The Monica Chronicles

A couple of years ago when the news broke that a Wegmans store would be opening in our area, anyone who knew anything about the grocery chain rejoiced.

And, while many folks were excited by the arrival of a store because of the reputation it has gained as the chain moved south over the past several years, Dave and I were overjoyed because we would finally be able to easily buy a handful of our favorite foods.

Years ago when we lived in Syracuse, Wegmans was one of our local haunts.  It was a where we did our regular grocery shopping.  Along with offering a wide selection of groceries and outstanding produce, their stores pushed the edge of the envelope by offering a variety of specialty shops around the perimeter of the groceries.  In fact, the sewing and notions shop was so well stocked that I used to purchase my fabric and supplies there when I was still making my own clothes!

These days our trips to Wegmans are not as frequent and our usual reason for making the half-hour trip across town to pick up items that are not available in other local stores due to their regional nature.  When you live in a place for a while, you acquire a taste for foods you can only get in that area. In the case of Central and Western New York, the foods we hunger for the most are two kinds of mustard; Nance’s and Webers, Hofmann’s hotdogs and an amazing type of Kaiser roll called a kimmelweck which is the base for a Buffalo favorite called a “Beef on Weck”.

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I wasn’t able to get a photo of the kimmelweck roll I bought because by the time I thought about sharing these wonderful foods, my sandwich was half-eaten and the roll didn’t look so good.  So, I borrowed this photo from the web:

I feel pretty lucky to be able to stock up on these staples without having to resort to making relatives cart them as carry-ons on planes or ordering in bulk on Amazon.  If I’ve made your mouth water, I’ve included the recipe for how I made my Beef on Weck’s although I’m sure there are many variations.  So, if you’re heading to Wegmans for whatever you think is worth the trip, you might want to give it a try!

Yesterday afternoon Dave and I said a tearful goodbye to our calico, Izzie.  Over the past few weeks she’d been failing rapidly to renal disease and despite our desire to spend more time with her, we made the call many pet owners do that it would be selfish of us to prolong her life and suffering any longer.  So the call was made to the vet and after many tears and a short prayer, Izzie was released from her pain.  Some might think it a bit odd to write an obituary for a cat, but in my mind, to overlook the passing of such a close companion would be negligent.

Izzie chose Dave and me for her family almost ten years ago when we visited the Norfolk SPCA. We’d just suffered the sudden loss of our dear cat Fiona and wanted to find a cat to fill the void in our home.  After about an hour in the cat room “test driving” their wide selection of cats, we were about to leave empty handed when an attendant brought out a small calico kitten who had just come out of quarantine for some unspecified illness.  She put the kitten in Dave’s arms and the kitten settled in as if to say, “You may take me home.”  So that’s what we did.

From the start it was clear that the personality quirks of a calico cat were strikingly different from those of our mostly white Fiona.  Although very friendly and people oriented, calicos are not cuddly.  In fact, I’m sure that whoever first made the statement, “dogs have owners, cats have staff,” must have owned a calico.  And, while she was a benevolent dictator, there was no question that Izzie was in charge of our household, setting our daily routine of up at 6:30 to feed her and let her out (no slacking permitted on weekends!) to the quirky water ritual we did each night before bed where she insisted we dump her upstairs water bowl into the shower where she could then lick it up off the shower floor.  It wasn’t necessary to understand why she wanted things done when she did, just that we complied.

Izzie was always at the door to greet us when we came home.  Yes, it was mostly because Dave’s arrival home from work coincided with her dinner time, but other times she greeted us, all she wanted was to be picked up and given some pets. And if she wasn’t there directly, all I had to do was call out, “Where’s my kitty?” and soon we’d hear the tinkling of the bell on her collar and she would appear.

Izzie was a fierce hunter and protector of our property.  Within a year or two she had completely eradicated the pesky moles who had tunneled throughout our yard and no other cat dared jump over our fence without risk of being greeted by a raised back, pumped out tail and loud hissing.  Once I even saw her parading across the grass with a small snake in her mouth!  She wasn’t too keen on dogs either.  In fact, I made my first trip to the emergency room as the result of an infected bite I received from her when she went after the neighbor’s pit bull not long after moving in. I learned the hard way not to get between her and another animal.

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Most of all, Izzie loved spending time in her yard.  So yesterday, that’s where we spent most of our time; Izzie curled up in her favorite spot under the bird bath and me on the back porch, keeping her within my sight.  Even though it was cloudy and rain threatened, it held off long enough for her to enjoy one last day monitoring the birds at the feeder and chasing away squirrels.

