Nana's Whimsies Moved!

This will be my final post on this site. Please visit nanaswhimsies at www.nanaswhimsies.com.

I wrote my first blog in 2008.

I had just retired and Bill and I were preparing to leave on a long-planned adventure where we would spend three-and-a-half months traveling around Europe. I was considering ways in which I could stay in contact with my family. I knew telephoning was difficult. Email was a possibility. Someone mentioned I should write a blog.

I had no idea what that meant. A bit of research opened me up to the then-relatively new world of blogging. I developed my first blog – The Reluctant Traveler. Each day for three plus months I shared our delightful, sometimes frightening, often funny experiences as we explored a world where we didn’t know how to ask for directions to the bathroom. Der badezimmer. Los Servicios. Cabinet de toilette. Il Bagno. The loo.

When we returned from our travels, many people asked if I was going to continue blogging since they had enjoyed reading what I wrote. I always said I would love to, but my everyday life was pretty quiet and uneventful. What would I say?

But I missed writing. I dabbled, but never dove right in.

Late last summer, my sister Jen suggested I start a blog. She convinced me that I didn’t need to be living the life of a movie star to blog, but only needed to be willing to share my family, my life, my feelings, and my time with others. I could write a blog about nothing. More specifically, I could write a blog about anything that was tickling my fancy. My whimsies.

I initially thought I would do a blog largely dedicated to cooking. I love to cook. I had sort of a vague notion that I would like to show others who fear cooking that there was really nothing to it. It didn’t take me long to realize that a cooking blog – at least a blog dedicated specifically to cooking – wasn’t really what I wanted to do. For one thing, I’m not a terribly good cook. I follow recipes. My siblings are much better cooks.

I went back to my notion of writing about whatever interested me, and decided I would gear my words to an audience of Baby Boomers -- people like me (though anyone is welcome!). That’s what I have been trying to do. It’s not always easy. Don’t get me wrong. For me, the writing is always easy. But as I said earlier, I live a simple, unspectacular life. Who cares about me? Many days the most exciting thing I do is sort laundry.

I mostly am excited about developing my blog and expanding my audience. But I have terrible moments of great anxiety and self-doubt. It didn’t help yesterday when I asked 3-year-old Austin, who at the moment was running in circles around his house, his thoughts. “Do you like my blog?” I asked him as he ran by in a blur. “No,” he said over his shoulder as he ran away from me. Maybe he’s just a tough audience since he can’t read.

“Do you like my blog?” I asked my sister Jen a little later.

She assured me she did. She said her favorite posts are the ones in which I share my soul. I’m never one to be reluctant about sharing my thoughts and fears and joys with others. It’s just that for me, like everyone else, most days just pass without my even thinking about my soul. I’m too busy worrying about the guacamole stain on my jeans.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I am going all-in with nanaswhimsies.com, and I’m excited about it. Kind of scared, but mostly not. I want to entertain people. I want to share my soul. I want to teach. I want to let my family and friends know what we’re up to. I want to write.

So I will keep plugging along. Tell me how I’m doing. Give me suggestions. Share recipes and family stories. Send pictures. Stay in touch.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace

As I said at the beginning of the year, instead of making vague and mostly unrealistic “New Year’s Resolutions” I was going to set a goal at the beginning of each month, and see if I can meet my goal. For January, I vowed to increase the level of water I consume. I was very specific, as I vowed I would be. I said my goal was that I would drink eight glasses of water a day.

So, how did I do? So-so, really. I definitely increased the amount of liquids I consumed. I seldom actually drank eight glasses of water a day. I did, however, almost always drink at least six glasses of liquid a day (and that didn’t count wine or martinis, Smarty Pantses). I had a rather lively conversation this month about what can count as liquid, and I refer you to this article on WebMD. See? Coffee DOES count. Neener, neener, neener. (This, by the way, is probably what Eli Manning is saying to his brother Peyton these days when talk turns to Super Bowl rings. But, I digress.)

By and large, I am more aware of my body’s need for fluid. In fact, I bought the water bottle pictured above at Target. It holds 24 oz. of liquid. I try, and am almost always successful, to drink one bottle each day. Big improvement.

