Friday, June 29, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A Breakfast Sandwich
My husband was a wonderful cook. He and three brothers all enjoyed cooking, and it was fun to see them together at family gatherings, talking about recipes, grills, cooking utensils, etc. DH's specialty was cooking on the grill (charcoal only, refused to even discuss a gas grill), but one of our favorite meals was breakfast. When we were dating, he would get to my house early on Saturday morning and cook our breakfast before we started on our day's activities. After we were married and he was still working, the Saturday morning ritual continued...bacon, eggs, grits, toast (or maybe biscuits...he even liked canned biscuits as well as those really good frozen ones), and jelly. He also liked bucket steak (that he bought at a wonderful little community grocery store where they still cut their own meat) with gravy and biscuits, and we'd occasionally have that meal for dinner.
After he retired, he would get up with me at 5:30 a.m. and cook my breakfast before I left for school. I am an adult-onset diabetic, so it was important that I have a good breakfast to keep my blood sugar balanced in case I didn't have a chance to eat a morning snack. He'd also usually have my dinner ready when I got home from school, and with enough leftovers for me to have lunch the next day (I haven't eaten a school lunch in about twenty years).
This week, I had a craving for DH's breakfast sandwich. That was my favorite from the beginning; I told him it was one of the reasons I married him. We had the sandwiches during my last Christmas break; he went into the hospital on January 21. The breakfast sandwich consists of two pieces of toast (spread lightly with mayonnaise, and it had to be HIS favorite brand), several slices of bacon, a slice of American cheese (Velveeta was always his favorite...I tried to steer him toward 2% cheese, but he said he could taste the difference), and an egg cooked over easy (we both ate our fried eggs over easy, probably another reason we had such a good marriage). This sandwich could not be eaten as a sandwich (because of the runny egg yolk), but had to be eaten with a knife and fork.
I had a breakfast sandwich this evening for dinner. It was made with white wheat bread (DH was white bread all the way), low fat mayonnaise, reduced fat cheese, and only my second egg of the week, but it was still a wonderful meal. I've had a long week of missing DH, but the sandwich brought back good memories instead of the awful ones that have been floating around in my brain for the last two weeks.
After he retired, he would get up with me at 5:30 a.m. and cook my breakfast before I left for school. I am an adult-onset diabetic, so it was important that I have a good breakfast to keep my blood sugar balanced in case I didn't have a chance to eat a morning snack. He'd also usually have my dinner ready when I got home from school, and with enough leftovers for me to have lunch the next day (I haven't eaten a school lunch in about twenty years).
This week, I had a craving for DH's breakfast sandwich. That was my favorite from the beginning; I told him it was one of the reasons I married him. We had the sandwiches during my last Christmas break; he went into the hospital on January 21. The breakfast sandwich consists of two pieces of toast (spread lightly with mayonnaise, and it had to be HIS favorite brand), several slices of bacon, a slice of American cheese (Velveeta was always his favorite...I tried to steer him toward 2% cheese, but he said he could taste the difference), and an egg cooked over easy (we both ate our fried eggs over easy, probably another reason we had such a good marriage). This sandwich could not be eaten as a sandwich (because of the runny egg yolk), but had to be eaten with a knife and fork.
I had a breakfast sandwich this evening for dinner. It was made with white wheat bread (DH was white bread all the way), low fat mayonnaise, reduced fat cheese, and only my second egg of the week, but it was still a wonderful meal. I've had a long week of missing DH, but the sandwich brought back good memories instead of the awful ones that have been floating around in my brain for the last two weeks.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
This is a picture from my art journal that I started keeping while DH was in the hospital. This is in a small (about 6" X 8") scrapbook that I bought at Wal-Mart, but my favorites are about 8" X 10", and I buy them at Dollar General for $3.00 (they'll probably quit stocking them now, but I have four stashed in my craft room). I did not inherit my mother's ability to draw, but I did inherit her love of color and her enjoyment of detail work. I section off the pages and draw the basic designs with a black Pitt brush pen, then go back and fill in the color using other Pitt brush pens (at least 48 different colors, just like that wonderful box of Crayolas from my childhood). When I went to the hospital every day, I carried my journal and pens with me (in my bright pink plastic tote from Hobby Lobby).
