Christie's Yeast Rolls

This recipe makes 30 yeast rolls. I am sort of semi-famous for my yeast rolls. They make appearances at all the big family dinners and on my friend's tables at the holidays. I get many compliments on them and many requests for them. They are easy to make, once you learn how, and a really inexpensive way to win friends and influence people! They are buttery and will melt in your mouth. I made 60 dozen of these last year for Christmas presents for family and friends. Bake them up, let them cool on a rack and then put a dozen in gallon zipper bags to give for presents any time of year. You will make many people happy!

Ingredients:
(I premeasure everything, then you don't have to think about whether you have already put something in or left it out!)

2 packages active dry yeast or 2 teaspoons instant yeast.
1 1/2 cups warm milk (115 degrees)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs (room temperature)
6 to 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour, plus more for the work surface

If you use packaged active dry yeast, warm 1/4 cup water to 115 degrees and sprinkle yeast on top of the water and let bloom for about 5 minutes. It will turn foamy.

If you use instant yeast (like Red Star Yeast for bread machines) you can just add the two teaspoons to the dry ingredients. This is the method I use.

Wisk yeast, 6 cups of the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
Warm milk in the microwave until it is near 115 degrees. Use an instant read thermometer to check. Put butter in with the milk and melt at the same time. Whisk in TWO eggs one at a time into the liquid ingredients. If dough is still thin after mixing and not coming together, add more flour 2 tablespoons at a time until it resembles shaggy bark.

Using a stand mixer with the paddle blade, put in 1/3 of the liquid mixture and then about 1/3 of dry mixture. Begin mixing on a very low speed or you will have a face and kitchen covered with flour! Continue mixing in thirds until all of the liquid and dry ingredients have been used. If you have a large stand mixer you can knead the dough in the mixer, using the dough hook,  for 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and shiny. If you don't have a stand mixer, you can do all the mixing by hand and then flour a clean work surface and dump the dough onto the work surface. Knead until dough is smooth and elastic.

Spray a large tub or bowl with Pam and place dough in the bowl, turning once so that the dough ball is greased lightly. Cover with plastic wrap, sprayed with Pam, over the bowl and place in a warm spot to rise until dough doubles in size, (about 1 hour and 15 minutes.)

Butter two large rimmed cookie sheets or three 13 X 9 pans. Divide dough in half, then divide each half into 15 pieces. Shape each roll into a disk with your fingertips on the counter, then shape into balls by turning edges under over and over, then cupping in one hand and rotating the top hand in a circle. You will get perfectly round rolls this way. Place rolls in greased pans and cover with sprayed plastic wrap, and let stand for about another 1 hour and 15 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with racks in the upper third and lower third of the oven. In a small bowl, beat remaining egg with 1 tablespoon of water until well blended. Brush onto the tops of the rolls. Bake for about 20 minutes, rotating pans back to front and top to bottom halfway through baking time. When finished baking, brush with melted butter. If using immediately, place in a towel lined basket and cover with a towel to keep warm. If using later, let cool on wire racks and place in gallon zipper bags. Enjoy!

My first memory is this, "Worms, worms." I was less than three years old and I wet my bed. My mother heard me crying and cleaned me up and put me in bed with my oldest brother, Everett. There was hole in his quilt and he had twirled the filling into strands that felt like worms. I guess he would play with the filling to comfort himself. It's strange where you find comfort when you are little and chaos reigns in your world. Laying in my brother's lap twirling the quilt worms was a comfort when my daddy was yelling at my mother to shut up that squalling child and come back to bed. My mother was gentle with me and paid him no attention, but my world and my brothers was not easy.

My mother and daddy had met in post-war Los Angeles when my mother was living with her sister and daddy was there too. They parked cars in a parking lot. I have a picture of Mother and Daddy outside my aunt's house and they are smiling and laughing. I never knew anything about their courtship. I have three pictures of my mother on her wedding day: two in my grandmother's front yard and one of Mother and Daddy in the house. They are beautiful and happy. I don't know when things went wrong, but they did.

My two brothers, Everett and Terry, were eleven months apart. I didn't come along until seven years later so we have very different memories being almost a generation apart. Both my parents came from big families, eleven children were in mother's family and twelve in my daddy's. They both grew up on farms. Mother in DeKalb County in Alabama and daddy in Egypt, Arkansas.

My grandaddy Everett was a master carpenter, a farmer, and at one time ran a dairy in Lebanon. Mother was born in their house in Fort Payne at the foot of Pine Ridge. Sometime in the 1930s, grandaddy bought the property in Rainsville that will forever be what we all think of as home. The house is built of rocks that he and my mother snaked out of Town Creek with a yoke of oxen. Many of the rocks are three or four feet tall and at least two feet wide. The walls are nearly a foot thick and rock inside and out. The floor is a little wavy as my grandaddy built his house on a rock that he dug out from the side of a small hill. There was a three foot walk around the house and on the back of the house the ground was about six feet high. The roof was flat concrete 4 inches thick. They say my grandaddy used to grow flowers on the roof. By the time I came along it had a gable roof on top and the screened porch had been taken in for another room forever called the front porch.

My Grandmother and Grandaddy Hufstedler lived in Pocahontas, Arkansas when they married and at some point moved to Egypt. There, they raised their children and share-cropped cotton. They lived in an old farmhouse and I don't remember being there as a child until I was fourteen and went to visit with Everett when my nephew was born.

Mother and Daddy divorced when I was three. Mother and us kids moved into Grandmother Everett's house and lived there until I was 12. The house wasn't very big...it had three small bedrooms and Everett and Terry slept in the attic. The house was warm in the winter from the fireplace and the big gas heater on the front porch, and cool in the summer. Those thick rock walls were all the insulation it needed, but Terry and Everett were not inside those thick walls. I'm sure they were cold in the winter and hot in the summer. There wasn't insulation in the attic at all.

I didn't know until after my mother died when I was 19 that mother and daddy were married twice. They got divorced and daddy went back to Egypt to live with his parents. My mother was "sick" sometimes and my uncles and grandmother took care of us kids. After my daddy left to go back to Arkansas, I never saw him again until he came to school to see us kids when I was in the fifth grade. He wanted us to go "for a ride" with him and I wouldn't go. I said if I didn't go home after school, mother would worry about us. I saw Everett and Terry ride off with him and I went back to Mrs. Armstrong's fifth grade class. That was the last time we saw Everett and Terry for several days. My mother was frantic when I told her they were with Daddy. Uncle Guice and Uncle Barnard called the sheriff and swore out a warrant for Daddy's arrest. They found him and my brothers at a friend of daddy's in Henagar. That was the last time I saw my daddy until I was fourteen.

So...in my really formative years I never really knew my daddy. I was priveleged to have my Uncle Guice and Uncle Barnard though. I never knew my mother, brothers, and I were poor until after I grew up. I didn't have all I ever wanted but I had everything I ever needed. Most of all I had the love of a big old family. Uncle Guice and Uncle Barnard never married. They took care of us and my grandmother. Uncle Barnard is 87 and still works several days a week. He still is visiting the sick and the poor and taking care of others. I am so blessed to have him.

Thanks to my family I am still...Living Life.

Cleaning

My mother was a world champion cleaning freak! There was never a Friday that didn't meet its match in my mother. As soon as she got home from work, she lit into housework like a fire consuming dessicated wood. We had to clean a room of windows every week. Dust would fly and I would think I was going to die from sneezing. Every week we would clean one room deeply and give all the others a once-over. Every night I had to miss Jeopardy to wash the dishes. I could hear it, but never got to see it because the dishes had to be done before we could sit down in the living room to watch anything!