Today it is much quieter around the house.  We overslept a bit without our regular wake up call and going downstairs was strange without Izzie’s demands for breakfast.  Over the past several days she hardly ate anything but nonetheless required I stick to my routine of filling her bowl and then letting her out.  Today I filled the bowl for our other cat, Purrl, who is attempting to decipher what is going on. Then I opened the back door, just in case Purrl wanted to go out (although she rarely does) and went out to greet the morning alone for the first time in a long time.  The loss hit me again as I’m sure it will from time to time in the days going forward.  But, except for my trip to the ER, all the memories of our Izzie are good ones and her life, although shorter than we would have hoped, was a full one.

Portulaca is one of my favorite flowering annuals. It’s perky bright flowers thrive in the heat of the summer when most other plants are beginning to wither and fade.  As a little girl I loved to say the word; “por-chu-lak -a”. It has such an exotic, rhythmic cadence.  Maybe it was because it rhymed with “la cucaracha ; one of those annoying little ditties we used to sing as kids. 

A few years ago I rescued half a dozen “reduced” portulaca plants from the  markdown rack at Lowe’s and put them in my front garden where they came back and flourished.  They were so happy in their new spot that they went to seed and have come back each year.

This year’s crop of portulaca was disrupted a bit when we put in our new walkway.  Much of the front garden was disturbed and re-mulched.  Still, a large group of plants emerged at the lower tip of the garden, which had stayed pretty much the same.

I’ve enjoyed watching them grow from the time they first peeked their spiny leaves through the bark, their cheery flowers making me smile.

 

Then, while I was cutting the grass last week, I noticed a new plant had emerged in a new spot, away from the others.

Somehow a seed managed to land on the edge of the lawn and despite the competition of weeds and the lawn, grew into a strong, vibrant burst of color.

This little plant is a living reminder of the adage I’ve heard so often in my life, “Bloom where you’re planted,” something I’ve had to do so many times. It’s good to have reminders like that.  We never know when life will interrupt the plans we’ve made and our seeds are cast into the wind.  Sometimes we’ll land in a familiar place, other times in the weeds.  Either way, blooming is possible.

 

For most of my adult life going to the beach has meant one thing; piling a couple of chairs, my beach bag containing towels, sunscreen, snacks, crossword puzzles and maybe a radio along with a small cooler packed with drinks and fruit and heading off to the military beach at the Dam Neck Naval Base in Virginia Beach.  In fact, of all the beaches had to pleasure to sit on, that stretch of sand is my favorite.  What has made it so is for the most part the fact was its convenient location; never more than twenty or thirty minutes from my home for a large part of my adult life.

That changed seven years ago when we moved inland to Central Virginia.  Since then, our trips to the beach have been so infrequent as to fall in the “rare” category.  At first the beauty of the Blue Ridge almost perpetually in view through my daily routine seems to have overshadowed the call of the sea.  Then, just a few weeks ago after seeing some photos of my youngest grandson, Kaspar, playing in the surf, I turned to Dave and said, “I need a beach fix!”  The mountains may be pretty but that feeling of majesty just doesn’t compare with the  incredible feeling you get bobbing in the waves.

The next time I spoke to my friend Vanya on our bi-weekly FaceTime calls, I asked if we could come spend a weekend with them.  It’d been too long a time since we’d seen each other in person anyway so the date was set.

So that is how I came to find myself sitting in a beach chair, burrowing my toes in the cool sand as I watched the waves roll in and the dolphins play on the horizon.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I wasn’t just coming to the beach as much as I’d come home to a place that is as deeply rooted in my heart as my home town.  While many things have changed dramatically outside the gate of Dam Neck, that stretch of beach has remained pretty much unchanged over the past thirty-six years. It is as familiar to my as my childhood back yard, with so many memories  of the hundreds of hours spent in this beautiful place.

The first time I remember going to the beach at Dam Neck was when Maggie was an infant.  Dave had been sent home from his deployment on compassionate leave following his father’s death and he was able to meet her for the first time at six weeks instead of six months old at the end of his cruise.  In a moment similar to Kunta Kinte presenting his son to something greater than himself, one of our first outings as a family was to take Maggie to the beach. Even though it was March, we’d been treated to an unusually warm, sunny day, perfect for a walk on the beach.

The next time I found a photo history of our time at Dam Neck was a few months before Andy was born when Dave’s Mom was visiting.  Maggie was walking by then and took great delight in watching her shadow follow her along the sand.

