Dappled Things

Very Nearly Wordless Wednesday
Ed. 4

Ed. #9
Thirteen Things For Firefly

1. 8 large white bath towels

2. 8 white hand towels

3. 8 white washcloths

4. 4 white king-sized pillow cases

5. 1 warm throw blanket (to replace the “binky” Banjo stole from me)

6. 1 case of Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream soda

7. 1 large box of Dots (Hey! Nobody told me they came in wild berry flavor!)

8. 2 rolls of Necco Wafers (You can take a tour of how these candies are made here.)

9. a good book on learning to crochet (so I can learn how to make my own headcoverings)

10. some thin crochet hooks

11. dark blue, chocolate brown, and black baby-weight yarn

12. quiet time with my husband and girls

13. 1 (at least) good nap


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Very Nearly Wordless Wednesday
Ed. 3

…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
~ from Psalm 30:5

I have been pretty sad this week. My mother is in the end stages of an Alzheimer’s-like disease. When I was growing up, my mother had seizures that couldn’t be diagnosed as having been caused by anything that her doctors could find. About ten years ago, it became obvious to me that something else was going on with my mother. Two years later, she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s. She was eventually tested and found to be lacking the gene that is normally found in Alzheimer’s patients. None of this really matters to me anymore. I am just telling you so you will know.
I have grown up with a mother who has never really been well. Physically, her body was typically quite healthy, but something has never been quite right with her brain. Knowing exactly why doesn’t seem so very important. When I speak of my mother’s illness now, I just say that she has Alzheimer’s because it is easier. Nobody asks for the particulars and nobody would be able to tell the difference anyway.
My father takes care of my mother at home. In August, he suffered a heart attack and had to have emergency, quadruple bypass surgery. My father actually drove himself to the doctor’s office that afternoon and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. By the time my sister was notified and got to my parents’ house, my mother had fallen out of bed and was on the floor of their bedroom. She had been there for quite a while.
I went to stay with my father after he was allowed to go home from the hospital. My sister was taking care of my mother at her own home since she lived in town. I had planned on staying with my father for a few weeks hoping to help him get well. In the middle of my first week there, I called my husband on his cell phone since I couldn’t reach him at home and it was late in the evening. He was with our daughter in the emergency room. Eight hours away from me. As it turned out, Lily had to have an emergency appendectomy. I thank God that my husband is such a wonderful and capable father and that he has such a good relationship with our girls. I can’t imagine how I would have been able to bear to be so far away from my child during such a major event in her life if he hadn’t been with her the entire time. She had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days and my husband stayed on a cot near her bed the entire time. As soon as she was safely in the care of some of our good friends, he came to get me. He was exhausted. I was torn between wanting to care for my family in two different places at once. I ended up only staying with my father for a week. My mother came home a few days before I left. My father would not hear of her going into a nursing home.
As it turns out, my mother can’t even stay in a nursing home because she doesn’t have a “medically treatable” condition. So my mother is at home right now. She will not eat. She cannot see or walk or speak. She just screams all the time. My father, feeling defeated and exhausted, finally tried to get my mother into a nursing home, but they only let her stay for a few weeks before they sent her home.
I am tired. I told someone recently that “it is well with my soul”. And it is. It is well with my soul. This is just such tiresome business. This living.

Blogger Friend School Assignment # 8

Blogger Friend School – Cookie Exchange

Most people LOVE cookies and the holidays are just a perfect time of year to share our family favorite cookie recipes.
The assignment this week is to post your recipe and any family history behind the recipe.
If you have time to take pictures, please share a visual
Better yet, make it a homeschool project, put on your aprons, and have a baking day. Language Arts can be reading the recipe and spelling the name of the cookie….Math can be measuring the ingredients and guessing how many cookies your recipe will “actually”…Science can be experimenting with different food colors, Art can be decorating the cookies, and History can be sharing with your children about your time growing up and baking cookies.
Our favorite part of baking day is Snack Time!…BUT don’t forget to toss in a good Home Economics lesson and teach proper kitchen clean up. Have fun!

