- Arrived home a day ago
- Wonderful, wonderful trip to see my family in California
- A year and a half way too long
- Berkeley
- Do you have vanilla ice cream?
- No
- Do you have chocolate ice cream?
- No
- Well then
- What do you recommend?
- Our cardamon is very popular
- Good reason
- Stonemountain and Daughter was closed to the public
- I did walk down though and stare through the open door
- While they filled orders
- Including mine
- Saved so much money
- Because I couldn't get close enough to hear
- The bolts calling my name
- Practised my Spanish on the men on the corners waiting for work
- So polite they were
- Except I don't speak Spanish
- Although that is what I am doing
- In my first undergraduate university course in 40 years
- Yup back to school
- Try getting a exemption/credit
- Just because it is a course you also once taught
- In that very same institution
- Admin offices haven't changed in these decades
- Nope
- But I could appeal
- Like a person who has waited 40 years to go back to school
- Has time for that?
- But guess who's getting an A
- If it kills us all
- As it probably will
- Started this week
- Sharpened my pencils
- Pro tip
- Not necessary for online learning
- Almost three-year-olds are amazing
- Best afternoons in a long time
- Sitting in semi-dark rooms telling stories
- To someone in a very small bed
- What's the rest Babsie what's the rest
- It's nice to be back in the nap time story business
- By popular demand
- For someone who says
- But it was a very nice racoon wasn't it?
- This grandmother gig
- Has a lot to commend it
- Kind of nice to be the person sitting in the backseat
- After all those years trying to get it right
- Up front
- Then you realize maybe you did
- At least parts that really mattered
- And now you can sit back there and say
- Whatever you want is fine with me
- And discuss silly stuff with the compatriot in the car seat
- Nu nu head is an underused concept
- I am pretty sure I have met some
- They now work in Admissions
- Airline travel
- Not that good at it
- Too shy to ask the poor person
- Pushing a cart full of old cups up and down the aisle
- How to fix the movie thing
- I accidentally turned it to Hebrew
- And the help menu is in Hebrew too
- When you are a person just trying to expand your Spanish beyond
- Loud Holas yelled by someone in a crooked hat and a mask pushing a stroller
- With a person in it asking if you really know where you are going
- So I am not quite up to learning Hebrew
- At the moment
- At least not before we land
- It seems to me that being an airline attendant
- Now is like being a monitor on a school bus
- Of junior high kids who don't care if you tell their mother
- And about that glamorous
- For Canadians
- It is worth going to California
- Just to taste the way the food tastes before
- It is picked unripe and put on a truck for six weeks
- Next time I am taking my canning equipment
- So you have anything to declare?
- How about forty lids and rings
- And a pair of forceps
- Suitable for lifting jars from boiling water
- Or difficult deliveries
- As required
- What I wouldn't do for a few Meyer lemons
- Here in Nova Scotia
- Do you know folks there let fruit fall from trees and just let it sit there?
- Which reminds me
- Here at home the crabapples are ready
- Meyer lemons they are not
- But very popular among folks
- Who are the kind
- Who appreciate this
- And rhubarb jam
- Which you cannot buy anywhere
- But every grandmother of a different generation made
- On toast in the morning while you watch the birds in the backyard
- And are glad you have a grandmother like that
- To be so old now that I remember what the Depression did
- To women like that
- Half a pancake wrapped up and saved in the fridge
- Buttons cut off and saved in a jar and passed on like an inheritance
- Salads with home made mayonnaise
- And radishes, always the radishes
- Quilts made with the cut off and saved tops of hand knit men's socks
- Like sleeping under a sidewalk those were
- To have come from that
- To cardamon ice cream
- Is quite a journey
- Quite a tale
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About me
- Barbara
- I am a mother, a grandmother, and a teacher. But whatever happens in my life, I keep sewing. I have worked as a political communicator and now as a teacher in my formal life. I have also written extensively on sewing. I have been a frequent contributor and contributing editor of Threads magazine and the Australian magazine Dressmaking with Stitches. My book Sew.. the garment-making book of knowledge was published in May 2018 and is available for pre-order from Amazon
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Friday, September 10, 2021
Flypaper thoughts back home version
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7 comments:
I’m so glad you were able to visit your CA family.
As for Meyer lemons you can probably grow them in a pot. Check and see if any local plant nurseries sell the tiny trees. Amazon US sells them so maybe Amazon Canada does too. I have a lemon tree growing in a pot. It’s about 10 years old and produces lemons every year. I put it outside in summer and bring it in during winter.
Hi Barbra, Welcome home. Could not get through this post. I find that you have too many bullets and it interrupts the flow as they are in the middle of the sentence. I don't know how to use bullets without this happening but there must be a way. I sent you a response when you were asking for/about white buttons. You would have to pick them up on Dunbrack St. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, or Give away! Janet
Love your flypaper thoughts. COVID restrictions can be crushing but I guess we’ll all be on the other side eventually. I remember my grandmother made a quilt that was packed with jumpers on the insides that we had outgrown (that had originally been made from wool frogged from other jumpers). She was also amazed when shops started using plastic bags. For free! She used to wash them and hang them on the clothesline to dry so they could be reused. One of the original Greenies I guess. From necessity.
Ahhhhh...Ginger beat me to it. I live in Michigan and have a Meyer Lemon 'tree' in a pot that produces lemons every year. It's almost 30 years old. Lemon Curd from Meyer Lemons and the neighbor's chicken eggs Nothing like it. Strawberry-Rhubarb-Rosepetal Jam...it's the best. And speaking of grandmothers, have you read Margaret Atwood's poem 'Blackberries'?
Thank you so much for your flypaper thoughts. I hope to see my grandchildren soon too. A year and a half of COVID and two years in Guam is much too much.
I really enjoyed your Flypaper thoughts/poem. I appreciated your expression of love for your family especially your grandchildren, your appreciation for the work your mother did, and your gentle sense of humor.
I always love the flypaper thoughts - they remind me of my mental processes. And cardamon ice cream sounds good.
ceci
Oh boy, I love your flypaper thoughts - sometimes its like you are reading them right out of my brain!
ceci
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