Nana’s Handbag
After writing about my Grandma the other day, I started thinking about Nana, who we lost just this past spring. I actually feel a bit weird about it, as I didn’t fly home for the funeral. I had just been home, couldn’t afford to go back, and it was perfectly reasonable. But it still feels odd to miss your own Grandmother’s funeral.
I currently have the picture of Nana and myself from just below as my wallpaper on my computer (why yes it is a very old picture, however did you guess?). It was a pretty common scene: Nana, with at least on Grandkid (she had 7) peeking into her handbag,
Me checking out Nana's Handbag
Nana’s handbag was really fascinating for two reasons. This first, most obvious, one was that it always, always, always had candy. She usually referred to them as sweets. But no matter what you called them, chances were good that if Nana was digging in her handbag, you were about to be offered a candy. Judging by the picture above, on that day I had either already been offered one, or had asked.
Her handbag wasn’t the only place with candy. You were also invariable offered one from her little tin if you rode in the car with Nana. The green apple shaped cookie jar was always full, and more often than not, unless it was almost meal time or Mom was right there to stop it, you got a small cookie if you just looked at it for a bit. My Nana liked her sweets
The other reason why Nana’s handbag was so fascinating, at least to me as a little girl, is a bit less obvious. That is, unless you remember what it’s like to be a kid. See, my mom had a purse. It was black leather and had a long shoulder strap (she actually had a series of purses, but I was 8 or 9 at least before I realized this). Other women I knew had purses. Most were black, most had shoulder straps.
So, what made Nana’s handbag so special? It was called a handbag. No one else that I knew carried a handbag, or even any sort of bag that looked like Nana’s. At least not on a regular basis. I’m not sure what exactly I thought it was, but I was fascinated with it because it was different. I very definitely connected the word handbag solely with my Nana for many years. In fact, I’m not quite sure when I figured out that other people could carry a handbag. Even to this day, if I refer to one as a handbag, or someone mentions one, I think of my Nana.
Grandma
One year ago today, my Grandma passed away from leukemia. So obviously, I’ve been thinking about her a fair bit today. It’s funny, but she must have fit the stereotypical image of a Grandma pretty well, because many of my memories of her revolve around food
Grandma teaching me and Sis to make chicken noodle soup
Not that I don’t have lots of other memories too. My Mom is an only child, so my Grandma and Grandpa have just my sister and I for grandkids. I can remember going bowling with the two of them. I know that I learned to knit from my Grandma, but I never really took to knitting that much. I’m more a cross-stitch girl. I do remember playing the Strawberry Shortcake board game with her, and hide and seek in the basement. I remember her really awesome collection of dress up clothes for my sister and I to use.
But when I think about Grandma, it’s the food related memories that jump to mind. Going down to the basement in the morning on Thanksgiving day, Grandma would have a turkey roaster sitting on the table, a loaf of wonderbread, and a big bowl. My job would be to tear up the bread while she did all the other stuffing prep. Then we’d both dig in with our hands. I can also remember helping her make buns, and all kinds of other things.
In fact, every time I make gravy I end up thinking of Grandma. I don’t remember exactly when she decided it was time that I learn to make gravy, but I would guess that I was about 12 or 13. And so it started that every time we were together for a turkey dinner, Grandma and I made the gravy together. At first, I just watched. Then I took control of the spoon, while she added the flour and water in the correct amounts. And finally, in the last few years I had taken over all gravy making at our house, even when Grandma wasn’t there.
I’ve been told that we make gravy the hard way. I take the meat juices, still in the roaster, and add the correct amount of flour directly to them. Once that’s mixed to about the right colour I then add water. Usually I use the water that the vegetable for dinner were cooked in, but if necessary boil some in the kettle. I know that it’s apparently easier to mix the flour and water first,. But honestly, I’ve tried that because I need to do it when making pot roast gravy (water already mixed with juices so I can’t add the flour straight) and I find it so much harder to get it lump free. So I stick to my way. It’s easy for me, and frankly, although I know I’m biased, I think it makes better gravy.
Hubby wasn’t feeling well today, so I made soup for dinner. But I’m kind of wishing I had roasted a chicken, so that I could have made gravy just the way my Grandma showed me.
