Bursting the Bubbles

Those 'soap' opera bubbles, that is. It seems that they're going out of fashion. With some of the storylines I've witnessed over the years, I can pretty well understand why. But it is still kind of sad.

I grew up a child of the CBS soaps.
As the World Turns Search for Tomorrow The Guiding Light They were the staples of daytime viewing at my house. My Mom tuned in every day to see what was happening with the Hughes family and just what the Spauldings might have gotten themselves into now.

Don't know if you realize how many actors and actresses got their big break by joining the cast of a soap opera. It's pretty amazing, really! Most of the big stars of today would sooner stop acting than to appear on a soap, but a few of the big names owe much of their fame to the daytime venue created for and supported by housewives all across America.

For instance, SFT spawned the careers of Jane Krakowski, Morgan Fairchild, Don Knotts, Larry Hagman, Sandy Duncan, Hal Linden and Susan Sarandon, just to name a few. And you can't forget Viggo Mortensen and Kevin Bacon! On ATWT Meg Ryan was the original and best Betsy ever and Julianne Moore just was Frannie. No one could ever quite replace them as far as I was concerned.

Trust me when I say I'm just scratching the surface here. SFT ran from 1951 to 1986, and ATWT started in 1956 and is still running. That's plenty of time to introduce a lot of new talent.


GL ran from 1952-2009 and gave Hayden Pannettiere her big break. Kevin Bacon also appeared on this one. But my favorite still has to be Vincent Irizzary who played Lujack. Oh what a crush I had on that boy! He was the handsome, rough-around-the-edges bad boy that every mother warns her daughter to avoid and I dearly loved him! (Does this tell you a little of what I put my parents through during my teenage years?)

Then there's the other end of the spectrum.

Just 9 years into its run, Don Hastings joined the ATWT cast as Bob Hughes. Bob was always the good guy, always trying to do the right thing. I liked Bob, too. Just not like I liked Lujack.

Did you grow up watching the soaps? Or perhaps as a young housewife you got totally wrapped up in their storylines and let them sweep you away into Another World (okay, so I'm just havin' fun now!) for just a little while each day? Tell me what you remember. Who were your favorite bad boys? Your favorite good guys? The woman you most wanted to be?

Fragments on Friday

Do you sometimes long for a complete thought? An answer to go with that nagging question? The ability to finish out a line of thought before moving on to the next thing that comes to mind?

I mean, as opposed to those little fragments of ideas that come popping into your head. You DO have those kinds of days when your mind rambles aimlessly and you can't seem to wrap it completely around something, right? Or is it just me?


Oh the things that pop into my head at times!!!

Anyway, here are a few of the things I've pondered this morning. If you have answers to any of the questions, please feel free to clue me in on it. (Especially RF#2...she drives me bonkers!) Not only will I feel better, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped maintain the sanity of one of your bloggy buddies.


Random Fragment #1. Why is it that when I have the opportunity to sleep in a little, my eyes pop open even before my alarm would normally be going off?


Random Fragment #2. Why does that one mom out at the school always insist on pulling into one of the (only) six tiny parking slots diagonally...making it impossible to park on either side of her?


Random Fragment #3: Three days ago Tucker requested tacos for supper this evening. How did I manage to: Forget my list when I went to the store? Forget one of the three things I went after...which happened to be the taco shells? Forget them again when I returned to the store to pick up the taco seasoning, which I had also forgotten?


Random Fragment #4: Why is it that I always seem to look at the clock at 11:11? (Phil does the same thing....NO JOKE! And the funny thing is, it started when I was pregnant with Tucker and guess what time Tucker was born?)


Random Fragment #5: Wonder if I have all the ingredients to make this carrot cake today?

Will I remember to look for the ingredients when I go downstairs in a few minutes? If so and I discover that I am missing something, will I remember it when I go back to the store to pick up those taco shells I forgot earlier? Will I remember the shells? Or even how to get to the store?


I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Could have something to do with the fact that my eyes popped open a good hour and a half before I had to get up this morning. (See Random Fragment #1.)

One of THOSE evenings!

This little guy is providing our dinner this evening.


Chances are pretty good that we'll be eating here:


Yes, it's gonna be one of THOSE evenings.

I'll be picking up the kids from school and rushing to a photography studio in a little town north of us where Perri is doing a photo shoot for an online catalog. I'm taking a book so that Tucker and I will have something to do to keep him occupied. We're currently reading this together:

I'm lovin' it! :) I love re-reading my childhood favorites with my kids.

