Weekend Away!

No, I did NOT already start to bloggy backslide.

This weekend I was away on a wonderful, spontaneous, frugally-extravagant 'getaway'. Just Hubs and I, in Nashville.

We stayed at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, which has EVERYTHING you need for a break from mundane....

We thoroughly enjoyed the "free" stuff - our beautiful surroundings. The weather in the 'real' outside was bitterly cold and overcast, but outside our balcony the environment was perfect.

There were fountains, and then there were fountains.

Flowers and Falls

Whimsy and sweetness.

The resort is exactly like a city indoors..... probably like what they do in Vegas, but I wouldn't know.

You could take a boat ride through the hotel and have a tour guide describe the plant life and colorful fish, you could swim, exercise, blow your money in the arcade, get a pedicure, shop, eat, or, just sit and enjoy your surroundings.

With more time and more money, I would've treated myself to one of the facials offered in the full-service spa and salon:

organic oxygen, warming sugar and spice, aromatherapy radiance,

anti-aging, vitamin C.

Or a massage:

stone, aromatherapy, deep tissue, shiatsu, Swedish, neuromuscular.

There were pricey restaurants and affordable restaurants and kiosks and ice cream parlors and coffee shops and pubs and sushi bars and cookie places and even a Godiva chocolate store. There were clothing stores and jewelry stores and children's stores and gift shops and a golf shop and more.

And if that wasn't enough: The resort is right next door to the Opry Mills Mall: outlet stores, regular retail stores, food court, Rainforest Cafe, Aquarium restaurant, indoor glow-in-the-dark mini golf, bungee bounce, arcade restaurant, carousel, hardware store, twenty-screen movie theater, Bass Pro shop, and even an oxygen bar. You could spend two days there and not see everything.

It was a great break,

and now for a different kind of treat, I get to catch up with all my favorite bloggers. . . . in-between loads of laundry..... :)

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Things in my House Thursday #26

This week we're out of the pantry and into the closet, my place to store most of my keepsakes.

My paternal grandmother raised two boys, Billy and Gary:


I never knew my uncle because Billy, her firstborn, was killed in Korea just a few days before his two-year enlistment expired. He was 21.

I also never knew, until about three months before my grandmother died, that she'd had a baby girl, Betty Jean:

As Grandma was telling me the detailed story - there was a pain in her voice as if it had happened the day before versus nearly seventy years earlier. I missed or just can't recall all the specifics she shared because I was so surprised that I'd never known, and so heartbroken for her.

When the three children were very young, my grandparents were poor and uneducated. When Betty Jean was around two years old she came down with some childhood illness, and it was all Leroy and Ethel could do to have one of them get her to the hospital for care. Leroy was finally able to take her but couldn't stay because he had to be back at work.

When they were able to scrounge up enough transportation money to go back to the hospital the next day, together, the doctors told them that their daughter was going to die, there was nothing they could do, and for my grandparents to just let them handle the burial. They basically refused to let them see their little girl, and they left the hospital without ever seeing her again.

This happened during the era of the Georgia Tann baby-stealing operation, and I sensed that the possibility that Grandma's daughter was stolen from her tormented her even more than the toddler's alleged death.

Tann was a highly respected director of an orphanage in Memphis, Tenn., who used her position to oversee more than 30 years of baby-stealing, baby-selling, and abuse.

While she is credited with popularizing the worthy undertaking of adoption, she corrupted the mission by arranging adoptions for profit to the rich, the famous, and the unfit to parent.

These children came to her after being seen by "spotters" who either targeted babies ripe for abduction or located desperate single women seeking a better future for their child. She was involved in more than 1000 adoptions in New York.

Many of the birth certificates she provided as part of the adoption process were altered, and she was the chief force behind the legislation that sealed these records. Tann and her cohorts convinced the powers that be that her stolen and kidnapped children, as well as all other legally or illegally adopted children, should be forevermore barred from accessing the simple facts of their birth that most people take for granted.

After my grandmother died, I found among her things a yellowed ziploc bag with her baby girl's birth certificate, dated April 9, 1931, and this little silk and satin coat and wool hat:

I'm certain the coat used to be a brighter, baby pink color, but is now faded, and that the hat was a creamy white.

My grandmother kept up with this tiny collection for decades; I'll preserve it for as long as I can.

EDITED TO ADD: Jessica commented that this was depressing; I say, it is sad, but Grandma never wasted time being depressed or feeling sorry for herself. She was always positive, energetic, and caring; near the end of her life she was just reflecting on what was and what might have been.

Or maybe she was simply looking forward to seeing Billy and Betty Jean again soon.

Please join TIMHT and share something fun or sentimental or

useful or decorative or - you get the idea !

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Slackerville

Yes, I know. I've been catching some grief lately about my lack of blogging - and a complaint that I've been boring even when I did blog. (That sweet comment was from my 'worst-blogger-ever-and-never-comments neighbor'; thanks Sharon!).

I even had someone quit 'following' me!!!!

Well, far from being upset, I am just oh-so-grateful to know that people read and care. :) You whiners concerned friends motivate me. :)

I VOW to be better, and just because I've said that before doesn't mean it can't be true this time....

I have realized that I've been cyclical with my blogging and computer use in general. There are days when one of the first things I do is get online and start reading news, email, blogs, etc., and there are days when I realize that I have not been on the computer the entire day. Those off days usually mean I'm actually accomplishing some project OR I've started a good book.

If that doesn't sound like a good enough excuse, just tell me, because I've got more where that came from. The only activity I can come up with more excuses for not doing is exercise.

Or, I could admit that I've been in a funk since my jello post - after Isledance led me to a page that led me to an article that led me to the knowledge of what gelatin actually is - and that it is in CREAM CHEESE.

