Are you ready for this!

Ok, here it is! My newest nuttiness! The apron is hotter than the kitchen collection of not your granny's aprons! Check it out. More patterns to follow!

What's that smell?

Whew! It is strong in here! When you come in from outside it smacks you in the face. I was going to light one of the fragrance candles, but the competition of aromas would be too much. In the crock pot, I have potato and leek soup, and couldn't resist throwing an onion in. That was a very weepy production. But I noticed that Paula Deen was wearing these onion goggles, and I have to get myself some. Between the leeks and the onions yesterday, I could have cried myself a river, literally! Anyway, I am reheating that since I made it yesterday. I have some shredded cheese and crisp bacon to throw on top when it is ready to eat. On the stove is a slab of corned beef with all the seasonings that was in the packet, that has been simmering since about 10:00 a.m., and I just threw in the red potatoes. My husband is telling me to wait on the cabbage, he likes it firmer. Guess that will mask the taste of the corned beef that he hates! Anyway, my son and his partner are coming, so the table is only set for four. Daughter is very pregnant and tired, and the trip is a little too much these days, especially for a meal that you hate! I made cupcakes yesterday and coated them with sprinkles, green and white, and I did my second attempt at an ice cream cake, chocolate chip mint on the bottom, crushed thin mint girl scout cookies, mini chocolate chips and hersheys' syrup, then another layer of just vanilla ice cream. I did that yesterday and just took it out a while ago, and dyed some cool whip green and put the sprinkles on and put that back in the freezer. Hubby just came back from the liquor store with two kinds of Irish beer. Plus our cable company that plays music has all Irish music on the Sounds of the Season channel. It is pretty dreary out, misty and rainy. My neighbor is from Ireland and she tells me that is the way it is over there. I wouldn't know. I always dream of someday going to Ireland, but if that every happens, that would be a miracle. I'm all set for today though, a little bit of Irish heaven in Jackson, New Jersey. Plus, I was busy sewing this morning. Wait until you see what I made, I will post it later, but I want my son to model it for me first! So since my friend Nora asked me to post some pictures of my Irish kitchen, I have put some in here for you to look at! Pretty soon all the Irish stuff will come down and the Easter curtains, tablecloth, etc., will go up. Change, variety, the spice of life! Reminds me, I heard somewhere that change is the only constant thing you can count on. Thats for sure. Lot of changes, from the St. Paddy's day celebrations with my parents when we were kids, my own over the years with the house overflowing with relatives and nieces and nephews and grandchildren, to this simple table set for four. Many empty chairs, my brother and family moved to Illinois nine years ago, Aunt Edna has passed, David has passed, Mom and Dad Tietke, and of course my parents well over 30 years ago. Things have changed a lot, but a lot has stayed the same. Love of family, sharing a simple meal, carrying on a tradition.

A Mother's Love's a Blessing

A mother's love's a blessing,
No matter where you roam,
Keep her while she's living,
You'll miss her when she's gone,
Love her as in childhood,
Though feeble, old and grey,
For you'll never miss a mother's love,
Till she's buried beneath the clay.