After Perri's shoot, we're going to head back toward home, drive through and pick up those Hot 'n Ready pizzas and gobble them up before we go to the middle school for Perri's chorus concert.

Oh, did you not know that Perri had a chorus concert tonight?

How funny. We didn't know it either!


With all the snow days lately I guess it just slipped everyone's minds that perhaps they should send home a note or something informing us of this little concert tonight. But that's okay. I'm great on spur-of-the-moment....I thrive on it.

(See, this guy doesn't even know me and he's rolling his eyes!)

If I Were...

My friend Rita posted this on her wonderful little blog today and I just had to play,too! :) How fun to have to think of ourselves in these unconventional terms. It really makes you think about how you see yourself and wonder if others see the same things in you.

a verb...write
a flower...daisy
a holiday...Christmas
a taste...chocolate
a color...coral
a book...Anne of Green Gables
an emotion...happy
a month...October
a TV show...LOST
an article of clothing...sweater
a movie...Anne of Green Gables
a day...a sunny, cool and crisp October day
a piece of furniture...a soft and comfy (but not TOO fluffy ;) ) chair
a song...Pachelbel's Canon in D
a car...Ford F150 pickup (which is what I drive...useful but also fun)
an instrument...a piano
a store...some little independent, locally owned bookstore with lots of little nooks and crannies...and lots of great books!
a tree...a weeping willow
a scent...citrus and clove
a fruit...an orange
an adjective...relaxed
a tool...a Dremel (so many possibilities!)
a planet...Earth
a shoe...a comfy, well-worn sneaker
a taste...sweet/tart

I hope you'll do this, too! :) And I also hope that in reading these answers of mine and using your imagination, you'll be able to 'see' me just a little more the way I really am. :)

How Embarrassing

It's official. I'm tired of winter. I know it took me a little while longer than most, but I've definitely reached that point now.

And it isn't the snow or the cold that has me wishing for spring to hurry up and get here. It's this:



It is rainy, gray, dreary...and just about any other 'BLAH' word you can conjure.

So this has had me thinking about warmer weather, spring's arrival, planting the garden
working in the flower beds Ahhhhhhhhhh.....

And it also made me think about sleeping with the windows open, which made me remember a little funny that happened right after this 'city' girl moved to the cow pasture.

First of all you must realize that the 'city' where I grew up wasn't really a city at all. With a population of about 1100, it was more of a small town, but to the folks around here, I'm still a city girl.

The kids and I moved here on Halloween Day 1994. The fence that bordered our property was barbed wire. We were chainlink people. What was up with that? Then we discovered that it wasn't to keep my kids in the yard, but to keep the cows that grazed the pasture on the other side of it contained. We were simply THRILLED to have these large, beautiful animals so close to us! There were times when we'd sit on the back deck just to watch them. Theirs is such a peaceful existence and even with being on my own in a new place for the first time in my life, I found that sitting and watching those cows could calm me. Whenever they were moved to a different pasture, we missed them and anxiously awaited their return.

Then came spring. The air filled with birdsong

and the fragrance of wildflowers blooming in the pasture.

All those things about country living that had appealed to me and drawn me to my new home.

Life was good.

Strangely, the most difficult part of our transition to country living was the quiet.

Seriously.

If you're from the 'city' and you're used to an occasional car going by or a train whistle echoing through the night or even the neighbors coming and going at all hours, the stillness of a country night can be unsettling at first. It took me weeks to be able to fall asleep as soon as I went to bed.

The quiet can be really deafening.

But back to the talk of spring. There is just something so happy and hopeful about it, and I was starting to get used to our quiet new life. One night, when it was finally warm enough to suit me, I decided to leave my bedroom windows open. There was the softest breeze and it was scented with the sweetness of the blooms just beyond the back fence. I'd grown much more accustomed to the quiet of nighttime in the country. The kids and I had played outside right up until bathtime, so they were completely spent and had fallen to sleep as soon as their little heads hit the pillows. I was exhausted as well, and didn't even bother to pick up a book. It was lights out for me.

Then came the sound.

FWWWOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!



It was faint but it was frightening enough to a woman living with only her two young kids in a strange place, far from all things familiar.

And there it was again.

FWWWOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!