Sadly, I don’t have pictures of beach trips that followed.   I wish I had a couple of photos of Andy as a baby at the beach even though I know we took him there when he was just a few weeks old.  The logistics of keeping two little children corralled at the beach required my full attention so looking through a viewfinder was just not practical.

The beach was always a cost free, safe place to take the kids and tire them out when I was alone with them.  And, when they were little, that was a lot of the time.  It was a place to meet up with friends, most of them young Navy wives like myself, alone with a child or two.  After a day at the beach, those kids tended to sleep really well; a real perk!

I feel so very lucky to have had such a beautiful place to call home for so long and that it is a place I can return to and enjoy.  I am also blessed with good friends who are happy to give me a place to stay when I need a beach fix.  That’s a combination that is hard to beat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Growing up in a large family has provided my with social skills that I’m not always aware of.  Take yesterday for example.  After checking my car into the local Honda dealer for some routine maintenance and state safety inspection, I went to sit in the customer lounge area for the duration.

I always come equipped to keep myself busy when I have to wait, carrying along my iPad and a knitting project just in case the time runs long.  The lounge is a comfortable area, with cushy armchairs that provide a cozy place to sit.  A mini fridge, stocked with bottled water sits in the lounge and hot beverages are available around the corner. And, as with most common areas these days, there is also a large screen television for distraction.

Generally the waiting area isn’t very crowded since most folks drop their cars off early and take the courtesy shuttle to their offices.  But yesterday the room was full of people.   There was a feeling of heaviness in the room as I took my place in an empty cushy chair.  It didn’t take long to realize why everyone looked so uneasy.  The television was tuned to Fox News where Kellyanne Conway was spinning plates in defense of the president’s most recent faux pas in Helsinki. Some people are gifted with the ability to block out background noise, I am not one of them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit there and listen so began to mentally run down other areas at the dealership where I could sit.

Then I took a quick glance around the room again to see if my first impression was correct and yes, sure enough, the other folks did indeed look uncomfortable.  Wondering if perhaps they felt the same way I did, I dug deep into the lessons I learned as a child living in a house with eight people and one television set and politely asked, “Would anyone mind if I changed the tv channel?”

Now I was totally prepared to take any heat given and would have quietly relocated myself if need be, but happily the responses were; “Oh, please do!”, “Yes”  and “How about the Today Show?”  And, as there were no dissenters, I got up and with the remote in hand, changed the channel. Immediately the room felt lighter and soon people started chatting with each other.

As I took my place in my chair and grabbed my knitting, a woman across the room said to me, “Thank you so much, I never would have had the guts to even ask.”

Little did she know that compared to the risk of a barrage of counter-battery provided by my siblings while trying to come to a consensus on which Saturday morning cartoons we would watch, politely asking a group of strangers a question was easy.

 

 

This past weekend Dave and I decided to take advantage of a long-awaited break in the summer heat to work on the patio extension that has sat on our back burner for over a year.  With a high temperature of 82 and low humidity on Saturday we hit the pavers after breakfast and after taking only a short break for lunch, we worked until about two o’clock when fatigue and the sun moving over our work area sent us indoors for a few hours rest.  After a light dinner, we got back to it and stopped when the light began to fade just before nine.

It was a glorious day and I was glad I had a purpose to be outside.  And although sitting by a pool might have been more relaxing, the hard work felt good and the sense of accomplishment was good for my soul.

We took most of Sunday off from our project only because we’d made a prior commitment to play with friends, but Dave still managed to get a few more pavers set after Mass.  I just didn’t feel like getting sweaty and having to do my hair again, so I sat in the shade and supervised.By Monday after dinner, we’d gone about as far as we could go without some additional planning.  Having started from the inside corner and working outward, we’d reached the far corner where the pavers weren’t lining up with the outside course of larger base bricks.  After weighing our options, we finally determined we’d have to cut some of the edge course bricks to get them to fit.  The problem was, we didn’t know how.

So, we consulted the popular wisdom of YouTube and found a great video presented by a pleasant fellow in a dinosaur t-shirt who demonstrated how to cut a paver with a stone chisel and hammer.  The process looked fairly straight forward so we thought we’d give it a go.  Dave stopped by Lowe’s after dinner and procured the required tools but by the time he got home it was too late to try.  As he headed out the door this morning he told me that I was welcomed to try to cut the stone if I felt like it.  I think he knew that I secretly wanted to see if it was really as easy as it looked.

