Hot Rollers are Back!

Hot curlers or hot rollers have been around since the late 1960's. That makes them almost 50 years old! Don't some folks call 50 year old items "antique?"

I can remember buying my first Clairol electric hot roller set. For my high school graduation in 1966, my hairdresser aunt Lucy gave me a $20.00 bill. (Back in those days people just sent cash in the mail.) I was soooo excited with the cash gift and immediately purchased a Clairol hot roller set like the photo below.

Rumor has it that when redhead Aunt L. received my thank you note letting her know how happy I was to have bought electric curlers that she was very upset. Back at that time, hairdressers were worried that the invention of hot rollers would ruin the beauty shop businesses. I do not know if that really happened, since I have seen beauty parlor hairdressers using hot curlers on their clients' hair. So I guess hot curlers became an aide, not a destroyer of businesses.

I am now using my 4th electric curler set. Over the 47 years, I have worn out two Clairol sets, one Babyliss set, and now I have a Conair set. The curls definitely do not last very long in my type of hair, but that keeps me from having to walk around in rollers or sit under a hot hair dryer.

Wonder what happened to the vintage steam rollers?

Fifty Boxwoods

Can you even imagine what 50 small boxwood plants would cost at the garden center?

Back 20 years ago we bought over 50 small boxwood plants from a local grower who called them "slow growers." He could not sell them on the market, so he let us buy them cheap. They grew just fine along our gravel driveway. We did our best to trim them twice each year and give them a shot of fertilizer when needed . They looked super in our yard.

Recently here in Louisiana we planted 50 more small boxwood plants that we propagated ourselves during the last year. This time we are lining another gravel path, our walkway to the front porch. This planting was the third one around and down the path. We bought one mother plant about 4 years ago, and the cuttings have made almost 100 small plants so far. Since we need over 100 more plants to finish off our border, next week we will need to get those new cuttings into the soil.

Boxwood propagation is really simple, and the result is usually 95%-100% successful.

How to: With a sharp knife, cut a 4 inch to 6 inch stick with the leaves. Trim off the lowest leaf and stab that end into rooting powder that you purchase from a garden center.(I read on Pinterest that you can use ground cinnamon as a fungicide instead of rooting powder!) Then plant the boxwood sticks in moist soil about 5 inches apart. Keep moist, but not drowning. Then step back and watch them grow.

About 9 months later, the little plants will be ready to set out into the yard. Then just make sure to keep your boxwood youngsters damp when there is no rain.
First photo is of the first planting two years ago.
Second photo (with green wire fence) is April 2012.
Last photo (with orange tape) is February 2013.

Happy Bordering!

Once in a Blue Moon

Being a lover of etymology, I am always wondering about the origin of words, phrases, and expressions. I have a complete shelf on my bookshelf upstairs just full of word origin books.

My former 7th grade students at the American School of the Hague will tell you that I forced them into the world of etymology (some thought they would study BUGS) by assigning a word origin based research paper as their primary writing assignment.

I can still see and hear the anguish of a mother letting me know that asking her son to research the beginnings of "cocktail" was an impossible task. Her words: "I can't find anything about the origin of the word my son chose." Needless to say, within 10 minutes her son found at least six sources of origin in the sixty etymology reference books on our classroom bookshelf.

What a blast you would have had if you had "Googled" cocktail, you are thinking. The Internet does not contain more origins than these books do, but I will use my iPad to research my post title "Once in a Blue Moon."

And just as I expected, there are only about two origins or theories of origin, but they are disguised in myriads (Greek for 10,000!) of unnecessary information. I wanted the phrase origin referring to the second full moon in a month that occurs just once every 2.7 years. In other words, "once in a blue moon" means rarely. My 7th graders would have been Googling for ages to find that simple origin!

I had a "once in a blue moon" experience today. A former student from here in Louisana sent me an email message from Vienna, Austria. What a joy to hear from a young man enjoying his university experience with lots of traveling! (And he has a far better blog than his old English teacher!)

Chapeau, Monsieur Le Blue.

Who Let the Dogs Out? Not Flip!

Poor Flip. He is beside himself.

Our neighbor has invited a friend to come "run the dogs" this morning, and Flip must stay out of the way. Although he is a beagle like the other dogs, he has not been working in the pack with these hounds. He is a hunter, but a solo hunter. For the last few months he hasn't even had another dog to bark at or play with, except when we visit my brother's dogs.

