July 31, always a tough day

This is the day that I have to really face the fact that soon we will be back in school and freedom will be nothing more than a memory.

Summers go so fast!

On to something more productive though. . .today I have a little cookie recipe for you because, well, cookies are good.  Who needs another reason?

Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 ½ cups quick-cooking oats
1 2/3 cups (10 oz pkg) HERSHEY’S Cinnamon Chips
3/4 cup raisins

Heat oven to 350.  Beat butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar in bowl until creamy.   Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.  Combine flour and baking soda; add to butter mixture, beating well.  Stir in oats, cinnamon chips and raisins (batter will be stiff).  Drop by heaping teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. 

Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.  Makes about 4 dozen.

Lullabies and Country Songs

There are plenty of great songs that could be soothing lullabies.  I used to fall asleep to Travis Tritt's Drift off to Dream

But for one of my little girls, it was the Oak Ridge Boys who provided the best soothing music.  Her absolute go-to calm her down song was this one:

My mother hates country music.  For a while she was our main babysitter for this little girl and, well, my daughter always has known just what she wants and could be inconsolable when she didn't get it, especially as an infant.  I told my mom it's an easy fix.  Just turn on this song.  She couldn't believe it.  My best friend and I even did an experiment in the car once when my little baby girl was crying.  We plopped the CD in and immediately the crying stopped.  Popped the CD out and the crying started.  CD in--no crying.  CD out--crying (screaming).  So we decided it was better to just leave the CD in. . .on repeat, just to be safe.

The Cassette Tapes in My Car

Years ago I had a Cougar.  I had a stash of cassettes in my car.  When I switched cars, I pulled my cassettes into my new (er) Cougar.  When I got my van in 2001, I moved that stash of cassettes again.

But my van had a CD player in it too so over the years, CDs became my choice for listening to music.

I don't always have CDs readily available anymore though because my kids listen to their music (from the library) so it's not like it used to be.  We mostly listen to the radio which means my poor children have to listen to me station-surfing every day. 

But I still have a cassette in the tape deck.  So once in a while we listen to that.  The big song today was this one from the Oak Ridge Boys.

I Wish You Could Have Turned My Head (And Left My Heart Alone)

This is not my favorite version of the song but it will do :-)

After we made our way through the initial tape I dug out another tape and asked my daughter to put the first tape in the cassette box. . .except she didn't know how to open it.  Oh my.  I think I aged a bit there!  I have boxes of cassettes in my basement.  I do believe I will need to dig them out for some drives before we head back to school!

That's the Way Love Goes. . . .

There are a couple of songs by this name.  This one happens to be my favorite.  Merle Haggard singing a classic. 

Happy Saturday!

That's the Way Love Goes

And Then There Were None

Since this was one of my beach vacation books, I just can't help but think the time is right to watch the movie.  (I still wonder how I managed to make it to my 40s without reading this book????)

Enjoy your Friday movie!

 And Then There Were None

Why English Majors Cannot Listen to the Radio

Seriously people. . .how difficult is it to write poetry set to music?

But for today's generation, grammar is an unknown and proper English, well, they claim artistic license or some other mumbo jumbo to justify themselves.

Example:  Florida Georgia Line's hit song Cruise makes me cringe

"Baby you a song
You make me wanna roll my windows down"


Too lazy to sing "Baby you're a song?"

No offense guys but it makes me scream a little because it's not *that* difficult to keep that line right. 

And then there's this song that is incredibly danceable.  It's really hard to stay still when it's playing.  I try not to pay attention to the lyrics because they are not appropriate, especially for young ears.  But when the singer says "What rhymes with hug me" again, I cringe.  I want to offer some suggestions like "mug me"  or even better "slug me"

Shame on you.  Music doesn't have to have inappropriate suggestive lyrics (or videos) in order to be popular.  Lazy (wrong) grammar isn't the key to success either. 

Make music that won't make an English major cringe over the lyrics.

Please!

Final thought . . .yes, I listen to both of those songs an have known to blast them while driving down the road.  But mentally I correct the English errors which means I don't get to enjoy the songs as much as I might otherwise ;-)

Beaches and Happiness

People who live near the beach just don't seem to get it.  They cannot understand why some of us drive so far and so long just to spend a week in the sun.  (Funny how they can take it for granted that they have a beach right next to them but cannot understand why it's a luxury to the rest of us.)

For the first several days at the beach we visited the one across the street from our condo.  It was a short walk to a very crowded beach.  Even in the evening the beach looked like this:

I realize that's not really crowded but imagine that same stretch of beach with rows of beach chairs (available for rent for just $40-50 per chair for a day) then a row or two of tents behind it and really, not much more than 5 feet between you and your neighbors.  Gosh, people were so loud that you could hardly even hear the ocean.