I've been humming this song lately. It is kind of melancholy. I first knew of it when I read the book Angela's Ashes. I think of that song a lot this time of year, because of two occasions, my mother's birthday and St. Patrick's Day. My mom was born on March 16th, 1926, and growing up I always associated her birthday with our celebration of St. Patrick's Day. My mother was proud to be Irish. Margaret Ellen O'Brien was her name, but most people called her Peggy. Anyway, on St. Patrick's Day, she would always make a traditional Irish dinner of corn beef and cabbage and red potatoes, all boiled in the same pot. And we would have rye bread with lots of butter and she would put a drop of green food coloring in my father's beer. There was always Irish music playing on the record player, and my dad often sang, Peg of My Heart, or my Wild Irish Rose to her. She died in 1974, at the very young age of 48, suddenly, in an instant. One moment she was talking, the next she was gone. Earlier that year she had ordered a set of Irish records that were advertised on TV, you know the kind of infomercials that they had back then, even in the 70's. She waited patiently for them to come, and they did arrive, about a month after she died. I remember my dad saying, Mama's records came. I think we played them, but it just wasn't the same. Through the years, I have tried to recreate that festive Irish celebration for my family. My kids usually groaned, and my husband would annouce that he hates corn beef and cabbage but will eat it just once a year. I decorate for the occasion, I have special Irish curtains and a tablecloth that I made. In fact, this year, I bought new material, because my old set was getting pretty raggedty. I will buy the soda bread, corn beef, cabbage, red potatoes and rye bread. I already put out all my Irish knicknacks. My kids are grown now with families of their own, and I have been trying to coordinate their very busy schedules to get them home for an Irish dinner around St. Patrick's Day. One soninlaw is from Portugal and the other soninlaw is from Romania, so guess the Irish blood is getting thinner and thinner in our family! Anyway, we are down to two possible dates now, so it looks good for this year. So once we settle on that date, the music will be played and the food prepared and for one day I will step back in time and feel the warmth of my mother's love as she made that day so special for us. I have often told my kids that the best feeling I ever can remember is the embrace of my mother when I was a child. So much of our life is assumed, assumed that people know how we feel, assumed that we will have tomorrow, assumed that there will always be more time. So if you are lucky enough to have your mom still living, give her an extra long hug. As for me, I have to save my hugs until I see her again, but hope she hears me singing . . . . " . . a Mother's Love's a Blessing . . ."

What do you mean I am too big for this bed

On this crazy journey, life changes, and what was familiar and comfortable before sort of melds into something new. About a year and a half ago, we were an overflowing household. An elderly aunt, who entertained us with dementia, until it became heartbreaking, a married daughter and her husband and son, her two dogs, cat, fish, and variety of visitors in and out all day long. We had them from 6 to 82 and all the drama and emotion that goes along with it. And then everything changed. Aunt Edna died, and Lauren and Sorin and our grandson moved away with their animals. The house was empty, quiet, still, lonely. And then came Lena. We inherited her from the Covaci family when my daughter discovered my grandson was allergic to him. Now, we weren't in the market for a cat, or a pet of any kind for that matter. And Lena, was . . . . a little strange, the true personification of a fraidy cat. When my daughter and her family moved last summer, Lena crawled in the space between the washer and the shower and stayed there, we can't even guess how long she was there because we never saw her. Don't worry, she came out, there was the usual evidence of that, eaten food, food deposited after recycling into the litter box. We knew she was okay. But it took weeks to catch her and put her in the carrying case. She scratched my son in law who was formerly her idol and she just never got real cozy in the new place and upon her return, she wasn't really that crazy about being here either. But after a few weeks, she noticed that it is pretty quiet around here without the grandson, the two crazy dogs, the visitors, and all the hoopla that goes with a busy household. So she started venturing out and letting us pet her . . . . with our feet! She still hasn't let us pick her up and scampers away when we try to pet her. But she is becoming more and more friendly and we have to admit that we have grown quite attached to her. My brother was asking us why we didn't just spend Christmas Eve with our children this year, and I blurted out, but we have to watch Lena open her presents. Instantly, I knew that admission was a mistake, just by his reaction. Ok, and we did kind of overdo it on the presents, she has a little basket with all her toys in it. And yea, we got one of those laser mice things, that you click the button and a laser light comes on and you can make the cat chase it all over. Ray likes to make it go up the wall, that really drives Lena crazy, sometimes she is so excited she drools. When I leave for work in the morning, she kind of sits in the window and stares, with those big kitty cat eyes. And both of us call out to her when we come in before we greet each other. Now that is pretty sick. But you know what, it is comfortable. At some point, I pulled this little bed out from the cat carrying case and put it on the floor. My daughter said that Lena never sat in it when she lived with them, but I gave it a try anyway. Lena slowly started sitting in it, and as she has grown, she really overflows in it. We tried making her other little beds, but she really likes this one. It doesn't matter that her feet hang out, she is comfortable. And you know what, so are we. Life has changed, and we are moving on, rediscovering our relationship, embracing the quiet, and squeezing ourselves into a new kind of comfortable.

I LIKE TO SING!

