After we finished our shopping, we walked across the square to the corner drugstore for ice-cream to wait for time for Mama to go see the doctor. We slid into a booth where I had to make a huge decision: chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla. I worried over it, quizzing Mama and Annie which was best, finally choosing vanilla, just like I always did. Annie let Continue reading
Month: December 2014
On Flying Time; Can We Do Anything to Slow it Down?
Love this. Reblogging. Originally seen on Love and Olives.
Time Flies. When you’re having fun? When you’re standing still? Having babies? In love? You’ve heard the longstanding adage before. What does it mean to you? And the bigger question is: What can you do to slow it down? To me, time is moving at lightning speed. One day, I was welcoming the summer sun in my mesh-covered beach chair, listening to the squawk of seagulls at a late June sundown. The next day, it was December. Just like that. As we get older, that phrase “time flies” takes on a meaning of greater significance. With the blink of an eye, years transpire and we suddenly find ourselves older versions of what we used to be, with more responsibility and with less, well, time. Time is flying – and we are chasing it with everything we’ve got.
Do you remember summer vacations when we were kids? From…
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Stones That Made Food
Beautiful post from Bente Haarstad Photography.
For centuries there was production of millstones in these mountains, now a national park. The production in Kvernfjellet (The millstone mountains) started sometime during the 1500s, and lasted until 1914. There have been many sites for millstone productions in Norway during history, but this was the biggest with more than 1000 quarries. For some centuries this area supplied more or less all the country with these stones. In the 1800smostof the bread eatenin Noway was bakedfrom flourmade withthes stones, that is mica-schist scattered with 2-5mm large crystals of hard minerals. In the picture above is a broken millstone left in the mountains.
Millstones were needed to grind grain, our most important food source, in Norway as in so many countries. There have been a lot of scientific work on these sites lately. A multidisiplinary research project involving geologists, archaelogists, historians, botanists, geographers and…
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Watch Out, Missy!
It was the old farmer’s first time in the hospital. The split back gown was bad enough, but when the nurse had him roll on his side to get a rectal temperature, he squirmed and wiggled.
“Be still, Mr. Smith. I’m trying to check your temperature!”
“Well, watch out what your doing, Missy! You’re about to poke me right in the butt with that thing!”
Working Hard to Get to Heaven
Church was hard on me. All that sitting still and not talking were hard on a kid back when ADD was just called BAD. Believe me, I know. My prissy older sister, Phyllis, loved anything to do with church, making me look particularly bad. The only glimmer of hope was that she was slow and Mother threatened to leave her every Sunday. When I tried Continue reading
Too Sweet
Joe was in the hospital with his jaws wired. He was dying for a cup of coffee. He was so miserable the nurse finally offered to fixed him a coffee enema.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black with a little sugar.”
When she started the enema, he squirmed. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is It too hot?”
“No! Too damned sweet!”
The Funeral and the Big Hat Feud
Grandma Perkins always said she loved a good fight. Well, she must have died happy, because she and her daughter-in-law had a whing-dinger going when she had a stroke and keeled over. Ruby Nell was a sweet woman and didn’t usually get into it with Grandma, but hadn’t been able to avoid her that day. Her sons, Dave and Harry, and their Continue reading
What Will Move You?
Family history is precious. It is who we are, where we have been, and why we do what we do. Reblogging on Nutsrock. Thanks for the reminder! Reblogged from Maybe someone should write that down
So I know this seems to be an odd time to ask this but…Why?
What got you started on this crazy train? What or who inspired you to take up this cause and perhaps give your ancestors a little brush of the immortal ? We all know it isn’t easy, it is often quite thankless and frustrating. So why on earth do we kooky family history hounds chase the ever-dangling carrot?
I only need to look at this photo to know. It is my Grandmother with my Dad on her lap. Two pieces of the” oldest child of the oldest child” puzzle that have molded a big part of my life. I think she is timeless and beautiful. I remember her warmth and the tenacity that she loved us all with. I want my granddaughter (the oldest child of My oldest child) to know her as well. Today, my send…
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Cookie and Uncle Riley (Part II repost)
Cookie and Uncle Riley
This is a repost of one of my earlier stories, my mother’s recounting of a trip with eccentric relatives. My mother, Kathleen Swain did the illustration.
People came and went. The waitress cleared the other tables and pointedly checked on Mother a few times, staring at the uneaten breakfasts and serving her enough coffee refills to float a battleship. She dawdled as long as she dared, hoping her nemeses would come back to retrieve her before the arrest. She occupied her time well, alternating between Continue reading
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