On to my February goal……

This month I am dedicated to work on my prayer life. I want to pray more and better. I don’t think I’m a great pray-er. Each time I pray, in the back of my mind I am thinking, “Why would God listen to me when so many people are praying right now, right this very minute?” I know the answer is Because He’s God, but I can’t seem to shake that thought.

Since I am committed to making my goals specific, I plan on adding a specific prayer to my day – a daily rosary. My non-Catholic readers are saying, “Oh, bah!” My Catholic readers are smiling.

In my way of thinking, the rosary is nearly perfect prayer. Keep in mind, I’m not saying IT’S THE PERFECT PRAYER. I am saying that the rosary is nearly perfect, at least for me.

People who don’t understand the Catholic faith often misconstrue Catholics’ devotion to Mary. Catholics do not pray to Mary, we pray with Mary. We ask Mary to pray for us. In the same way that we might ask a friend or sister or priest to pray for us or for a special devotion, we ask Mary to pray for us. That’s it. It’s not complicated. I have always had a special devotion to Mary because she is a woman – like me – and a mother – like me. When I had issues with my son as he grew up, I loved being able to ask Mary to pray for me because she knows what it is like to worry about your children and want to prevent them from making mistakes. God answers prayers, not Mary. But Mary is a good person to have in your camp, no?

The rosary is simple: In its most basic form, it consists of four prayers – the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Apostles Creed.

The Apostles Creed is simply a declaration of our beliefs as Christians. The Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ own words of prayer, how he taught us to pray. The Glory Be is a simple prayer to God in the Blessed Trinity. Hail Mary is a prayer encompassing the Biblical words of Elizabeth to Mary when she came to call on her: Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you. Blessed are you amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. It ends with us asking Mary to pray for us.

With each rosary, you go through a period of time in Jesus’ life on earth. Each rosary looks at a different part of Jesus’ life and work. As you pray, you ponder. The prayer is repetitive and therefore meditative, at least to me. Yesterday morning, out of curiosity, I did a test. I took my blood pressure before I said my rosary, and then again just after. My blood pressure decreased by 20 points. I kid you not. I’m not implying that this was any kind of miracle; I’m only saying that the rosary provides 15 minutes of peace in my life. It calms me.
As I say my rosary each day this month, I will be saying it for a specific intention. And Mary will be at my side.

As an aside, my mother was a big fan of the rosary. She said it often. Her rosary, at least the rosary she had in the final years of her life, was silver, with the tiniest little beads you can imagine. It made sense because my mother was a tiny woman with small fingers. The rosary was perfect for her. Square beads, as I recall. She died with it in her hands. It is remarkable and sad to me to recall that we all neglected to ask for that rosary after she died. I’m sure it got lost somewhere in the hospital laundry. I hope someone found it and uses it with the same devotion as Mom.

How do you pray? Do you pray? Does it come easy for you?

For dinner last night, given the chilly 50-something degree weather in the evening, I made a pot of chili. To go with it, I made Toasted Cheesy Bread.

Toasted Cheesy Bread

Ingredients
Texas Toast
Butter
Seasoned Salt
Mozerella cheese, shredded
Parmesan cheese, grated

Process
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Take out the number of slices of toast you wish to make. Spread generously with butter. Sprinkle seasoned salt onto the bread. Cover with both cheeses.

Bake for 5 – 7 minutes, until cheese is melted and browned.

Nana’s Notes: I put the bread on a pizza stone to crisp up.

The Times, They Are A Changin'

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

-Bob Dylan

Well, those lyrics are a much too dramatic for the change I’m telling you about in this post, but those lyrics just give me goosebumps. Things really did change in the 60s and 70s, no question about it. Baby boomers were growing up and changing the world.

Anyhoo, I want to tell you about an exciting change in my blog.

