Southern Living Yankee

April Fools Day is next week--are you ready? Come on, folks, plan ahead for this important day! You'll be giggling with mischievious glee ahead of time and retelling the tales of victorious pranking for years to come. What could be better? This year the joke might be on me. I'm doing a workshop--"Blogging for Klutzes, Whiners and the Simply Uninitiated," on April 1. Will I make a fool of myself? Will anyone show up? Will they throw tomatoes and eggs at me? I'll be getting all nervous instead of posting on this blog next Monday. So check back later in the week. I'll let you know if I survive the presentation. WRITING UPDATE: I'm almost done! Hallelujah! Only the epilogue is left now. Lots of re-writing to do, but the structure is up, the last chapters are so much better than I ever imagined. The Lord really enabled me to pull it all together with some wonderful little insights. I won't be able to write any more for it until after the blogging workshop. ...

Sometimes I wonder if I work at a library or a video store. The movies are far more popular than the books! I, too, have given in to movies over books. Let's face it: why read a book which will take about nine hours or more, when you can get a whole story plus munchies, or folding laundry, or knitting, or snuggling with your husband, etc. etc., in two hours with a movie? This past week I watched three movies (Australia, The Boy in Striped Pajamas, and Henry Poole is Here), and read a sci-fi/fantasy book by C.S. Lewis, "Out of the Silent Planet." There was value in each, but if you're going to spend any time suspending yourself in the escapism of story, you may as well make sure it's a good story. Here's a website I recently found that helps me with movie choices: www.imdb.com Internet Movie Data Bank. Just type in the title of the movie in the search box. If it comes up with several movies that have the same title, find the exact one you want by the year or ac...

This The title tells the ingredients for cooking now days if you're looking for a job like exactly half the men in my family. Tom still has his, but last week when we expected our mortgage to go down $100/month, it went up another $200--the escrow account, not an infamous balloon mortgage. We've only been here two years so they're jerking us around on the escrow. So I'm mentally hunkering down for some hard times--and finding a new mortgage company. Here's a link to a 91 year old grandma's Great Depression cooking videos. Click on "Episodes" for the you-tube clips. I think I'll go with my own "3 Meals from 1 Chicken" recipe before I try her "Pasta and Peas," though. www.GreatDepressionCooking.com Do you want me to give you the chicken recipes next week? I should have the chicken butchered and plucked by then and be well on my way to a feather pillow and making cardboard insoles for the holes in my shoes. Darn, I should have...

When a niece of mine turns 12, sometime between her birthday and Christmas she gets a package from me with an invitation to read the enclosed book, "Beautiful Girlhood." As a reward I take her out for a weekend. Since I live so far away I don't get to see them often enough so this is a way for me to let them know a few things. 1)Auntie Ferree thinks they're special. 2) Being a girl is great, so enjoy it and don't be in such a hurry to be all grown up. 3) If they ever need help, a friend in the family, or someone to pray for them, just call me. This weekend was Emily's turn, and above is a picture of her at the John Hancock Tower Observation deck in Chicago. Isn't she a bright spot against a cloud? Yes, we were encased in snow clouds part of the time up there. Lake Michigan looked eerie and gave us the chills; it was also strange to see the Sears Tower rising up into a layer of cloud. But then a patch of blue sky would open and the sun would break t...

Three little burros came to Auntie Ferree's one day. They begged, "Please let us out of this box, dear auntie! It's so hot and stuffy and we want to be free, like you!" "OK, amigos, but no funny stuff. You look like trouble makers to me," I said. "Watch this, Auntie Ferree, watch this! Get ready. . . get set . . ." "Aim . . ." "FIRE!" I didn't know such little pinatas could hold so much crap, oops, I mean scrap. WRITING UPDATE: Today I'm supposed to be working on chapter 20. Enough said. Thanks for checking in on me!

Tom left me this weekend. But he'll be back tomorrow. And then we get to catch up on Valentines Day (wink wink) and my birthday! Right now he and Aaron are visiting his parents in New York and doing their best to stimulate the economy and blast our credit card debt into the ozone layer. Meanwhile I've had a fabulous weekend! Saturday I cleaned off all the piles of papers and junk that were spilling off all available surfaces in the kitchen, dining room and living room. I have a desk in the living room that I haven't seen the top of for months! Now I can; and since I put a nice lamp on it, a potted plant and a copper container for pencils and all my little notebooks, it's beautiful. I should have taken a before and after picture. I'm a visual person and seeing mounds of clutter really weighs me down and tires me out. So to get all this junk out of my sight is wonderful! Last night Judi came over with sub sandwiches and her mom's homemade custard. We watched ...

Why did God have to put that in the Bible, and why did I have to be reminded of it so many times--like not only once a day, but many times a day, each day this week??? Obviously, I needed it. Every once in a while you get some God-things going on. Stuff happens that has His fingerprints all over it. Don't envy me. I can't go into details, but for lack of a better gauge, here's how I've slept this week: Tuesday night: one hour. Wednesday night, three or four hours. Thursday night, maybe two hours on the sofa, and an hour or two in bed before Tom got up at 4. Friday night: near normal. Last night, near normal, just lost sleep from 3a.m -4:30. The constant low-grade stress we've been under spiked into the red zone several times this week. And it had nothing to do with Aaron's school being evacuated for a bomb threat and a student found carrying a gun in on Thursday. But, deep down, I must admit a certain peace and relative rejoicing. Prayers are being answered. Th...