Pet/Project

Flip keeps pretty good track of where I am most of the day. He even photo bombs my 1980's quilt project.

Photo bomb on the flimsy.

Then we had a photo session. Flip was a great model ! Very obedient!

Sit!

Down!

Sit!

Down!

Dead! (Just playing dead. Comes in handy when I am trying to dry him off after a doggie shower!)

Our dog Flip!

Love Letter Reveal

I have always been a letter writer. 

My first letter home from college (only two hours away) in 1966 was over 8 pages long. My mom must have gotten rid of those long epistles even before I made my life-changing trip to live in The Netherlands in the summer of 1979. 

So I will begin my Share and Tell with a pale pink envelope with a lacy pale pink piece of stationery dated July 1979.

But before I share a piece of my past, I must set up some basic rules for myself:

1. No names, just initials.

2. No slandering.

3. Keep it real and interesting.

4. No fabricated letters. ;)

5. Explanations where necessary.

Here goes---

20 juli, 1979

Dear Mother and Daddy, 

Reading your letter about your fantastic trip made me almost as excited as you were. J. said he has always wanted to see the Mesa Verde, so maybe on one of our trips we'll be able to see it, too. I'm glad that you had such a great time. Now start saving your pennies for your European trip. Round trip APEX fare is only around $500. We will take care of you after you get here.

Write me more about F.'s job in Baton Rouge. Where is he living? Tell S. I'm still having nerve exposure pains every night when I go to bed. I take one aspirin and it stops, but the feeling is sure annoying. I thought the bad feeling would go away, but it hasn't.

All of my packages have arrived, but the sewing machine is not working. Something must have jarred the mechanisms loose. J. is going to work on it next week. Luckily he can do things like that. If it is really broken, I'll have to buy another machine. I'd be lost without my sewing machine.

We will travel to Olst tonight. Sunday Mr. and Mrs. S. will receive 8 visitors from Italy. With 3 languages being spoken I should have an enormous headache Sunday night when we return.

I will write more later. I will get ready to walk to meet J. when he gets off work.

Love, Linda

P.S. I hope the dryer is working fine!

P.S.S. Daddy, you can write me too if you wish.

[ 35 years later I call my mother "Mom." Don't ask me why I changed. 

I was lucky that my parents enjoyed traveling and took real vacations. And $500 for a round trip ticket? I visited Europe in 1976, 1977, and 1978 before I decided to move there in the summer of 1979. My dad thought I was a bit looney to make all of those trips, since my monthly salary as a full time teacher in Louisiana in 1979 was just at $1000.

When I left, my youngest brother "inherited" my furniture, and my parents bought my dryer. Our middle brother had begun his dental practice, and he and his wife and kiddies had settled back in our hometown.

Before I left the US, I mailed eight boxes of my personal belongings to Rotterdam. Each box weighed less than 40 pounds and the cost was about $40.00 per box. I did nothing special to pack those boxes. Was there even bubble wrap back then? My portable Kenmore sewing machine was cushioned with a real cushion--my bed pillow! All eight of the parcels arrived within six weeks time.

My future in-laws often had overnight (overweekend) guests from other countries. So the prospect of a future daughter-in-law from the US was not so unusual.]

Now that you have the gist of the background, I will try to limit my explanations. Questions and comments are welcome.

Love Letters--A Peek into My Past

This week I helped my mom clean out and declutter the closet in her study. 

A few things went straight to the trash. (A large box of 20 year old copies of Reader's Digest mags, two computer consoles without hard drives, and an old computer printer). 

A couple boxes of my books and school yearbooks came home with me after having spent 35 years in her closets. Some bits and pieces of sewing material scraps plus an almost completed quilt flimsy (with blocks of many of my dresses from the 1970's) and quilt batting and an old quilting frame found its way into the trunk of my Jeep. Needless to say, that looks like a project for me.

But what I really was looking for among the Christmas decorations and a box of my Dad's photos and memorabilia was a box of Love Letters. "Love letters" I had written to my Mother and Father when I made my life changing move from Louisiana to The Netherlands back in 1979. Many of the letters are at least 30 years old or even older.

One of the last boxes I sorted through in the closet contained my letters. Yippee!! Well, at least most of the letters were there. There was evidence in the box that some small creature had snacked on a few envelopes, so maybe the rest were the main course. 

Anyway, I have lots of memories to enjoy in those letters. Today I read through the 20 letters from my first 6 months of living in Europe, and I have decided to share excerpts from some letters that some of my followers might actually enjoy. 

The letters to my folks were definitely not complaint letters, as my mom says that sometimes this blogpost can be. 

So come back later for a peek into my past.

Breaking Bad Marathon and Dr. Pepper Pork

What do you do when it is too hot to do anything outside?

Well, this weekend while in The Big City with our bachelor son we kept cool while watching television and cooking/eating pulled pork. 