Nana’s Whimsies is moving to a new platform, with a slightly different address. I gave Blogger everything I could, but I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted it to do for me. Perhaps it was user error on my part, but in the end it doesn’t matter. It had problems. The most significant issue was that some of you could comment, but many, many of you were unable to do so. I don’t know why. My friend and new web designer Will tells me it might have something to do with third-party cookies. Friends, the only cookies I care a hoot about are those that have sugar and flour and butter and chocolate chips or peanut butter or cinnamon sugar. Those I understand. The kind of cookies that keep you from communicating with me – no clue, no desire to get a clue.

I love blogging. Truly I do. I love to write, and I love to share my quirky life with friends, old and new. I have been taking baby steps because I needed to know if I really had the commitment it takes to blog. I wasn’t sure if 1) I was disciplined enough to sit down and write every day, and 2) If enough happened to me to write about.

I have found that I LOVE to sit down and write. It makes me happy and stretches my brain. And while not a lot of exciting things happen in my quiet and simple life, I always have something to say. Being the owner and publisher of a blog has helped me to look at life in a different way, and that’s a good thing.

So I’m going all in. My old blog – nanaswhimsies.blogspot.com – will be going away. I have obtained my own domain name – nanaswhimsies.com – and I will be operating from that platform. I’m serious about blogging, and I’m serious about being able to communicate with the people who read my blog. I’m also serious – very serious – about building my readership. You all can help me with this process. Tell your friends. Share me on Facebook. Help me get the word out about my blog. And communicate with me. Respond to what I say and give me ideas about what to blog.

This will be a work in progress. For a period of time, I will likely run both platforms until I’m fully satisfied that my new domain is working just fine. Please, please try to comment on the new site. I want to hear from you. I want to know who is reading my blog. I continue to fear my two sisters are my only readers and they only read it because otherwise I will glare at them at our next family function. Or tell Mom.

New address:

www.nanaswhimsies.com

That’s it. Simple, huh?

See you at nanaswhimsies!

One word about the Broncos….

I am happy we made it to the Super Bowl. Only two teams do that each year, and we were one of the two. Yay for us. However, I’m sad for Peyton Manning because I know he wanted to put this one in the win file and bring home a ring. Many of us understand sibling rivalry, and you KNOW Eli sits around the dinner table with a ring on two of his fingers and allows the light to reflect off them into Peyton’s eyes and says, “Oh Peyton, is the light off my ringSSSSS bothering you?”

It would have been fun if the Broncos had made it a good game, but que sera sera. And there’s always next year. And I love my Denver Broncos!

Every year I'm sad when football season is over. It’s a long time until preseason. But at least we have something to look forward to this year. On to the Olympics!

Saturday Smile: Where is Mo Mo?

Beginning today, my Saturday blog post will be called Saturday Smile. I am going to devote a couple of sentences to something that made me smile during the past week. It may be something I blogged about; it may be something I witnessed or heard about; it may be something one of my grandkids or great nieces or great nephews or friends said or did. It’s whatever made me smile.

So:

My granddaughter Mylee has had a stuffed monkey since she was a baby. The monkey’s name is Mo Mo. When you see photos of Mylee, it’s like reading one of those “Where’s Waldo” books. Where’s Mo Mo? Because you know he’s there somewhere. And if he doesn’t happen to make it in that photo, he is somewhere just out of the lens’ reach.

For example:

So, the smile this week was a photo of a picture that Mylee drew this week:

Yes, Friends. It’s a portrait of Mo Mo.

Friday Book Whimsy: Plainsong

I will say right up front that this was a reread. And I will read Plainsong again and again and again. This beautiful book is among my top three favorite books, no question about it.

Plainsong, by Kent Haruf, much like the television program Seinfeld, is a book about nothing. But I eagerly read every word, and while I read, I kept wistfully looking at how much of the book was left, simply not wanting it to end.

Plainsong is about five or six people who live in a small farming town in eastern Colorado. Though their lives intersect, (because how can they not in such a small community?) each has their own story to tell.

Bobby and Ike are brothers – young boys of 9 and 10 – who are forced to face much sadness during these few months in their young lives. Their mother suffers from deep depression and leaves them with their father to move to Denver. Guthrie is a high school teacher who faces his own moral dilemmas. Victoria is a 17-year-old girl whose mother and father have both deserted her, leaving her to face her pregnancy alone. She turns to Maggie Jones, a kind teacher, who realizes the importance of relationships. She takes her to live with the McPheron brothers.

