wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

New York City or bust! After a two hour delay the plane was in the air and landed at rain-drenched JFK. Yes, it's time for a dose of holiday magic in the Big Apple.

A new New York adventure - taking the bus from LaGuardia to the Jackson Heights train station and  catching the F train to Rockefeller Center. The bus ride was free, the train fare was $3.00. What a bargain vs. the Uber, Lyft, or taxi fares. You don't have the convenience of a driver handling your luggage but all I had was a small suitcase and a backpack so easy peasy.

The Rockefeller Center tree will be lit tonight. The crowds will be horrendous and we will stay away until Friday. People are already claiming their space for the tree lighting. Luckily it's a sunny day to hang out as the minutes tick away.

Holiday lights and decorations are already sparkling and bringing a festive spirit to the streets. The reflections from the rain are a bonus.

I took a stroll down Avenue of the Americas to meet my daughter after she was done with work .The walk-through tree...what a fun way for people who work at the building to start their work day. Lots of pedestrians walk through it, too. I did!

 

oh, christmas tree, oh, christmas tree

Something that I rarely ever, ever do is begin Christmas decorating before Thanksgiving. Well this year I did. Thanksgiving was quiet, just Todd, Patrick, and me, and the guys were going to watch football for a good part of the day, so why not get a jump on decorating? 

See that mitten at the top of the tree? That's been my tree topper for fifteen years. Here's the story: First, to let you know, we have artificial Christmas trees because a couple of our kids have pine allergies. Fifteen years ago, our Christmas tree bit the dust and we needed a new one. At 8:30 in the morning I was out the door to WalMart to find a tree. No luck. Onto Meijer...found one but it was a bit pricy. Sears came to mind so onward to the Dayton Mall. I found my tree...but none were in stock. A very nice salesman looked online to see if any were available in the area stores. No luck. He sat down at the computer and typed in the information at sears.com and found one! I completed the transaction and as I thanked him, I looked at his name tag. This helpful salesman's name was Howard. My dad retired from Sears and his name is Howard. (He passed away in 2002). I do believe I met a Christmas angel that day and also had a little wink from heaven. 

Now for the mitten. That mitten belonged to my dad. It's heavy duty and so warm and he wore mittens like that to keep his hands warm during the bitter Chicago winters. My dad also loved Christmas and even though the tree has to be replaced every so often, his mitten will always be the tree topper.

monday's mulling: the christmas letter

The last couple of days I had a doozy of a cold, it felt like my head would explode, I was in Christmas decorating mode, but had to put that on hold, along with blog posts, truth be told.

Well, hello December! As I cross off tasks on my Christmas to-do list, there's always more to add. Will it ever get shorter? (Deep breath), yes it will. One of my tasks is to write the annual Christmas letter. 

I subscribe to a poem-a-day newsletter and this one recently showed up. One of the saddest casualties of the email age is the disappearance of the Christmas letter. I remember back in the day Mom and Dad reading us the two-page, single-spaced, xeroxed Christmas letter, in which we learned about various peoples’ lives for the past year. Pete got a promotion. Little Annie made the Dean’s list. John and Debbie are enjoying their retirement in Naples.

The Christmas Letter

By John Norris

Wherever you are when you receive this letter

I write to say we are still ourselves

In the same place

And hope you are the same.

The dead have died as you know

And will never get better,

And the children are boys and girls

Of several ages and names.

So in closing I send you our love

And hope to hear from you soon.

There is never a time

Like the present. It lasts forever

Wherever you are. As ever I remain.

I have written a Christmas letter for many, many years, ever since 1984, the year my first child was born. 41 years...wow. It’s an alphabetical compilation of the past year where each letter gets filled with someone or some event or place. I keep it to one page, front and back, and sometimes some of the letters get a little silly. Some letters like Q, X, and Z get a little goofy but hey, life gets a little goofy at times. Friends look forward to this year-on-a-page letter and I do have fun writing it.