When Nicole was a baby, you could have eaten off my floors. I mopped my kitchen and bathroom every night before I went to bed. Every other day, I vacuumed the floors, dusted imaginary dust, and cleaned the table tops of Nicole's little handprints. When she was eight months old and I was going crazy from being in the house with a little one all day, I went to work at the Boy's Club. I had a 9-6 job with an hour for lunch everyday, a $20,000 a year job and life was good. I also hired my first housekeeper. I thought I was in high cotton. Not only did my housekeeper clean the house, she did the laundry for Freddy and me and did the ironing.

I was such a good "ironer" that my mother hired me out to iron when I was fourteen! I began ironing when I was 5 or 6 years old and distinctly remember being in our house in La Puente, California and mother sending me to the basement to iron her nurses uniform. I came back up the stairs with it and she made me go back and "lick that calf over." It took three times before it was to her satisfaction, but I never had to iron something more than once ever again. There was an ad in the paper on Sand Mountain by husband and wife chiropracters and they needed someone to iron their sheets for their exam tables. I did them so well that they started bringing me their lab coats and then eventually all their clothes. I had liked ironing up until then. We didn't have air conditioning and it was terrible that summer ironing in 120 degree heat in our house! When school started back to my relief Mother told them they'd have to find somebody else. I still never slept on a sheet that wasn't ironed until I was somewhere in my twenties. On occasion I will still iron the part of the sheet that turns back on my bed. Now I iron on Sunday mornings before church and only what Freddy and I need to wear to church.

Now I have the cadillac of irons...a Rowenta steam generator. It is something my mother could have only dreamed of. I will never miss that old G.E. iron my mother had that weighed several pounds and sputtered water on the clothes! Then irons became unbelievably lightweight. They didn't get hot enough to take the wrinkles out of the clothes and I hated them. When Nicole was little and I started smocking I had to have a better iron and became a convert of Rowenta. I used several irons until I burned them flat out. I am on my second steam generator. There is nothing like a well ironed shirt. When I hang a freshly ironed shirt, it looks so crisp, I'm sure my mother would be proud.

Since I started school, I guess I have developed a laissez-faire sort of attitude about housework. Things get piled up before you know it and then you just start overlooking all you can't get to. Of course it doesn't help that I have two packrats in the house. Nicole finds it impossible to throw almost anything away. Freddy is only just a little bit better. My mother was a firm believer in giving things away that we didn't use and every six months, right before Christmas and right after school was out for the summer, we cleaned out closets, drawers, and kitchen cabinets. If we had not used or worn something for six months it was going to the Upper Sand Mountain Thrift Store because that was how mother could help those less fortunate than us and things never piled up around our house. Now it sometimes hurts my heart how my house looks, but today after my last final, I took down the valences and the sheers and cleaned the windows, washed the sheers, scrubbed the valences and I am a happy housewife!


A friend of mine on Facebook said he just looked somewhere else when he saw something dirty at his house and he was about out of places to look! Well, my house had gotten in that condition too...I told him to just do one project a day and in no time his house would be clean. So, between now and starting back to school in January, I am going to get cleaned up! Today, the living and dining room windows, tomorrow the world!

I will get back into my dear departed mother's good graces since I know she is looking down on me and saying, "Sis, it's time to get started!" So...here we go! Today's project is putting up the Christmas decorations and then thoroughly vacuuming the house. The day after that there will be another project beckoning but I will start one day at a time and living life...

Short Ribs

This is one of my favorite recipes for short ribs. Sometimes it is hard to find short ribs but today I was fortunate at Wal-Mart and found extra meaty back ribs. Back ribs and short ribs are the same thing. It is so cold and supposed to be colder tomorrow, so I thought that tonight would be a good time to make this meal for my family.

12 beef short ribs
Kosher Salt and ground black pepper
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 1/2 cups or 2 large onions chopped
4 cups large diced celery
3 carrots peeled and diced
1 small bulb of fennel, fronds, stems and core removed and diced
1 leek, remove outer leaves, cut in half and dice, place in bowl of water, swish around and then scoop out of water and place in colander.
3 large garlic cloves, minced or use garlic press
1 small can tomato paste
3 cups burgundy or other dry red wine
Fresh rosemary sprigs
Fresh thyme sprigs
6 cups beef stock or two 26 oz. Swanson Beef Stock
2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the short ribs on a parchment lined half sheet pan. Salt and pepper ribs and place in oven for 15 minutes. Remove ribs from the oven and reduce heat to 300 degrees.

While the short ribs are in the oven, prepare the vegetables and heat the oil in a large dutch oven and add the onions, celery, carrots, fennel, and leek and cook over medium low heat until translucent. Pour the 3 cups of wine and the tomato paste over the vegetables and cook on high heat until the wine reduces at least by half. I cook until the heat concentrates the wine and the vegetables are almost solid looking again, about 20 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon salt and 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper. Tie 2 rosemary springs and about the same amount of thyme into a bundle and the brown sugar and add to the pot. Give everything a good stir.

Place the roasted short ribs in the pot in two layers and add the beef stock and add to the pot. Pour in the beef stock all at once and heat until the contents boil again. Cover the pot and place in the preheated oven. Bake for two hours or until the meat is tender. You do not look in the pot during this time, it will do everything for you all by itself.

After 2 hours carefully remove ribs with tongs and set aside. Take out the bundle of rosemary and thyme and discard. Skim excess fat from the top of the pot with a large spoon. Cook the vegetables and sauce over medium heat for 20 minutes, until reduced again. Put the ribs back into the pot and heat through. Serve with the vegetables and and sauce. The meat may fall off the bones!

I like to serve these ribs with wild rice. To cook the rice. Measure out about 1 1/2 cups of rice. Place 1 1/4 cups of chicken stock into a small pot and bring to a boil. Add the rice and stir well. Cover the pot and reduce heat to low. Do not remove cover for 15 minutes. Remove cover after 15 minutes and fluff rice with a fork.

This will serve 4-6 people depending on whether they eat 2 or three ribs.

Excuses, Excuses

I have a pretty short fuse for excuses. I don't like them and I try not to use them except for extreme emergencies. I have even been put out a little when other bloggers I follow don't post often enough to satisfy my need for distraction when I should be studying but I need a little break. That being said I have noticed that I haven't blogged since October 16th and that is really just inexcusable! All I have to offer is excuses and they aren't very good ones.

I was studying through the valley of the shadow of Dr. Knauss for Nutrition.
I was writing my articles for the Six Mile Post the college newspaper that I am a staff writer for.
I have been writing columns for the afore said Six Mile Post.
I have been rehearsing for the Christmas cantata at church.
I have just been a lazy snake soaking in the sun...
You get the picture...too many excuses and not enough effort to just sit down and write about what I'm thinking about! Sometimes you just have to suck it up and do it.

So, what do I want to write about? Barbara Walter's 10 Most Fascinating People seemed to have shorter segments this year and her two toned hair was not her best look. The white on top just looked like her hairdresser forgot to color her gray hair. Her hair would surely be all white at her age and I bet ABC paid the hairdresser a lot of money for that dreadful look. Speaking of white hair, Lady Gaga looked pretty cool and Kate Gosslyn's hair looked so good without the little spikey things sticking up in the back.