So, this morning after my cardio workout, I gathered the items listed by the friendly man on YouTube, stone chisel, stone hammer, two boards, measuring tape, square and safety goggles, and set out to conquer the lump of concrete.  Following his instructions, I set the stone on the boards, measured the stone and scored it on all sides.  Then I began to chisel along the score line.

Over and over I set the chisel along the line and tapped it firmly with the hammer, rounding the stone again and again.  The hammer was heavy and the chisel made a loud chinking sound each time the hammer made contact with its top.  It was a muggy morning and sweat dripped from my forehead onto my hand as I hit the chisel.  Then suddenly, as if by some miracle, the stone parted into two pieces!

I was astonished!  I actually split the stone with a chisel and hammer! From start to finish it only took about five minutes, even though at the time it seemed like a much longer space of time.  I set my modified creation in place and although a bit ragged, fit pretty well into place.  So I did it again for the next stone.  And it worked even better.  The edge was as straight as if I’d used a saw.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I placed the stones and laid the next course to see if another cut was necessary.  One more stone would need to be cut but I decided I would save this last one for Dave so he can join in on the fun.  I know he doesn’t want to miss out on this marvel of low tech!

It’s funny how such a simple set of tools can do such a good job.  I guess the mystery of the ancients has been revealed!

I discovered is that the secret to my success with this project wasn’t a result of whacking the chisel with the hammer as hard as I could, but simply by the persistent and continued tapping on all sides of the stone.  There is a lesson to be learned here for sure.

So many times life presents challenges that prior experience hasn’t provided answers for.  But, by getting the right advice and plugging forward, with constance and persistence, miracles can happen -even if it’s only simple physics.

 

 

 

 

Over the course of the last year rainfall amounts in our area have been low.  This has caused concern among those of us who rely on the regional water supplier who draw our drinking water from a small river that borders Greene and Madison Counties.  There was a time last summer when our tap water had the distinct odor of mud which caused some of us to wonder if the river was truly drying up.  There were murmurs of shortages and rationing that fortunately never came to pass.

After a dry winter, weather patterns have changed and we now find ourselves more than amply compensated for the rain deficit. In fact, in the past three weeks rainfall amounts have seemed to be of Biblical proportions resulting in landslides, major road flooding and even the changing of course of at least one small river.  A week ago Greene County Emergency Services reported 42 road closures due to high water and mud, including five mudslides on US 33 through the Swift Run Gap. This meant that  many folks living in the mountains and hollows were cut off from the main roads. Twelve inches of rain will do that!

On the days when the sun has shown out from the clouds, the sound of every lawn mover and tractor in the neighborhood fills the air as if we’re having a synchronized lawn care event.  Woe be it to the poor soul who isn’t home during that brief window of time!

Except for the inconvenience of having to carry an umbrella at all times (just in case), Dave and I haven’t been affected by all this rain.  We were fortunate to head home from our vacation over the mountain the day before the road was closed.  Our back yard is soggy and the  spring time barbecuing we love is a hit or miss sort of thing.  Haven’t had the guts to check the crawl space to see if the weatherizing we had done a couple of years ago is holding fast. Our only concern is that the ground is so wet that if we do get a storm with any kind of heavy winds we could lose some trees.

So God, we are really thankful that You have blessed us and that our time of drought has come to a close but feel that it is time for this rain to move to some dryer part of the country where they really could use it, like Colorado for instance.

 

I am not prone to buying “stuff” to fill the surfaces in my home.  I have friends who are truly gifted in finding the exact thing to carefully place atop a shelf, counter top or table that perfectly complements the room.  I’d be lying if I said I was a minimalist, my surfaces are full of things collected from family and friends over the years.  Admittedly I am a sentimental fool, attaching myself emotionally to the assorted items that others have gifted my with over the course of my lifetime.  And, as I’m getting up into the second half of my first century, I’ve had a bunch of years to gather stuff.

The other day is was in TJMaxx looking for new kitchen towels when a couple of characters caught my eye.  They were small, colorful and best of all, functional.  I smiled as I picked them up and thought what a bright addition they would make to my kitchen counter.  But, I really didn’t need them so put them back on the shelf and started to walk on.  Then I stopped, doubled back and picked them up to check the price.  I don’t remember the exact cost but it was less than a vente cup of coffee at Starbucks.  So, what the heck, I put them in my cart.

When I got home I opened them up and filled them respectively with salt and pepper. They now sit happily on my kitchen counter while the boring Princess House shakers that we’d used for the past several years have been retired to the upper cabinet shelves.