It seemed to be coming at fairly regular intervals. And it was completely unidentifiable! Was someone snooping around out there? Or worse yet, was someone trying to come inside? I really worked myself into a tizzy trying to figure out what it could possibly be.

Quietly I got out of bed and crept to the open window. The light of the moon in the cloudless sky was enough to illuminate most of the backyard and I could see nothing out of the ordinary. The swingset was still. The deck was vacant except for the grill and the two empty lawn chairs.

But the sound still came.

FWWWOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!

I am ashamed to say that I spent nearly an hour being absolutely terrified and trying to figure out what on earth was happening outside my bedroom. I could not see anything that could possibly be making that sound and I would have felt ridiculous calling up 911. After all, 911 is for emergencies and this didn't appear to be an emergency.

Unless you count the fact that I thought I might faint if I didn't hurry up and figure out what was going on!



Then suddenly, after I was so completely agitated and wide awake that I didn't think I'd ever sleep again, it occured to me what I was hearing. I went to my nightstand and pulled out a flashlight. Sweeping the beam across the backyard, I finally found the culprit.

It was HUGE!

It was STARING DIRECTLY BACK AT ME!

And it was one of the most docile creatures I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.



She was eating. The FWWWOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT! sound was the heavy spring grass being torn from the ground as she munched her way to a full tummy.

Then I put on this

felt grateful that there had been no one there to witness my ignorance, and tucked myself back into bed.

How embarrassing.

A Little Slice of Summer in the Snow

Yesterday I went to the garage and got out this:

And I cleared a path across the deck from the kitchen door to this:

Soon, I was doing this:

(only without the cute little chef's hat)
Where I cooked these:

They had these:

And these:

And this:

Plus I grilled little foil packets of julienned these:

and these:


And I do believe that the general consensus was that it was all so fresh and yummy and it reminded us of:


And everyone in my family was wearing one of these:


Dessert is a must around here, so I also prepared one of these:

AMISH CINNAMON PUDDING
(Couldn't find a pic and didn't think to take one, but take my word for it...it is YUMMY! Bakes up like a cake on top with a gooey cinnamon syrup underneath it.)
and I served it with this on top:

(Spoon that yummy syrup over the ice cream and WOW! What a treat!)

Needless to say, yesterday was good. Very, very good.

Spring Cleaning, Spare Rooms and Selish Motives

Is it 'spring cleaning' if you're doing major housework while it's still the dead of winter but you're anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring?

I say yes, it is. So I have been spring cleaning.


There has been no school at all this week because of near constant snowfall and heavy accumulations. The roads have been terrible and evidently the state's snow budget has been blown apart at the seams. We haven't had a winter like this since I was a kid.

It sure makes for great cleaning time! I've spent the last couple of days working on the upstairs. Going slow and steady because I don't want to make myself sick of it right off the bat and I SO want to get some of these long-dreaded tasks accomplished.

I have a spare bedroom upstairs. I've never had a spare room before now and I'm anxious to put it to good use. You see, when my oldest son moved out we just added another baby. So while all of the kids shifted bedrooms, the small 'spare' room was instantly converted to a nursery for our new addition. Then Brie moved out, bedrooms were reconfigured once again, and that smallest of rooms sat vacant for a very short time...awaiting my decision as to what should be done with it.

I finally decided that even though the room was rather small, it should become a playroom. A room that would benefit the entire family. I wouldn't be selfish. After all, I really didn't need a room all to myself for crafting and sewing and writing and private time....really I didn't.

And so the transformation began. All of our board games and jigsaw puzzles were relocated to this room and we were about to move in the PS2 and a TV.


Then we found out we were having a grandchild.

So out came the crib and the chest of drawers and the room was once again a nursery, for those days when I'd be babysitting or they'd be visiting. After all, the little guy needed a place to lay his tiny head.


Unfortunately, Hayden had other ideas. He absolutely would NOT sleep in that crib. Ever. So basically the 'nursery' was a storage area for the baby furniture and a few of his belongings.

So here we go again.

The crib is down and going back into storage. My craft supplies and sewing machine are getting the dust blown off them. But I'm not being selfish about it. Even though I don't think the PS2 will be making an entrance, the board games and jigsaw puzzles have found a very accessible home in the newly organized closet.

Maybe I'll even post pics when it's all done. But for now...

BACK TO WORK ON MY....*ahem*...OUR SPACE!!! ;)

I just can't wait...