Until I started this little rant I think that's enough to break the drought. Merry Christmas all!

Finding Your Distant Past

Today at 12:46pm

First, I am a daughter of the Confederacy. Never had proof before today but I found out online. It is amazing. I was just kidding my brother that if you can't be found on Google, you don't exist. Well, I have nearly a whole page of listings. He had a few. The amazing part was that I gound a 395 page document with listings of my whole paternal side of my family back to the 1600s in some cases!



For sure I know that my great-grandfather, Samuel Moore Hufstedler, was a Confederate in the Civil War. In an article called, "Then and Now" one of his sons, David gave the following account:



"The Federals came and captured my father and gave him his choice to take the Oath of Allegiance or go with them as a prisoner of war. He took the oath and it meant death if he was ever caught in arms against the North again. They wrote down his name, weight, height, color of his eyes and hair. Then in about a year a man by the name of John Mitchell made up a Rifle Company of Rebels and he had to join or they would have conscripted him. So there he was. They took him about 50 miles from home and then he left them and came home and hid out for the rest of the war. We carried him his grub about a mile. I didn't think he did anything wrong.



The war had not been on long till our salt played out. Then everybody dug up the dirt from their smokehouses where the meat had dripped and put the dirt in a hopper like an ash hopper, poured water on it and boiled down the dirty water to make salt. When that played out six or eight of us went to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for salt and got only one bushel to the family. On the way back at the St. Francis River robbers took everything we had but our salt. We had a lot of coffee, dry goods, domestic, shoes, hats and calico, for that was what they wore in those days.



We was water bound at St. Francis (Arkansas) for about three days. We took logs and hauled them to the river and nailed them together to make a raft. We took our ox lines and made a rope to pull the raft back and forth. Then took our wagons over, unyoked the oxen, took our yokes over on the raft. We swam seven yoke of oxen and some of the boys crossed over to yoke the steers as they came out of the water. There was a big snow on the ground and it was the coldest weather I ever saw. Our bed would freeze to the ground. I was about 16 years old."



David was one of my great-grandfather's 22 children. He also raised a step-daughter and four children who belonged to his brother and his wife. When his brother died he took the widow and children in with his family.



You might wonder that it was only my great-grandfather in the Civil War. I come from a long line of long lived people. My own grandfather had twelve children and lived into his 90s. Samuel Moore Hufstedler lived well into his 90s and had one daughter, Great Aunt Lizzie, who lived to be 103. My brother remembers going to Pocahontas, Arkansas as a child to visit her many times. She died in 1974, the year before I got out of high school.



There will be more about my amazing family stories as I uncover them. Until then you will find me...Living Life.

Etowah Adventure III

Well, I did it again. Made a wonderful trip with the Coosa River Basin Initiative on the Etowah River. This time we did 17 miles from the US 411 bridge to the boat ramp at the soccer fields boat ramp at the by-pass in Rome. I have now officially paddled from Allatoona Dam to Rome. WhooHoo!

On Thursday Freddy gave Nicole and me the go ahead to buy our own sit-on-tops. We got Tarpon 100s at Terrapin Outdoors between Piedmont and Centre. Mine is robin's egg blue and Nicole's is ultramarine blue. We got awesome paddles too. What we didn't get and needed the most were gloves. We both got a few blisters from paddling so long. It took us 8 hours and 15 minutes to complete the paddle with a few stops along the way. It was a really long day. But my the fun we had. It was Nicole's second paddle and very ambitious but even though there came a time when I thought we would have to lash her boat with mine and a fellow paddler's she made it on her own and really felt like she had accomplished something!

It's sort of a thrill just getting in water at 411. It is a class five put-in! It is very steep and muddy. I enlisted four boy scouts to carry Nicole's and my boats. I was lucky to get down the hill to the water without breaking something. I used my paddle as a balancing tool. Not only is the hill slick, muddy, and steep, there is a deep gulley down the middle of it. It is an accomplishment to get in the water! It took nearly twenty minutes to get all the boats and people down the hill and in the water.

Of course I fell out of my boat again. I got stuck on a rock. My paddle was so pretty that I didn't want to scratch it up so foolishly I reached behind me to push with my hand and the next thing you know I was in the water and my boat was floating away. At least this time I had a paddle leash and the gentleman who caught my boat didn't have to chase but one thing down. The problem with falling out of my boat this time was that it was not in deep water. It was in water about two feet deep and I got banged up on the rocks pretty good. I have a very swollen and painful ankle where I burst a blood vessel and a big bruise on my arm. Oh well, it will get better and other than the initial pain it didn't hurt at all until after the end of the paddle when I got home. There's something to be said for adrenalin and endorphins!

We got to the most intact fish weir I have seen on the river so far. This fish weir is at Two Run Creek. It was amazing and the whole group stopped and played in the water. I body surfed with some of the other people and it was so much fun. Quite a refreshing break. These fish weirs are from 500 to 1000 years old and it is amazing to see how intact they still are. They are basically stacked rocks across the river and the native people but them in a V with a point pointing down stream. The men would walk down the V and another would have a basket at the bottom of the V to catch the fish they startled into the basket. I think that was ingenious. It also gives us a little thrill of white water on an otherwise slow river. There are more fish weirs on the Etowah River than all the other rivers in Georgia combined. There are about 36 between Cartersville and Rome and it's been my pleasure to paddle over all of them this summer. I love the white water!

Our next stop was at Ravenel's Cave. This was our lunch stop so we spent about 45 minutes there. On one side of the river there is an ancient cave that probably was used as shelter by the native people. In the Civil War it was used as a salt peter mine. Sherman's troops blew it up. Inside Joe found two orange salamanders. On the other side of the river is a creek with cold, clear water streaming in. This is where my friend, Matt Kerce and his buddies camped on their nine day trip down the Etowah earlier this summer. There is the biggest shoal on the lower Etowah. It is about three to four feet high. Some of us body surfed it, I did too. It was so much fun! Kind of hard on the butt, but once you are over it, you swim toward the shore and once you get in the eddy, the current takes you right back up the river to the shoal so you can do it all over again!

This is such an historic paddle. There are many places where Native Americans lived, worked, and played along this river. Besides the fish weirs there have been many settlements here. There was a large settlement at Two Run Creek. At Tom's Run Creek there is a trestle still standing that was a part of the famous Great Train Chase in the Civil War.  At Young's Mill Creek stood Fort Means in 1838, the US Military gathered the Cherokee before their removal to Oklahoma. The soldiers took the Cherokee in their fields and homes. They didn't let them carry anything but the clothes on their backs. It was a dark time for Native Americans here. All of us in the Coosa River Valley live on Cherokee land. We know why they lived here. It is a beautiful, wondrous place. When you are on the river you can still go miles and not see a house. You can paddle and not hear a car but in one or two places on the entire stretch. It makes you wonder at the beauty of God's world.

My favorite place on this part of the river is Reynold's Bend. At its approach is a small island with its high side facing upstream. If one had time this would be a great place to swim. You could jump of the high side into the cool water. Of course, Nicole and I are the slowest paddlers and we didn't get to swim this time, but there is always another time. The river makes a tight curve at the bend and when you come around the point it looks like a different river. There are huge rock faces on river left. If you look around you just might find a rope swing hanging in a big poplar tree. The river narrows here and there is a cool canopy of trees above you.

