It has started..

Another year gone..just like that. Why is it when we are young we want to be always older? And now that I am older I just want to be smarter? 

And to start my new year, I had the severe case of forget fullness. Started Monday with my phone at home.  When it was time to go home I couldn’t find my car keys.  I searched through my entire purse, emptying contents on the desk, only to discover that I left them in the ignition. Thankfully I forgot to lock my car doors. Stopping at the Mall to buy something, reach into my purse to grab my wallet, it isn’t there. It is at work on my desk because I had to look for my keys there remember? So home I go, talking to myself on how dumb I am. And since my drivers license is in my wallet which is at work, over sudden I get paranoid and notice every cop that is out there. So I turn into a granny driver, below speed limit, turn signals, looking constantly around me, praying please let me get home. 

Next day drive to work to get wallet, again paranoid driving. Once I have the wallet, okay put the pedal to the metal and look out. Forget safety. Later the day, trip to the mall again.  Out on the road just before the highway, I think did I turn my stove off? Alrighty, not sure about that, so let’s turn around and go back and check. 

Forgot to pump my gas at the Gas station yesterday – again. But at least I remembered this time before I pulled out of the gas station and not at the second light as before. Today at the store, I had a shopping cart. The key word is had, I lost or left it somewhere between the fresh produce and the baked beans aisle and didn’t notice till I got all the way back to the eggs. 

So here is to getting older and forget fullness, I just wish it would hit me at the right time, like  when I say something totally off the wall and I can deny it, because I don’t remember. 

What do you appreciate?

Couple of days ago on Twitter someone asked the question What makes you happy and what do you appreciate? With the hashtag appreciate after it. And I answered it with a tweet that the little things make me happy and I appreciate them.

I guess everybody is different. Some people appreciate the big things in their life, others the smaller things. I have many of things that I appreciate in my Life – big and small. My kids for instance are a big thing. That I have a roof over my head, another. But it is the smaller things in between that just sometimes make you stop and think and say thank you those are the ones that we seem to forget sometimes, a smile, a hug, a ray of sunshine, a lady bug climbing up your arm. 

I suppose I have reached the age where little things like this matter now. So no matter how much you appreciate the success in your life – the big things, stop and appreciate the smaller ones too, cause without them the big ones aren’t so big anymore.

 

No more complaining..well for right now anyway

The other day one of my Twitter followers Liam Alexander and I were having a conversation about the cold and snowy weather here in Michigan. He lives down under and naturally only enjoys summer, summer and mansoon season. He visits his In-Laws in Minnesota and gets to experience snow during those visits and thoroughly enjoys it. I guess when you only have 3 seasons which are all hot you do that.

But it is totally different when one lives in a State that has Lake effect snow, and Alberta clippers and North Easterners as a description of the weather forecasts and owning a snow blower is a must or if you fortunate enough have a “Plow guy” on speed dial.

So as we were talking about the weather, actually I was trying not to complain about it anymore, I remembered my childhood and as how we as kids never complained about the cold or snow. Sure I grew up in Germany, which has compared to here mild winters, but we had a ball. Out sledding after school till the street lights came on, home for dinner and then back out  (our local sledding hill had the help of street lights). Or weekends, we were out from morning till night fall, soaking wet, blue lips and shivering to no end but we never complained. Or ice skating. We had a little stream running behind the school and every year it would flood out into a field and freeze over which we used as our skating ring.

But now I dislike the cold and snow. Sure it makes everything look pretty, and for a lot of people it is a playground. But not me. My excitement with or for the snow ends around Christmas and then we can move on to spring.

Which brings me to the other part of the conversation, of me complaining when it is too hot outside and that hot flashes are making me miserable (which have been a no show this winter, go figure). I guess someone needs to remind me when I do complain, on how I did not like the cold and to put on my big girl pants and deal with it.

Home front news

Life is just moving right along here. I truly enjoyed my vacation time of doing nothing. It felt so great to just not have to be on the move and work and just shut down for a week. I needed it badly. But all things have to come to an end and Tuesday it is back to the drawing board for me.

The biggest news here is that my daughter got engaged to her high school sweetheart 2 weeks ago. It caught me by surprise to be honest. And as a parent you question the decision they made, and wonder if it is the best for them. So the best laid out plans change. She will be moving out to Colorado in the fall to join him, seeing he is stationed there and continue school next spring there. I have come to grips with this slowly. And I had to realize that ..well ..mother here didn’t do anything different then she is doing at that age. My wonderful mother reminded me of that when I told her the news. But I am happy for her. and hope for the best, which parent wouldn’t.

