wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

A little over four years ago, Andrew and Jen shared the exciting news that they were expecting a baby. To announce their pregnancy, they gave me a bottle of wine with a custom label that read, “Pairs well with becoming a Grandma.” 

This past weekend, we celebrated Owen’s 4th birthday with a Spider-Man themed party filled with Spidey goodies, superhero fun, and even a special visit from Spider-Man himself. It’s hard to believe how quickly four years have flown by!

 

Our drive home from Cleveland began under gray, rainy skies, but as we headed south, we could see the clouds breaking. By the time we arrived home, a beautiful sunset filled the sky, providing the perfect ending to a wonderful weekend.

ted and the pancake

I spy with my big brown eyes

A pancake that’s just my size!

I don't do much with Facebook anymore, but this memory popped up the other day and it made me smile. This is my rascally big (HUGE) dog Ted. Seated, his mouth was right at table level and as soon as you turned around, any food that was on the table was gone. He would sit, patiently waiting for that perfect moment. This did not become one of those moments. I kept my eye on him!

monday's mulling: old school v. ai

Friday night, after the grandkids went to bed, it was time to make the macaroni and cheese for Owen's birthday party on Saturday.

Jennifer had given me two boxes of pasta for the dish. The recipe called for 6 ounces of pasta, and each box contained 16 ounces. That meant I needed to increase the recipe by roughly  2 1/2 times. So I sat at the kitchen counter with the recipe in front of me, using my handy-dandy free Post-it note pad from Wittenberg University to calculate the amounts I would need for one batch of cheese sauce.

I planned to make the pasta and cheese sauce twice because Jen didn't have a pan large enough to cook two boxes of pasta at once or make a single batch of cheese sauce that was five times the original recipe.

As she watched me work through the calculations, finding common denominators and calculating all the totals, she said, "You know, you could take a picture of the recipe and have ChatGPT do the calculating for you."

I smiled.

I'm old school. Doing the math myself reassures me that my brain still works. I'm not a fan of AI. I like to keep things real.

sunday, a day of rest and time to appreciate

Think about this and appreciate the good things.

 

joy 2 u 2

8:30 a.m. and I was driving to the farm, stopping at the light at the busy intersection of Whipp and Far Hills. Ahead of me was a silver Buick, I was singing along with the Eagles “Seven Mile Bridge," and then I noticed the license plate.

JOY 2 U 2

A tiny message slipped into the day, a blessing on a bumper. I smiled. Out of all the combinations of letters and numbers that could have ended up on a car, this one was wishing joy to whoever happened to be behind it. Including me.

So I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture.

That night I was looking at the photos I had taken during the day. The license plate made me smile, but then I noticed that something else had made it into the frame.

Near the bottom of the windshield sat a white splatter.

Bird poop.

I laughed out loud.

There it was: a photograph that perfectly captured the morning. A message of joy in the center, bird poop in the foreground.

Such an accurate picture of life. Sometimes the universe sends you a cheerful greeting and a messy surprise at exactly the same time.

 

the friday feed: the good ole betty crocker cookbook

This past week, I pulled out my 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook a couple of times. First, the favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe on page 266 came to the rescue after Todd dropped a few not-so-subtle hints that he’d love a batch of cookies. Then, a couple of days later, my daughter-in-law asked if I would make macaroni and cheese for Owen’s birthday party this weekend. That recipe is on page 117.

Chocolate chip cookies may be one of the most nostalgic treats ever created. And that macaroni and cheese recipe was a quick, easy dinner that earned no complaints from my four children and has since become a favorite of my grandchildren as well.

The photos show just how often these recipes were used over the years. These days, I don’t turn to them nearly as often, but whenever I open that cookbook to fill a special request, the memories come flooding back.

big boy

Union Pacific's Big Boy 4014 is making its first trip to the East Coast as part of a nationwide tour in honor of America's 250th birthday. The massive steam engine is 130 feet long, weighs 1.2 million pounds, and is the world's largest operating steam locomotive.  It went through Cleveland this past Monday. 

Yep, we missed it by a day.

I like the second photo with the Cleveland skyline in the background and the road in the forefront with all the people watching the train pass.

All photos taken by Drone Ohio.