Over the Fence: Greening

Hello dears.  Isn't the sunshine lovely?   Two days of heavy clouds and loads of rain, thunder, lightning and in some areas heavy winds have done their work.  Tender green buds have appeared and turned into leaves on our lovely Faith tree and even upon the pecan tree.  The world outside my kitchen sitting room windows this morning was blue and green.  Green grass, green trees, blue sparkling puddles reflecting sun and sky on the ground and overhead the most brilliant blue skies.   

The wind picked up about 10am and has lowered the temperatures.   Yesterday it was 89F and tomorrow it's meant to be barely 60F.  I think Spring is here! 

We can sit here on the porch and have something warm to drink or go indoors and shelter from the wind.  The offer stands though for a cup of coffee or a glass of ice water with lemon.  Take your choice and let us stop and have a chat.

I've nothing and everything on my mind today.  We'll just ramble around for a bit and see where we end up, how's that?

I've been out of sorts and snappy as an ill-tempered cat the last few days.  John finally asked me why I was so ill, and the truth was it was more to do with worrying over him than anything combined with headache and nausea with the stormy days we've had.  He's spent so much time these last 7 weeks sitting in that chair with a blanket over his lap on top of a heating pad and it seemed to me each time I looked at him that I was seeing something that made me terribly sad.  

Now mind you all, John is not the most industrious man alive, but he does normally do something.  It's true I work circles around him, but I was married to a workaholic, and I prefer someone who can sit still and just be relaxed for a bit.  There are seasonal tasks I know he ought to be doing, is usually eager to get done, and there he's sat.  Each time he moved he complained he was hurting, and he's done absolutely everything except the very thing the doctor suggested (aka get x-rays).  So, I was not feeling well and was also frustrated with him for putting off what he should have already done and worried about him. 

We've had days out and he's handled those just fine.  Last Friday, for instance, we went to the mountain town and walked about a wee bit more than usual.  Then Tuesday we had the car serviced and went into a furniture store and had lunch and he walked about just fine.  But each evening, he sat back in his chair and complained of pain.

Yesterday morning, I'd had ENOUGH.  I'd fussed about his not getting the x-rays done and his flimsy excuse for not doing so and I'd fussed at him for not drinking nearly enough water or taking the supplements he was meant to take nor tracking his medication schedule and then I'd just fussed in general.  He looked like an old man in the nursing home.  Hadn't I seen them often enough, stuck in their wheelchair or chair, with a lap robe on their laps, glued to the tv in the lounge?  Something in my spirit just felt defeated by everything.  If it hasn't been financial strains, it's been sick grandchildren who needed care and now it was my husband's physical body seemingly breaking down.  Were we never to have any sort of life in our retirement while we were yet young enough to enjoy it?!

I packed up my angst and went off to run an errand and then shopped alone for a good long hour or more.   When I returned home, we had lunch and then John said, "I missed you.  A ridiculous amount.  And you didn't even ask me to go with you!  Did you just need time alone?"  And being myself, I snipped at him that I was just frustrated with everything and stalked away to work in another room.   

Of course, I couldn't hold out against him.  John is persistent.  He'd talk to me and ignore my sighs indicating that he was holding me up from my work at hand and then he started cracking off one liners, and the more I resisted laughing the sillier he got until I had to laugh just to make him stop.  

I confessed I'd missed him, too, while I was gone and wondered why he let me stay gone so long without calling to check on me.  I made him a good supper and we watched the Wednesday night service together.  My mood was only barely improved, but at that point it had to have been better than it was when the day started.   I went to bed to fall asleep almost immediately and as with the night before, found myself lying awake by the first watch, 3 am.  I began to pray.  What else can you do at that hour?

I felt groggy this morning but there was that sun, and John smiling, walking into the kitchen without a limp or gimp to his step saying how much better he felt.  I looked up at him and felt tears stinging in my eyes.  "Stop worrying," he said.  "I'm all right."  And everything felt all right.  

I puttered about after breakfast with minor household things. I've thought vaguely of my weekly list posted earlier in the week.  What was on it?  I've done plenty this week but have I even touched on that particular list at all?   Or have I merely just hit and miss on what was on my larger list of things to do as I came across them?  Progress.  It's all progress from where I was at this time last week isn't it?

