There used to be two of me!

 Many years ago when I married my first husband I weighed in at 92 pounds.  Five kids later I weighed in at 103.  When Kenneth passed in 2003, I was a hefty 180.  Same bones, same skin, same everything, just more compacted.  He used to say, "You's not fat, you's fluffy." And for a lot of years that is where I stayed, just a fluffy woman who liked to eat. 

Of course I still had Bret at home and had to cook for him, so I pretty much maintained that weight.  Then he fell in love and left me so there went the reason for cooking.  My weight went down to 165 or so and my doctor was pleased that I was finally doing something about my obesity.  Now granted, I was overweight, I still looked good, because I was compact, but as for "doing something about being overweight" he was dead wrong.  I had not been "doing something" about the problem, but I do think my body seeks its own weight.  Happy I eat and gain weight, sad I go the other way.    

It was not until this past year that the scales began to go the other way.  When one lives alone eating is not a high priority.  Before Covid 19 I was eating out occasionally and having friends over occasionally, but, then safety became paramount.  No more meeting for lunch.  No more stopping for takeout.  Life just pretty much became a solitary existence.   Consequently, since eating alone is not a lot of fun, I now top the scales at 139.  According to all the charts I see I am still considered obese.  

So here is the deal: I am going to set here and be obese.  Hell with it.  I am old with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel and something is eventually going to kill me!  I like cookies.  I really like homemade cookies and I just baked up a batch of white chocolate macadamia and there is no one here to eat them except me!  If I get so big that they have to take me out the big window in the front room, I will surely die a happy woman.  At least I will be full of cookies and at my age, that is about the best I can hope for. 

So peace to all and bon a petite!!  I am off to the kitchen to use up some more of those Macadamia nuts and Walnuts that my sweet little Irene sent me!  May even send her a couple!

RIP

A cow named Bossy.

I am not sure her name was Bossy, but I think it was and that is what counts.  She was brown, but back in those days most of the milk cows were.  I want to say she was a Guernsey, but you are not going to catch me lying at this stage of the game.  She was brown.  A soft brown.  We had several cows when we left the Ailmore place, along with the horses dad used for plowing. We also had Star, the Shetland from hell that no one could ride.  You would have thought he was a sweetheart if you just looked at him, but try to get on his back and that was not happening.  He is the one that left the scar on my brothers face.  But back to the cow.

 The reason I am telling you about Bossy is because that cow knew how to give milk.  But the best part of the milk was the cream.  We had a separator which separated the milk from the cream (hence the name separator).  We would toast a piece of bread and then put cream on it and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and put it under the broiler for just a few seconds.  That was heaven!  The cream was so thick it stayed standing on the toast.  I go to the store now and buy "heavy whipping cream" and it pours out of the carton.  I have not even seen cream like we used to eat.

The same cream was churned into butter.  The butter was bright yellow when it was rinsed and put in the refrigerator.  It was also very delicious.  After Bossy died in cowbirth, (the baby also died) we were without a cow and thus without butter.  The neighbor girls lived with their father right next door.  Their mother had passed many years before and he raised the girls  alone.  They also had a cow and made butter.  With no cow we had to resort to eating margarine.  Now in those days margarine was white.  I think it was actually lard, but it came with a little yellow dye button that you could work into the white mass so it looked like butter.  We used to trade margarine for butter because the neighbor girls did not like butter. 

Another thing was they made doughnuts every Saturday morning.  Their father was diabetic, but he sure liked those doughnuts and he thought if he only ate them once a week he would be alright.  Another daughter came from Plevna to visit them every Sunday so they managed to eat all the doughnuts.  None for me!

One time mother had fried up a bunch of small carp that she had seined and Dorothy got a bone caught in her throat.  Mother had picked the meat off, but apparently missed a small bone.  As she was choking one of us ran next door and told Mr. Reinke.  He had experience at such things, you know.  He grabbed a piece of bread from the cupboard (in case we didn't have any and of course we didn't).  He made Dorothy eat the bread, which dislodged the bone and sent it into her stomach where the acids would dissolve it.  He was a hero!