Annihilation
I recently finished reading Seven Archangels:Annihilation, by Jane Lebak. For anyone interested it can be found online at Mindflights Magazine, or you can buy it through Amazon. I have to say it was really an awesome book. I read the first part quite a while ago, and then exam time got in the way, but once I got back into it, I finished the last three fourths of the book in three sittings. So it wasn’t quite a stay up all night book, but then there are only about 6 of those ever in my life. It was definitely a stay up half the night book. And while that list is long, everything on it is very, very good
I was a bit worried that it would be a preachy book. After all the major characters are the Archangels Gabriel, Michael, Remial, Raphael and the demon Mephistopheles. The minor characters include Satan, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Within the first few pages, the angels are talking about God’s love. The main settings are Heaven and Hell. But within a short time it was clear that this book is no more preachy than any standard fantasy novel in which good and evil are clearly defined. In fact, it was a lot less preachy than a few of those that I’ve read. Annihilation reads very much like many fantasy novels I’ve read. Just to be clear, I say this as a compliment. I like good fantasy.
The story hinges around the idea that angels are immortal, until Satan finds a way to annihilate one of them. Imagine being immortal for thousands of years and then finding out you can be destroyed. Heaven goes into panic mode, Hell starts gloating, characters go insane. Overall, craziness ensues.
To make it even more fun, the author has added commentary for the various chapters on her blog. These add some interesting insight. I love it when author’s do this. I really think that it adds to my enjoyment of a book to know something about what the author intended, enjoyed etc. about writing the book. I suspect they would be even better read as you go. I read them all in one sitting after I finished the book. I did the same thing with Brandon Sanderson’s chapter by chapter commentary on his mistborn books.
Overall, I very much enjoyed this book, and I highly recommend it.
Aquarium
Hubby and I went to visit the Aquarium today, and it was really amazing. We ended up buying season passes, because they’re cheaper than two tickets, and we plan to take my parent’s there when they come to town.
There were a bunch of different shows, the only one we watched was the dolphin show, which was pretty impressive. It was only about 15 minutes but there was sure alot of jumping in that time. They have four dolphins at the Aquarium and they put on a great show.
We also took a look at the Beluga exhibit. We didn’t join the massive line to get at the underground viewing room to see the baby beluga, but we did see it from above. It’s actually really cute. The gift shop was pretty cute too, there were tons of “It’s a girl” beluga items for sale, including pink stuffed whales.
We also had a blast with the sea otters, they were so adorable. There was one that seemed to have an itchy foot/flipper. It spent several minutes floating around scratching away, occasionally turning a somersault in the water. Then they were fed. The food was some sort of shrimp or fish, embedded in large chunks of ice. I can now honestly say that I’ve seen a sea otter banging a piece of ice against rock, breaking it apart. One of the two otters had gathered up all the large chunks of ice and was floating around with them all balanced on its stomach. The other otter grabbed all the bits that got away. I think it actually ate more in the time we were watching.
There were just the highlights. There were tons of tanks full of small fish and urchins. Many of the underwater creatures were really, really weird. And some were really beautiful, like the strawberry anemone. Amazingly, I didn’t chicken out completely from the reef shark exhibit. I didn’t get very close to the glass, and I mostly focussed on the sea turtle that was in there with them. But I didn’t run away.
Finally we visited the frog exhibit. There were at least a couple dozen types of frogs there, many of them endangered. It seems that there’s some type of plague that’s wiping out frogs, and this exhibit was designed to raise awareness. Given how much I love frogs, I really enjoyed this exhibit. Although there were a few frogs that I couldn’t find in their aquariums.
Overall, an awesome way to spend an afternoon, and I’ll definitely go back
Tuna Sandwiches
I was making sandwiches for Hubby and myself for lunch today, and I started thinking about all the different additions you can use to give tuna salad a bit of crunch.
Mostly, I make tuna the way my mom used to do it. Tuna, mayonnaise, celery, and some pepper, on white wonder bread. The only problem is that I often don’t have celery in the house. So I’ve had to come up with some alternatives. A few years ago, one friend showed me her technique, which is to add diced up dill pickles to the mix in place of celery. I’ve also attempted onion, which is good but you need to be very sparing in the amounts; green onion which is quite good; green or red bell peppers which are ok, but peppers aren’t my favourite vegetable; and cucumber which is not bad.