This is the source for writing the annual Christmas letter, my Day Planner, which has turned into a diary. I write something about every day in it. Sometimes it's a word or a one liner, other times I fill the pages. It's enjoyable to go back to January 1 and read through each month, taking a stroll down memory lane. And that reminds me to put a Day Planner 2026 on my Christmas list. Gotta keep the tradition going.

the friday feed: mom's pumpkin pie

On our drive home from the Columbus airport, Todd asked me if I wanted to stop at the grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving. I told him we could go to buy the turkey but I didn't have my Thanksgiving shopping list ready and I didn't want to wander around the store going through a mental list of "Do I need this or do I need that?" We bought the turkey, some celery and chicken broth (those were on the way to the meat counter) and passed a table filled with boxes and boxes of pies. Todd took notice of this display and said, "Patrick requested pumpkin pie for dessert. Should we get one?" 

"Sure." 

"Oh we can wait 'til tomorrow and you can pick one up when you do your big shopping trip."

Tomorrow arrived and I went shopping around noon with my well-organized list. I got to the pie table and there were no more pumpkin pies. (WHAT?). I thought, "I'll just buy a couple pie crusts and make pumpkin pie." I am not a pie baker but I have my mom's pumpkin pie recipe, it's an easy one, so why not?

I had to search through a few old recipe books and finally found Mom's handwritten  recipe. As you can tell, it's old, well-used, and the paper is getting brittle. It's my favorite pumpkin pie recipe because the ratio of spices is just right. So many times it seems like one of the spices dominates, but not in this case.

Mom smiles from above.

A tattered, stained recipe...

Tradition endures.

Back to baking the pies. I bought off-brand pie crusts and pre-baked them before putting the pumpkin pie filling in. Those crusts shrunk. Oy. Whatever...I poured the pumpkin pie mixture into them and then into the oven for baking. Not the best looking pies but nothing that a big dollop of whipped cream can't take care of.

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Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 c. pumpkin

1 1/2 c. sugar (not quite)

1 1/2 c. milk

Pinch of salt (1/2 t.)

2 eggs

1 T. flour

1 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. allspice

1/8 t. nutmeg

1/8/ t. ginger

Bake at 450° for 10 minutes. Reduce to 350° and bake 35 - 45 minutes.

Sharp knife inserted in middle should come out clean.

gratitude and thanksiving

In yesterday’s New York Times, Sam Sifton started the morning edition with this thought:

“Good morning. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and odds are good that at some point during the day someone’s going to ask you what you’re thankful for.

It’s a good question to ask. People should think about gratitude more often. They should share their gratitude with others, in public, and not just on Thanksgiving. Saying it out loud is an act of grace, a gift to the people surrounding you.”

Today, Thanksgiving, is about gratitude and living with a grateful heart.

I want to share a couple of my favorite readings from this book. No religion, just food for thought on this holiday that centers around a meal and why we celebrate this day.

"Tonight we give thanks for the great gift of friendship. Thank you for the circumstances that brought us together and have bound us into the sacred bundle of life. Thank you also for the gifts of our friendship; for knowledge that comforts, for words that encourage, for insight that blesses, for all the experiences shared, for the sweet bliss of deeply knowing each other in so many ways; for history and a hope of the future, for conversation and laughter, for silence, for bearing each other's witness truly, for holding each other in our hearts with great love and tenderness."

~ Daphne Rose Kingma

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"One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime mystery which constantly envelopes us. All one need to do is notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling."

~ Simon Greenberg

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Thanksgiving blessings to you.

As always, many thanks and much gratitude to my friend Patricia Saxton for sharing her art and her wisdom.

wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

Todd's birthday was on Sunday so to celebrate he wanted to go the Cleveland Browns football game...in Las Vegas. Last Wednesday we drove to the John Glenn Columbus International Airport to catch our early morning Thursday flight. As always, I got my window seat and enjoyed watching the sunrise above the clouds.

We made a stop in Minneapolis-St. Paul to connect to Las Vegas. Did you know that SPAM is made in Austin, Minnesota, a town about 100 miles south of Minneapolis? I sure didn't. SPAM was a staple in the last two years of Todd's college diet when he lived in off-campus housing.

Hello, Las Vegas! As we walked to and through the terminal, the ding, ding, ding and the bright lights of the gambling machines enticed travelers to try their luck.

The Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix was going on while we were there. Lots of people came in to watch the four days of racing that was right in the center of town.  Thank heavens our hotel was away from the race route as it was impossible to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. We bought a 4-day monorail pass to get from one end of town to the other and did a lot of walking, too. The race was blocked off from those who did not pay big bucks to watch it but when the cars zoomed by, it was obvious from the engine roar that those were some very expensive, fine tuned machines.