...to get my computer fixed. I'm SO tired of not being able to blog the way I want to blog. I like adding lots of pics and doing it MY way. But I'm having to use my daughter's netbook and this thing is so teeny, tiny that it makes my hands hurt just trying to type on it. :( Kinda takes all the fun out of it.

Whatever the virus/trojan/worm was I got a few weeks ago, it sure did mess up my laptop. Allow me to suggest that IF you suddenly have a pop-up telling you that your computer is infected and you need to activate your virus protection or some such message, IMMEDIATELY shut down your computer and get it to a repair shop! Don't mess around with it. This has changed my wallpaper and won't let me put it back to the way it was; won't allow my browser to enter many sites that I use on a regular basis (like Facebook and HERE!); and really complicated my life in general! I have so much on that laptop that I need to access and I'm afraid to do it. Since I'm snowed in for who knows how long, I'm not sure when I can get it fixed.

So if you notice I'm not commenting on your blog, please don't hold it against me! I'm reading from my phone and I even comment from there sometimes, but some of the security settings don't allow it. I do what I can on this netbook, but it is hard to keep up with all of them on here.

Hopefully I'll be back on here full-time really soon! I miss it! :(

So that's what I JUST CAN'T WAIT FOR...how about you? What is it that YOU'RE looking forward to seeing/doing/enjoying???

Two-riffic Two-sday!

Last Tuesday I was standing in line at the pharmacy to pick up Tucker's meds when a young mom pushed her cart in line behind me. Strapped into the front of the cart was a cute little strawberry blonde boy who appeared to be about 8 or 9 months old. Then I noticed that there was movement among the items in the other part of the cart and there sat a duplicate strawberry blonde clinging tightly to a gallon of milk and trying with all his might to remove the lid. Twins! And they were cuties! Soon one of them decided he was not in the mood to sit in a cart that was not in motion and he started to fuss, which caused the other to join in since he wasn't about to allow his brother to have all the fun. They were definitely...

Those two got me to thinking about pairs...doubles...duos...duets. And 'Twosday' seems like a great day to discuss your favorite things that come in twos, so here are a few of mine.


Tony Bennet's Duets CD is one of my faves! So many modern artists had the privilege of joining this legend to sing some of the classics. From fantastic toe-tapping tunes to soft and sweet sentimental melodies, this album has it all. If you've never heard it, you MUST check it out.


One of our local pizza chains. They do this wonderful thing called Two 'fer Tuesday. Buy one pizza or pasta at regular menu price and get another of equal or lesser value free! Gino's started this years ago and several other places have jumped on the bandwagon, but Gino's is the first I ever heard of doing this.


This pairing has to be one of everyone's favorites, don't you think? Who doesn't love some good hugs and kisses? Whether they're from your kids or from your spouse, what day can't be made better by a little bit o' lovin'? :)

Now tell me, what comes in twos and makes your day just a little more 'two-riffic'?

What a Daddy!

This is my Daddy, P. F. "Peck" Tucker, pictured with my Mom some 15 years ago on their 50th wedding anniversary.


He did lots of things that were deserving of recognition. He was mayor of Glasgow, WV for 40 years and he served the town well. For most of those years, the mayoral salary was a paltry $10 per month. Obviously, he wasn't in it for the money. It was for the love of doing good things that would make Glasgow a better place to raise a family. In order to raise his family, he held many jobs over the years, including driving for Jewel T, selling life insurance, and selling cars. Not bad for a guy who was forced to drop out of school in the 8th grade in order go to work so he could help his family make ends meet. And while he may have been a dropout, he was probably the smartest man I've ever known.

After retiring he spent a portion of each day delivering food, clothing and other necessities to those less fortunate. He did other people's taxes, notarized their signatures when needed, helped them in any way he could....all free of charge. Daddy did the things he did because he had a giving heart.

But my favorite memories of him are more personal. Sitting on his lap late at night watching Saturday Night Wrestling after he'd allowed me to sneak out of bed once Mom was asleep. :) Seeing him sitting on the front porch swing working his daily crossword puzzle. Hearing him whistling as he walked down the street.

My Daddy went to heaven 12 years ago today. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of him, remembering something he said or did. And I will always do my very best to keep his memory alive and well.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF PECK TUCKER
JULY 4, 1918----------FEBRUARY 8, 1998