Hooked on Creamers

Just found a new coffee creamer that actually has real milk and cream as primary ingredient and the flavor I got, Vanilla Carmel is wonderful. It is by Coffee House. The Coffee Mate I have used for along time has a list of ingredients a mile long. Think I will try the chocolate next, love chocolate in my coffee.

Thought for today: He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

At least one hand is warm

Just realized why when I am playing on my computer (mostly using the mouse) my right hand gets so cold and the left is warm.

Well the room is quite cool, as my Internet is at my little store and this corner doesn't get the heat very well. So that is why the right hand is cold. Oh, and feet too. But the left hand is warmer because I noticed that I tend to put it under my left thigh if I am just mousing around. Like when I play my daily dose of Spider Solitaire. Guess I am sort of hooked on it. Did play regular solitaire yesterday till I finally won for the first time. That one is hard to win, you can't cheat with the computer!

Thought for the day: If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

Just a little BS on my brain today

Just hear a commercial on the radio, telling you that when you get your tax return to spend it on something you really need and will make you happy. A quick and easy divorce. I couldn't believe I heard it. Wow we can sell anything can't we?

Really raining today, probably be several inches when it is done. At least it is washing away all that crap left by the snow plow in front of my store. Oh, and gas jumped from 2.92 to 3.19 in one day.

Sitting here at my computer I can look into a little book case that I put books that I take in from customers that I think I want to read. Here are some titles:

Foreign Body by Robin Cook

The Ice Child by Elizabeth McGregor

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexqandre Dumes

Sunday at Tiffany's by James Pattersdon

The Loch by Steve Alten

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

The Fields of Eden by Richard Wheeler

Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris

OK that is probably boring enough. Better stop and go back to my weaving. Got a good rug going with browns and a bright green and some yellow.

Thought for the day: Dreams are poems from the subconscious

This ones for my girl

When I was just short of turning 21 my daughter was born. We were talking the other day and I realized that everyone should know about their birth. I always just heard I was born in a blizzard and like all the kids in my family was born at home. And thats about all I know.

I got married at 17 so that I wouldn't have to move clear across the country with my parents. When I was 19 my son was born. When he was just a toddler we decided he was so darn cute we should have another one. When I was about 5 or 6 mo. pregnant we moved out to the east coast to live near my parents and my big brother.

We were able to rent a little one bedroom cottage in a trailer park. I remember getting my first washing machine (ringer type) while there. We had a small dirt yard that was level with the doorway, so with a little guy coming in and out it was hard to keep the dust down. I worked a little as a grocery clerk just up the road for a month or so.

When I started labor we headed to the hospital, think we must have taken the son to my Moms. I remember it was raining. I was to experience a very different delivery than when my son was born in a little county hospital. I was in a very large City hospital. They delivered several babies a day. I remember I was progressing slow so they started a pit drip to make it more painful, (or was it to just make the contractions work better?) Any way back in those days they thought that you had to stay flat on your back or it wasn't effective. Being a labor and delivery nurse many years later myself I learned that was all a bunch of hooey! Anyway they kept coming in and making me turn back. I labored all day and somewhere around 7pm was delivered of a 7 lb 3 0z. baby girl via forceps! Here I am a good size healthy 20 year old and couldn't spit out a little 7 # baby! In hind sight I know know that she was turned face up and that was why I had so much back pain and the need for the forceps.

Back then you had to stay in the hospital for 2 or 3 days at least. I was breast feeding so when they would bring the babies down the hall to give to the Mamas they had a big cart on wheels. No rooming in back then. We have told the story of how the babies were in these little bins on the cart and sadly we teased our daughter that maybe they got babies mixed up. Little did I know that her brother took up on this and she lived in fear that maybe she didn't belong to us! Well they were ID'd with wrist bands and I have no doubt. But they really did look like vegetable carts to me!

So we took her home and big brother got moved out of the baby crib and put into a little cot so the new baby had a bed. Lucky that we were able to move into a large house a few months later. The picture posted here is of my daughter and I way back then, standing in front of that house with our matching dresses that I made.