I finished the second sojourn with Father Timothy this afternoon.  Now I shall move on and read some of the other books I have on my shelf, quite possibly finishing up anyone of several series. I said that I had one book left in the Harry Potter series, and one left in the Mary Stewart Merlin series.  That's true.  I also have one book left in the Bridgerton series, and one in a set by Caroline Harvey aka Joanna Trollope.

I have a very tall stack of books I plan to either finish or want to start.  And the truth is I want very much to read them all and probably two dozen more, as well.  And still I am acquiring new to me books to be read.  I received The Lifegiving Home by Sally Clarkson and Sarah Clarkson this week.  Of course, I want to drop everything and dive right in!   

I don't know just why I dropped the habit of reading for the past few years but I must say, I am truly glad that I decided it was worthwhile to get back into the habit.  Despite my saying I was out of sorts with John this week, I promise it was a mild spring shower compared to where I've been in the past with frustrations.   

My doctor had recommended some time ago that I take Niacinamide every day and I finally broke down and started.  Well.   That helped a great deal with panic and anxiety attacks which was his reason for suggesting it.  I ran out a few weeks ago and waited to re-order.  It took about one week to realize how very much good the supplement had done me.  Waves of panic and anxiety jerked me awake in the morning, sent me scurrying to bed at night.  I'd be fine and it was like someone had popped a balloon next to me and I couldn't get over that feeling of being startled unpleasantly.  I began taking my prescription anti-anxiety on a nightly basis once more...and I placed that order post haste and waited impatiently for it to arrive!  Barometric pressure is a trigger for sure and the barometer has been all over the place these past two weeks.    I take one 500mg tablet daily and it's just a B-vitamin but boy does it help!

I told you I was feeling rather random today...

Oh I must share this little story.  I'd read the other day somewhere on Instagram or online that if you were constantly losing your car in a parking lot/garage, always take a picture of the character on the end of the row be it alphabet or number.   

I was in the local grocery yesterday and a girl at the self check-out earlier came back in saying "I can't remember where I parked my car!"  Now this was mildly funny because there are only three rows to park in and couldn't have been more than ten cars in the lot.  She'd found her car on the other side of a big red truck.  She and the woman behind me began to talk of how often they lose their car at Walmart and places.  I told them the hint I'd just come across about taking a picture and we all agreed it was a good idea.

"Yes," I added, "and of anyone you're with, too if you should get separated."  I was remembering how John and I got separated in St. Augustine a couple of years ago.  "I lost my husband in Florida," I went on and the older woman behind me grasped her chest and came towards me.  "I'm so sorry!  I'm so very sorry", and I looked puzzled, then reassured her, "No! No, no, no, you misunderstand me, I didn't 'lose' him like that I mean that I literally lost him, and we couldn't find each other and he didn't have his phone on, nor could he tell anyone what I was wearing."   All the dear woman's former sympathy turned into one single disgusted phrase, "Now that's a man for you!"  lol  It was very funny and I've been giggling over it the past 30 hours and probably will for a few more days, yet.

When I left that store, I went on into the store next door and interrupted a conversation about the previous night's storms and stood chatting with two more people I'd never met before we parted and went on about our business.    Those two little interludes made me realize why I really miss our local small town grocery and being part of a community overall.  

Our local grocery never has more than one car in the parking lot.  John and I keep wondering how much longer the owner can continue to carry the business.  It's the gambling machines that's done it.  I won't tell you the man wasn't struggling anyway.  He's foreign and people distrusted him from the start for that alone, but he did a steady enough stream of business and certainly the store stayed clean and neat.  But when the gambling machines went in his business fell off to nothing.  

But I've also said again and again, that we've never become part of the community here as we did in our former home.  25 years and I'll lay odds that no one except the mail lady and the manager at Dollar General who knows V, knows who I am.   I was involved with Katie's school in her elementary years but not when she was in Junior High or High School.  We've always attended churches that were out of town.  We do most of our shopping out of town.  John's work schedule was so odd that even the people we knew well couldn't understand it let alone those whom we might have just met by accident, so we never got invited anywhere.  We live out of the way even for the country.  You can't even see our home from any of the roads about us.  