Once you get to Dykes Creek there are two fish weirs in a row. These are the last fish weirs on the Etowah. The current of the water picks up. It is refreshing and you know that there is only a couple of more miles to go. It took Nicole and me a long time to get this far and we thought it would take about another forty-five minutes to get to the boat ramp. It didn't. With the speed of the current we were able to make it. One of my favorite sites all day was to see Freddy standing on the ramp with his red baseball cap waiting on us. He had called to see where we were. We didn't realize we were just one bend in the river away. He only had to wait about five minutes for us!

This was a wonderful day. I would like to thank a few people who make paddling our rivers so much fun. Joe Cook is our River Keeper. He is a fount of knowledge about all the rivers in Georgia, but his heart lies in the Coosa River Basin and we are proud to know him proud that he fights for the rivers in Northwest Georgia. Alan Crawford is the CRBI volunteer who sets up all our paddles. He spends untold hours registering us for the paddles and greets us at each one. He gives us our maps, takes our money, if any is owed, and sometimes paddles with us. Alan was felled by a disease called sarcoidosis. One day it attacked his nervous system and he couldn't walk. He is amazing. You need to look him up on YouTube. He has let nothing stop him and you can see him skateboarding! He also invented the Crawford Crawler, an aluminum framed contraption with heavy duty wheel chair wheels and straps that allows him to be lowered into the river in his kayak. He puts his faith in the people who hold the rope that puts him in and out of the river. One of the most amazing sights I have ever seen was the people pulling Alan out of the Etowah at 411 on my first paddle! Remember the discription at the beginning of this blog?!? When we put in that day at Euharlee Creek a little boy said he thought that they were going to let him go! I told him that this was NOT Six Flags.

I'd also like to thank the Boy Scouts who carried our kayaks down the treacherous hill. We wouldn't even have gotten started if it hadn't been for them. I'd like to thank Tim who paddled with us Saturday. Not only did he catch my float away boat, but he kept Nicole and me company all day. I'd also like to thank the sweep-man, Chase. Every paddle has a person who stays at the back with the slow paddlers to make sure everybody gets off the river safely. Chase was ours for the day. He was all patience and kindness with Nicole and me. I'd also like to thank Nicole for not giving up. I am so proud of her. It was really something to see my 90 lb. daughter paddle a boat that weighs 52 pounds and more because of the things we carry with us! She was amazing, and she learned that perserverance pays off. I love you honey, I look forward to paddling many more river miles with you.

Labor Day Weekend 2009

Freddy, Nicole, and I just spent a wonderful weekend camping in our motor home at the Rocky Mountain Project in Big Texas Valley just outside Rome. We had a great time and it was so peaceful. We had a campfire two nights out of the four. It rained once and we had to come home on the fourth day. I cooked on the grill. I make BBQ ribs that are out of this world good, and when I have the opportunity to make them over the fire, they are superb, if I do say so myself. I cooked bacon on the grill on Sunday after Freddy and I came back to camp from church. We had stupendous BLTs for our lunch. I found heirloom tomatoes at Kroger before we went. The tomatoes and grilled bacon with crispy crunchy iceburg lettuce was the bomb! I cooked hamburgers on the grill the first night we were there. I like grilling. I have two gas grills, but which is my favorite? The good ole Weber grill, that you use charcoal with. Gas just does not impart the flavors and smokiness that a charcola grill does.

Scantron forms

Today I bought my first scantron cards for school. You may wonder what they are and why it matters that I had to buy them. They are the forms that one uses to "bubble in" the answers to our multiple choice questions on tests at school, then the professor can run them through a machine that grades them. Why does it matter that I had to buy them? Why am I upset that I had pay a mere 40 cents for them and it upsets me so much? We can also only buy them three at a time because they are in such limited supply in the school bookstore.

Scantron forms are only a symptom of the changes that are happening in the halls of higher learning this year. Yes we know that the economy tanked. Yes we know that the state of Georgia is having a crises in receiving tax revenue because of the economy. We also know that tuition went up. There is also a fee that each student in the state must pay. Last year it was $25.00, this year it went up to $50.00.

On Friday our professors and staff at colleges all across Georgia will be taking a furlough day. There is not enough money in the state coffers to pay our teachers for all the work they do. Many of our professors will not be taking the day off. They will be working in their offices or at home doing the things they do everyday. They are one dedicated lot of people. They just won't be paid for it.

Our scantron forms are not that expensive. It's not like they cost anywhere in the neighborhood of our textbooks, but; if our tuition goes up and our student fees go up could someone in charge have thought that if we buy enough scantron forms for the whole University System of Georgia, the students will not have to pay for them! They certainly would not cost the state anywhere near 40 cents apiece!

We are nearly one week into the school year and the book store at school has not had them but at the first day of school. There was a run on the scantron forms when professors announced in class that we would have to buy them. Some students bought 15-30 according to the book store assistant manager. Today, a week later I was able to buy three. Since I have three classes I should have what I need for my first test in each class. One of my advisers on the Six Mile Post said that now she had to try to schedule her tests for WHEN the book store had scantron forms in stock. I think that borders on the ridiculous.

According to various news outlets like the Rome News-Tribune and all the television local news broadcast, ABC, and CNN when the economy gets bad people go back to school. Attendance is at record levels since the recession began. If our parking lot is any indication, this must be a true statement at GHC! There are at least a third more cars in the lot on Mondays and Wednesdays when I am there. My logic tells me that if attendance is at an all time high in Georgia then tuition and fees should cover small things like scantron forms. My logic also tells me that our professors should not be having to take furlough days because there is not enough money to pay them. I feel yet another letter to our governor, Sonny Perdue coming on. Join my in the cause, write letters to your state representative, the governor, and our lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle. Let them know that this small issue is important.

Three great people

In the last three weeks, three of my friends have passed away. It makes one think of great questions in life and also practical ones. One was my next door neighbor and two were gentlemen from my church. They were wonderful people in such divergent ways.



Eugenia Carnes Wiseman was my neighbor. Before she and her daughter, Glenda, moved next door thirteen years ago, her mother, Henrietta Carnes was my neighbor. There have been Carnes next door to us for the past twenty-six years and I don't know what it's going to be like to not have a Carnes neighbor next to us. Mama Bill was always handy whenever I needed to run somewhere and needed a last minute baby sitter. She was a wonderful cook. We could expect some wonderful treat often from her kitchen. She walked everyday into her 90's, I could not keep up with her on the steep hills around our house. After Mama Bill passed away, her daughter, Eugenia, and her granddaughter, Glenda, came to keep us company. We have been blessed by their company. While we were in New York and Mississippi, Glenda fed our cats everyday. Now they live between their house and ours. Glenda is mentally handicapped. She is just a little older than me. It has been wonderful to have her as my neighbor these past years. It was always good to see her walking in the yard. If she came by and saw no food in the cats bowl she would come on the porch and go feed them. Sometimes she would be on the porch and we would come out in our underwear and be surprised that she was there!



The sad thing about Eugenia's death is that Glenda will have to move. She receives a small stipend from Social Security because of her handicap. Now there is not enough money for her to pay the expenses in the house and she will have to move to public housing. Glenda misses her mother and I'm sure she will miss our remaining shared cat. One of our cats was killed last week and she was devastated. She kept saying it was terrible to lose her mother and her second favorite cat in one week. We had a funeral for the cat and invited Glenda to attend. We stood around the grave and told stories about Spot. Glenda told about Casey and Spot killing a copperhead a couple of weeks ago in their yard. She was convinced that they were protecting her and her mother. Glenda will live by herself in the high rise. She is capable of cooking, riding the bus, and is an excellent house keeper. She will be fine, but I will miss her so, so much. It will be hard not to see her everyday, in the yard or on our back porch.



