What I Learned From A Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I made something like 5,000 cookies for David’s soccer team. Cookies  for every away game for all four years. I was so proud of him when he played high school soccer. I wanted to contribute something.  

  

So I did what I do best. I baked cookies.  I learned that soccer boys like chocolate chip cookies best, then peanut butter, then oatmeal.  Roger did the math and we quadrupled the recipes. It takes 9 eggs and 11 cups of flour for a quadruple batch of chocolate chip cookies. I beamed when they thanked me every year at the soccer banquet.  

I reigned as the best cookie baker on the planet. But today, I passed the honors on to Anny. See, Anny wants to be a baker.  She’s making  good cookies. Today she asked me a cookie question. I debated for a nanosecond then I shared my cookie baking secrets with her. 

She listened and nodded as the old Cookie Queen advised the young one.  I turned back to the computer and felt pretty good about stepping down as Cookie Queen.  

Anny’s cookies will only get better as she builds her own secrets on top of mine.  Plus I don’t have to do the work and I get to snatch a cookie or two.  

Anny is a chip (tee hee) off the old block. And that feels even better than getting mentioned at the soccer banquet. 

Come on over before she gets home. There are a lot of oatmeal cookies cooling on the dining room table.  She won’t notice if a few are missing and I’ll pour you a glass of milk.

What I Learned From My Hippie Table Cloth

We had eight people over for dinner on Thursday night.   For the first time we ate on the back porch. We shoved three smaller tables together on the deck.  It made one very odd-looking  table.  I covered it with the hippie wall hanging/bedspread that I bought it at a yard sale because it reminded me of something my roommate hung on a wall of our dorm room in 1975.  

Suddenly we had some kind of theme for our dinner. This would be cozy and laid back. The guests didn’t expect an elegant dinner.  My table cloth was hippie, laid back and fun.  So the people who sat down at the table already knew what kind of dinner it was going to be.  They relaxed and ate with their fingers sometimes. They talked and laughed and passed picnic food and grilled meat.

I don’t think all the “good vibes,” came from the peace and love tablecloth.  They came from Roger and me.  We set the table, put on the food, and then thought about the people  we ate with. They got to know each other and we got to know more about them. 

Even when we ran inside as it started to rain, nobody went home.  We all just sat in the living room and talked. I hope the company had as much as fun as I did.

Come over sometime and eat with us.  I’ll get out the hippie table cloth. Or any other one you pick. Roger and I will be glad to see you. Let that set the tone.

What I Learned From My Friend Susan

Today Susan gave me a push.  I needed one.  I made a lot of creative glass tableware by gluing beautiful pieces of glass together to make candy dishes, vases, chip and dip servers, candlesticks, etc.  I thought they were great.  “One of these days I’ll find somewhere to sell them,” I said. 

After a few “No, thank yous,” I shoved my artsy glass dream onto the back burner and left it there. 

Then Susan came along. Now Susan is a laid back California girl, but she urged me to keep looking for a venue. She took me to Tunkhannock, boldly carried the tub full of glass art into the vender and expected me to start talking. 

I had convinced myself that nobody wanted what I offered but the vender thought I made art. When the vender suggested a way to display it, Susan and I ran around town and got some silk flowers and starlight peppermints for vases and candy dishes.  

I let myself get a little creative in the display. I signed a contract, and my things looked really nice adored with candlesticks and peppermints and flowers. 

If it wasn’t for Susan all my art would still be packed away in the basement. She calmly believed I made art. I had no confidence until she lent me some.  Sometimes, I wish I was still twelve. I knew then that I was unique, creative, beautiful. I didn’t have to have anybody tell me.  

But I’m sure glad Susan told me today.  I never could have done it without her steady help. I really do need my friends.  Thanks to all of you for all the times you believe in me so I can too.

PS Shop at FRIENDS  on Tioga Street (main street) Tunkhannock. Great name, huh? And great art!

What I Learned From A Paperback

 

Once I had a wonderful hard-backed study Bible. Roger bought it for me when I talked to my ladies group in my church about the Bible. It had wonderful scholarly   features like cross references so you could look up related verses, and footnotes of what the scholars thought the passages meant.  You could really appear smart quoting from this Bible.  

Then one day when I was talking to the ladies I accidently pushed the hard- backed Bible off the stand where I had opened it to read from it.  I was probably gesturing wildly like I do when I get really going with something.  

I broke the poor Bible’s back! Now about a third of the Bible, falls out when I open it.  Other parts of the Book are barely hanging in there. All the references from the back have to be put back in the book before it can use them. 

Then I had a paperback Bible. It has some extra features, but nothing like the fancy Bible.  My more humble Bible, the paperback one, is yellow and dog-eared and goes in and out of my purse and my back pack and my car. It has been to more than a few camping events, and has been dropped, accidently pushed off a desk, more than once.  

Yet the paperback Bible, because it is less rigid, is still going strong. It is a book I can pick up and read without stopping to piece it back together. 

The other Bible has to be held together by me before it offers me anything. 

I think I’d like to be the yellow paperback Bible. I’d like to be still offering words of hope and encouragement in my plain wrapper. I want to be still trudging along until I’m ashes to ashes. I think there might be something to adapting yourself to situations. There might be something in being flexible and not so rigid. Both books have the same good news. Yet one of them is more useful day in and day out.  

I guess I aspire to be a paperback book.  Don’t you?

What I Learned From National Geographic

Someday I’m going to burn my bra. Not because I’m  a belated feminist. The only statement I want to make is, “BRA I HATE YOU!”

I have hated every bra I ever owned.  They cost too much. They never really do “lift and separate” like they claim. Or if they do lift and separate, they seem more like a straight jacket or some torture device, instead of something to make me more feminine.  As if something made of spandex and nylon could make me more me.   

Then , of course, if the cup fits, the straps fall down. If the straps fit, the elastic part around you cuts you in two.  Or makes ridges in your shoulders. And if you find one that fits in all areas, the company stops making it by the time you need a new one.  They show too much or look like those high way cones under your T-shirt. Or you wobble like jello as you walk down the street.

It’s not gauche anymore for your straps to show. But I’ll never get used to it. Even if I spent a small fortune for  pretty colored bras so my straps could show with flair .

I always kind of admired the cultures where women only had to wear skirts. Where they weren’t  jabbed by under wires, or chaffed by elastic, or had to keep shoving straps back under their shirts.  Where they weren’t held hostage by Victoria’s Secret or Playtex. Where they didn’t hang on Oprah’s every word about  fit and then feel incomplete if they didn’t make a pilgrimage to the right boutique to pay a million dollars for THE bra.

I always secretly thought it was nice that the “girls” could swing in the wind in those National Geographic pictures. Should would feel better. Don’t you think? 

Even me, nonconformist that I am, will not get rid of my bras anytime soon. I have dispensed with stockings and heels for the sake of comfort. But I probably will always wear a bra. 

But I just had to rant a little. Get it off my chest, you know?

So