Our little Teka has been diagnosed with diabetes. I have been cooking her food and have been giving her supplements since her diagnosis, but her sugar level is just not going down. I am going to try one more thing with her and hopefully that will help on getting her levels down.  If it doesn’t I will have to make the very hard decision on having her euthanized. I know Ayla will be heart broken and so will we, if it comes to that.

My Son has submitted his application to graduate from MSU next year. It seems like it’s been forever since he started College, but this journey is coming to an end and now makes me feel a lot older then I want to be. 

Hot flashes are the pits..and that is all I got to say about that.

Been cooking and baking a bit more trying out some new recipes and old ones, but I had to tone it down a bit, there aren’t enough people in this house to eat it all, and I don’t want to get to a point were they can roll me everywhere. 

Reconnected with some old friends I grew up with, back in my hometown on Facebook. It is a shame when you have to ask ” Who are you, and how do you know me”. But by all rights it’s been 24 years since I left Germany, so it is understandable.

Anyway like I said in the beginning, Life just keeps on moving and so is this day. So I better make the best of it. Till the next time folks. 

 

 

Melting away and other stuff

So I barely survived the first heatwave of the summer. And we still have a couple of months to go. I am either going to become a nudist or move to Alaska. For your sake you better hope I choose Alaska. If I would loose weight while I am sweating, I’d be out there 24/7 and have a slimming figure by the beginning of fall. But seeing that won’t happen I will try to dodge the heat as much as I can.

Seeing that I spent a lot of time indoors nowadays so I don’t melt away, I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows on PBS. One night at 11 pm I was so fascinated with the grilling show they ran, I wanted to go outside and fire up my grill so I could satisfy my over sudden desire for grilled tuna, pineapples and chicken. I have to stop watching them, these shows just leave me hungry at the end and then I am forced to eat cookies. Or I head to the grocers the next day and buy everything under the sun and make an ungodly amount of food. So cartoons it is from now on..well right after I try the new recipe for omelets I saw Jaques cook up yesterday.

On the family side of news, kids are doing fine. Son has finished his summer classes and is finally a senior starting this fall at MSU. His main concern is now on landing a internship this semester to be able to graduate next spring. My daughter is heading back to East Lansing this fall to begin her second year. She is also moving off campus this year with a few people. She will get to experience first hand what it means to pay bills without that mysterious money tree in the backyard that she seems to think I have.

Well time to get cooking, my stomach is getting mad at me. Until the next time folks.

Call me crazy….

My kids and some of my friends think that I am totally nuts for getting up every day around 4:30 am. I know as much as I like to sleep, you’d think I’d push it to the last minute and stay in bed. But today I was thinking how much that time in the morning means to me.

There is no noise. All is quiet, well unless my neighbor lets his dog out and he barks all the time for an hour straight. No buzzing noises, car sounds, no neighborhood kids yelling. Total calmness. And then slowly the birds start wakeing up and today the neighborhood cardinal was just out there singing his beautiful song. The sun was starting to rise in the east, and I had my cup of coffee in my hand and was thinking to myself that I am grateful that I was able to experience this.

And then there was the 1 hour nap midday…my siesta. Priceless!

Seafood….Eat it!!

When I grew up in Germany, Italian Pizzerias were plenty. And they all had wonderful food. One of the items that I remember is Seafood Pizza and how good it was. So I finally decided to make one and now on the urging of Mark Baars I am posting the recipe or at least my variation of items used to make it.

I googled seafood pizza and there are a lot of recipes out there, each with its own variation. But as usual I don’t just settle with one recipe I make my own up as I go along.

First, you can use either an already made Pizza crust, buy frozen pizza dough or if you feel like it even get a pizza crust mix and make it. I suggest a frozen pizza crust. I used an already made one, but I do think the flavor will better with a frozen one. Then I opted for garlic alfredo sauce instead of regular Pizza sauce. And instead of buying the small shrimp, calamari, imitation crab meat, imitation lobster and scallops individually I found a seafood medley with all the ingredients in the frozen seafood section which will work just as well. Then 2 small roma tomatoes, a small red onion, some sliced black olives, olive oil, minced garlic, shredded cheese – I used a 3 cheese medley made out of mozzarella, provolone, and romano cheese. But you can always just opt for one of the cheeses if you can’t find this item.  And then the trusted grated Parmigiano cheese.

