Naming

I was looking back through some writings and found something I wrote not long before my grandson Peter was born. It said that Paul told me his name would be Maximilian Golden and I saw that as an improvement over some he had mentioned, like Piedmont. I could go with Golden, of course. It's a Schiess family name. But Piedmont.

None of my business, really, and I said as much back then, but I like Peter much better. Peter Golden.

I think it was just Paul's way of saying, "It's our son; we'll be naming him; you don't get to know yet."

Seems fair.

Stuck

That's a first. Stuck in my own driveway. Well, in the gutter just beyond it.

I backed out and turned, thought I'd check my mail. Should have walked to do it, because my car got stuck. Alyce about wore herself out pushing, but we got nowhere. She said the right wheel was spinning, but the left wheel was not moving--which meant it wasn't touching the ground. A clue.

I sent her across the street to Contas' for help. Jan said to try laying down branches from the neighbor's cedar tree, put them behind the wheel. The branches were in the street, having been blown off the tree by a recent big wind.

Good idea. If it worked, I could just back out of there and drive down the street. It didn't work.

Ron came over, brought his shovel and dug around the front wheels. Then he and Alyce pushed while I eased on the gas. No luck.

Ron went back and got blocks of wood. More digging, more pushing. Nope. Went back and got a burlap bag and a big rectangle piece of rubber. The bag behind one wheel, rubber behind the other. Same routine. No. Ron kept saying he didn't want to push very much on the front of the car because it's plastic. I think he said it three times.

Okay, okay, it's plastic. I still like it.

Alyce said they could push on the frame of the car because the windows were open. They tried. No way. That's when we knew for sure the car was high-centered, and Ron looked under the car and said, "It's up on two blocks of ice." Then Ron said he helped a guy last year who was high-centered, and it left the whole bottom of his plastic car on the ice.

Great. That worried me a little. I think I felt a little bit insulted, too. I mean how many times does he have to say my car is made of plastic? Get over it, Carol. He is working hard for you.

I thought maybe I'd have to lock up the car, leave it, and hope. Not sure for what. An ice melt seemed unlikely, especially under the car. It was cold. But it would look strange, my car sitting skeewampus in the street at end of my own driveway.

Jan, Ron's wife, appeared with a bucket. "I've got boiling water," she called. "She's got boiling water," Alyce shouted.

"Okay," said Ron, "but it might just freeze." It was cold--I said that--about 26 degrees. "We'll have to hurry."

Alyce picked her way over the ice and got the bucket. She poured half the water under the right wheel. "Now hurry," Ron said, and Alyce slid over to pour under the left wheel. More pushing, rocking, easing on the gas.

Guess what. It worked. The whole process only took about half an hour. That's all.

Ron gathered his wood blocks, his burlap bag, his strip of rubber and went home. Alyce cleaned up the cedar branches and picked up the mail. We left to run errands and decided when we got back we would give them the jello salad I had just made.

Good deal. Good Alyce. Good Ron. Good Jan.

Christmas Now

The best part of this Christmas so far has been singing with Lola. Her voice is beautiful. She is beautiful.

Confession

Okay, so here's the truth.
1. The Obama smokes blog was an experiment.
2. I don't care that Obama smokes, but I really didn't know he smoked, not having read the NY Times article Alex quoted from.
3. I thought and think he is gently handled by the media.
4. I know nothing about the voter registration. That part I kind of made up and threw in as "evidence." I thought of it after conversing with a friend who lost re-election to the state legislature and is contacting, one by one, the 2500 new voter registrants and has found a 15% discrepancy so far.
5. I do not repudiate the election of Obama. Certainly not because he smokes.
6. I do wonder how his "change" will translate into reality and how it will affect us.
7. I don't look to government to solve life's problems and take care of everything.
8. I have a theory, which I used to express to my students: people respond to the negative, they like conflict and controversy. That posting seemed to verify my theory. I also found out someone reads this blog. Sometimes.
9. Of course, and this has nothing to do with politics, the theory also includes the idea that the darker, more negative aspects of life are easier to write about. Finding words to express joy is a harder task. This is the theory, but in brief.

Where There's One . . .

I just saw a fox. He made his way along the east side of Mrs Lindell's house, then darted in under the old trees and shrubs near the front of her house. First time for a fox here on Greenwood Circle. Raccoons a-plenty, squirrels by the score, owls and crows and flickers and other such predatory creatures. Well, raccoons prey upon garbage cans and will attack dogs, I've been told.

But a fox.

I wonder if he has found the invalid squirrel who lived under the shrubs on the west side of Mrs Lindell's house. I saw that squirrel three times in the late summer but have not seen it for many weeks. And a fox makes one wonder about a den and babies. Oh dear. What will become of the neighborhood?

Christmas Past

Music. It has blessed my life. And I love the music of the Christmas season, love to hear it and to sing it. Always I loved to sing the carols. We did that every year at home. My mom would play, and we would all sing.

Of course, I wanted to go caroling. When I was old enough to go to Mutual, I got my wish. We would gather at the church, climb into cars, and meet at the houses of friends, get out and sing, load up again, and drive to the next place and ooh and ah at the Christmas lights as we went. No snow to worry about. This was southern California.

The best times were the hayrides because we were out in the cold air, together with friends, singing carols through the town. And sitting on hay bales. Not sure why, but that made it so much better.