Mostly Mr. Reinke just did handy man work around town and then did his chores when he came home.  We could here him singing songs in German while he did his chores.  Since he sang in German, my dad was sure he was a Nazi, but we never knew that for sure.  I just thought he was a very nice man to save my sisters life. 

I was always envious of their "outhouse" because it had a concrete floor and a lid on the potty part.  Ours had a floor that was pretty well shot and a bench with 2 holes.  I never understood that part, because we never went in there with anyone.  I just could not picture that!  Thiers also had a door and a latch from the inside for privacy.  Ours had a door at one time, but not by the time we inherited it.

The point of this entry when I started it was about cream.  The point I wanted to make was, back in those days we ate thick cream.  We used real butter.  We ate potatoes, and bacon, and gravy and we were all skinny.  When I married my first husband I stood 5'1" and weighed 92 pounds.  I am convinced that all the additives in our food are still in our bodies.  I have given up trying to read the ingredient list on anything I pull off the shelf or out of the freezer.

And I am sure I will never live long enough to ever be able to toast a piece of bread and pile cream on it with cinnamon and sugar.  Sure would like to see old Bossy again, but those days are long gone.  I would not eat a Carp now if I was starving.  I am beginning to look forward to the day when I can once more run barefooted down Strong Street see all my family and friends.  Seems like that list gets
shorter every day.

(After thought) I do need to tell you, that when the separator quit working at one point and mother strained the milk it was not the same.  She would leave it set and the cream would raise to the top.  I could not stand the bits of cream that were floating in the milk  to touch my lips.  I would try to pick them all out with my finger, but it was an exercise in futility.  I could eat straight cream, but not swallow a fleck.  I was so happy when we had to buy milk from town because it was homogenized.

Five Minutes on the soap box.

Well, I know I am in the middle of something with my ladies, but I have got to hop up on my soap box here for just a few.  I know they will not mind this little diversion.
America, what in the hell are you thinking?  Riots over Penn State coach firing!  Is a ball game that important?  Where have I been all my life?  I see acts of cowardice on the news when a 2 year old girl was hit in the street and people walked past and paid no attention.  I think that was in China.  What did the world say?  They said  "Things like that happen in the United States, but not here."  We have become known as a country of callous beings.
Where else are athletes paid millions of dollars to play a season of ball, put them on a pedestal, and then riot in the streets because a 10 year old boy got himself raped and the adults who were supposed to protect him turned blind eyes?  That particular coach was to be excused because he had a winning team!  I am sorry, I just don't get it.  Sandusky is the guilty one here, you say?  Sandusky is not the only one to share in this debacle.  There are laws in place to protect the weak and young and they are there for a reason.  There were a lot of responsible people who turned a blind eye on this one.  This one and how many more just like it?
I am so sick of turning on my television and seeing some one with down cast eyes making their little spiel about "Oh, well, I am so sorry.  I should have done more."  The politicians who lie directly to the camera for weeks and then when confronted with the actual picture of them with thier hand in the cookie jar tell us, "Oh, well, I remember now.  I am so sorry.  I am an honorable man, but there was that one time."  And Lord only knows if all of Tiger's women were ever uncovered.  (Well, we know they were uncovered, but I mean in the sense of publicly discovered.)  I do admire his wife, oh, excuse me, his EX wife. 
I rather live in my own little world and try to just do what I think is right, and people, this is not right.  I look at my world around me and I am so happy that I am old and this is not going to be my fight that much longer.  Man's inhumanity to man is just about more than I can stomach for many more years.  I see the "Occupy " forces over on the corner and I watched the Tea Party blossom, falter and splinter.  I long for the days before technology when we did not see what was happening in virtual time. 
If I indeed do get to come back for another shot at this life, I hope I can come back in the time of the Pony Express and no phones, no television and I can eat fresh cows cream on my cracked wheat in the morning and top it off with a pat of real butter!