I suppose that some people would not consider this a “cookie” in the classic sense; but my mother made tarts every year for Christmas along with every other type of cookie you could imagine. These were always my favorites and, I might add, are only made the better by a pot of hot tea.
You will need to try and find some tart tins, if you don’t already have a supply of them. True tart tins are exceptionally difficult to find in the United States. They are not mini-muffin tins. They are very shallow compared to a mini-muffin tin.
The tart tins that I have seem to be a bit more shallow than this one appears, but they were handed down from my grandmother to my mother and then to me. Williams-Sonoma used to have nice tart tins, but I don’t think they carry them any more. One could ask, though. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’ll have to order them from England.
COCONUT JAM TARTS
(Makes about 40 tarts)
Pastry
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup shortening (Crisco)
1/3 cup milk
Coconut
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup coconut
Line tart tin with pastry. Put about 1/2 teaspoon of raspberry jam in each. Top with about 1 teaspoon of coconut mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Ed. #8
Thirteen Things about Me

1. When I was young, we lived next door to a very old, distinguished-looking, library and my father used to bring home a stack of books as tall as I was each week. Books to read aloud to me. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting curled up in my father’s lap while he read all sorts of books to me.

2. My favorite flower is the lily-of-the-valley, but I am also quite fond of lilacs and hydrangeas. When I was growing up in New Hampshire, we had a large lilac bush that was heavenly. It was nearly as tall as our barn which it grew beside. Lily-of-the-valley grew wild in great patches in the shade of the woods.

3. I am in the middle of reading Northanger Abbey. I am taking an extraordinarily long time finishing this book for some reason. My daughter, Lily, has already finished it and is waiting impatiently for me to finish it, too. She doesn’t want to give anything away. I need to hurry along with it because I have already committed to reading four other books before the end of January. I have also been contacted by a book publisher to review five more books on my blog. If I thought I needed something to get me back into reading, I certainly have it now.

4. I am actually looking forward to eating fish sticks, macaroni and cheese and green beans for supper tonight.

6. When I was Clara’s age, my favorite thing to do during recess was to either finger knit or use a wooden spool with four nails in it that my grandmother made for me to knit long coils with. I also enjoyed playing with the kindergarteners on their playground. I always liked being around young children. The other girls would play soccer, but I was not much of an athlete. Interestingly enough, the girls played what was called “goal” soccer and the boys would play “base” soccer. “Goal” soccer was considered a “girls’ game”, but it is what we know of as traditional soccer today. “Base” soccer was similar to baseball except the boys used their foot instead of a bat and a soccer ball instead of a baseball.

7. When I was Lily’s age, my best friend was “going steady” with a boy for the first time. I always felt as though he disliked me and wouldn’t mind getting rid of me entirely. He probably wouldn’t have.

8. I know haiku and I am not afraid to use it.

9. When I was little, I believed that the trees made the wind by pushing the air around with their branches.

10. One of the first words I ever read was on the back of a truck parked in a church parking lot next door to my house. (Yes, we had a library to the left of us and a church to the right). I was riding my tricycle around in the parking lot with my dad. The word was “Chevrolet”. I told him, “Look! It says “chevrolet”!”. Except I said it phonetically.

11. My husband is home! I must go prepare our fish stick feast!

12. My husband wants me to tell you I have beautiful eyes. Can you tell I am running out of ideas? I must be very boring.

13. Ask me something about myself so I have some good TT fodder for next week! (Yeah, I know that wasn’t exactly enlightening, but I am running out of ideas.)

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Very Nearly Wordless Wednesday
Ed. 2

Morning, November 29, 2006

When the Frost Is on the Punkin
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here –
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock –
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries — kindo’ lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin’ sermons to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawsack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below — the clover overhead! –
O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin, and the fodder’s in the shock!
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!
I don’t know how to tell it — but ef sich a thing could be
As the angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me –
I’d want to ‘commodate ‘em — all the whole-indurin’ flock –
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!
James Whitcomb Riley

Ed. #7
Thirteen Things For Which I Am Thankful

1. The pretty pies my daughter, Clara, prepared from scratch.

Cherry-Berry

Apple-Cranberry

2. The way my daughter, Lily, is so peacefully curled up on the sofa with her head on her father’s shoulder.

3. How my husband remembers me even when he forgets my Dr. Pepper.

4. Hot tea and Pepperidge Farm Chessmen.

5. Our cozy home, my warm dress, and my sweater. (Can you tell I like being warm?)

6. The pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner in my refrigerator.

7. That God has carried me through some of the saddest days of my life during this year.

8. How our home is crowded with good books. Some read, some unread as of yet, and some waiting to be read again.

9. For cranberry sauce with real cranberries and even for the jellied kind; because that’s the kind that makes Lily happy.

10. The wooden plaque over the door in my living room that reminds me to



Psalm 46:10

11. The comfort a certain puppy has brought to my life.

12. The family God has given me. Both immediate and eternal.

13. The blessing of good health that my family enjoys.



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Very Nearly Wordless Wednesday Ed.1

My birthday was last week and I just thought I would share what my sweet girls gave me.