The Music of My Sunday

          The Sunday that I envisioned began with sleeping late, followed by a large cup of tea and some blog writing and exploring.  Next I was to shower, take care of Hillary’s needs, and return to relaxing pursuits such as writing, reading, playing games and chatting with my husband as he read the Sunday papers, all while the local radio played in the background.  Following lunch my day would include a walk in the crisp March air in the strengthening sunshine, then perhaps a nap…….  I interrupt this dreamy day to inject a dose of reality! I did indeed sleep in, which was nice, but Miss Hillary decided not to sleep late so her shower, etc. took over my morning.  The radio was playing, and my husband was reading the Sunday papers, at least until we went food shopping, picking up an early dinner on the way home.  The TV was then turned on, the washer and dryer and dishwasher were all doing their jobs adding to the music of my Sunday.  Next daughter number one returned from a weekend with friends and decided to cook herself something.  As we live in a small one story ranch, all the sounds mixed together as I took care of things.  The radio in my bedroom to which I was listening as I folded clean laundry added a lyrical touch to the swish, gurgle, whirl, hum, clack of the washer and dryer. As I made my way through the kitchen, Anna had Celtic music playing as onions sizzled in a pan on the stove, in Hillary’s room I could hear voices from the TV show in the living room behind the sound of her vocalizations and clicking of her bead toy she was playing with. It may not have been the Sunday I had envisioned, but it was a pretty nice day anyway.  The sounds of my house and family created the soundtrack of my Sunday.

What's Thirty Years?

As my husband and I celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary, I reflect upon our life together.

What’s 30 Years?      

  It’s weddings and funerals, births and milestones, it’s weekends away, Thanksgivings, birthdays, and parties.

 30 years together is Friday nights ordering in, sleepy Saturday mornings and yard work.

  It’s vacations and staycations, friends and family gathered around the table.

 New cars, unemployment, new jobs and moving a child into college.

 30 years is disagreements, tears, fears, and eating Twizzlers at twilight on the front porch in the summer.

  It’s shoveling snow well before dawn, holding hands, road trips and picnics.

  It’s jaunts to the supermarket, hardware store, plumbing projects and planting flowers.

  It’s painting, parades, bowling tournaments, kids’ concerts, back to school night and graduation.

  It’s pizza for dinner, steaks on the grill, cereal at bedtime, and peanut butter sandwiches in the lunch bag.

 30 years is handmade Christmas decorations, Halloween candy, hidden Easter eggs, and fireworks.

 It’s a fair, a show, Jeopardy, and listening to the radio.

  It’s rodents in the attic, bees under the eaves, bird’s nests, and poison ivy in the yard.

  It’s random socks, too much in the closets, clothes to be folded, and tattered towels.

  30 years is a chain of every day events and moments, unbroken, which binds two people together in a partnership.

 30 years together is love.

Filling Out Forms

            If there’s one thing I can’t stand doing it’s filling out forms.  For the past 20 plus years I’ve been answering the same questions on school, doctor and service application forms. They’re hard to see as they’re typed in a small font with short lines for the answers or tiny little check boxes to be filled in and I’m losing patience for this activity! One universal form which is filled out once and updated yearly would be so much easier.  I wouldn’t mind reviewing information and initialing before moving on to updates.  This would be less stressful to do, and easier to read.

            When my daughter was diagnosed with Aicardi Syndrome, which includes seizures, scoliosis, and severe developmental delay, we went from specialist to specialist in order to address each of her medical issues. By the time she was 6 months old it was apparent that therapeutic intervention would be necessary.  This is when I became aware of the repetitiveness of forms as each one I filled out asked for the same information.  As she aged, I filled out more forms than I can count, all asking for the same old information along with questions about more current concerns. As she gets older, we have more forms to fill out for assistance programs, new doctors, and special activities.  They all ask for the same information I’ve been writing down for the past 20 plus years. It bothers me to repeatedly write down the history of all my daughter’s obvious challenges.  Some questions about her birth I fill in with a scribbled “I don’t remember, it was over 20 years ago!” I feel at this point that information isn’t relevant.

            If I could write all the smart alecky answers that I’m usually thinking when I’m faced with a form at least it would be amusing, but I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t be appreciated.  So I’ll continue putting the information on those short little lines and filling in the little check boxes until I either can’t hold a pen or someone comes out with that universal form of my dreams.

Like a Badge

            So many times I hear people lamenting their age, “I’m so old!” they’ll say, or “I can’t believe I’m turning (fill in the number)”.  Know what I say?  Wear your age proudly, like a badge.  Proclaim unapologetically that you are __ years old!  I am turning 53 this week, and I am happy to have survived this long.  It’s pretty amazing that any of us survive for long at all, considering that we all start as two little specs invisible to the naked eye that come together against all odds.  Then there are diseases and childhood in general to survive, not to mention those crazy teenage years during which many things happen that could  shorten our lives by quite a few years.  Not that I’ve had any life threatening health events or accidents, but really, sometimes life is so random and nobody ever knows which will be their final year.  So I say, the more candles on the cake the better—well, figuratively speaking anyway. You really have to be careful how many candles you put on a cake, depending on its size.  It would perhaps be better to make a rule that you must invite one person for each of your years in age to partake of cake with you so that you have a cake large enough to allow proper spacing of the candles.  I speak from experience.  There was the year that my husband turned 49 and, being a smart alecky kind of gal, I put 49 candles on a cake just big enough for the four of us.  Turned out it was too small for that much combustion.  After the first 20 or so candles were lit, they began lighting each other rendering my matches unnecessary.  Breathless from laughing and mild panic, my daughter and I called my husband into the kitchen to blow out the cake.  There was a lot of smoke, and a lot of wax on the slightly candle broiled frosting.  It’s a memory that I chuckle at every time I retell the story.  But I digress from the original subject which was age.  Be happy with whatever age you are, isn’t it great that you’re still here?

We Made Lasagna

 

Making lasagna is so easy these days since I discovered the oven ready noodles. Sauce, noodle, cheese, sauce, noodle, cheese until all ingredients are gone and the pan is full, covered, and popped into the oven.  I love those noodles, they make the dish such a snap to put together; much less time consuming!  As I baked a pan the other evening after returning from the supermarket, my  mind did a little time travel while I puttered around the kitchen putting away groceries, making salad, and unloading the dishwasher.

It was somewhere around 1977 and I was in my friend’s kitchen with her dicing mozzarella cheese.  Bubbling on the stove was a big pot of water just waiting for lasagna noodles to be added.  As the steam rose my friend Cathy dropped in the curly edged sheets of pasta and stirred it with a big spoon.  We were chattering away about how much our boyfriends were going to like the dinner we were making.  We had walked to the Acme down the street from her house to buy the ingredients and were now in the middle of my first foray into cooking without an adult around.  I think we had overestimated how much we’d need, or else there was no large pan available to us because I recall layering ingredients in round cake pans and square pans of different sizes.  It seemed like we had pans of lasagna all over the place.  It must have been quite cheesy because I remember dicing a lot of the mozzarella cheese.  I guess it didn’t occur to us to use a grater.  As I reflected, I couldn’t recall actually eating the food, I’m sure we must have, and I don’t know which boyfriends it was.  I just remember we had fun, made what seems like large quantities of lasagna, and dicing all that cheese with a little paring knife.

I’m still good friends with Cathy, and although we no longer live close enough to cook together, we do exchange letters, cards, e-mails and texts regularly.  I don’t know if she remembers our lasagna cooking day, perhaps she’ll leave a comment when she reads this post.

So now that you’re craving lasagna, go get some of those oven ready noodles and whip up a pan!  Enjoy!