The McPheron brothers are the stars of the show. Harold and Raymond McPheron are old bachelors who have lived together since birth, in the same house. They are hard-working ranchers who are set in their way, living their simple life. They are kind, however, the kindest, most endearing characters you will ever meet in a book. It is safe to say that the McPheron brothers are two of the most memorable characters I have ever come across in a book. I have never forgotten them, and I never will.

Haruf’s writing is beautiful. It’s why the book is worth reading, plain and simple. He writes in short, clear sentences. His descriptions are simple, not elegant in that phony way that some authors have. You can so clearly see and smell and taste what he describes.

You don’t have to be very far into the book to see what I mean. In the first few pages, Guthrie is waking his sons for school. They are having trouble waking up, but he finally succeeds and leaves them. A few minutes later, he walks again past their room.

Here’s what Haruf says:

When he returned to the hallway he could hear them talking in their room, their voices thin and clear, already discussing something, first one then the other, intermittent, the early morning matter-of-fact voices of little boys out of the presence of adults. He went downstairs.

When I read that paragraph, I immediately thought about the sounds of my little grandkids when they are downstairs playing together – just two of them. I can’t really hear what they’re saying, but I hear their little voices going back and forth, discussing their make-believe game, whatever it is, or discussing something important in their lives. Haruf captured that experience in just a few words.

One of my favorite things about his writing is that it is so subtle. He doesn’t preach and he doesn’t horrify you with gore and violence, though violence does take place in this book. But he gets his point across through the eyes of the characters. An example: Ike and Bobby witness a terrible act by some teenagers. Later, they return to the scene, bringing along a friend to whom they had related the story. The boys are disturbed by their friend’s prurient and unsympathetic interest in what transpired and his desire to take something from the scene. These two young boys’ simple empathy to the girl who was the victim tells the reader so much.

I mentioned in last week’s review that I was dissatisfied with the dialogue. Haruf’s dialogue is nothing short of magnificent. He uses a technique that I sometimes find distracting – he doesn’t use quotation marks to identify the dialogue. However, somehow it works in this book. The dialogue is so true, so realistic, that it doesn’t need to be set off in any way. In particular, the McPheron brothers' dialogue is absolutely dead on right. When I would read their words, it would immediately set me in mind with some of my uncles, or older people I have met in my life, particularly small-town farmers or ranchers. You have to read it to know exactly what I mean. Haruf’s dialogue writing is unbelievably good.

Plainsong is a wonderful, wonderful book. Treat yourself to a read.

Baby Talk

Lillyana Marie Eve Jensen is five days old. And I believe that, using Kaiya’s emphatic question as inspiration (see yesterday’s post), Lilly is saying, “What the……?

Imagine that she spent nine peaceful months in her mommy’s tummy, floating in warm liquid, floating….floating….floating. Suddenly, much to her surprise and consternation, and through no choice of her own, she is flung into the light, into a chilly operating room, hearing loud voices and other noises. She is being handled by these odd creatures wearing blue gowns (though of course she didn’t know they’re blue because she still sees in black and white and anyway she can’t see more than six inches in front of her face, but you get my point).

Now, suddenly, she feels hungry and cold and gassy, and plus she has this bow on her head. Why do I have a bow on my head? Mommy has waited a long time for a girl.....

Yeah, I’m sure of it. She is saying, “What the……?”

The Jensens are all getting used to each other. Three-year-old Austin seems to be quite taken with her, though he likely expects that she will go away soon and he will be happy to walk her to the door. He likes to spend a lot of time bumming around with his grandmother, away from the baby’s cries. Maggie and Mark just have that glazed-over look that is part terror and part sheer unadulterated exhaustion.

They will be just fine. She is the second newborn in our family in the past few months. Faith Naomi Gloor was born at the end of November. She, too, undoubtedly was shocked to be born, but she and her parents have fared nicely.