That is why I felt like I was in heaven when we reached a decision to go to the state park beach for our last day.  This is what greeted us during the busiest time on the beach, at 11 am:

And this is the beach at 2 pm when the crowd had cleared out:

We had the roar of the ocean.  We had a breeze (I swear it was much cooler at this beach simply because we didn't have a gazillion people around us!).  We had a relaxing long day at the beach.  Precisely what we drove all those miles to achieve.  And we had Twinkies.  Yup, good stuff.

Shark!!!!

I was stretched out on the beach trying to decide if I should just give in and take a nap or try to read for a while.  Suddenly one of my kids came out of the water and passed all the chairs/umbrellas to announce "Shark Mommy!!  Shark!"

And sure enough, there was a shark!  Everyone got out of the water and gawked at it like it was the most amazing thing ever. 

OK, so it probably was pretty amazing.  We've been to that beach a few times over the last ten years and we had never seen a shark. 

We all just stood there watching as it swam along the coast.  There were a couple of guys on paddleboards, smacking the paddle on the water to try to steer the shark back away from the beach.  I am a terrible judge of distance but I can say I was well out of the water and I could easily see the shark as he/she swam by.  Someone said it was around eight feet long but I have no idea if that person knew what he was talking about or not.

When my family went over to get sno-cones, they asked the girl that was working the stand if sharks have been a common thing this year.  She said they were not; she thought there had been one at the start of summer but this was the first since then.

Sooo, my kids got a nice cool little memory out of their trip to the beach.  They actually got to see a shark swim right past them.


Sorry, no pics.  The zoom on my camera isn't that fabulous and seriously, do you think I wanted to look that much like a tourist? 

Travelling

Some people travel really well.

They can sit in the car for hours, content to watch the countryside as they roll down the highway.

Others take books so they don't have to pay attention to the highway at all.

And still others, sleep.  (This option is not really available for the co-pilot in our family because we still rely on good old maps and map-reading skills)

But then there are the ones who don't travel well.

Bless their little hearts.

They are the ones who ask, after just one hour on the road "How much longer until we get there?"  And then just twenty minutes later they ask "When are we having lunch?" quickly followed up by "Where are we stopping for lunch?" even though they just had breakfast two hours ago.

They are the ones who say to you "I don't have to go" when you are in the nice clean gas station/fast food restaurant combo but then just five miles down the road will have an emergency and need to go, requiring you to stop at the first gas station you encounter.  Yes, this will be the gas station that has water all over the floor, no toilet paper in the stall and/or the light in your bathroom will be out.  But as Rudy Huxtable once said "Little kids can't always know when they'll have to go."  (Or something like that, I'm working off of memory here.)

I guess it takes all kinds and for sure, my family got a little of all of these kinds.  Luckily we have one that drives everywhere we go.  Fearless about driving in unknown lands--definitely the most important type to take on your road trip.

When we were kids, Willie Nelson sang the anthem of every single road trip we took :-)

On the Road Again

A World Without Love

I always loved the message in this one from Peter and Gordon. . . .Hope you have a great Saturday!

Lock me away. . . I won't stay in world without love :-)

Bell Book and Candle

Today's movie selection comes from 1958 and stars Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon.  It's the story of a modern day witch who puts a spell on the neighbor that she likes (and she just happens to hate his fiancee).  What she isn't prepared for though, is falling in love with him for real. 

I think I'm especially drawn to this one because at the start of the movie New York City is in the middle of a snow storm.  Sounds nice and cool here in the middle of hot humid summer.

From back in the days when movies were good stuff.

Bell Book and Candle

Reconstructing Amelia

Vacation also meant a ton of time to read.  I am not the best little traveler you would meet so when I am on the road, if I'm not driving, I am reading.  It's the only way.

My first book of the vacation trip was one that I found thanks to Buzzfeed.and the list 14 Books to Read Before They Hit the Big Screen.  The title intrigued me.  The story is about a mother coming to terms with the death of her child. . .who apparently committed suicide after being accused of cheating on an English assignment.

But there was so much more to what happened to Amelia.  Her mother, Kate,  had to try to wrap her brain around how this happened to her daughter.  And then the texts came "She didn't jump."  Suddenly Kate is thrown into something much larger. . .and has to face up to her own shortcomings as well.

It was very well written with only a few oddities that made me think "huh?" in particular when dealing with some of the digital trail left behind by Amelia.  But overall, this was a book that left me thinking for days after I finished it.  In fact, it was intense enough that I had to pause before even trying to pick up another book to read.  It's more than just the issue of Kate unraveling what happened to Amelia.  It was also because Amelia in the story is the same as as one of my children.  It made me think about how difficult the teen years can be for kids, even the ones that talk to their parents all the time.  It was the same kind of "intense, make you think about it for a while books" as Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes (which really ought to be required reading for parents and teens).

