The Black Friday Potluck!

In a move my friends think is downright crazy, I’ll be hosting dinner for approximately 30 people the day after Thanksgiving (Thursday = traditional dinner for eight, Friday = potluck for ~30).  Needless to say, I have to prepare for this event ahead of time.  Therefore, the serious making of the cabbage rolls will commence this weekend.  I’ve decided the most expedient way to accomplish the task is to fill 9 x 13 foil pans, bake and freeze.  When I get them out of the freezer, all the pans, being of approximately equal content, should take about an hour to thaw.  I’ll pop the thawed pans into the oven two at a time until they are hot, then transfer the hot cabbage rolls into the big roaster and let everything stew until dinner time.  Many of those attending will be bringing food and leftovers, so it won’t be just cabbage rolls and mashed potatoes.  The logistics of seating 30 people down to eat at the same time in my house has yet to be determined.  I see much moving of furniture in my future.

R.I.P. Perry Yowell

Lake County has lost yet another wonderful, multi-talented, local musician.  Dozens of Perry’s friends, fans and musical peers gathered at Rider’s Inn in Painesville to celebrate his life and his music and to wish him well at his new gig in the beyond.  Although the evening was filled with music and laughter as people shared their stories of Perry and his music, I would rather there had been no call for such an event.  Our musical community is diminished by his loss.

At least the stuffing was a hit....

Making the stuffing for 100 people (my husband’s boy scout troop and their family members) went much better than expected.  I suppose after almost 20 years making this dish for this particular event, I should expect it to go with no fuss.  Of course, I dried the 18 pounds of Italian and Rye bread about 5 weeks ago and broke it into pieces, so it was ready to be combined with the rest of the ingredients.  I dumped all the dry bread into a clean, 30 gallon plastic storage bin, and set it aside.  The actual hand chopping of the onions (10 pounds) and the celery (5-6 pounds), as well as the cooking of said vegetable bits with 6 pounds of butter in a huge stock pot, took about 45 minutes.  Once that was done, the salt, pepper and appropriate seasonings were added to the pot and left to simmer another quarter hour.  This concoction, along with a gallon and a half of boiling water, was poured over the bread.  I found the best way to mix this enormous load of stuffing is to don a clean pair of Teflon, oven-proof gloves and scoop it around with my gloved hands.  It’s quicker than using a spoon, but one must make sure that none of the boiling hot stuffing falls down the glove openings!  Once evenly mixed and cooled, the stuffing is scooped into gallon zip lock bags (nine) and placed in the fridge until used.

The funny story here is that, for the last several years, I have made my famous stuffing for this annual event without the onions.  It almost killed me to do so, and I was vocal about the diminished quality of the final product, but one of the assistant scoutmasters was deathly allergic to onions.  Therefore, the onions had to go.  My husband insisted that the stuffing still tasted fine, but I knew it did not.  I had mixed feelings of sadness and delight when the man in question sold his business and moved to Florida over the summer.  I tried not to dance with glee at the thought of once again using onions in the stuffing. 

As I sat eating the turkey dinner with several of the scout parents, a woman piped up and said, “Wow!  This is great stuffing!  They must have gotten someone new to make it since it’s been pretty blah tasting for the last few years.”

 

Vindication! 

Searching for a new "Normal"

It’s been a little over a month since Mom passed away, and I find myself floundering in my search for a new normal.  Her passing has left a large hole in my life and routines.  Someone asked me what I was doing before, and I had to think back a very long way to even begin to figure that out.  I suppose this is something akin to empty nest syndrome.  Chris had moved out, but Meredith was still living with us on and off when Mom first came to stay.  She lived with us for almost 7 years of the 10 years before she went to assisted living.  Even after the move to assisted living, my life was still mom-centric. 

From the beginning, I tried to make Mom an integral part of my smaller family unit.  I wanted her to feel that this was her home as much as ours, and made sure she was included in all the functions we hosted or attended.  Everything I did, barring attending a few sci-fi conventions, was done with an eye to Mom and making sure she was included.  We went to lunch on Saturdays and we shopped.  When Forest and I were still performing as Sabbatical, Mom came with me to the performances.  When we weren’t performing, she came with me to wineries to listen to others.  Sometimes we’d stop at Your Vine or Mine for a Panini and a glass of wine.  A picture of the two of us graces the photo collage in The Vine’s foyer.  We went to Captains’ games, both as family outings and as part of work events where bringing family was encouraged.  One of my fondest memories is taking Mom to the Vatican exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

As time passed, she started to decline those opportunities, and I started to decline those invitations so that she wasn’t sitting at home alone feeling left out.  When Mom moved to assisted living, I visited a couple times a week and we continued our Saturday lunch outings.  Then her health took a turn for the worse, and her condition made it difficult for me to take her out and about.  She needed more supervision than the regular-level assisted living provided, and her dementia was progressing, so they moved her into the memory unit.  I knew she felt trapped there, so I increased my visits to as many times a week as I could, stopping after work most days and for a couple hours on weekend days. 

I'm now heading home after work, but three times this month I have found myself halfway to Emeritus before realizing that I was driving there by rote.  Then again, when I have to shop, I find myself avoiding Sam’s Club because it makes me sad when I have to drive by Emeritus to get there.

I am making a spreadsheet of what I want and need to do with my life and my time going forward.  There is no going back.  I need to create a new normal, even if I tend to be far from normal by most people’s standards.  Though, with the holidays coming at me like a speeding freight train, even my best intentions might be derailed.  We will see.  The calendar is filling up with a lot of events and obligations that in no way resemble the creation of a new normal.

• Sunday afternoons are filled with Messiah rehearsals until the December 8^th concert. 

• Meredith needs help selling jewelry on Saturdays between now and Christmas.