The only good thing to come out of that virus is that we are close to family and the two other neighbors who live on our street are at least known to us, now.  We all reached out when this thing hit, not knowing what any of us might be facing.  So there's that anyway.  We are part of a neighborhood.

And really I don't miss it, most of the time.  But after a day like Wednesday where I've engaged in conversations with people around me, I do miss it a bit.

I was cooking earlier and I made biscuits.  I ended up with a baby biscuit.  I always have that last wee bit of dough leftover and I go on and make a baby biscuit with it.  Granny always made the baby biscuits and we grandchildren fought over whose privilege it would be to eat that tiny biscuit.  But I smiled, thinking of Granny as I made my biscuits this evening and ended with that little one.

I've never been able to make biscuits as Granny did.  Mama used the same method but hers were never as smooth and pretty and so exactly shaped as Granny's, though they used the same amounts of everything.   Granny would put her flour in the wooden bread bowl and she'd make a deep well right in the center of the flour.  Into that well went her measure of shortening and then she'd pour in the milk or buttermilk and she'd squeeze that shortening into little tiny bits in that cold milk.  When the felt no more big lumps and was sure that the pieces were all tiny, she'd gradually start dragging in some of the flour from the walls of the well until she had a dough that held together and she'd knead it right there in her bread bowl in the remaining flour.  Then she'd put the ball of dough in her hand and with her other hand she'd bring the tips of her thumb and index finger together and sort of twist off a little ball of dough.  She'd roll that in her hand until it was a smooth little ball and then she'd pop it into her biscuit pan (a 7x11).  She didn't bake her biscuits separated from one another.  She put them in the pan as one does rolls, with the sides touching.

I tried and tried when I was learning to cook to make biscuits in the way that Mama and Granny did, but I never did get the feel of it.  I got very tired of the teasing my family always gave me, too.  It seemed to me just making the effort to make biscuits was worth at least a polite comment but instead my family roared with laughter over my biscuits.  They'd knock them on the table and claim they were rocks.  I was teased a lot by my family, and I took it in stride, but my pride hurt over those dang biscuits.

One day as I was making dinner, I took down Mama's Better Homes and Garden cookbook (long before it was BH&G) and I followed the recipe for Biscuits Supreme.  They were perfect.  My family was astonished.  I'd made beautiful biscuits, light and fluffy and delicious.  That's the same recipe I used tonight.  And they are good, every single time I make them, as I've been making them now for about 50 years...But I've always felt I had let down tradition somehow by not making them as Granny had, which was the same way she'd been taught by her mother and grandmother and the way she taught my mother.

I had meat frying in the pan and I was listening to it as I worked on the biscuits and stripping the meat from the chicken frame I'd cooked earlier today, and I remembered Granny telling me to 'listen to the singing' when she was frying chicken.  She always knew the exact moment to turn her meat or when it was done by how it sounded frying.   I listened but never quite got it right, but I learned eventually.  She was referring to the sound the meat makes in the oil. When you put meat in hot oil, the contact between the two causes a fast tempo sound or singing.  When the singing becomes a slower tempo then it's time to turn it or remove it if you've already turned it.  

I thought about how she also taught me to 'go by smell' when cooking or baking.  You can, once you've trained yourself, know exactly when a cake needs to come from the oven, or the biscuits have browned or when the potatoes have gone tender as they boil, or even when the chicken broth is at the perfect point, all by the smell.  Katie was always irritated by my sense of smell.  She followed a recipe, and if the recipe said it needed to cook 'x' number of minutes, it wasn't done until the timer went off.   Often enough I'd push her to check anyway.   I won't even say how often it turned out I was right.  

It was Big Mama who told me to go by feel when making breads.  I know when biscuits are right after kneading and how well kneaded bread dough feels.  I learned to cook with all my senses.  We looked and tasted and smelled and touched.  That's what my grandsons really mean when they tell me my food is good because it's made with love.  

There.  I've been all over the place and gone nowhere much, haven't I?  But I do hope you've enjoyed your break with me.  Talk to you later!