I give two huge thumbs up for Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight.  It is her debut novel and frankly I am looking forward to more from Ms. McCreight.

One out of three is, great?

So I was telling a friend about our recent trip.  We went to the beach, as you can see from my last post, right?

I was asked "how was it?"

My response?

"I hate the fighting in the car.  I haaaate staying in hotels.  But I love the beach."

My friend quickly pointed out that one out of three doesn't make a good vacation.  Valid point.  Unless one of those three is the beach that I looooooooove.

It's a long drive from my home to the beach.  We have to break it into two days because there is no way to do it in one.  Just no way at all. The last hour of the drive each day is painful enough.  I cannot imagine if we tried to push the entire drive into one day.  You might think I am punishing myself by having 2 "last hour" of driving days but I can't see one long horrific drive as better.

And we have to stay at hotels.  Hotels are just icky.  You don't really know that the place was cleaned up between visitors and does their level of cleaning match mine?  I am a tad ocd. . .and a trip heightens my anxiety level and makes my ocd-ness go off the charts.  I mean, for Pete's sake I actually sent a friend a text the first night at the condo "These sheets don't smell right.  How will I manage to sleep here?"  On the upside, the condo was great and definitely passed my "white sock" test.  If I can walk around all evening in white socks and they are still white at the end of the evening, well, your level of cleaning must match the level I strive for at home.

But the beach, that is what makes it all worth the hassle.  I love lounging on the beach.  I read.  I doze.  We take walks on the beach.  We search for shells.  We eat Twinkies.  We sit at the edge of the ocean and let the waters run up onto us.

This time around we stayed in a condo that was pretty awesome.  It was more expensive than the hotel we used to stay in but it gave room for our family to spread out instead of being right up on top of each other all the time.  We were able to walk to the beach which was nice.  The only downside to our location was that the beach was crowded.  So on the last full day we went to the state park beach that we had gone to on previous trips.  That beach was the first beach that each of our kids played on when they were little.  It's sentimental but I love that beach more than any other.

Pure heaven.

Since the state park beach charges admission, there are fewer people there.  Instead of people being 3-4 families "deep" from the ocean we could pick a spot on the beach and not have anyone directly next to us, in front of us or behind us.  We could hear the ocean.  It was gorgeous.

I told my husband that I know it was a pain to pack up the car to drive 3 miles to the beach but it was sooooo worth it.  Pure happiness on the beach.  Pretty much made all the other hassles worth it.

Good stuff.

Back home again

And just you wait.  I have stories to tell. Some of it was like this:

And some of it was more like this:

Yes, actual picture from vacation.  When someone takes a picture with an unfamiliar camera on a dark beach, this is the memory you get.  Beautiful eh?

So brace yourself for stories this week.  We just might have a few worth sharing.  I hope you don't mind though if I take a tiny vacation first just to recover from my vacation.

For now, I just keep singing John Denver's song:
"Hey, it's good to be back home again
Sometimes this old farm feels like a long lost friend
Yes, 'n, hey it's good to be back home again"

Listen for yourself. . . . Back Home Again

Mellow tune today. . .Go Away LIttle Girl

This one comes from Steve Lawrence.  It wasn't necessarily my favorite song when I was little but it was part of the collection of music I listened to the most when I was little.  Poignant song.  And so classically 1960s. . . 

.

Made for Each Other

Oh it's wedding season.  And who can resist a fun little movie about a newly married young couple?  Entirely safe for one and all.  After all, it's Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 movie "Made for Each Other" 

He is a young lawyer who met a young lady while on a business trip. . .and married her after knowing her for just one day.  This is the story of their first year of marriage.

Blast from the Past!

Used to love this one when I was in high school. . .one of those songs my sister and I listened to over and over and over--on a tape which meant we had to rewind it over and over and over.

Hold Me Now--The Thompson Twins

Lightened up Fettuccine Alfredo

A few nights ago we were scrounging around for a meal.  Some members of the family were happy to eat a breaded chicken patty. I was not.

So I started boiling some water to throw some pasta in.  Then I dug around in the fridge to find that jar of pesto that I just knew was in there somewhere.

But I wanted  more.  I saw a recipe somewhere for a pesto fettuccine alfredo.  But it called for heavy cream. . .which of course I didn't have.  So looked online to see if I could substitute Greek yogurt, which I usually do have in the fridge.

Bingo.

Rocco DiSpirito's Lightened Fettuccine Alfredo.   It makes 4 servings (funny, that's how much fettuccine I put on to boil before I even knew I was making his recipe.