Kenneth Stipe and his wife, Bobbye, were some of the first people I met when we moved to Rome. We started a new Sunday School class at North Rome Methodist twenty-six years ago. I have known them exactly half my life. They adopted us as part of their family. They have been like parents to me and Freddy and grandparents to Nicole. We have always had chili and cornbread on Halloween night until the last few years. Freddy had seven surgeries on his foot beginning when Nicole was in kindergarden and through the third grade. Bobbye and Kenneth kept Nicole several times through those years so she could go to school and not have to stay with my family in Alabama and miss school. Kenneth was the world champion hugger. He would fold one in his arms and gently give the best hugs ever. He was always in a good mood and always had a smile on his face. Once, Bobbye told him Leigh needed a whipping. He took her to her room, pulled of his belt and told her to hollar every time he swung the belt. Bobbye thought he was killing Leigh and she came up and caught him in the act of beating the bed to death! He was too gentle to whip Leigh. He was firm when he needed to be, but I only ever saw his gentleness.

Kenneth's funeral was a testament to a life well spent. Steve Story and Barbara Davis performed the service and his son, Ken Stipe did the best eulogy I've ever heard. He read things he had written down about his daddy through the years, he read letters from Kenneth's daughter, Leigh, and his son-in-law, Mark. They talked about how wonderful, kind, and gentle he was. Freddy, my husband, did the music. He played the guitar and led us in singing "How Great Thou Art." He sang a song he wrote, "When Flowers Bloom." Kenneth always loved it when Freddy sang in church. He especially loved it when he would sing something he wrote accompanying himself on the guitar. After Ken's loving eulogy, Freddy sang "Ave Maria" a cappella. It was probably the hardest thing he had ever done. We laughed and cried, cried and laughed and Freddy had to hold his composure which he did admirably.

It seems strange to me that we have to compress a person's life to an hour. We try to boil their life down to it's essence. I guess most of the time we manage pretty well, after all funerals are for the living, not the person who has gone on to another plane. I think that if we are remembered, we are still alive in another's heart. I hope one day that most people that have known me in life will remember me fondly. I will remember these three people for as long as I live because they made an impression on me in some way. I will remember you Eugenia, Kenneth, and George. I will remember you while I am Living Life...

The Fourth of July Weekend

It was a wonderful Fourth of July weekend this year. I suffered no catastrophes, made it through the whole weekend without falling down. I paddled a river, cooked the most awesome meal, had a wonderful night at the fireworks, finished the fourth with watermelon and kisses, and...when it was raining on this fine Sunday, rolled right over and went back to sleep all afternoon.

On Friday, July 3, my friend, Sandy, and I loaded up at her house in Piedmont and drove two more hours south to the Coosa River in Wetumpka, Alabama. We see the beginning of the Coosa everyday here in Rome. At the confluence of the Etowah and Oostanaula Rivers the Coosa begins right here in downtown. It is a muddy river here. In Wetumpka, the river has mica and quartz crystals through it and it looks like gold and diamonds in the water. There are interesting rock formations all along the river that you might or might not see depending on the discharge from the Jordan Dam. There are several rapids going from Class I to II to the infamous Class III rapids that goes by the name of Moccasin Gap. It has a pretty fast flow and is an S turn. You have to be on your Ps & Qs to make it. You must hug the right side of the first fall and stay right going through the S. If you don't the big sandstone rock has a shelf that will reach right out and grab you. That's what happened to many people. I don't know if it was the first time a lot of people had paddled this stretch of river, but almost every canoe flipped on the shelf of rock in the second bend. We laughed watching all of them. Sandy said that she had never seen so many people turn over. I anchored in the rocks and Sandy would reach out to people floating by and we made friends with about 15 people we fished out of the river. I met one young man from Fort Payne, my home town. He and his girlfriend made good natured fun of their friends who had flipped in the Gap. Sandy took a picture of them and promised they could see them on Facebook. Right after the picture was taken they flipped their boat in the calm water! It was so much fun!

Saturday, was grilling day. We have three different grills. Two gas grills and one old very nearly worn out kettle grill. Which is my favorite? The old worn out one. I carefully built my indirect fire, soaked and made a foil packet for the cherry wood chips for smoking. I use pure charcoal, none of that presoaked charcoal for us. I use a chimney starter to get it going. While waiting for the coals to turn white I made a rub for the Boston Butt. I used cayenne pepper, paprika, salt, pepper, garlic, dry mustard, brown sugar and gave that baby a massage like it never had in real life. I smoked the butt for two hours on the grill then finished it in the oven for three hours. It was the best pulled pork I've had since Henry Irwin ran his BBQ on Broad Street. I made my own sauce. I used brown sugar, pepper flakes, salt, pepper, tomato sauce, ketchup, garlic, and my secret ingredient is a Sprite. I simmered it for the three hours that the Butt finished in the oven. I made potato salad, slaw, and baked beans to finish out the meal. My brother, Everett and our Uncle Barnard came to partake of our repast. A good time and a full stomach were had by all. We loaded up the CRV with extra lawn chairs and headed to Ridge Ferry Park for the Fourth of July celebration and fireworks. We enjoyed the music, the moment of silence to remember our troops who have given their all for our freedoms, and of course the fireworks. There must of been near 100,000 people who watched the fireworks from the park and all the higher areas of Rome. When we returned home we had watermelon, printed pictures for Everett and Uncle Barnard of the night's festivities, hugged and kissed them and sent them on their way. They left around midnight and Freddy kept telling me I needed to let Uncle Barnard go home. I did, but reluctantly!

Sunday came with overcast sky and a gently falling rain. Just the relief we needed since we have been having weather so hot we just short of hellfire and damnation! We were going to church, but I couldn't wake dear husband up. I sat on the front porch with a good book, my Sprite, and an absorbing book. I slept Sunday afternoon away in a nap in my favorite napping spot, the sofa. We had great leftovers and probably will have them for the rest of the week. Can Living Life be better than this!

Failing and Overcoming

Well, I knew I did too much other stuff over the weekend and I must say, if you're going to blow a test, blow it in a big way! And...I did, along with most of my classmates. Who ever thought that it would be a good idea to take a science course in the middle of the summer? My advisor, that's who. She failed to tell me that we would be covering four weeks of a fall or spring semester's worth of work in one night! Two and a half hours of lecture surely is hard to sit through and keep your mind and bottom in gear. The amount of memorization is staggering! My advisor thought that with my GPA I would breeze through Microbiology.

There is only one way to fix a goof up and that's to work harder for it not to happen again. I have always tried to work hard but I just let this one slide and I thought my innate love of Science would pull me through. That must have been most of my classmate's attitudes too, because professor said he'd never had a group as a whole fail a test on such a large scale! Tomorrow, out come the books and the internet to look things up that I don't understand in the book.