Preheat the oven to whatever your directions are on the crust you are using. Then slice some red onions, depending how much onion you like, the roma tomatoes ( you can either use them as whole slices or quarter them), drain your sliced black olives. Heat some virgin oil in a frying pan with a 1/2 tea-spoon of minced garlic and add the seafood, onions and olives.  Heat that till your shrimp looked cooked or your onions look glossy but not browned.  In the meantime cover the pizza crust with the garlic alfredo  sauce. I only used a couple of tablespoons to cover mine, but I do believe you can use more to give the crust more flavor. Then sprinkle some Parmigiano cheese on top, add the heated ingredients and the tomatoes. Arrange it to your liking. Sprinkle some italian seasoning and garlic powder on top. Then cover it with cheese and another sprinkle of Parmigiano. Bake it till the crust is brown and/or the cheese is melted.  Like I mentioned before I usually play around with recipes so it is hard for me to tell you how much to use of things. But if you are a seasoned cook or just adventurous you will find the right measurements. Anyway enjoy! I did!

 

Advise from an old person..

Hindsight is better then foresight, they say. If you knew back then what you know now, you would have done things differently…these are some of the sayings that will come up in ones journey through Life more then they care for.

Yes, we all wish that we had the knowledge of Life right from the get go, and avoid making mistakes, but then what would we learn? In the same sense though, some things, mistakes, situations, problems could be avoided if we all just took a minute and listened to a person in our lives that may have been there, done it and knows what not to do.

I guess I’m writing this because as a middle aged mother, I’ve been there, done it and survived it. And I hope that some people will take some of the advise to good use. Here we go….

- Don’t live in the past. Look forward to the future. Life will continue running it’s course, and you might miss out on all the beautiful things that are happening right now and later. When you are old and need a hearing aid, then talk about the memories of the past – you may make an impression on a young person, who thinks you are a wise person.

- The good will outweigh the bad. Things happen, good and bad in ones life. But you cannot dwell on the bad things to a point they take up all your energy and space in your head. Focus on the positives. As tough as Life gets and throws a kink in your path, cry, be mad, you have the right to do so. But then deal with it in such a way that you will be able to put it behind you and continue enjoying the great things that do happen.

- You cannot make someone else happy, if you are not happy yourself. If you are waiting or longing for someone to make you happy, then you will be a lonely person. Happiness starts within you.

- No burden put on your shoulder is to heavy to carry. It may seem like it at times, but if that was the case, human kind would be extinct. Don’t give up. Seek help if it is too much. Look within you to find the strength to keep moving. After you have muddled your way through it and come out at the other end, you can be proud of yourself and are stronger and you may be able to help someone later in Life that is facing the same burden.

- Respect yourself. If you don’t respect yourself, you will not receive respect from others. – Respect others. This will get you respect.

- Appreciate the little things in life. We all strive for bigger and better, but don’t overlook the small things in your life that may have big surprises for you.

- Be kind. Kindness goes a long way. Sometimes we are so tied up in our own little world, we don’t realize another person just wanting our attention, a smile or a hug to make their day.

There are many more. But these will be there all our lifes. Take it from an older woman.

Fall is here

Summer came and went. Michigan has a short summer season, that’s why we try to cram a lot of activites into 3 months. The rest of the time is spent stocking up on supplies for the 6 months of winter.  Thinking my animals are too, they are eating non-stop and I see squirrels just a digging and burying their treasures already.  The early morning quacking of geese and ducks heading south. Signs of a hard winter?

But we have a love affair with fall here also. The colors that explode during 2 months are just spectacular here. We love cool Friday nights high school football, early trips to the farmer markets on Saturday for pumpkins,squash and all things cider. And the trips north to see a abundance of fall colors.

I am thinking this will be a short fall season, and old man winter will be knocking on our doors before we know it. So enjoy it while it lasts. I know I will.

Best intentions

Every day I think about writing a post for this blog. But the best laid intentions to do it seem to be interrupted by other events, circumstances or as in my case, uninteresting.

I’m in the car and something comes to mind and I think “Oh I should write about that” ” Naw, boring”. Or I see something that evokes a good or bad emotion from me and I go ” Ohhh got to make a post about that”. And then I seem to forget about it, or get over it, and 2 days later it comes back to mind and I say “Nevermind”. So I call it uninteresting.

Some people write with ease, they have a thousand things and thoughts to put down, I on the other hand contemplate of what I should write about. As I am writing this, I have already re-read everything written and changed 3 sentences. Yeah that’s me.

Does one have to have a eventful life and so many interesting subjects to write about to make a few posts a week? Probably not. But I always make it harder then it has to be. Just a single thought, idea, remark is needed and viola there is a post. So get a grip dear, it’s not a memoir you are writing, just a simple post to a blog.