I walked into the bank today and waited for a teller to call me over. There was one other customer there.
I handed my teller the deposits and walked to the counter to grab a lollipop. As I turned back, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I recognized the woman. When I heard her voice, I knew who it was. Someone from high school. Someone who was on the cheerleading squad with me. Someone who I’d call an acquaintance, or someone that I used to know.
Hmmm….do I just kept my head turned and sneak out after my transactions are done? Or do I find my friendly face and say hello? What to do what to do!
I turned toward her and said, “I’d know that laugh anywhere!”. We shared a hug, had a small conversation, I collected my receipts, and left with a breezy, “It was nice to see you!”.
It would have been so easy to just ignore her, and go on my way. I feel a smidge better that I didn’t.
If you would call 30 years ago, not so distant, that was the time that we acquired our first computer. It was a no-name computer put together by someone who knew what they were doing and it gave us access to the World Wide Web. Back then we were tethered to a desktop and a dial up modem. If someone had told me we would have mini computers in our hands, I would have thought they were crazy!
I think about those times now with the need to constantly update myself on what’s going on in the world. Such a “fear of missing out”!
What did I do back when our only link was the desktop and dial-up? I might knit, or read, or watch tv, and back then, I was definitely playing with our son!
I am really glad all this technology wasn’t available to me 30 years ago!
I’m curious by nature. I ask (a lot of) questions when I meet someone or when I’m talking to a friend because I enjoy a conversation. Sometimes though, it’s because it takes the spotlight off me.
I like to comment and ask questions of the bloggers I read as well and I like when they comment and ask questions of me (hint, hint 😉).
I’ve been following a blogger, I don’t think she follows me and I enjoy what she writes. She’s from a different part of the country, has a different lifestyle, and still raising children while I’ve raised one.
I’ve read back posts and had been trying to follow the threads of her life, and was looking forward to upcoming events.
I made a comment to her latest post, and now she’s gone. Perhaps in saying I’ve known those feelings in the past, I overstepped the bounds she felt were acceptable. I appeared to be the only person commenting so it must have been something I said! In this case, I’ve tried to ask general questions because it’s a public forum and you never know who else is reading.
I read many blogs that I really enjoy for a variety of reasons, and I’m really disappointed that she has disappeared.
Have you ever felt a well-intentioned comment you made caused someone to disappear in real life or online. Notice I said “well-intentioned” because we know how our keyboard fingers can fly when angry!
I know that ear worms are usually associated with songs but I have an ear worm of a poem running through my head:
Summer breezes softly blow Memories of long ago Happy places Smiling faces Loving you
It is from SO long ago, and from a random place that I’m not sure it’s exact so maybe I’ve made some parts my own over the years.
I started enjoying poems when I was in my early teens. In our local newspaper was a weekly section of reader submitted poems. Being a love obsessed teen, the poems of that type were right up my alley! I was also in the early stages of typing so I would sit on the floor of my room with my aunt’s portable typewriter and type out the poems I liked. It was a great way to practice, progressing from “hunt and peck” to “not hunting but still pecking” to straight up “no look typing”.
I kept them all in a small book of sayings (about love, of course) that I hung onto for years, moving it with me in my “box of treasures” where ever we lived. Unfortunately, in the course of “simplifying”, the box with this book and some other items got thrown out with the rest. I feel a little heartbroken about it and feel like it’s going to magically appear one day!
Are your ear worms mostly music or do you have a favorite poem that pops into your head too?
Worry and fear fly into the room and enter my brain at 4am. I should be enjoying the final hour and 15 minutes of a good night’s sleep but instead in find myself awake giving them the opening to appear.
Bills.business.life.health.travel.bills.job delays.bills. Over and over again.
I turn to my left side and recite the Lords Prayer. I try a little ‘God’s got me the palm of his hand‘. Nope.
I rotate like a pig on a spit to my right side. Happy memories? Upcoming adventures? Nope.
it’s 4:30. I realize the problem is, I’m THINKING. Everything involves my brain thinking. Turn it off.turn it off. It won’t shut off.
Then suddenly, I’m younger, alone and driving trying to get home. I don’t know where I am but (in the morning light), I think it’s in a town nearby. I’m driving up a hill, stop when I can’t go anymore and leave my car. Where do I go? Suddenly, I’m taking a yoga class. Then I’m at home with my husband and Vince Vaughn and his sister (?!) stop by to look at our house. She and I talk about needlepoint. I’m called away from yoga by my friend Sherri who died a few years ago to go see a young girl who was in the elementary school I worked at. When I go back, yoga is over so I pack up my belongings and suddenly I’m back at my car. People are picnicking in the area. I look over and my car door is open. Someone broke in but the people nearby say all they saw was people commenting about the car. I head over to look.