Thought for the day: You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

Everyone loses

I hear some sad stories from my customers. Had a guy in today that I see every few weeks. He usually is looking for books for his grandson who is now 12. He was telling me how his grandson is being raised and it makes you wonder how he will turn out. I guess he lives one week with his dad and one week with his mother. His dad is "shacking up"(grandpa's words) with a gal and lives in a converted garage at grandpa's house. The mother works and is in a band. The grandpa is the one who takes the boy to school everyday and picks him up, buys all his cloths and school lunches, but has no custodial rights. So some days the boy doesn't know for sure where he is supposed to sleep as the mom may be out really late with band practice. So he ends up just being a pawn being shuffled from here to there. Grandpa says he is starting to see some acting out, (surprise!) Grandpa is 65 and says he is retired now and would like to look at getting out and traveling but feels he needs to be there for this kid. He would like to have him full time and I think wash his hands of the 40+ year old son. Looks like there is only losers in this story.

Thought for the day: If you can't be a good example- then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

All the snow and ice that we have had this month makes me think of the times when I was growing up that we made ice cream, but only in the winter.

During the time that I was about 9 to 12 we lived on a farm in Iowa. We didn't have much, not even an ice cream churn. But one winter the neighbor loaned theirs to us for the whole winter. Dad would chop blocks of ice from the pond, put them in a gunny sack and smash them with the side of a flat ax to break the ice up into small pieces.

Dad was milking a couple goats for the milk that was to help heal his ulcers. So now we have free milk and free ice, and a free ice cream churn. All we need to buy was the course salt. When the milk with sugar and vanilla was put in the steel cylinder, the crushed ice was put around it and the salt sprinkled liberally into the salt. This makes the ice start to melt and is colder. So as the handle is cranked (we all got a turn at this) to turn the cylinder around and around the cold starts to freeze the milk. Walla you get ice cream. What made it the best was that when it was close to being set up we would open the container and add some of Mom's home canned blackberries. I especially liked this as I always thought I could smell goat in the milk!

Our weekly churning of home made ice cream was a real treat for us that winter. I have many memories of the time that we lived there. We moved around so often that to be in one home for 3 or 4 years seemed like a "really" home. I made many trips up the hill on that gravel road to visit those neighbors. Her name was Ethel and I am sure she was a big influence on me and probably never knew.

Thought for the day: The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts

Don't mess with me

Ever notice how in the winter time our days seem so repetitious? Seems like you do the same thing every day and the days seem to run together. Guess I have been going a little stir crazy being stuck at home for almost 2 weeks after this big blizzard hit. It makes you lose track of what day it is if you don't have to go anywhere. Alot of businesses lost money for sure.

Hopefully you can click on the pic and see the caption. If not the first one says: I'm a broccoli and I look like a tree. The second one says: I'm a walnut and I look like a brain. The last one says: I'm a mushroom and I am sick of playing this game.

I just got back into my book store this past Wed. but since I am located on the highway you can imagine what the state left for me all along the highway in front, where customers park. Things are melting and there is an area to park across the alley but then you have to still walk in the slushy snow. We set record lows, and now we will see some record highs, I think for this coming week. Good by snow and ice.

Had a customer in a couple weeks ago that is a farm person. She is single and she was telling me about a new boy friend and about this big sign she has at her home, sort of a warning. So she gives me my Thought for the day:

Don't mess with me, I've castrated everything on this farm!

Looking out my kitchen window

This was taken on the 2nd of Feb. Day after the blizzard. We used the snow blower to take the snow off the deck. At least 12 in. plus drifting off the roof. So glad it is warming up and will be up in the 60's by next Wed. Think we got all our snow within the first 2 weeks of Feb. Got additional 6 in. a few days after this one.

So looking at books that I want to read. When customers bring books in to trade, they always tell me which ones were good. So I end up with this stack of books that just get bigger and bigger. Just finished The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow, which was verrrrrry good but took awhile to read. Seems like I have been reading alot of historical tragic books lately..This one about a lady displaced from her home in Kentucky in the early 40's so her husband could work the steel mills in Detroit. Wow what a story. I just looked it up on the net and found that when it was made into a movie in 1984 Jane Fonda played the role of the main character. I just can't see her in that person that I got to know in the book. Maybe I can find the movie one day.

But I got distracted, I want to list the ones I plan to read soon:

The Ice Child by Elizabeth McGregor

The Other by David Guterson

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxcy by Douglas Adams

Intervetion by Robin Cook

Jewel by Bret Lott

The Man in The Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

The Lucky one by Nicholas Sparks

and the one I just started: The Time Travlers wife by Audrey Niffenegger. That all should keep me busy for awhile.

Almost forgot I was going to re-read an 8 book series by Diana Garbaldon. Oh, so many books so little time

Thought for the day: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step:
Confucious