I have been remembering when I gave birth to my son 33 years ago. I recall when the doctor handed him to me I looked at him like he was a stranger instead of someone who had been a part of me for nine months. Suddenly I realized that his mouth looked exactly like his dad’s mouth, and I understood he really was part of us. It’s an amazing feeling.

But I also remember when we got home after the few days in the hospital. His dad left to go to the store, and I had this strong sense of terror. Don’t go! I don’t know what to do with this baby. I don’t know how to be a mom! There were no classes on motherhood. There might be now, but at that time they handed us the baby and the Dr. Spock book, and threw us in the deep end.

He survived and so did I.

Being a parent is a glorious job – the hardest and most important job any of us will ever have, and the most rewarding. The good thing is that our children are resilient, and for the most part, forgiving. And generally they just simply love their parents, no matter what.

The Jensens know all of this because they have a child already. But right now they just want four hours of straight sleep. That will come. Give it a few years.

Show Me the Cache

Four or five years ago, I got a telephone call from my sister Jen.

“I have a perfect hobby for us,” she stated, as though I had been looking to pursue a new interest. “It’s called geocaching.”

As my 5-year-old granddaughter Kaiya would say, “What the…..?” (I’m only hoping Kaiya never finishes the question. To date, she has not.)

It turns out geocaching, according to their own website geocaching.com, is a “real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the container hidden at that location.”

I didn’t really understand any of that, except for the TREASURE HUNT!!!!!!

Tell me more, I said to my sister. She proceeded to explain to me that she had learned about geocaching from a husband and wife who were clients of hers. “I can’t really explain it myself, but it sounds like fun and I think we should look into it,” she said.

So we did. And it is. Fun, I mean.

Apparently up until 2000, GPS systems were restricted to only really important people, like those who needed to know the location of nuclear devices. In 2000, President Clinton decided all of us should have access to GPS technology (probably because he correctly determined we wouldn’t be able to figure out how to find nuclear devices anyway, but we sure could find tiny little containers holding random gadgets and a log to sign with a SECRET CODE NAME. Thus, the beginning of the game called geocaching.

Seriously, geocaches are simply a variety of little containers that generally hold nothing more than a log that the finders sign using a geocaching code name. They are hidden by other geocachers who then register the cache with a website. There are geocaches all over the world. Thousands of hidden treasures. Once a geocacher finds the container using GPS coordinates, he or she signs the log. Did I mention you sign using a SECRET CODE NAME?

I have even got some of my grandchildren interested in the activity. Addie, Alastair, Dagny, Maggie, and I find a park that I know has a geocache (from checking the website), and we proceed to hunt for it. We are generally successful, but usually no thanks to me. I have very smart grandchildren, who are good at following a compass even if they are only 10, 8, 7, and 5!

Yesterday Jen and I spent a couple of hours geocaching in a couple of areas of Phoenix. For the most part, we are hit-and-miss geocachers. Yesterday we were AWESOME! Five finds out of five searches. Three in one park and two in another.

One geocache was big enough to fit a pair of shoes.

One geocache was so tiny it barely fit a signing log. It was magnetic, and we found it under a metal bench. It's the little metal case next to the cell phone.

One hung from a tree, hidden in plain sight.

One was in a pill bottle tucked into a fence post. Jen was the one who figured out the top of the fence post came off.

The one that took us the longest was also hidden inside a fence post. Jen had tried to remove the top when we first approached the area, but it appeared to not be removable. We looked and looked and were about to give up when Jen once again gave the fence post a twist. Voila, there was the geocache.

One of the things we like best about geocaching is that it gives us a chance to see parts of a community that we might not see otherwise. Beautiful parks; beautiful views, like the one at the beginning of this post. We have occasionally been asked what in the world we were doing, but for the most part, surprisingly, people leave us alone. You would think two grandmothers crawling around looking under bushes might cause some confusion, but apparently not enough confusion to ask what we’re up to. Only on one occasion was I stopped by a police officer and asked what I was doing looking around the base of a light post in a Walmart parking lot. I think having a one-year-old baby with me (my nephew Austin) made me look less sinister.

Of course, he didn’t even know I had a SECRET CODE NAME.