Things I Haven't Done Yet
Mamacita says:
1. I have never watched a reality show.
2. I do not admire Angelina Jolie in the least. Nor Brad Pitt. Adultery is not admirable.
3. I have never gone skinny-dipping, although I’ve gone swimming with lots of people who DID go skinny-dipping. Everybody goes skinny-dipping in the Hoosier quarries, except for me. I had and still have too many body issues, plus, quarry water is colder than a witches. . . . um, you know. (Wouldn’t you think those would be hot, not cold? Illogical!)
4. I haven’t purchased my Thanksgiving turkey yet. But the very fact that it’s comin’ up on it thrills me to the core.
5. I haven’t put up any Christmas decorations yet, because it’s not time yet; however, I plan to do this a few days before Thanksgiving so my family can see them.
6. I haven’t re-read Caroline B. Cooney’s What Child Is This yet this year, although I did get it out. It’s lying on the desk before me, in fact. If you haven’t yet read this book, I highly recommend it. It makes me sob out loud every time, even though I know what’s going to happen by now. I used to read it to my sixth graders in December, to get them in the mood to “Create Christmas” for a needy family each year. Sigh. I miss that. But seriously, after you read this book, you’ll want to run out and make Christmas for a child, too.
7. I haven’t started cleaning for the PEOPLE who will be here on Thanksgiving Day and the Day After, either. I may have gotten out my Christmas dishes in anticipation, though.
8. I haven’t been Christmas shopping yet this month. But that’s because I ALREADY DID IT! Thass right; I’m done. But this is not good news to me, for I dearly adore making lists and thinking of things other people might like, so I can give it to them.
9. I have never tried to destroy someone’s life, and, sadly, this is more than can be said for some people.
10. I haven’t chosen my Christmas cards yet; this is another thing I love to do.
And now, I’m off to watch last Thursday’s Ugly Betty on the magical internets, because I haven’t done that yet, either.
Quotation Saturday
Mamacita says: We have entered that time of the year that is my very favorite: the season of anticipation of the season.
Planning and preparing for the holidays is what I look forward to all the rest of the year! I did most of my Christmas shopping in April! My Christmas music is already in the cd player! I’m pathetic. This time of year makes me happy. Just looking at the calendar makes me happy. I am not made glad by just ANY calendar page, mind you; only the ones approaching the year’s crown: December. I love eveerything about Christmas, from the family reunions to the making of lists to the checking them twice to the cooking and baking to the actual Reason for the Season. I love it all.
I love it when people wish me well in whatever way their particular beliefs phrase it. When people wish me well, who am I to get all huffy and indignant and insulted, just because someone wished me well in the language of another culture? I’m HONORED! I thank people when they wish me well. What difference does it make how it was phrased? Quite honestly? People who are insulted and angered when somebody smiles and wishes them well, just because it was done in an unfamiliar way, well, I consider such people to be nasty prissy joy-bashers who really, really need to get a life and pay attention to the world. It ain’t all about YOU, ya know.
Please! Wish me a Happy Kwanzaa, or a Happy Hannukah, or Season’s Greetings, or Merry Christmas, or Happy Christmas, or Joyous Santa Lucia Day, or Happy Winter Solstice, or Merry Las Posadas, or Happy Holidays, or Blessed Christmas, or Happy Winter Thick Fur-Growing Squirrel Preparations. I love it. Thank you! Thank you, for including me, with your greeting, in your plans for celebration and happiness! I haven’t got a clue what some of your greetings might mean, but since when was THAT important? I just think it’s nice that you shared.
1. The true innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves but who thank others are. –Josh Billings
2. Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man. –Ausonius (This one’s for people who are insulted by other people’s joy-sharing.)
3. Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding. –Gandhi
4. Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. –Carl Zevanzig
5. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. –Muriel Rukeyser
6. If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles. –Doug Larsen
7. One of my old formulas is to be an enthusiast in the front part of your heart, and ironical in the back. –Oliver Wendell Holmes
8. The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant. –Anonymous
9. In most of mankind, gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors. –Francois La Rochefoucauld
10. God is subtle, but He is not malicious. –Einstein
11. . . . Grammar, which can govern even Kings. –Moliere
12. God never made His work for man to mend. –John Dryden
13. A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend. –O.W. Holmes
14. We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I do not know. –W.H. Auden
15. Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength. –Henry Ward Beecher
16. Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere. –Emerson
17. The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement for genius. –Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
18. Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head. –Arthur Shopenhauer
19. Always remember that the person that you find fault with a great deal, will finally rebel. –E.W. Howe
20. A fool does not enter a room, nor leave it, nor sit down, nor rise up, nor is he silent, nor does he stand on his legs, like a man of sense. –Jean de la Breyeire
21. To those who can dream, there is no such place as faraway. –Anonymous
22. There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot about something and not really understand it. –Charles F. Kettering
23. He who lives without folly is hardly so wise as he thinks. –La Rouchefoucauld
24. It is the enemy whom we do not suspect who is the most dangerous. –Fernando de Rojas
25. No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency. –T. Roosevelt
26. Experience is a good school, but the fees are high. –Heine
27. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. –Einstein
28. Evereything worthwhile, everything of any value, has a price. The price is effort. –Loretta Young
29. The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living. –Wendell Phillips
30. Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely necessary. –Will Cuppy
31. The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life. –Nietzsche
32. As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty. –Simone Weil
33. Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced. –Thoreau
34. No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. –George Jean Nathan
35. To ignore the facts does not change the facts. –Andy Rooney
36. If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for. –Florence Shinn
37. The world, like an accomplished hostess, pays most attention to those whom it will soonest forget. –John C. Collins
38. I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. –Winston Churchill
39. Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the test of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves. –Richard Whately
40. However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer. –La Rouchefoucauld
41. Education is that which remains if one has forgotten everything he learned in school. –Einstein
42. None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting to change all the tenor of our lives. –Kathleen Norris
43. All that one gains by falsehood is not to be believed when he speaks the truth. –Hosea Ballou
44. When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. –George Eliot
45. Victory is what happens when ten thousand hours of training meet up with one moment of opportunity. –Anonymous
46. You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other. –John Adams (to Jefferson)
47. Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. –Marston Bates
48. Blessed are the risk takers, for they shall bring us tomorrow. –Daniel Yovich
49. If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. –Erica Jong
50. I’m a self-made man, but I think if I had it to do over again, I’d call in someone else. –Roland Young
Me too, Roland.
And now, according to the customs of my own personal culture, I will bid you all “Good Night,” whether you like it or not. Any nightmares you might have because someone wished a peaceful sleep for you will NOT be my fault.
"'Tis Mince"
Mamacita says: Indeed YES, that is homemade apple pie that you smell. Four different kinds of apples, butter, cinnamon, a sprinkling of flour, and a half cup of Splenda. Oh, and crust. Sometimes I make the crust myself, and sometimes I buy generic the very best. I always poke holes in the shape of a pine tree on the top crust, though. When I was a kid, I read a book called The Plums Hang High, which is still one of my favorite novels, and in it, Hannah Maria poked a pine tree on all of her pies because that’s what the cook back in her aristocratic parents’ home always did. Unless it was mince pie, in which case she poked “TM” in the middle, for “‘Tis mince.” I loved that paragraph when I was a kid. I still do. I have never, however, tried to make a mince pie. I’m not dead yet, so I still might some day. Don’t lose hope.
Most people use many kinds of apples because they’re gourmet cooks or something cool. I use many kinds of apples because no two people in this house like the same kind of apple and I generally get the notion to bake a pie when we’re down to two or three apples in each bag.
Also? I don’t eat pie. I just love to make them. Fortunately, other people do like to eat them, so they never go to waste.
Now, get to the library and try to find a copy of The Plums Hang High. Chances are pretty good that you won’t find it there, because our libraries got rid of all the books I used to get there over and over when I was young and replaced them with computer games and graphic novels and Gossip Girls and teen vampire stuff.
If that’s the case in your library, order the book from Amazon. It’s really, really good. Really good.
Really.