I am a math teacher by profession, and I think the orderly, geometric feel reflects that training. Someone also commented to me that the pictures are a reflection of my desire to control some part of my life at that time.
I have three other journals in progress--two of the spiral-bound notebooks, and a loose leaf journal/scrapbook that will be kept in an 8.5" X 5.5" three-ring binder. I finished the alphabet cards for my niece and great-niece and put them in the mail yesterday.
Time to change the DVD, get another glass of water, and get back to my drawing...I also got a new Somerset Studio in the mail yesterday, and I'm saving it for later today.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
What Are They Doing...
in heaven today?
"What are they doing in heaven today
Where sin and sorrow have all gone away
Peace abounds by the river they say
What are they doing there now
I'm thinking of friends who I used to know
Who lived and suffered in this world below
But they've gone up to heaven and I want to know
What are they doing there now..."
~Charles Albert Tindley~
The first time that I did a search for this song was after hearing it on an ice cream commercial. I think it was for Blue Bell, but I'm not sure. One of the times DH and I heard it was after my dad had died (January, 2005), and it made me cry. I cried because I was sad; I missed my daddy...hearing his voice calling me by my nickname, hearing him chuckle after telling one of his famous jokes, calling to ask him directions (he was more reliable than Google when it came to driving directions) before making a trip, reading one of his letters to the editor in the local newspaper, and so many more things that I still miss. I also cried because I was happy for him...seeing his parents, his sister and brothers, so many old friends; and finally getting the answers to genealogical questions that he had researched for years!
Then my mother died...and I cried again. I cried because I missed her wonderful sense of humor, knowing that she thought her children and grandchildren were the smartest and most beautiful people in the world, and being able to call and tell her something clever that her "granddog" had done. I cried because she was going to get her last prayer answered--she wanted to be in her right mind and be with my dad, and see her parents and the seven brothers that had already gone to heaven ahead of her.
Now DH is in heaven with them, and I thought about this song again today. Our finite minds cannot comprehend the wonder of God's heaven, so we think about it in human terms. When I was sitting with DH while we waited for God to tell the angels that it was time to go get him and bring him home, I told DH that I was jealous because he was going to get to see my parents before I did. When the angels came at 3:40 a.m. on that Saturday morning, I kissed his cheek and told him that I was going to miss him. It was the truth--he's been gone for just over three months, and I do miss him. Since he was already retired, he was always here when I got home from school, and we spent the summers together...cooking produce from his garden, watching the Braves, and playing with the dog. School has been out for almost two weeks, and it's been an adjustment for me. I'm working on a curriculum project for my board of education, and the administrator in charge asked me when I was able to get so much done in the week since our last meeting. I told her that since I'd gotten my laptop, I could work and watch television at the same time, and that I needed something to occupy my time since DH was gone.
Whatever they're doing in heaven today must be glorious...
"What are they doing in heaven today
Where sin and sorrow have all gone away
Peace abounds by the river they say
What are they doing there now
I'm thinking of friends who I used to know
Who lived and suffered in this world below
But they've gone up to heaven and I want to know
What are they doing there now..."
~Charles Albert Tindley~
The first time that I did a search for this song was after hearing it on an ice cream commercial. I think it was for Blue Bell, but I'm not sure. One of the times DH and I heard it was after my dad had died (January, 2005), and it made me cry. I cried because I was sad; I missed my daddy...hearing his voice calling me by my nickname, hearing him chuckle after telling one of his famous jokes, calling to ask him directions (he was more reliable than Google when it came to driving directions) before making a trip, reading one of his letters to the editor in the local newspaper, and so many more things that I still miss. I also cried because I was happy for him...seeing his parents, his sister and brothers, so many old friends; and finally getting the answers to genealogical questions that he had researched for years!
Then my mother died...and I cried again. I cried because I missed her wonderful sense of humor, knowing that she thought her children and grandchildren were the smartest and most beautiful people in the world, and being able to call and tell her something clever that her "granddog" had done. I cried because she was going to get her last prayer answered--she wanted to be in her right mind and be with my dad, and see her parents and the seven brothers that had already gone to heaven ahead of her.