I hear a noise. It’s my alarm at 5:45am. I press the button on my phone to turn it off and lay there to calm the feeling in my body from the alarm.
Why Bother Because right now there is someone Out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words — Sean Thomas Dougherty 2018
I heard this poem this past week while attending an author talk by Monica Woods for our town’s “One Book, One Wallingford”. The participants in the program read her book “How To Read A Book”.
She recited this poem when discussing her journey in writing. She had a manuscript for her book “The One-In-A-Million Boy” which was rejected in 2008 (or so). She tossed it in a drawer and her husband kept encouraging her to send it to another publisher. She didn’t, but in the meantime wrote a memoir, “When we were the Kennedys” and a play! Her husband kept encouraging her to re-submit it. But next she wrote “How To Read A Book”. Then, she submitted the cast-away manuscript and it was published.
I have no plan to write a book but her story and the poem she recited really struck me because I alternate between writing, and wondering why I write. Who cares what I have to say or feel? Who am I to feel like anything I say matters?
Reading that poem encourages me to continue to write and hope that someone out there nods in agreement or at least pauses to contemplate my words.
Tonight on Spring Baking Championship on HGTV, one of the challenges was for the bakers to elevate one of their favorite childhood desserts. That got me thinking about MY favorite childhood desserts.
My uncle on my mother’s side was a baker. I don’t know if he learned his trade in the army or by osmosis from my grandmother. He owned his own bakery for a few years and, after closing it, worked first at the local prep school, until finally settling in as the baker at Masonic Home and Hospital, a rehabilitation hospital and nursing home for people who were members of the Masonic Temple Association.
This man made the most INCREDIBLE baked goods. It’s amazing that he could make hundreds of desserts for the people at Masonic using these huge tubs for the dough and ovens to bake in and each one tasted as delicious as if it was one of only a dozen.
My favorites were his chocolate eclairs. They were all one piece filled with cream and delicious chocolate on top.
Chocolate Eclair (from the internet)
His cream puffs! Oh my word! Filled with delightful air pockets stuffed with cream.
Cream Puffs (internet photo)
He also made something called a Hermit Cookie. I found it quickly online. They were square bar cookies with ginger and molasses and raisins. One version I found is called New England Hermit Cookie Bar with the story that they date back to the Pilgrims and they were good for travel because they were dense and stayed moist for up to two weeks! Maybe his mother, my grandmother, brought the recipe with her when she immigrated from the Galician area of Poland in the early 1900s!
From thelemonbowl.com recipe
I do remember my uncle’s Hermit cookies being overall dark like the inside of this one.
In addition to his job and making desserts for family events, he made the wedding cakes for my mother, and for my cousin.
We did not have homemade desserts in our house. They were store bought cookies and pastries. My mother worked full time and she wasn’t really a baker, with the exception of the four layer chocolate cake with whipped cream filling and chocolate frosting we requested for our family birthday parties! She never said no! There would always be cake left over and we would eat that until there wasn’t a crumb left anywhere.
I love pizza. I could eat pizza every day. My stomach and intestines might have something to say about that since doughy stuff and them are not always a happy couple.
We live 20 minutes away from the town that gives Connecticut the (self-given) title “Pizza Capital of the World”. That would be New Haven, the home of Pepe’s pizza, Sally’s Pizza, Modern Pizza, and one of my favorites, De Legna x Nolo.
dinner at Pepe’s Pizza in March for my husband’s birthday
But even closer to home are some excellent pizza places! Right down the road is Fabi’s and in the next town The Bar.
I think the best pizza has a super thin crust, and I don’t mind a char on the bottom. Usually my husband and I will get our own small pizzas in which case mine is a white pizza (no sauce) with eggplant and ricotta cheese. There is mozzarella on there too of course! My husband usually gets a sausage or a pepperoni.
If we’re ordering with a group, I always make sure there is a white pizza and other than that, will eat whatever is ordered!
The Bar white eggplant and ricotta pizza
I liked that this pizza has 9 pieces which means I can eat 6 pieces (thin crust remember? – you can eat more!) and still have enough for lunch the next day.
What is your favorite kind of pizza? Do you like think or thick crust?
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 