Every time I see them I smile and that’s a gift I so need these days.  While my own life continues with little drama, no so the world around me and it weighs heavily on me.  Between the now too common school shootings, rude comments from people in the government and public sectors and daily revelations of sexual abuse, my hope in the future is getting shaky.  So much of what is happening seems like deja vu.

I suppose that’s my age showing.  I sometimes feel like we’ve been through all of this before and the collective “we” should have figured it out by now.  Perhaps that is the greatest evidence of evil in the world; that we haven’t learned from history and we are destined to repeat it.

I’ve heard that the simple act of smiling can improve your mood. So, I will take all the opportunities to smile I can.

 

 

Most people will remember this past Saturday as the day Harry married Meghan.  For Dave and me, it will be fondly remembered as the day we finally fixed up the pantry.

Like most homeowners, Dave and I try our best to keep our home in good repair.  As a testament to that fact, we have a garage full of stuff we’ve purchased at Lowe’s intended to replace, repair or spruce up those little things around the house that are in need of attention.  The challenge is that we have more good intentions than free time to tackle them; that and sometimes we just feel a bit lazy. Last Saturday, the planets seemed to line up favorably and we were able to check one item off our list; a spruce up of our kitchen pantry.

The pantry had a couple of issues that needed to be corrected.  The most annoying of these was the fact that when the wire shelving was installed, the brackets were placed too close to each. This caused a problem when items on each shelf weren’t placed with the heaviest in the middle.  Incorrect positioning of items resulted in the occasional see-saw, causing everything on the shelf to shift to the lowest point.  And, as I prefer to arrange my pantry items by functionality rather than like baggage on a small plane, this was not a good thing.  So, we resolved to install a third rail with brackets to carry the weight more efficiently.

We’d had one false start on this project weeks ago when we purchased what we thought we needed but discovered the rails we’d gotten were too long and had to be returned. So, before we could begin, Dave needed to head to Lowe’s to purchase the correct rail.  While he was gone, I worked on packing the contents the pantry into shopping bags.

Once the shelves were emptied and removed, it was obvious that the walls were going to need to be painted.  Aside for the fact that it was clear that it hadn’t been painted since the builder left the work site, the walls were marked with hundreds of colored lines that must have resulted from twelve years of containers and boxes scraping along the drywall.

After returning with the correct rail, Dave dug out the can of paint we had left over from our hall spruce-up project last summer and then began to measure out the placement of the bracket rails.  There was one problem.  The new rail sat about a quarter of an inch further out from the wall than the original rails.  Ouch.  It wasn’t going to work.

So, Dave headed back to Lowe’s to buy two more rails and after giving the walls a good scrubbing, I opened the paint can to begin cutting in around the woodwork.   As I looked into the can I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough paint to do the job.  And, as I began to work around the baseboards, I was pretty sure that I we were going to have a problem.  The thing was, Dave had already been gone a while and it was probably too late to give him a call to pick up some more paint.

When he returned, I shared my concerns and suggested we look through the many other cans of paint in the garage to see if we had anything else that would work.  The last thing I wanted to do was send him back to Lowe’s.

As a possibility I suggested we check out a box tucked away in the back corner of the workbench that contained about a dozen sample bottles of paint that we’d picked up over the years when we were selecting colors for other rooms.  They were pretty much all “off-while” with hints of color.  Some had grey-green tones, some had blue tones and others were more buff.  None were exactly the same as what I’d started the project with but since we had a small space to cover and weren’t concerned about matching anything, we decided we would choose one of them to mix with what we had. So we did. We dumped it in and gave it a good stir.  It looked good. But it still didn’t look like enough paint.

So we dumped in another and stirred.  The color didn’t seem to alter significantly and there were so many sample pots left that we eventually ended up adding about five or six more.  And after a good stir, it really looked like the color I’d started with, with the added bonus that we now had more than enough paint to complete our project.

Finally we were ready to get going and in a couple of hours our pantry was a lovely shade of “wauff” white. (On our trip to the UK, we learned “wauff” is the way Waugh is pronounced in Scotland where Dave’s family originated.)

Yesterday we put the shelves back up and I carefully placed our foodstuffs by their function, not be their weight.  It felt good to finally check this project off the “to do” list and so satisfying to know that we were able to use up some of the odd stuff in the garage in the process. I don’t know when our next project day will be, there are still many nagging little things to be done.  But when that day comes, I am confident that we have at least most of what we need to complete the project stored in our garage.

• As a footnote, I wanted to add that we didn’t begin our project until after the royal nuptials were over.  My priorities were in good order!