Ignorance truly is was bliss.

Since Renna (speaking of slackers); said I ruined pudding for her, I guess I deserved it....

But now, I have memes to participate in, awards to accept, pictures to take. So, please, keep looking, and you'll start finding more posts!!

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Snowstorm for us too!!

Okay, all you northern peeps out there that thought you had the market on snow:

Look what was coming down this morning in our neck of the woods:


Beautiful!!


And look and the coverage by the time it had stopped!!!!

I got out while I could and stocked up on supplies. We should be okay! :)

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Things In My House Thursday # 25

I suppose that this is the type of post that could stand on its own, but I think we all know that I have a dismal track record posting outside of my meme.... and it IS about something IN my house.

I've gone through health food / organic / homeopathic - type phases for decades. I vacillate from totally committed "hippie / freak" to simply having made some good changes and being more aware.

One thing I am consistent about is reading labels. It's usually depressing.

While I was at the store yesterday, Mary called to say that she needed some of this:

sugar, dextrose, modified food starch, salt,

disodium phosphate and tetrasodium pyrophosphate,

diglycerides, yellow 5, yellow 6, artificial color, BHA.

YUMMY!!

How does this fit with the simple idea that you should recognize all the ingredients in your "food", be able to pronounce them, and either have them in your kitchen or be able to find them at your local grocery ?

Not very well.

But she needed it for one of her dessert concoctions.

Before you google it, here's the sugary, starchy, salty, phospatey, glyceridy, colored goodness:

Guess we're going to have to start making our OWN organic pudding. Recipes, anyone?

****************

And, maybe, we should start dedicating some of our TIMHTs to our pantries. Muddy came close to this format when she posted about a single serving of mayo.

Join TIMHT - and share anything (family-friendly) from your house! Clothes, pictures, decor, food, people - whatever you want to show and tell us about!

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Childhood Memories: Tar Bubbles & Indian Beads

I'm excited about joining Susan's new meme featuring childhood memories; I doubt if I can write anything interesting every week, but I didn't want to miss this inaugural posting.

Here's a fond memory that popped into my brain when I was deciding what to share:

Tar bubbles and Indian beads

During the summers that we visited my 'rural' grandparents, various siblings, cousins, and I would get whatever bikes were available and working, and head down the road beside their house. The first section of the street, off the 'busy' road, was newly tarred. In the intense Southern summer heat, bubbles would form on the road. It was ridiculously fun to ride the bike over the bubbles and pop them! Yes, really, it was. (It wasn't as much fun to step on the bubbles - you could lose a little shoe that way).

When the tar bubbles had all been conquered, we kept riding until we reached the old gravel part of the road, then we'd turn a bend to an area that had a shaded canopy of trees. There was literally no traffic, ever, so we dropped the bikes and scattered in the middle of the road to collect Indian beads. We could do this for hours. And that is another general memory - kids could leave the house in the morning, with no specific destination, no cell phones, etc., and stay gone ALL day. We'd show back up when we'd get hungry, maybe, then disappear again. That is unimaginable today.

As for the Indian beads, of course I later learned that they weren't fashioned by Indians for actual jewelry, but are supposedly just fossilized plant stems. In the gravel road, they just stood out from the other rocks because of their size and shape, and it was fun to search for them.

I think my memories of tar bubbles and Indian beads will always be more meaningful to me than my kids' memories of Nintendo and Playstation will be to them. And I'm sorry about that; they have no idea what they missed out on! : )

Have a memory you want to share?

Join the fun at Girls In White Dresses.

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Things In My House Thursday # 24

This week's TIMHT has me back to 'ordinary' stuff around the house.

Today's featured item is this super-duper, small cabinet of drawers. I got it years ago on clearance from Pottery Barn. It is one of the most useful pieces of decor in my house.

It used to sit by the computer, but when I got a new printer the space was too crowded. Now it's a few feet away, on Grandma's old desk.

The drawers are labeled for: tokens, tacks, rubberbands, paper clips, staples, stamps, buttons, misc., stuff, etc.

Most of the labels reflect what is in the little drawer. Some are different, such as safety pins in the 'button' drawer.

Have anything extra-handy in your house? Join TIMHT!

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Fanny Packs

News From the Past

125 years ago: 1884

No woman is fashionably dressed unless her gown has a distension at the rear. Steel springs, like those of the old-fashioned hoop skirt, are set into the drapery to produce the desired effect which everyone agrees is charming.

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Happy Birthday Matt!

Today is Matt's Birthday!!

* My absolute favorite son-in-law is experiencing his birthday today, a special birthday that he shares with Joan of Arc  and the baby lion-tailed macaques at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.

This date is also the anniversary of the first recorded boxing match, in 1681, between the Duke of Albemarle's butler vs. his butcher. *

Hope you are having a great day with lots of white chocolate!

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Things In My House New Year's Day

First things first: HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!

Now, for this special edition TIMHT, I'm sharing a few of my Christmas gifts that I have already enjoyed a great deal.

I remembered watching this movie when I was young and loving it; it was wonderfully fun all over again. The kids had plenty of issues with it, but they just don't understand the sixties....

I especially remembered this song! Couldn't wait to get it on my ipod.
Recognize the 'lead singer'?

I also got season one of HAZEL on DVD. Yeah!!

I received and have worked the same jigsaw puzzle I gifted Renna. It was much harder than I expected.

And the most used gift: a beautiful, fleece-lined, quilted heating pad cover that Jessica made for me. I have the heating pad out all winter, and there's nothing as cozy as curling up under a blanket, with the heating pad behind you, watching some great old sitcoms or movies. Now the heating pad isn't ugly and medicinal-looking; it is softer and warmer and pretty.

Please join us! Share something fun from your house; Just post, link, visit, and comment!

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