Today, I had to use onion, as it was the only one of those options that I had. It was pretty good, but it sure wasn’t the comfort food of my childhood. I think we need to start keeping celery in the house. At least we had wonder bread.
The Dark Night and Wanted revisted
To celebrate Hubby’s return home, we went to see two movies today. We started with a matinee showing of Wanted, grabbed some dinner at the mall, and the saw an evening showing of The Dark Night.
The Dark Night was really, really good. As the title suggests, it was very dark. The Joker, as played by Heath Ledger, was super creepy. I’ve heard people suggesting that it’s an Oscar worthy performance, and I tend to agree. His was not the only stellar performance, however. In fact I think that everyone in the movie acted their parts very well.
The story really worked in this movie. And wasn’t particularily obvious. I didn’t tend to see things coming but at the same time they weren’t obscure. I probably could have guessed most things if I was better at guessing and put a lot of effort in to it. I was happy to go with the flow and be surprised.
I didn’t really expect to like this movie, I was really only going because Hubby really wanted to see it. I didn’t care for Batman Begins, so I had no reason to think that this movie would be any different. But I have to say that I really truly enjoyed The Dark Night, and I highly recommend it.
Wanted I also recommend. It lived up to a second viewing quite well. It still felt as intense as it did the first time, however I do think that I originally overestimated how much of the movie was action sequence. it was definitely much more action than not though. Hubby seemed to have very much enjoyed both movies.
On another exciting note: one of the previews shown during The Dark Night was for a new Terminator movie. I LOVE the Terminator movies. I’m so thrilled there’s going to be another one. Hubby was actually laughing at me because I was bouncing up and down in my seat. Overall, we had a fun day, but I’m definitely movied out for the next few days.
Hubby’s Coming Home
Hubby is coming home tomorrow. I’m very excited. I really miss him when he isn’t here, and he’s been gone for fully two weeks. Which in my opinion is way too long. It makes it even worse that he had only been home a couple weeks after his last multi-week stint away.
Aside from missing him, I’m also very excited that Hubby is coming home because I do not do well living alone, even temporarily. After about a day of relishing having the house to myself, I start to get jumpy. For the last week and a half, I’ve had the tv running every waking moment so that I don’t have to hear the sounds of the house settling, or the landlords moving around upstairs, as that makes me jumpy.
Even then, I have to be careful what I watch, because Hubby isn’t here to deal with it when I watch something mildly scary. Seriously, I’m the kind of girl has to have Hubby to get me a drink in the middle of watching Jurassic Park because there’s no way I’m getting off the couch. And that the reason I’m not getting off the couch is that as long as I don’t move I know for a fact that there are no raptors behind me. Lucky for me, he thinks this is cute and endearing, not annoying. However it does make watching anything even mildly scary a really bad idea when I’m home alone.
So in anticipation of Hubby’s returning, I have become a house cleaning machine. The entire Scrapbook-tornado mess that was our living room has been sorted into neat piles and is tucked under the couch. Two loads of laundry have gone through the machine. and all the stuff I’ve been putting off throwing out from the fridge is gone.
I have also discovered a wonderful thing known as a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Seriously, they aren’t kidding when they named it magic. We had a stain on the grout in the kitchen where we’d spilled some juice and not gotten to it in time. Now it’s barely noticeable. Overall, I am very happy with my house now. It’s ready. So hurry up and get home Hubby! I want a hug.
How I Defeated the Closet
We have a huge closet in our apartment. It’s a great place to store stuff, but it has one problem: no shelves and very little internal structure. When Hubby left town almost two weeks ago, he left out a suitcase that belongs in this closet (I told him this was ok, and that I would put it away) I’ve been walking around this suitcase since then, and today I decided to take on the closet and try to get it put away. This turned into an all day struggle from which I came out victorious.
Well, after a little struggling, it became obvious that in order for the suitcase to go in, everything else had to come out. The only exception was the part of the closet sectioned off for support by the stairs. That part is full of bubble wrap and styrofoam from our move here. That part got left alone. I tried to pull some out, but it’s scary.