I guess it can get pretty annoying, my habit of either humming or singing most of the time. I just can't help myself, but I have started to realize that not everyone wants to hear my various arrangements of songs, complete with the substituted forgotten words. When my kids were little, I thought they enjoyed it, although they will probably point to that little idiosyncrasy as an explanation for some future psychoanalysis needs. I liked to take actual songs and mess up the words, or just take a chore and try to make a rhyming instruction with it. Ask the kids about Roses Make me Fart. Anyway, we had an actual record player in the living room, and lots of old vinyl records. I liked to play classical music and tell the kids to close their eyes and pretend we were ice skating. We did a lot of crazy pantomine dances to the records that I would play. Another fun one was Our House by the Clancy Brothers, telling the story of people that came to visit and never left, but not in a good way. One of my favorites was to blast Day O in the morning to wake my little darlings up for school. You know the song, it's playing right now while you are reading this. I would tiptoe into the living room, gingerly, pump up the volume (hey, I was cool even then!) and gently lift the arm of the record player. As soon as the needle touched the vinyl, I could imagine their eyes popping open in terror as Belafonte shouted out the famous words! Of course, I had to accompany it with various exagerated dances and lipsyncing for just the proper effect. And some mothers used the warm washcloth technique! SISSIES! As the kids moved on, or as they like to call it, "escaped from the asylum," I mastered humming. There really wasn't any specific song or tune, just kind of an idiotic repetitive low gutteral buzzing sound, that seemed to just always be there. I didn't even realize it, it was like a vibrator had been attached to my vocal cords. While I was helping a client on the phone when I worked at a law office in Howell, the client suddenly said, "are you humming". I felt like saying, "yea, you got a problem with that?" I had another job where my boss and I shared the same office. One day he jumped up and screamed, "WILL YOU STOP THAT HUMMING?" I think I did for a few weeks, his outburst was very traumatic for me. Now when I go into work, my humming precedes me. As I am hanging up my coat, I invariably will hear, "the hummer is here." I don't think that is something that I should necessarily be proud of. This morning, at about 5:30 a.m., I felt that I was in great voice. I went though a few hymns, "Yahweh I know you are here", "Lord when I come to the water", then an Irish song about some boyfriend that sailed across the sea. As I was going into the shower on the second verse of Day O, my husband shouted, ALL RIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH. Hey, I thought he was sleeping. What nerve! Anyway, I turned on the shower full blast, and knocked it down a few octaves, but I finished the song. Geez! But as soon as I shut the front door, it escaped " I hear a bird . . . a Londonderry bird . . . " (By the way, the picture above is of my own creation, the Rasta Hat, in honor of Harry Belafonte, custom made, just pick your color and size, $25)

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices that you make will shape your life forever.

Powerful! I wish I had thought of that myself, but it is one of the closing lines in the movie, The Bronx Tale. I was reminded of it on Friday night when I was watching 20/20. The kid that played in the Bronx Tale was being interviewed. Lillo Brancato is his name. He was in the Sopranos too. But his interview was not on some movie set, it was behind the bars of jail, where he will be sitting for about the next ten years or so. You may have read it in the paper, high on drugs, looking for more drugs, making the wrong choice, he got wrapped up with a guy who shot an off duty police officer. The cop heard glass breaking and called it in, made a choice, made the right choice, investigated it, and it cost him his life. And now Lillo Brancato is being asked if he remembers the last line of The Bronx Tale. Of course he does, and he quotes it as above. And it started me thinking, about the choices we make. How one split second decision can alter the course of your life. I guess I was on that subject on Friday because I had gotten a letter from my cousin, who is in jail, for murdering his mother and step father. Whenever I hear from him, it makes me wonder, how did that happen, how did a good, loving sensitive kid end up with a double life prison term. You can ask him, he probably doesn't know either. But it has to do with choices. Some choices are planned out, plotted, prepared, and executed with precision. But many are not, many are split second judgment calls. Hey, we all have made them, and looking back, I have made a lot of very poor judgment calls in my life, but somehow they worked out okay. I have made a lot of good judgment calls too, but at those moments,I wasn't thinking, good or bad, yes or no, pro or con, I just picked one, and thankfully it was the right one. So when I was thinking about this today, I was thinking life is full of choices, the gift of free will made it so. Each day, each moment, presents us with a choice, whispers in our ear, like the angel and the devil on opposing shoulders. And like Calogero C. Anello, said in the Bronx Tale, the choices you make will shape your life forever.