Rumour Has It

This is who I wanted to be in 1977:




(The one on the right, Stevie Nicks)

Here she is circa 1997 or so:



Yeah, I still want to be her, former cocaine habit and all...

And here's something on my wish list:



This album has never been released on CD. My copy of this album went to that great vinyl repository in the sky.

Donuts in my day

Someone from a research study here in the hospital kindly brought in Dunkin Donuts this morning. I wished immediately they had been Krispy Kremes, ingrate that I tend to be.

But as I sat licking the glaze off my fingers, it occurred to me that when I was a child, getting donuts was a big dang deal, not an entitlement, and happened only occasionally. Donut magic for me was Delta Donut in my hometown, Clarksdale, and because it's now the Blues Mecca (who knew?!), Urbanspoon has been there, eaten that, and written a review. Read about it here.

I think it looked like this 30 years ago too.

Return to Sender

When I was living in Knoxville a couple of years ago, I applied for a job as a transcriptionist for the sheriff's department. I probably would have gotten the job, being an awesome transcriptionist and all; however, one of the requirements on the application was that you had to list every address at which you had lived since the age of 18, and you must include the entire address including the zip code. WELL. I had a clear visual of each and every place but as to the address...

Here's what my application would have looked like, in reverse order starting with the address where I was at the time I would have applied for the job:

1. 400 Hitchcock Way, Knoxville, Apt. No. Kill Me Now. No one should put 2 adults and 4 children and one 90-pound dog in 1100 sq. ft.
2. 3xx3 San Pedro St., Paradise, FL. 2-1/2 blocks from Tampa Bay.
   
3. 2409 Old Coach Trail, Paradise, FL. Gillian's first home.
   
4. Sean, Mollie, Shannon, and my favorite apt, NE Coachman Rd, Paradise FL.
5. 4th at 4th, Safety Harbor, FL. Close to the Christmas Parade!
6. Shannon's Birthplace Condo, St. Pete. FL.
   
7. Feather Sound Apt., St. Pete, FL.
8. Shamrock House, Tampa, FL. Mollie's first home.
   
9. House on Tampa side of Tampa Bay off Bayshore.
10. Royal Oak, MI house. Sean's first home. The "Levittown House"
11. Hideous Estrella St. apartment, Tampa.
    
12. Barton House, Nashville.
13. Belle Meade duplex, Nashville. Governor of TN and Minnie Pearl were neighbors.
14. Murfreesboro Road apartment.
    
15. Woodmont Blvd. duplex - now an office building...
16. Metairie, LA apartment - victim of Katrina.
17. New Orleans duplex close to City Park - victim of Katrina.
18. East New Orleans apartment - victim of Katrina.
19. College apartment across from Bolivar County Hospital, Cleveland, MS
20. College apartment in former church.
21. First ever home of my own: tiny, furnished apartment near Delta State University.

Since then, I've added 3 more addresses to that list, with yet a 4th soon to come. One learns to pick and choose one's treasures carefully when you move them around frequently. I'm moving china around I picked out at 16 that I don't really love any more, but my daughter does, so that matters. I off loaded a bunch of books that I love but are replaceable. My granny quilts and my photographs get packed up first, kitchen appliances and cooking implements last. (priorities, priorities).


When my family left Florida for new adventures in more northern latitudes, we left with our things in a tractor trailer jammed full, our vehicles full with pull behind trailers. My own comfort level for how much stuff to own is somewhere between Gandhi and that.

I like to live by the rule that one should be able to throw everything they can't do without into their car within 10 minutes and run for their life if they have to. Obviously, this has more practical application in places with volcanoes, tsunamis, wild fires, and hurricanes. But it does give you something to think about.

Cars I Have Loved

I realized recently that I didn't really take "full body shots" (to quote Kip from "Napoleon Dynamite") of the cars of my youth. Still, I paid for these with my very own money and were picked out by me (or in the case of the Cougar and Datsun, FOR me by my daddy). I crammed as many as 3 children into the Honda Civic and it was with great regret that I gave it up for a huge monster truck that was great fun but not exactly practical for the 3 children and the honeymoon baby which followed.

Thanks to Google Images for getting my motor running one more time.



1974 Mercury Couger - Bucket seats, Floor shifter, so pretty! Used my life savings for the down payment. $2300



1981 Datsun 210 - baby blue. My daddy picked out a stick shift - what a trip that was. about $6000



1983 Honda Accord Hatchback - the first car to haul children around. This car was approximately the same size as the current 2009 Civic, maybe smaller. $8000 used




1992 Honda Civic - during a period of particular financial embarrassment, I bought this Civic which was the absolute bottom of the line. Who knew you could get a car with no radio? I drove it for over a year that way. I think I paid about $8000 brand new (no radio).

After a long hiatus of driving monster trucks and minivans, I'm back in a Honda, this time a Fit, the new incarnation of the subcompact offering from Honda. This one does have a radio (and cruise control), and according to the advertisements, I can haul a llama around in the back if I configure the seats in a certain way. Most likely, I'll just be coming back from Sam's after stocking up on canned tuna and bottled water for the coming Hard Times.