Now DH is in heaven with them, and I thought about this song again today. Our finite minds cannot comprehend the wonder of God's heaven, so we think about it in human terms. When I was sitting with DH while we waited for God to tell the angels that it was time to go get him and bring him home, I told DH that I was jealous because he was going to get to see my parents before I did. When the angels came at 3:40 a.m. on that Saturday morning, I kissed his cheek and told him that I was going to miss him. It was the truth--he's been gone for just over three months, and I do miss him. Since he was already retired, he was always here when I got home from school, and we spent the summers together...cooking produce from his garden, watching the Braves, and playing with the dog. School has been out for almost two weeks, and it's been an adjustment for me. I'm working on a curriculum project for my board of education, and the administrator in charge asked me when I was able to get so much done in the week since our last meeting. I told her that since I'd gotten my laptop, I could work and watch television at the same time, and that I needed something to occupy my time since DH was gone.
Whatever they're doing in heaven today must be glorious...
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The Love of My Life...
Someone called last week to check on me, and said something about DH being "the love of your life". I think I'm glad that people thought that he was the love of my life, but he wasn't. Now that I've written that, it sounds different than I meant...and I must explain.
The "love of my life" was the man with whom I had a relationship before I met DH. He was twelve years my senior, and had recently lost his wife of more than forty years. He did not want his family to know about our relationship, probably because of the age difference and the fact that I had a professional association with his wife and children. We saw each other for more than a year, and then he broke my heart. I threw myself into a lot of other activities, and announced to my friends that I was open to blind dates.
I met DH as a result of one of these blind dates, and we knew almost immediately that we were supposed to be together (and married). I wasn't the love of his life, either. I think the love of his life was a woman that he should have married when he was in his early twenties, but events and choices led him down a different path. The path had some rocky patches, and took him some places he should not have gone, but by the time our lives crossed, he was back where God wanted him to be.
We had a wonderful relationship, and a good marriage. DH was my first husband (at the age of 45), but I'd witnessed enough of good and bad relationships to know that marriage was work, and not always wine and roses. We complimented each other in many ways, and had been raised in similar families with similar values. It was a better match than a marriage to the "love of my life" would ever have been. We finished each other's sentences, almost read each other's minds, shared the same interests in music and movies, cooked together, laughed together, and cried together. I helped him become more patient, and he helped me become a little neater and more organized. We loved and cared for each other's parents, and shared one "child"--a darling Jack Russell/fox terrier dog, who has grieved almost as much as I have over the loss of her beloved "Pop".
Maybe he WAS the love of my life...
The "love of my life" was the man with whom I had a relationship before I met DH. He was twelve years my senior, and had recently lost his wife of more than forty years. He did not want his family to know about our relationship, probably because of the age difference and the fact that I had a professional association with his wife and children. We saw each other for more than a year, and then he broke my heart. I threw myself into a lot of other activities, and announced to my friends that I was open to blind dates.
I met DH as a result of one of these blind dates, and we knew almost immediately that we were supposed to be together (and married). I wasn't the love of his life, either. I think the love of his life was a woman that he should have married when he was in his early twenties, but events and choices led him down a different path. The path had some rocky patches, and took him some places he should not have gone, but by the time our lives crossed, he was back where God wanted him to be.
We had a wonderful relationship, and a good marriage. DH was my first husband (at the age of 45), but I'd witnessed enough of good and bad relationships to know that marriage was work, and not always wine and roses. We complimented each other in many ways, and had been raised in similar families with similar values. It was a better match than a marriage to the "love of my life" would ever have been. We finished each other's sentences, almost read each other's minds, shared the same interests in music and movies, cooked together, laughed together, and cried together. I helped him become more patient, and he helped me become a little neater and more organized. We loved and cared for each other's parents, and shared one "child"--a darling Jack Russell/fox terrier dog, who has grieved almost as much as I have over the loss of her beloved "Pop".
Maybe he WAS the love of my life...
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