By the way, why do professors make you buy books that you NEVER use and spend anywhere from $50.00 to $350.00 on them. I have had 28 college classes, I have had maybe five that I really used my books for. They also have to point you to the school bookstore to buy them, where if you are so inclined, you may pay full retail for them. After the first semester of school I learned about Amazon, EBay, Cheap Books, and OZ. I have bought new books for much less than half price. Not only have I learned to blog this summer, I have learned to sell my old books and maybe make enough money to buy my fall books! I may put a little more information with my books than others do and maybe that's why they have sold so quickly! I always tell if there is writing in them. I only use pencil if I do write in them. I mean they are just like new when I say they are like new. I detest buying a book from someone that is NOT what they promised. I have learned to find my professor's web sites and find out what books I need before I take their class. No more full costs books for this girl.

Most teachers have notes on their web sites, plus outlines and their power points. Technology will get you nearly anywhere you need to go in both of the colleges I have attended. There was none when I was in high school. We still had slide rulers for Pete's sake! Hand held calculators were just coming out and did little more than add, subtract, multiply, and divide. You were uptown if you had one that did percentages and the teacher's wouldn't let you use them in class. Now they do the Quadratic Equation and factoring! Now we need a class to learn how to use them. Mr. Forrester and Mr. Blalock spent a great deal of their time showing us how to use them for each section of Alegebra we were in. I got extra help from both of them. I stayed for tutoring every day and when I couldn't remember their tricks for a problem I would stroll to their offices for their advice. I would write detailed instructions, but I couldn't remember them for five minutes. The first quarter I spent with Mr. Blalock, I cried every test. I gave that up when I got to Mr. Forrester's class. They had many a laugh over me. I am Algebra challenged. I just cannot remember formulae to save my life! But I hope that you are impressed that I know formulae is the plural of formula! I pulled a "B" from Mr. Blalock and and two "A's" from Mr. Forrester. That's how far you can go with a little, okay... a lot of determination! I may never be a whiz at Algebra, but I can write an essay in fifteen minutes flat (with references) and read a 400 page book in two days.

This blog makes me sound ancient. I am not. I am 52. I am many times the oldest person in my class. Most of my classmates think I am in my thirties until I tell them differently. I am proud to be the "old girl" in my classes. And with the exception of Ultrasound Physics and Microbiology, I have always been at the top of my class. If you think you are ancient, you probably are. Go out today and do something that makes you feel young. Ride that old rusty bike down the river trails, buy a kayak and paddle the rivers! Go register for those classes you've always said you were going to do. Learn something or do something new everyday. You might just surprise yourself. Love God, Love People, Love Living Life.

First Test and Father's Day

Well it's that time again. The first tests of the summer semester is on Monday. I despise first tests. You never know how that particular professor is going to test, what style of tests will any particular professor use? You don't know what to study so you study EVERYTHING and it's hard to remember ANYTHING! I stress so much over the first test that I nearly become ill. So I have two tests with two different professors on Monday and they are both the day after Father's Day.



It's so hard to allot your time so that everyone gets attention and you spend enough time studying. Not only do I have to schedule study time but I also have to do the housework, mow the yard and I so need to do the laundry. There just isn't enough time in the day!



Freddy is a wonderful Dad. He has two boys, Wayne and Scotty, and we have Nicole. The boys have grown up to be great young men and Nicole is growing into an adult. Where did all the time go. Wayne and Scotty were 11 and 9 years old respectively when I came along. They are independent and have their own homes. I hope they have the life that they want. Nicole is still in school and I really hope that she likes digging in the dirt since she has been studying horticulture for the past three years. I don't know what is in the future but it sure has been a good ride with our kids.



Freddy is so patient with me and going to school. I have taken full loads every quarter or semester since September of 2006. I can't believe I've been in school this long! Three years! I took all college level classes at Coosa Valley Tech and had 71 hours invested there. Then I didn't like the Vascular Technology program after I got in it. In January of this year I transferred to Georgia Highlands College and became a freshman again. After checking my advising transcript today I found out I am now listed as a Sophomore. I still have two more years to go before I finish school. I so appreciate Freddy for sending me this long.

I hope that most days in life Freddy is content. He has such a stressful job! He is the Engineering Manager at Sara Lee here in Rome. There is always some kind of mechanical problem/project going on or some kind of issue with employees. I know though that he does a great job! I'm sure that though the sacrifices he makes to work at such a high stress occupation keeps him so busy we are glad to be able to live in our own home again.

After twenty-seven and a half years of marriage, we finally know most everything about each other. I know what he likes and doesn't like. I know most of the time what he's thinking. I know what kind of clothes he likes. I know he loves photography. I know he loves his family. I know that he loves Lexi, our Yorkie. I know he loves to eat fresh strawberries. I know he loves God. I know he loves to pick his guitar and sing songs that he wrote. He also likes to sing in the choir. I know so many things about him, and yet, there is much I don't know about him. He can still surprise me after all these years. That's the best part of being his wife.

Life may be hectic, without enough time in the day to do all I need to do, but I'm privileged to be in school, I'm happy to be a mother and step-mother and I'm happy to be a wife. Living Life, wouldn't take anything for living in my zoo!

Uncle Barnard

Today is Uncle Barnard's eighty-seventh birthday. He is still in good health and works two different jobs. I think that's what keeps him going. He has never stood still for too long at a time.
He never married and helped raise me and my two brothers and sent my Aunt Jean and Uncle Guice through college. He is always visiting "old" people in the nursing home, hospitals, or the homebound. He taught us to do the same. He is a most awesome man.



I don't know what we would have done as we were growing up without Uncle Barnard. He bought all my school clothes. Right before school started every year, he would come home with seven to nine dresses and tell me to pick my five favorites. I always was looking good when I went to school that first day. On my birthday, December 29, the whole process was repeated.



Every Friday evening when Uncle Barnard came home, he would come with a trunk load of groceries. We would all go out and help bring them in. Every other Sunday he cooked a pot roast with all the trimmings. On the other Sundays, Mama cooked fried chicken. We never knew how many people would be coming to eat. We always had cousins, other aunts and uncles, and friends who would show up on Sundays to eat with us. Most of the time the preacher and family would be there too.



We had a host of friends who would come on Saturdays or Sundays. Sometimes Uncle Guice would play the Hammond organ and Uncle Barnard would play the piano. Donald Hammonds would play the piano too. Donald taught me to dance "The Pony, and the Mashed Potato, and the Watusi" in grandmother's living room. Uncle Barnard would cut the rug with me too. The Meyers Sisters worked with Uncle Barnard years before I was born and came often to visit. Uncle Guice's sweetheart Nelli Burt was usually there too. The bigger the crowd the happier we all were. I still love to have company and I guess I got this from Uncle Barnard and Mother. Our door was always open. I don't remember our door ever being locked when I was a child. I don't even know if there was a key to the house.



Uncle Barnard lives in the home place that my granddaddy built out of huge rocks that he and my mother snaked out Town Creek with oxen. Some of them are four to five feet tall. The outside and inside of the house are made of these. It doesn't take a lot to keep it warm in the winter or cool in the summer, but if the rocks ever get cold in the winter it takes quite some time to warm them up! When we were kids, Mother and I slept in the back bathroom, Grandmother in the front, Uncle Guice in the bedroom off the kitchen, Everett and Terry slept in the attic, and Uncle Barnard slept in the little house out by the road. I don't know how but we all fit and we often had company too. Uncle Glysco, Aunt Lela and Mickey would come for a visit once a year and so would Uncle Edward, Aunt Ethel, Butch and Laura. Aunt Eulene and Uncle Yewell came every year with Melinda and Robert. Uncle DeArmond and Aunt Hazel came once a year too. By the time I was old enough to remember, their kids were already grown. When I was little, I thought our house was huge. Now it is small. Isn't it a wonder how our perspective changes when we grow up? There was always enough room for everybody though. The kids would sleep on pallets and as soon as Grandmother got up we had to too. We had to fold the quilts and put them away in case we had company to visit whatever company we had.