Turns out, we had ALOT of cardboard in there. I promoted one box up to secondary laundry basket, but the rest I broke down for recycling. Including the huge one that served as a dining room table for two weeks until our table got here. That box had duct tape all over it which just made taking it apart even harder.
After finally becoming mistress of all things cardboard (without even cutting myself) I had to tackle the stuff that I couldn’t just throw out. I found all our winter scarves and stuff. And I found Hubby’s Linux cap, which has been missing for a while. I found my mini-vacuum, which for some reason was in the box for Hubby’s biking stuff, and I found the biking stuff which was pretty much everywhere but in the box.
For a long time I couldn’t figure out why stuff still wasn’t fitting. Then I remembered like magic: the suitcases must be put together like Russian nesting dolls. So out they all came again, the duffels got folded, and back into the closet they went. And now, it’s all pretty and clean and organized. I have bruises from dropping boxes on myself, but I definitely won.
Hubby be warned. When you get home, if those suitcases you took with you get just thrown in the closet rather than nested properly, I may have to kill you.
Year Of Wonders
I recently finished rereading Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks. This is one of my all time favourite books, by an author who’s work I enjoy every time. Obviously I love this book. Except for the epilogue that it’s. I find it completely incongruous with the rest of the book. Every time I reread this book I declare that I’m going to stop before the epilogue. I never actually do though, and always end up annoyed that I didn’t stop.
I came across this book in my final year of highschool. I was doing an English project, whire I had to compare two novels, and I had chosen courage as my topic. When I saw the subject of this book I realized it was perfect. Year of Wonders is a piece of historical fiction about a small English town in the 1600s which is afflicted by plague. The town voluntarily quarantines itself, a decision that is unheard of at the time.
Despite the subject matter, I never find this book to be sad. It isn’t exactly the most uplifting story, but at the same time it is very touching. The main character is a young woman who loses both of her children to the plague, and the tragedies pile on from there. But this story isn’t really about the deaths, it’s about those who survive. I think that’s why I find that the title fits. it seems a really odd choice at first, how can a year when two thirds of a town’s population dies be considered a year of wonders.
But if you think about it from the population of those townspeople it was the year that god called on them to do something extra. They sacrificed themselves to protect those around them. That’s really pretty inspirational, especially in a world where most people considered the plague a punishment. And I think that’s why I love this book so much. It’s a beautiful, well written, touching story about a doomed little town, who manage to become heros.
Which is not to say that it’s a boring preachy book. Lots of stuff happens, and there are oodles of characters to hate, despise and pity to varying degrees. There are the greedy ones, the stupid ones, and the generally misguided ones. And then there is the plague itself. Brook’s doesn’t skim over the horror of the disease. Its presence dominates the book all the way through. As the subtitle says, this is “A Novel of the Plague.”
Home
I had an interesting discussion the other day, which started when I confused the heck out of my lab mate with the following sentence: “I have a pile of books in my bedroom from last time I went home, raided my room for books, and then brought them back home.”
Now, what I really meant was: “I have a pile of books in my bedroom in this city from last time I went to my parents house, raided my old bedroom for books, and brought them back to my apartment in this city.” Not all that surprisingly, he required clarification of that sentence. But it let me really thinking about what is “home.”
Now, for the first 19 years of my life, home was straightforward. We never moved during my childhood, so there was no issue of a hometown that was different than where I lived. Home was my parents house, my house, where I grew up.
When I went to University it got a bit more complex. But in undergrad everyone knew that when you talked about going home, time scale indicated where you were talking about. Home for the weekend meant parent’s place. Home for lunch meant your local apartment. It worked because everyone was in that situation.
Then I got married, and for real moved out of my parents house. Barring unforseen circumstances, I have no intention of living there again. And suddenly the definition of home gets a lot fuzzier. It’s only made worse by the massive amount of stuff that my parents are storing for us. Seriously, they have an entire closet full of wedding presents that we couldn’t afford to move halfway across the country for two years.
So after much reflection, i have come up with a new definition. I started by thinking about what is different about when I return to my parents house compared to most anywhere else. And here is what I came up with. Home is anywhere that you have lived, where you still have a place that is yours (even if other people use it while you’re gone) and full fridge privileges, and everyone is happy about that.
