I Love This!

That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles!

Right off the bat I'm going to say, this is a nit picky post, but I'm going to do it anyway.  Yesterday was a cold day.  I mean, bitingly, bone crushing COLD.  The high was -4.  So I made a crock pot full of bean soup and two loaves of homemade bread for dinner.  It was a good day for that.  So, along with my domestic brainstorm for dinner, homemade cookies sounded good. 

The problem with homemade cookies, however, is that one batch makes way more than we can usually eat.  I've taken to buying those "scoop and bake" tubs at the warehouse stores.  They're freshly baked, and are really good.  Normally I buy them at the store closest to home, but last week I bought a tub at the other store because I was there that day.  A different brand, but a nationally known and good brand.

And here's the problem: these cookies crumble all over the place!  They taste good, but the texture is not the same as the ones I normally buy and bake.  Now maybe a crumbly cookie isn't a big deal; no one is going to have their lives irrevocably altered by a cookie that crumbles too much, but I was disappointed.  And, if you are like me, thought you might want to know!

Homesick

I'm feeling homesick.  My arthritis is bothering me, and all the stairs in my house are so painful to get up and down and I'm missing my sweet house back in California.  Everything on one level.  So nice!

And I'm missing being near family.  My parents and sister were only 70 miles away, and Stan's sister was just a twenty minute drive from us, his parents only three hours away.  I didn't appreciate the proximity until I was too far away.

And I'm feeling homesick for my old ward too.  I wasn't the old lady in the ward then.  Of course that was over ten years ago, so who knows how it would be now? 

I had a job I just loved working in a high school library and I still miss that.  The kids, the teachers and staff, and of course the librarian I worked with.  It was a dream-come-true job for me and leaving it was just as hard as leaving my family and friends and my old house.

I miss going to the beach, the briney smell of the shore and the sound of seagulls crying as they fly overhead.  And the redwoods.  That musty smell and the coolness in their shade.  The aroma of eucalyptus trees along the damp roads leading over the hills to San Juan Bautista. 

But home is Colorado now.  So am I feelilng homesick or nostalgic?

I guess I'm just feeling blue.

The Times, They Are A Changin'

I remember when  I was a teenager hearing my parents and their friends discussing my grandparents.  They would talk about how much had happened in their lifetimes.  "They've gone from horses to a man on the moon!" they would exclaim and marvel at how fast the world had changed.

Lately I've been thinking the same thing about my own lifetime.  So much has changed.  And it changes faster and faster every year.  I think about how different things were when I was my children's age and to see it now in their time is fascinating.

Dial telephones, black & white televisions (we got our first color TV when I was a freshman in college!) records, typewriters and more.  There was no cable, not 24 hr news channels, cartoons were only on Saturday mornings, and if you wanted to see a movie you liked more than once you had to wait for it to come on network television, or see if they showed it at a second run theater.

So, what do you remember from your childhood that your children will never experience?  Block parties, grocery stores closing at 9pm, what?  I'd love to hear what changes have happened in your lifetime.

A Question for Readers

One of the blogs I like to visit is Nathan Bransford's. He is a literary agent with Curtis Brown in San Francisco. He often asks interesting questions that get you thinking. One he asked recently is one I'd like to ask as well.

When do you stop reading a book?

Do you read the first couple of chapters; do you try to make it halfway through; or do you read the entire book then toss it aside in disgust for having done so?

I have a friend who won't even start a book if the first paragraph doesn't capture her attention. A high school English teacher of mine used to say, "Never finish a book merely because you have begun it." What do you think?

And what would make you keep turning the pages??