We would always sit outside when it was pretty. We had lawn chairs every where and a picnic table. Grandmother would make sweet tea and we drank it out of those aluminum glasses that everybody had in the sixties. They gave the drinks a sharp taste that I loved. There was nothing like water from the spring in one of those glasses! We would have watermelon cuttings and them cut the rinds up to feed the cows. Uncle Barnard never really liked the cows. It was something that Uncle Guice and I did. Uncle Guice always kept a milk cow until Everett and Terry graduated from high school and it almost broke my heart when he sold the last milk cow. Of course, I never had to milk! I might have felt differently about it if I'd had to do it.



Aunt Jean and Uncle G.B. came with Brian and Tim nearly every other Sunday to see us. I would run out to the car and tell them every thing that had happened since they were there last and Aunt Jean would say that they never needed the news when I was around. I guess I still do that through my blog. Aunt Edith and Uncle Lester came pretty often on Sundays and I never could figure out how they went to church at 11:00 am but got to our house, an hour away, at 12:00 noon. I was probably in my teens before I figured out that twenty-five miles away the time changed! Aunt Edith never came to visit me without bringing me a gift. She made me an Easter outfit several years when I was a little girl. When I would go to visit her on Lookout Mountain she would put me in her little VW and take me to Loveman's in Chattanooga and buy me an outfit. Then, when I was properly dressed, gloved, hatted, and shod she would take me to the Reed House for lunch. Most of the time I thought she was the cat's pajamas but sometimes she was stern like Grandmother and I would want Mother to come get me.



Vondell, Glenda's husband, would fly over the house sometimes in his little plane and buzz us several times. He'd actually holler out the window for us to come to the airport and pick him up. He took me on my first airplane ride. I thought I was going to die when we went over the edge of Lookout Mountain and we hit the down and up drafts! It was the first time I saw our house from the sky. I thought our little farm was beautiful.



At Christmas, Uncle Barnard and I would take a van full of toys to the United Methodist Children's home in Selma. I never could understand why children of divorced parents could be in an orphanage. I couldn't understand that there were children with two parents that at least one of them didn't want those kids. Everett, Terry and I may have had divorced parents but we never had to worry where our next meal was coming from or be cold or without nice clothes. Uncle Barnard and Uncle Guice took care of all our daily needs. Our other aunts made sure we had treats through the year. Aunt Jean would dress me up and take me to see Santa Clause and have my picture taken even though I didn't really believe in Santa anymore. Aunt Flora, Grandmother's sister told me there was no Santa Clause when I was four. She used to keep me when Mother worked at Forrest Avenue Elementary School and it was against her religion or something.



Uncle Barnard has always been kind and wonderful to all of us in this huge family we had. I don't know what we would do without him and I hope he has many more birthdays to share with us. I hope I get to emulate the wonderful life Uncle Barnard has had so far. Living Life...sure has been a trip with Uncle Barnard.

Paddling the Etowah

Yesterday Nicole and I joined nearly seventy other river rats and paddled 10 miles of the Etowah River. It was gorgeous! We arrived at Osborne Park in Euharlee where we met up with the other paddlers. We were even a little early and... if you know Nicole that was a major accomplishment! She is not much of a morning person but she really hung in there yesterday.

There are no boat launches on the Etowah except in Rome, so we had to go down a steep little path to get to the creek that led to the river. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! One of the best things about the trip was Alan Crawford, the person in charge of Adventure for the Coosa River Basin Initiative, is a paraplegic. Some of the men from the Initiative made an aluminum frame with wheel chair wheels and webbing across it for the kayak. The rolled Al down a very steep bank and got him in the water. On the water, Al was not disabled in any way. We had a great day with Al and appreciated all his efforts.

This is the launch site at Osborne Park in Euharlee. It was fairly steep.


We paddled about half a mile on the creek and then the river opened up before us. There were several fishing weirs on the trip. These were places where the Cherokee placed rocks in the river to herd fish into a narrow space and then they caught them with nets. There are rocky shoals all along the river and most places it was only a foot to waist deep. We floated several miles and took a group break on an island. Nicole pointed out some animal tracks in the mud. "Deer tracks," I said. I asked her if she was surprised that I knew that and she replied that no she wasn't. I know everything. For once she wasn't ill with me or anything almost all day! We got back in our boats in swift water and I lost my paddle. A lady said, "Here I come!" She and I got to the paddle at the same time. Nicole laughed at me. Her laughter was like silver over the water. Nicole took this picture of me when we got to our first rest stop. An island in the middle of the river. This is the group of nearly 70 "River Rats" who had a great day on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 This is me just paddling along about to go under Hardin Bridge. My back was really killing me, this little boat doesn't have an adjustable seat, and I thought I would just try so sit on the back of the boat.





Just before Hardin Bridge Road, I decided my back just couldn't stay in one position any more! I tried to push up to sit on the back of my sit-on-top. Big mistake...that boat whipped me over the side faster than you could say, "Jack Sprat!" I came up spitting and hissing. My life jacket was too big and it was about to kill me! I thought I was going to drown from the life jacket! It came above my ears, pushed my glasses all cockeyed, and knocked my hat up on one side, down on the other. Nicole was having a fit. She laughed so hard she could hardly catch her breath. The other thing that amazed me about this spill was that it didn't even turn my can of Sprite over! It was sitting there in the boat right with my shoes. They had not moved one little bit. The water was just the perfect temperature after I got my breath back and I would have floated until I could reach the bottom but Nicole was freaking out! She doesn't like to be in water that she can't see her feet. Well, I didn't care that I couldn't see my feet, it was great. I guess I floated a hundred feet or so when there was a rock just under the water that I could stand on to get back on my boat. There were no witnesses to my embarrassing spill, the people behind Nicole and me were around one bend in the river and the people in front were too. But, I have the pictures to prove it. Nicole says that when I die she's going to blow it up and put it up for everyone to see. I told her if she died before I did, I have naked baby pictures of her!

Well, I tried to sit on the back of the boat and this is the result...an unexpected swim. My lifejacket was too big and it knocked my glasses and hat all catywampas. I thought I would drown from the jacket! I picked the one place in this whole stretch of the river that the water was over my head to turn over.
This is me just chillin' and being cool after my "swim." Whew!

We came to a rock place with shoals all across the river for lunch. It was a beautiful place and people were body surfing over the rocks out in the middle of the river. Our canoes were wedged over some logs and there was a huge spider underneath it. When it was under the log, it was black, when it crawled on top, it turned a light gray. I didn't know that some spiders were chromatophores! It had a leg spread bigger than a silver dollar. Another spider with shorter legs and a big round abdomen kept crawling up on the front of Nicole's boat. She has arachnophobia. She wasn't even in her boat. She was standing on shore eating her sandwich. I flicked it off and dang! that spider came right back up the side of that boat. I flicked it again, this time it got caught by the current and it was bye bye spider. It's good to be the Mama that's not afraid of things to save my daughter from even if it's just a spider. When we got back in the boats I got stuck against the rocks at the Class 1 rapids. I finally pushed the back of my boat away from the rocks and pointed straight ahead and shot across them. Another party was crossing across the river from us. The spilled and all their stuff came out of their canoe. Several people in canoes turned over. Our little sit-on-tops were very stable as long as you don't try to climb behind the cockpit in the deepest water on that stretch of the river.

