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?
“Money, Money, Money, always sunny, in the rich man’s world” – ABBA 1976
If/when you wake up in the middle of the night, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?
Mine is MONEY. Why money you ask? Because I’m always paying bills. I have a payroll to process every week, bills for materials and other on-job expenses, bills for vehicle loans, and bills for overhead expenses like the phone service and anything else that keeps our doors open and lights on (electric bill!).
At 3:30 am, if my brain rises out of whatever phase of sleep nearest to awake, my mind says “do you have enough money?” and something inside gives my heart a little squeeze. If I’m too much awake, I’ll head to the bathroom for a change of scenery. Sometimes I can snuggle back into my pillow, say a little prayer of thanksgiving for my bed, my house, etc. and very soon, I’ve fallen back to sleep.
Do you have a particular thought that pops into your brain if you wake up in the middle of the night?
“I expect my mother’s fear of decimal currency was related to her dislike of math, which is a common fear often dating back to a cruel teacher.” – Cherry in Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty.
Oh, that hit me right in the memories!
I don’t think Sister Holly Jean my third grade teacher at Holy Trinity School was intentionally being mean. There were two math groups and two reading groups, and when you’ve already spent 2 years with the same kids, you know which is which.
I bounced back and forth between those two math groups throughout 3rd grade. Long division was my nemesis! Carrying the what because it’s not equal where? My mother brought home waste letter paper from work and filled them with division problems for me to solve.
I survived third grade math but I was never the same afterwards. Math just continued to beat me down year after year. Algebra, Geometry, even review math in 12th grade was a struggle.
Ironically, I really enjoyed Accounting in high school and college and handle the (Quick)books for our company.
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
I have to work hard to brush away negative and worrying thoughts.
I’m learning to rely on faith.
Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Nights when I wake up at 3am and the first thing that pops into my mind is something about work, I roll over and I pray. It pushes out the worry and negativity and I fall back to sleep.
During the day if I start to worry, I just talk to God and thank him for the day, the weather, my home, whatever!
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 