As I write this, he is jumping all over me trying to get me to let him outside.

I can't wait to get the All Clear sign so that I can be the one who let THE dog out.

Caller I D

"Hey"
"How ya doin'?"
"Y'all goin' to be home later tonight?"
"Thought we'd drop by."
" See y'all around 8:00."
"Bye"

We don't have Caller ID on our landline home phone. If someone called us with the message above, we would not really be sure who was calling. Several of our family members, both male and female, sound alike. Some even sound like our neighbors and acquaintances. So 8:00 could be like a surprise party! We wouldn't know if we should have coffee, beer, iced tea, lemonade, or hard liquor ready, since we would not be sure who was coming for a visit.

I can remember back in the early 1970's when a nice sounding male voice phoned me and invited me to go for a swim to the bar pits with a group of friends. As he said my first name and did not identify himself (and I thought I knew who was calling), I got my swim gear together and waited to be picked up to join the fun. And I waited. And waited. :( No one showed up. And I do not think it was a prank. I believe that some guy just mistakenly called a girl (me) with the same name as his girlfriend. If he had identified himself (or I hadn't had such a common first name), I wouldn't have felt so foolish. I wonder to this day if he ever told his girlfriend about the phone call. Bet he wondered why she wasn't ready for a fun time on a hot summer day.

The 27 years I lived in The Netherlands I never had that kind of phone problem. It is a custom there to answer the phone by at least saying your first name. The person making the call always states his or her name. My biggest problem with that was that I rarely understood the Dutch name, unless it was a family member or acquaintance.

Now that we live here in the US, my Dutch hub has the problems. Almost all male callers sound alike. Unless they identify themselves, he does not know if he is talking to my nephew, my brother, the air conditioner man, or our neighbor. He has the same situation with female callers.

One kind request: If you are planning on phoning us, please identify yourself. Then we won't say or do something foolish.

Unsanitary ER Restroom

Yesterday my mom had a visit to her specialist in another city. She has visited this doctor a few times the last year, and every single time I have been along as chauffeur we have had an interesting experience.

This time my mom ended up in the Emergency Room at the hospital. Her blood pressure was waaay too high, and neither the specialist nor her general practitioner trusted it. So off to the ER we went. On the way, we rode in the elevator with a former English teacher of mine. Seeing someone who taught me over 40 years was interesting, but there was more to come.

After getting all set up behind the curtained cubicles in the ER, we waited. Luckily my mom's blood pressure went South (even before medication), and she was visited twice by a very kind and communicative doctor who seemed convinced that maybe Mom had eaten too much salty food the day before. Others in our family are sure that she has a bad case of the "white jacket syndrome." Whatever reason, she was checked out after about four hours and given the okay to go home.

She says she feels fine today, by the way.

Back to the ER situation. If you have ever been there, you know that there is no privacy. Our neighbors heard our conversations, and they even commented on what we said to each other. We tried not to comment on what they were saying to each other, but what a couple of "whackos." The poor woman professed to be in severe pain, but in the meantime she and "Daddy" analyzed the health care plans (they do not have any!), the end of time with our present government, and their own personal finances (not much to brag about).

After listening to that drivel, I tried out the nearest WC (toilet). Dirty! It was dirtier than most roadside service station toilets I have used. And they are far from clean. It was a shocking experience. (The ER neighbors let us all know they were surprised when they heard me tell my mom.)

Now I plan to tell the hospital CEO how dirty his ER toilets are. Hope I never have to go back there to see if he responds to complaints.

Winter and Summer in The Netherlands

I am sitting behind the PC where all of the photos are stored.

In the top photo, I thought I'd show you a January kind of day at our old house in The Netherlands. That was over 6 years ago. Today the temperature in The Netherlands is the warmest January day since they have been keeping track of the weather. 12 degrees C/ 53 degrees F!!!!! No Snow!

The lower photo is on a summer day. Since I wrote about sitting to do my gardening this morning, I thought I would show you that we had raised flower beds around the old hay stack.  The new owners knocked them down :(.

Back in the days that we lived in Zoeterwoude, I did my gardening sitting on the edge of the raised bed or on my little scooter.

Things haven't changed much except the scenery.