HOW WILL YOU BE REMEMBERED?

In the last 3rd of your life...how will you be remembered?

Le Conteur

MY LIFE AS A NORWEGIAN

    My family's heritage is Norwegian on my father's side and Irish/English on my mothers...not exactly a quiet household...Stoic, stolid and strict (Father), Calm, Quiet and Deadly (Mother).  I have a sister that was coddled, enjoyed and taught to horseback ride...I was a child of the sixties - Parents chose to confine, challenge and restrict me...I had more groundings than a major airport. 

   There were certain times in my family when you just did not express your opinion...one of the major times was at the dinner table...Now, my mother being English/Irish believed - really BELIEVED- that anything that you cooked needed to be really, really dead...even if it came out of a can...I didn't know what vegetables tasted like till I left home at 17 and lived in a glorious hovel outside of town with a pagan vegetarian.  (This came as a double shock because I was a lapsed Lutheran.)

   At home our typical dinner was: dead green beans (from the SW can - boiled for exactly 15 minutes), dead beef or chicken (meat must be grey of color, thin and leather like, chicken not only had to be flat, colorless and tasteless, but also needed to have no sauce or flavoring associated with it)
potatoes, ALWAYS POTATOES, the Irish famine you know, bread, LOTS of bread and butter (we did try out Oleo or margarine but papa took one taste and calmly walked it out to the kitchen garbage, rooted in the fridge, got the rest of "that stuff" and solemnly stated: "Never, ever bring that stuff in the house again", quietly sat down and commenced to finishing dinner.

   One also never spoke  at the dinner table...this was tantamount to being expelled from the table with no dinner (as dinner was described above you might believe that I would try to engage the fam in educational discourse - just get OUT of eating dinner.  This was true)  Worked like a champ, unless we had peas.  Now I hate peas, anywhere anytime anyshape anyhow...hate peas.  Mum would boil up a plate of peas (15 minutes from the can, you know) and proudly present them to papa and myself to eat...Papa would eat everything on his plate, I would gag down all but the peas...spent the next 15 - 20 minutes pushing them around on my plate.  Mother and Papa would get up from the table-clothed table, clear the table - except for me and my plate of peas and calmly state that if I had to sit there until tomorrow...I was going to eat the peas...sigh.

    One day I had what could only be called an epiphany.  Asked Mother if I could please have a piece of bread with lots of butter on it so that I could eat my peas..".Sure, enough." and handed me my buttered bread....they went off to leave me to ponder my fate and I immediately pushed all of those disgusting round green objects into the butter on my bread and placed bread under my plate and pressed down, hard.  Now we only had Wonder Bread in our house so it squished really nicely...flat.  Then I called out to Mother that I had finished my peas and wished to be excused.   She came in, saw bread and peas gone and excused me.  When she took my plate out to the kitchen to wash it, game over.  I don't believe that my mother laughed, nor my father, but it did take them a short while before I got my spanking and had to be confined to my room to ponder my fate.

   Still hate peas.

Le Conteur

WELL, IT IS A NEW YEAR...

 

      So, what are my plans for this new year...January is starting off with Dave Ramsey - if I don't get my finances in order, I will not be able to play where and when I want in the near future...February is the beginning of the Mediterranean Diet...eventually I will be going to Greece to live, and even though I may be 70 or 80 I want to have a body like Sophia Loren (after all she is 80 - and hot) March I will be joining another bunch of Crones in an aqua aerobics class...My RA has proceeded to the really annoying stage and I want to remember how to move.  I will let you know how that goes and then plan the next three months.

     As you know by now I am a bibliophile and have more trouble donating a book than getting rid of too tight clothes.  I tasked myself with the chore of going through at least one 6 shelf bookcase each month (there are 23 in this house, not counting the built-ins.)  Out of 180 books in one bookcase I got rid of two (Yes, 2)  I believe I need a book intervention professional!

     I have also tasked myself to sell a lot of paraphernalia that has accumulated over a well-lived life.  As my parents and assorted relatives passed on to other lives, they donated their stuff to me...some has real sentimental value...not so much the numerous vases I have accumulated through such largess... I am not a gardener...I love flowers and such - but do very well with the silk kind...I have a lady in mind to whom I may just send them as a donation to her green thumb...we will see.  Also, I have the world's largest collection of 1950's aluminum ware...pictures of same and EBay loom on the horizon.

     I will also need to get - heavy sigh - a new phone...I have an old flip type phone...it does just what I want...takes and makes TELEPHONE calls...it can take pictures, but you can't download them onto a computer for sharing with the world.  I am researching ones that do not have access to the internet, a phone that sneers at apps...a phone that takes pictures that you can download (although I love my DSLR) a phone that you can actually hold in your hand and talk to, one that you don't have to hold out so it looks like you are talking to your hand...remember that "old " phrase "Talk to the hand!"

     Sigh, it is going to be an interesting year.

Le Conteur