I had attempted regular fettuccine before and was not thrilled with my results.  Since I was the only one intending to eat it this go around, I figured I had nothing to lose.  So I followed the recipe as it was given on the ABC news website.

8 ounces whole-wheat fettuccine
1 tablespoon butter
3 garlic cloves, minced (I cheated and used minced garlic from a jar in the fridge)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
a pinch of ground nutmeg
3/4 c low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth
3/4 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
3/4 cup 5% Greek yogurt
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Cook fettuccine according to package directions.

While the pasta cooks, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until it is fragrant, about 2 minutes.

In a small bowl (or glass measuring cup) combine the cornstarch and nutmeg.  Add the chicken broth and whisk until smooth.  Pour this mixture into the skillet; raise the heat and bring to a simmer, whisking as needed.

Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and stir in as it melts.  Then, remove the  skillet from the heat and whisk in the yogurt. (Removing the skillet from heat is very important so that the yogurt does not separate)  The sauce should be smooth.

By this time the fettuccine should be ready to drain and then toss with the lightened alfredo sauce.  You may choose to salt and pepper to taste and top the pasta with the remaining cheese.

Serves 4.

According to the source cookbook Now Eat This this dish contains:
336 calories
10.4 g fat
Protein: 18 g
Carbohydrates: 47 g
Cholesterol: 27 mg
Fiber: 5 g
Sodium: 745 mg

Trailer for sale or rent

Rooms to let fifty cents

No phone no pool no pets.

I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah but two hours of pushin' broom buys an
Eight by twelve four bit room
I'm a man of means by no means. . .
King of the road!

Good Ol' Roger Miller. 

Another blast from the past. . .the fabulous music I inherited from my parents.  Music that told a story that you could create as you listened.

Perfect Saturday music.

Enjoy!

King of the Road

Let's Get together yeah yeah

Oh how I loved "The Parent Trap" as a kid.    Disney movie magic with long lost twin sisters finding each other and trying to bring their parents together again.  And totally safe family entertainment--those were the days.

Sit back and enjoy the magic. Follow the link as this one just won't embed. 

The Parent Trap

What Should I Read Next?

This is rarely a problem for me.  I usually have a stack of "must reads" and have to simply determine the proper order.

But every once in a while, I finish up all my "knowns" and suddenly have no idea where to turn.

Welllll, I am thrilled to share with you a little link that someone shared with me the other day. . .it completely solves the dilemma of the lost reader by giving you recommendations for what you would like based on something else you have already read and loved.

Soooo simple.  Click on this link What Should I Read Next? and put in the name of a book you read and loved. . .or an author whose works you have previously enjoyed.  It should recognize the book or author so you can click on it and watch a list of book suggestions appear.

Amazing.

Truly outstanding.

No go try it.  Find some books!  The summer is still young!

The correct time is. . . .

Once upon a time, there was a number that you could call, anytime, day or night, to get the correct time and current temperature.

Now this is something that kids today would have no concept of doing.

But back when I was a kid, we didn't all have devices that could tell us correct time.  (Side track--my husband's cellphone does not keep time correctly.  I think his is perpetually slow.  We've turned it off and back on so it can update the time.  It doesn't)

Anyway, we also didn't have apps for telling us current weather conditions. 

Soooo, we called the local number, listened to a short commercial from a bank and then the kind lady on the other end of the line told us, in her calm, cheerful mom kind of voice "The correct time is ______ and the current temperature is ______"

We used that call to determine if it was too hot to swim.  Sure, we could have stepped outside but we had a very well shaded property and temps were always cooler by our house.  And the correct time was vital if the battery died in your watch or there had been a power outage and you needed to reset clocks.

I was curious the other day. . .does this service still exist?  I found this link Time/Temperature/Weather

One might think that I would remember this phone number the same way I remember my grandparents' phone number (even though they haven't had that number since 1995).  Sadly, I do not. Funny how the brain works sometimes, isn't it?

Fireflies!

We have had terribly hot weather for the last couple of weeks.  Humid too.  So when it cooled off the other night, we went out on the porch for a bit to try out the new furniture.  My littlest one saw the fireflies and just had to chase after them.

Then she had the idea. . .Mommy--can we get a jar and put holes in the lid so we can catch a few of them?

Yes indeed we can!

I sent her into the house to look for a jar.  She didn't know where I stash old jelly jars so I ended up going in with her.  We rigged up the lid and she was ready to go get her some fireflies!

Then her older sister got into the game.

They probably caught a total of six of them. Th oldest sister came out to help explain how fireflies are able to light up.

It was one of those "moments' that didn't last long enough.  All at once the fireflies were gone--replaced by other things that seem to bite more.  So it was time to release the ones they had captured and head into the house.

Probably not more than forty-five minutes from start to finish.  But the kind of memory every little one should get to have.

Good stuff.