• I am slated to make stuffing for 80-100 people for the annual Boy Scout Turkey dinner, coming up this weekend.

• Meredith, Gary and the kids are coming for Thanksgiving dinner

• We’re hosting 25-28 (Jim’s side) the day after Thanksgiving for a huge pot luck. 

• And then, Christmas will be upon us and I’ve done zero gift shopping. 

My only accomplishment to date was making the Christmas wine early in September and getting it bottled up in mid-October.

I guess I’ll keep working on that spreadsheet and plan on not implementing any changes to the status quo before January 1, 2014!

Stairway to Heaven: Nancy J. Boyle (1924-2013)

When my mother passed away 10 days ago, and even before the inevitable end of her many years on this earth, I considered what I might say if asked to speak at her service.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not bring myself to write anything down.  Somewhere deep inside I knew I would never be able to hold it together long enough to deliver such a speech, no matter how well written, no matter how well rehearsed.

My brother Tom fought his grief enough to write an incredible eulogy and found the strength to deliver it.  It touched the hearts of everyone present because it perfectly described Mom for the loving person she was, and it gave voice to the underlying reasons for her greatness as a human being.  His words were elegant in their simplicity yet profound in their meaning.

Although I knew could not speak without breaking down, I wanted to do something for Mom.  So I sang.  The Prayer of St. Ignatius only came forth because I closed my eyes and let my heart sing to her.  I know she is happy now with Dad, once again has all her faculties, and is not bound by the physical restraints of this earthly plane.  Still, knowing she is in a better place will not lessen the pain of her absence here.  Only time…only time.

"Frank"ness is next to Godliness

I don’t normally write my opinions about organized religion in general or Roman Catholicism in particular.  I was born catholic, raised catholic, and educated in catholic schools.  I am an active member of a catholic church and belong to the music ministry.  That is not to say that practicing catholicism is simple or easy.  It’s not.  There are rules, you see.

For the past 15 years or so, I have had an extremely hard time keeping the faith, as it were.  While growing older and perhaps even a bit wiser, I find there is little in this world that falls into the black or white category.  Most things are gray by nature.  We are taught to have opinions, black or white, yes or no, all or nothing, good or bad, but I have to assume that God gave each of us a brain for a reason, and that He expects us to use it to the best of our ability to discern what is black, what is white, and what is gray.

We sometimes become so focused on a single issue where we take a black or white view, that it distorts our ability to see anything else in the big picture.  Life is not about one issue.  Life is about the greater good.  When Jesus walked the earth as a common man, he raged against the money lenders while he ministered to sinners, fed the hungry, helped the poor, and healed the sick.  He told us to do the same.  It seems the lesson he taught has been forgotten.

I watch in disbelief as those with agendas use our zeal about a particular issue (such as abortion or homosexuality) to sway otherwise intelligent human beings into basing their politics and their votes on that single hotbed issue.  Make no mistake, an enormous number of Christians, whether they are catholic or protestant, have been swayed to vote for questionable candidates based on abortion or gay marriage.  But you don’t just get a politician who does nothing but back your point of view.  You get someone who stands up and says “Vote for me because abortion is a sin, and homosexuality is a sin,” then turns right around and votes to stop those in need from getting healthcare, to stop children and the elderly from receiving much needed food assistance, cutting funding to schools that educate our kids, and putting money in the coffers of the rich. 

The catholic church is more than a little outspoken about the issues of abortion and gay marriage, and that is fine with me…be as outspoken as you like.  It’s a free country.  But trying to guilt people into voting only for pro-life, anti-gay marriage candidates is not fine.  The Roman Catholic church, with all its highly educated priests, and bishops, and cardinals wants to cut the dead tree in the middle of the billion-acre forest, and they’ll fell every last tree in the forest to get to it.  We are stuck on our own rhetoric, hoisted on our own petard.  I was very close to thinking that there was no hope for my church.

Then along came Pope Frank.  He does not don the ceremonial garb of the papacy.  He refuses to live in the papal quarters and lives in a regular apartment.  He left the Vatican and went to a regular church to pray the day after his election.  He bought himself a little car to drive around, just like an average guy.  He preaches the gospel of Jesus, not the rhetoric of the church. He has called out the church hierarchy for dwelling on issues like abortion and gay marriage while ignoring even more pressing issues that need attention.  I like this Pope.  And I am not being disrespectful in calling him Pope Frank.  I am honoring his actions as a common man, trying to live and act as Jesus would.  Perhaps he can change the direction of the church to more closely fit what Jesus intended.  Pope Frank, I hope you have a long run.

 

It is what it is...

How often have you uttered that exact phrase when the unexpected happens?  Those words sooth my ego when something occurs that I have no control over, can’t stop, or can’t change.  Sometimes it seems that almost everything in life “is what it is” in one way or another. 

We can steer our lives in a particular direction, but the universe often intervenes and sends us galloping down a different road. Sometimes it just seems crazy that we find it impossible to continue in our original direction, but for some reason, if you don’t fight the change of direction, everything works out…not necessarily as planned, but many times with a better result.

When I was young, I was determined to be a nurse. The universe intervened.  But I still leaned toward the medical sciences, so I became a medical technologist.  The universe intervened again, and I used my medical knowledge and my English expertise to become a biomedical/pharmaceutical writer and editor.  The really funny thing is, after all these years, the absolute last thing in the world I would want to do is nursing.  Had I stubbornly ignored the nudging of the universe, I could still have become a nurse, but just about now I would be regretting that decision.

So the next time the universe intervenes in your life and completely turns your plans into balled-up paper in a trash can, you might want to look around the new path and consider the possibilities rather than stubbornly heading back to the previous road.  You might even be pleasantly surprised at the outcome.