Doesn't sound too healthy, but it is what it is. August always proves to be a killer when it comes to keeping fit. Even our Flip is on the "fluffy" size, but cooler temps in a few weeks should change all that.

Source

Late Friday night my hub and son began the Breaking Bad marathon. I jumped in on show viewing Saturday afternoon while reading a few blogs, pouring the Dr. Pepper and canned hot peppers in sauce over the 11 pound pork roast as in the Pioneer Woman's recipe (Recipe Here)and stuffing a load of clothes into the washing machine.

Watching non-stop episodes of Breaking Bad starring Brian Cranston and Aaron Paul gradually became addictive. As I slipped into the storyline, my hub was slipping out. Although Hub can watch hours of home building or automobile reconstruction or even American political shows, he started to get tired of Breaking Bad. Between the Bloomberg News articles, he looked up for the next predicament that high school chemistry teacher and his former student "partner in crime" were into. I, on the other hand, began to follow this "soapy", but not so squeaky clean drama.

As in most crime thrillers and even sit-coms today, the writers try to appeal to lots of audiences. Breaking Bad is no exception. This one includes almost everything imaginable. From low paid school teacher to cancer treatments to unexpected pregnancy to shoplifting to deaths to drugs to cops to embezzlement to Spanish to chicken restaurants to family relations to escape miracles to airplane crashes. You name it. It is nestled somewhere in there.

As you can imagine, we did not complete the marathon. But Hub will find the series so that we can see a bit more. 

And if not, we can wait until next winter for the next "big baddie" Better Call Saul.

Complain, Complain!

My mom calls my blog my "complaint" blog. Rightfully so, I guess. So today I promise not to complain.

Yesterday my preggie cleaning girl came back to help me with my vacuuming. Don't ask how that happened. It just did, and I am not complaining!

This morning we had a good rain shower for about 30 minutes. Plants in the yard are watered. No complaints from me. ( My hub may feel differently, since he was planning to mow grass later today.)

My new batch of yoghurt set up well. No complaints!

I cleaned 1/2 of the kitchen cabinets yesterday while Miss J. was vacuuming, and now I need to go finish that instead of writing this. 

But no complaints.

Just stating a fact!

Take a Tylenol and Keep Your Soleplate Clean

Okay! Okay! You don't have to get out your iron, but I did yesterday. And I pressed up a few pieces of material to prepare to make a quilt. I didn't notice the soleplate of the iron before I began, but at the end of the session with spray starch it was a little streaky. (Sorry, no photos!)

As I NEVER iron anything, I decided to see if I could clean up the iron before I really need it. So I Googled "cleaning iron soleplates," and found some interesting but useless advice.

So this is what I tried this morning on my cold stainless steel soleplate:

1. Wiped it with a dry cloth--no more dust!

2. Used a wet cloth--looked the same as #1.

3. Used a very hot wet cloth--hmmm. No difference.

4. Squirted some dish washing liquid on my cloth--not any better, but it smells good!

5. Rinsed out the soap and added some white vinegar--naaaaa!

6. Added some baking soda to the vinegar cloth--Nope!

7. Threw the cloth into the sink and went to the medicine cabinet. Took a Tylenol-- Watch both videos: Here and Here

8. Turned the iron on to the hottest setting. While waiting for it to heat up, I moistened a piece of paper kitchen towel with plain water. Then I held the long white generic Tylenol (acetaminophen) in my hand and scrubbed the black stripes in circles. The pill dissolved as I scrubbed, and then I wiped off the residue with the damp kitchen towel. A Miracle--the black stripe was gone! 

Warning::::::: I do not recommend using pliers to hold the pain killer, since when you let it slip you can scratch the soleplate. That can be worse than sticky stripes or residue. There must be a safer way to hold the pill in your hand while scrubbing, but for the time being I won't have to worry about that. The next time I 'll probably do this will be in about 10 years!

 

This soleplate is residue free! Any marks are scratches :(((. Told you I was a bad housekeeper!

Home Sweet Home

My youngest brother and his three children can draw. We always said they inherited that art from our mom, but who knows? All I know is that the talent skipped right over me! I have trouble with stick figures ;(

Some 35 years ago, my brother F.  drew this picture of our family home. We have lots of photos of those front steps and Mom's roses and flowerbeds, but I like his interpretation the best.

I can still see us sitting on those steps waiting for my dad to drive in from his work. My brothers were usually dressed in their sports uniforms waiting for Dad to make it in time to drive them to their practice or game. And I was counting down the minutes until I would be late for my piano lesson.

And as for Mom, she was waiting to put the dinner on the table and finally have her family back together after a very busy day.

Update: Oops! I am such a poor photographer! Now I see my "selfie" in the reflection! Oh, well! ( Seems those are my Mom's favorite words.)