I grew up in Santa Monica, a beach town, so a hayride seems unlikely, but we did it. Our ward got a big flat-bed truck, stacked hay bales on it, and we kids piled on of a Christmas Eve. Then we met at someone's house at the end for hot cider or hot chocolate and cookies.

Always in our family, with our children, I wanted to go caroling on Christmas Eve, and usually we did. We made a decent little choir. My kids can sing, you know. As they grew, we grew from mostly melody to parts, with altos and tenors and more basses than one. (We'd always include "Far, Far Away On Judea's Plain," because we liked to hear our boys sing those low moving parts on the Glory to God refrain.)

Often we had snow to fuss with--Idaho is no beach town--and always we had to bundle up, but that was just part of it. When we got home, Daddy would light a fire. We'd peel off our coats and mittens and mufflers and caps, and have our own hot chocolate and a bowl of chili.

I love that we did it, love the memory of those times.

I Digress

Barack Obama smokes.

That's not a rumor. And don't you find it interesting that we, the poor stupid public who need change and need him to tell us we need change and what kind of change we need, never saw a puff of smoke or heard a word about his filthy habit? I do. I find it interesting and troubling.

I mean what else about St. Barack did they--and I don't even know who they all are, but I know some of them--hide from us?

Truly, this calls the whole election into question. This and the whopping registration of voters--democrats--who may or may not actually live where they supposedly live or live at all. And I won't even mention Blagojevich.

Christmas

I think it’s that I’m like my mother. She always wanted everyone to have a present on Christmas, something to unwrap. Yes, I’m like that. So this year I have been feeling bad. It’s a hard year for money, and I was sliding down into the hole of “I don’t have enough money this year to give something to everyone,” and maybe worrying if people would be hurt or mad. I was saying this to Tasha, whining a bit over the phone.

Tasha said, “That’s not what it’s about.”

Duh, Carol. She didn’t say that part. I did, but not out loud.

Then she said, “It’s about being together.”

I like that she said it. I believed it and believe it, and I hope I can believe it every day from now till 2009.

What Do You Make of This?

I just drove by Zamzow's on my way home and saw their sign.

Vaccinations [for dogs] Saturday 1-4

Santa Paws 10-5

The Cereal Serial, I Have My Say

I don't know why my kids didn't eat the homemade granola. Maybe it was because it didn't pour out of a box. Maybe it looked too healthy. Maybe it was that once in a while I cut up dates and made them part of the granola--but not all the time.

It was healthy. But that is not to say it wasn't sweet. It had honey and sometimes pure maple syrup mixed in before the roasting. And so on and so forth. It was also delicious. Friends loved it, but they were grownups. And, I will add, my kids ate the cookies I made with the granola I made.

The big bags of puffed wheat were for Wayne G. He loved that stuff, that and puffed rice. Puffed wheat affected the odor of one's urine. Not in a good way.

If I have a rule, it is that I will not buy sugared cereals. I don't approve of them and furthermore I hate them, their phony taste. They can't be good for you. So, mostly, my kids didn't get to have them. Once in a great while--like every ten years--I would buy a box of Lucky Charms--I don't know why, probably for Richard--and I will buy an occasional box of Golden Grahams to this day.

I read of Ann's 12 boxes and think of what's in my pantry.

• Shredded Wheat, yes the big biscuits, which, by the way, I would not eat as a kid.
• Corn Flakes, only Kellogg's please. I don't like Post Toasties, never did, and please, no off brands. My sister Lucile, who in her maturity has limited her cereal consumption to corn flakes, does like Post Toasties, and she told me about the bargain she found, a box of Kroger's Corn Flakes for 99 cents. She bought two. Big mistake. It's no bargain if you can't eat it.
  
• Cheerios. No fake brands, no honey-nut kind either. Just Cheerios.
• Raisin Bran, Kellogg's or Post, but I will buy no other, not even Total Raisin Bran.

That's it. That's what I have, and I will not be able to eat it all before it gets old and stale. Not to worry, though. A grandson will usually come over and have a bowl or three, stale or not.

I don't like Kashi. It does a number on me, the flax, you know.
I don't like store-bought granola.
Total and Wheaties are just okay.
If I've forgotten anything it doesn't matter.

Hot cereal now enters the discussion. Hot cereal, which, in the home where I grew up, we called mush, no matter what kind it was. It was always sort of brown. I didn't like it much.

In our Schiess home, we used to have hot cereal occasionally, oatmeal most often because Wayne, their dad, loved it, or Cream of Wheat or Wheat Hearts. By the way, General Mills stopped making Wheat Hearts about five years ago. Too bad. That was one kind of mush I always liked. Once in a while we had Malt O' Meal, another wheat-based hot cereal.

Or

I'd make our own cracked wheat cereal. How popular was that? you ask. Well, I liked it, but I may have heard some kid call it crapped wheat. Could that be?

My Granddaughter

Cory. Just last year she was Cori. But now she says she will spell her name as it was given to her. Why? Because that other spelling was a bit childish, and she is more grown up now. It's true. I mean she has views and opinions and understanding and some knowledge, all of which show her grownupness. So Sarah, you who are colored grown up, your little sister is approaching grownuphood, too.

Nice visit, good girl. She calls me Grandma, which I am, and sometimes Grandmother--just for fun--which I also am.

We sat up in my bed Friday night and talked until after 1 a.m. and Saturday night sat in the same spot to watch a movie together. I say you can't beat that.