So much art in all the hotels. This was one of my favorite pieces, "Tulips" by Jeff Koons. Many years ago when my daughter lived in New York City, she and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jeff Koons had an exhibit on the Met's rooftop. His art is large in scale and is fun, colorful, whimsical, and happy.

One of the days we went to the Mob Museum which is in Old Las Vegas. The Mob Museum really gave an understanding of organized crime's history and impact on American society. Walking around Old las Vegas was so different from the casinos on The Strip - the newer, glitzier part of town. Its Mid-Century architecture has been preserved. I really enjoyed this section of town and wished we could have spent more time exploring.

This breathtaking glass sculpture is Fiori di Como, created by Dale Chihuly, and it adorns the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel's lobby. As its placard says, "Completed in 1998, this masterpiece is renowned not only for its staggering beauty and complexity but also for being the largest glass sculpture ever made, embodying Chihuly's distinctive style and unparalleled craftsmanship in the realm of blown glass art."

And here we are at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Both teams came to this game with a 2-8 record. Not a lot on the line except the glory of a win and the Browns did give Todd a 24-10 win for his birthday. 

monday's mulling: who can relate?

 

This is me, particularly when it comes to my phone. I'm going to ask Santa for an iWatch. It has a "Find My iPhone" feature on it so Todd won't have to call my phone to help me locate it.

happy birthday!

For the month of November I’ve been writing in a daily gratitude journal and today’s prompt is “Animals.” It also happens to be Todd’s birthday. Hmmmm...how to combine the two...

Happy birthday to the guy who keeps me on my toes but also keeps me grounded.

He's a loyal DAWG* who bleeds brown and orange. He’s been through it all, starting as a 7 year old kid watching the 1964 Championship onto The Kardiac Kids, The Mistake on the Lake, The Drive, The Fumble, The Move, Rebuilding Since 1999, Factory of Sadness, The Helmet, and like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps on going! No matter what the Browns do, one thing never changes: Pittsburgh sucks.**  

Happy Birthday THouse...Here we go, Brownies, here we go! WOOF WOOF!

And now, 2 months and 1 week later, you're the same age as me!

*For those of you wondering about the Browns lore, the team's mascots are a "brownie" elf and a dog, typically a bull mastiff, in reference to the Dawg Pound, which is the nickname for a specific portion of the stands where the most diehard and rabid fans sit. The Dawg Pound has since been adopted and used as reference to the entire Browns fan base.

**The Browns - Steelers rivalry, or Turnpike Rivalry, is an intense National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers.

collective nouns

A collective noun is a common noun that names a group of people, creatures, or objects. Did you know there are around 200 collective nouns in English?

A "simple" grammar rule for you: According to Grammarly,

How do you know whether a collective noun should be singular or plural?

Collective nouns are singular in form but plural in meaning. In American English, they are usually treated as singular and followed by a singular verb. However, many of them can be treated as plural in contexts where the emphasis is on the individual members or components of a group rather than on the group as a whole. In British English, collective nouns are much more frequently treated as plural.

And a few more:

Mammals

• Apes: a shrewdness
• Badgers: a cete
• Bears: a sloth or sleuth
• Camels: a caravan or train
• Cats: a clowder
• Dogs: a pack
• Dolphins: a pod
• Elephants: a herd or parade
• Ferrets: a business
• Giraffes: a tower
• Hippopotamuses: a bloat or thunder
• Kangaroos: a mob or troop
• Lions: a pride
• Monkeys: a troop or barrel
• Rhinoceroses: a crash
• Tigers: an ambush or streak
• Whales: a pod or herd
• Wolves: a pack 
  

Birds 

• Crows: a murder
• Eagles: a convocation
• Flock: a generic term for birds
• Geese: a gaggle or skein
• Owls: a parliament 

Insects

• Ants: a colony or army
• Bees: a swarm or hive
• Hornets: a nest 
  

Other animals

• Crocodiles: a bask
• Fish: a school or shoal
• Frogs: an army
• Jellyfish: a smack or fluther
• Squirrels: a dray or scurry 

And after all this, if you're still wanting more information on collective nouns, check out this article on The Fascinating History of Collective Nouns.

Have a good day, y'all! (Is that a collective pronoun?)