And here's the llama/alpaca:


I'm pretty sure they spit on your shoulder if you let them take a ride. Ewww.

An Actual Recipe

This is an actual recipe circa 1980 that I got from my friend Geoff Davis whom I knew when I lived in New Orleans.



I think I can still cobble this together, although I believe today I would put some other sort of meat in it and some cajun spices, but in 1980 I was just barely out of the Mississippi Delta. Change comes hard for southern girls.

Red beans and rice are traditionally served on Mondays in New Orleans because that was laundry day and since beans took a long time to cook, they could be left to themselves while the laundry was being done. This is how I remember it anyway.

I'll see if I can jog my memory and post the 2.0 version real soon.

In 1997, my little Shannon fell off a wrought iron railing in a video store in Clearwater Florida and smacked the back of her head on the concrete tile floor. I called her doctor who didn't seem particularly worried but said watch her and if she vomits, bring her to the ER. She did vomit, I did take her, they did a head CT, and she was fine with a mild concussion, something a lot of little kids end up with at one time or another. But this week's tragedy with Natasha Richardson is a warning that head injuries can be sneaky. They can be nothing or they can be everything.

When Life Gives you Lemon Yogurt...

I did not learn to eat healthy growing up. I learned to eat deliciously growing up. I learned that adding salt pork and/or bacon to everything was essential to life itself. But I digress. I learned just out of college from a co-worker who never ate anything except the lemon twists out of vodka martinis that lemon yogurt with Grape Nuts was an acceptable breakfast/lunch on the go. I grew up thinking eggs, bacon, and biscuits was an acceptable breakfast on the go and a BLT was an acceptable lunch on the go. Dannon lemon yogurt was the yogurt of choice, Grape Nuts the Grape Nuts of choice. Recently, given the mandate of eating more judiciously, I went searching for Dannon yogurt and was left wanting. I did find that yogurt that makes you poop (Gee thanks, Jamie Lee Curtis) and 20 kinds of baby yogurt but no Dannon lemon. In a curious marketing strategy, Yoplait had three choices of lemon yogurt.



And only the one kind of Grape Nuts, the original.



When I was eating them in the 80s, the box looked like this



and was much smaller. Anyway, you tore off the top of the yogurt cup, licked the top and ate a couple of spoonfuls to make a dent and then dumped in about a tablespoon of Grape Nuts or however much would fit before it spilled out and stirred it up. Then you had to eat it before the Grape Nuts got soggy in the yogurt. Tasty and healthy, I guess. Better than a mid-morning vodka martini with lemon twist or the ever-popular bacon with whatever else is lying around.

My taste test coincided with cooking dinner so in a nutshell (or custard cup, as shown here), the results were:



Yoplait Light - No fat, 110 calories, NO lemon of any kind in the actual yogurt. Citrus-y flavor derived from ascorbic acid. OK, not great. Consistency runny. Grade after adding the Grape Nuts: B-



Yoplait Whips - First of all, Yoplait's website says eating this is an extraordinary experience and it certainly was. I spit this crapola out into my sink right on top of a bowl of froot loops one of my little darlings had not emptied out (you know who you are). The website would not give me any nutritional facts and I threw the cup away but there was actual LEMON JUICE in the yogurt, which might sound like a good thing except it tasted like a big squirt of that nasty bottled lemon juice we all hide in our refrigerator went in there yesterday. Also, "Whips" means there are 4 ounces in this, not 6, to lessen the agony for the same cost. Consistency: Floating in the froot loops milk. Grade: F.

And the winner



Yoplait Thick & Creamy - Fat 3.5 gm, 190 calories, lemon puree in the yogurt. It had a nice creamy, pudding-like consistency and held the Grape Nuts in place as if they had been in the yogurt to begin with.
Everything melded together nicely. Consistency very good. Grade A-



Yes, I know there are yogurt cups out there now with mix-ins already packaged up nicely. I am an old-fashioned girl, and doing it this way takes me back to 1980 when I wanted to be that girl who drank vodka martinis for breakfast and being very glad now that I ate lemon yogurt and Grape Nuts instead.

Update: I sort of remember eating lemon yogurt recently from Walmart that had actual lemon pulp in it, but since I technically don't eat lemon yogurt without Grape Nuts, I can't really disclose this until I formally taste test this with the Grape Nuts. I'll try it again this weekend and let you know how it stands up against the Yoplait.

Also, stay tuned for corned beef and rutabagas.

A Blast from My Past

When I was a little girl I really loved the library a lot. My daddy took me there every Saturday. They let me check out four books at a time. Our library, as well as many others in small towns and cities around the country, was made possible by a gift from Andrew Carnegie. This is what our library looked like.

I have lived in a lot of places in my adult life, but the one constant has always been one of the very first things I do when I move to a new place is go and get a library card. I never met a library I didn't like, but I've got a truly sweet space in my heart for this one and for my favorite librarian of all time, Miss Trosclair.