Many of the creeks around Rome have trash in them. When you walk you see plastic shopping bags up in the trees from people just throwing them down, and then the wind and rain sweeps them in the creeks. When it floods from heavy rains they float on top of the water and wind up in the trees. I didn't see one bag in the trees on the river. It was remarkably clean. Mark Lamade, the CRBI board president, found a plastic gas can complete with the spout. He tied it to his kayak and pulled it behind him home. He said that he always came back with more than he started out with. I saw one red plastic disposable cup in the river but somebody picked it up before I got to it. We also carried a plastic bag, tissues, and a trowel in case nature called on the trip. It did. I do believe a 2 piece swimsuit is in my future. I didn't think about getting a wet suit down and back up while I was in the woods. Nicole was much faster than I was, she didn't have to get completely undressed! We packed all out our accoutrements. The only thing we left behind was footprints.
This is Nicole just after we went through the last rapids. She didn't follow me, choosing her own path and it swamped her boat.
Nicole's legs in her swamped boat. She didn't like this too much.

Nicole bailed her boat out with her shoe! When in doubt just improvise. We were less than a mile away from the landing site so she was alright.

You might be surprised how quiet it was on the trip down the river. Once we left the park in Euharlee until we got to the takeout on 411 there was not one sound of a car engine. There were only the birds calling to each other.There was one pack of dogs at someone's river house. They came to edge of the river to greet us. One was a mastiff and three were pugs. They looked like miniature clones of the mastiff. We got a kick out of them. We saw a few people on the banks or in skiffs with trolling motors fishing. Other than that the only people we saw were in our group on the river and we were a fairly quiet bunch. It was the most peaceful place I've been ever in Northeast Georgia. The very last rapids we went over, Nicole spilled her half full Dr. Pepper in her lap. We laughed and laughed.I knew when the end of the paddle was near because I could hear cars again. It made feel just a bit melancholy, but also glad to be back in my normal habitat.
All in all, this was one of the best days I've had in a long, long time. I can't wait to buy my first Tarpon sit-on-top with an adjustable seat and a lifejacket that fits! The river was beautiful. The company was excellent, and new friends were made. Saturday, June 13, 2009 is a day that will live long in my memory and a great day for just living life!

Sit On Top Practice

Well tomorrow is a big day, Nicole and I are going kayaking on the Etowah River from Euharlee to the bridge at 411. So I went to Piedmont and rented the sit on tops and got home with them about 6:30. Between thunderstorms tonight Nicole and I took one to her friend's pool to practice getting in and out of them in deep water. Tomorrow when we are on the river with a bunch of other river rats, we didn't want to take a spill and look like complete idiots if we took a spill in front of other people.





We did pretty well. I did turn mine back over several times trying to get back on because I weigh a lot more than the last time I got in a boat in the middle of the lake! Nicole was like an otter! She just slid back in. I feel a lot better now than I did before I practiced. When I was young I was just like Nicole and could slip right over the side. It took quite a bit of effort to haul this big old bottom in the boat but I did it! While I was paddling around the pool, Nicole curled up under the front of the boat and let me paddle her some too. Before you know it she had slipped her leg up on top of the boat and was sitting in front of me. She's so little she didn't even rock the boat.





There's still some kick in this old girl yet. Just Living Life, ain't it a hoot?

Classmate

One of my new classmates came in the other day and sat down right beside me. Sometimes I wonder at classroom dynamics and how we decide who we are going to sit with and who is going to be our friends.

This young lady is so hilarious. She is a beautiful African American girl. She told us she was emancipated at 16 after living with her grandmother who didn't like children, but it was the only place she had to go. For a time she lived in her car, then started sleeping in the church office at night. She is now married to a pastor, and a college student at 26. She is awesome.

There was something about her cadence of speech that struck a cord with me. I asked her where she lived as a kid. She grew up in the projects on MLK. I asked her if she ever ate at the Community Kitchen at North Rome United Methodist Church. She said, "Oh yes, we hit them all, the kitchens, the food pantries, everywhere they could get something to eat." I asked her if she remembered the lady who ran the kitchen...She replied that yes she did..."oh wait, was that you?" Well, yes it was. I founded Rome Urban Ministries Community Kitchen when Nicole was 2 years old. I did it because it was something I could do and take Nicole with me and because I needed a ministry and one thing I could do was cook for a crowd. I remembered this little girl because of her cadence of speech. She is doing wonderfully now after such a rocky start in life...

Many times I see former clients on the street, or at the store. Several are doing well now. You never know who or how you will impact someone in life. Maybe, just maybe years later you see something you did that bears fruit. Satin is not my client anymore, now she is my classmate...and my friend.

I used to say that when I died it would be wonderful for people to call me the "Lunch Lady." It still would not be a bad epitaph, but there is so much more to me. You could call me the eternal student. You could call me a wife and mother. I hope you remember I was just Living Life.

Falling Down

On the first evening of class last semester and the first evening at my new school as I was on my way to class, I fell down. I don't mean I just fell, I really WIPED OUT and slid about four feet on the pavement! Books scattered everywhere, my shoes came off, my glasses went flying. The first thing I did was look to see if anyone was watching. I was in the wrong parking lot (faculty only) but I didn't know it then and it was DARK. I didn't see anybody and was relieved! Then...a car door opened and my heart almost jumped out of my chest. A gentleman asked me if I needed help and I hastily said no. I gathered up my things and asked him if he knew where I needed to go. He replied that no, he was just waiting for his wife. He didn't get out of the car, I think he knew he startled me. I limped off to find my class.

In class, Psychology, no less, I pulled up my jeans legs and looked at my knees...they were bloody and scraped and ragged. My hands were scraped up too. I was trying not to cry because it hurt like hell! Then I saw the humor in it and began laughing. The whole class laughed with me. I had just started a reputation for being a clutz. You have to understand, I was SO clutzy growing up but I had not fallen since I fell in the ice in New York more than four years ago. I thought I had a graceful streak going! We laughed about my knees all semester. I still have a scar on the left knee and it took nearly two months for them to heal up completely.

Monday was a new semester, summer, and I was happy to be going back to school after the break. When I got home I was pulling my book bag up the steps and the storm door shut on the bag and jerked me down. I banged my arm up on the edge of the door! I peeled skin and got a bruise. Freddy was home for lunch and Lexi (our Yorkie) let him know I was here. He came to open the door for me and asked what was I doing on the floor? He didn't hear all the banging the door made as it closed on me! He, gentleman that he is, helped me up. My butt is still sore.

On Tuesday, my friend, Sandy, and I went bike riding. We rode the Heritage Riverways Trail here in Rome. I took her by the fountain at the Rome History Museum to show her how the Etowah and Oostanala Rivers come together to make the Coosa River. As I rolled up on the sidewalk, my front wheel hit a big crevice in the sidewalk and turned me over. I didn't fall to the ground because this magnolia tree reached right out and grabbed me. Scraped up my left shoulder and I guess I messed my right leg up on my bike! The magnolia right behind me in this picture is the one that grabbed me!

What's the deal with all this falling lately? Am I doomed to fall the first day of class every semester? I just want to prepare myself...Dear Reader, if you have any ideas of how I can break the new falling down streak just let me know!

Ghosts, Do You Believe?

Last night two friends from school and I went for a drink after class. Sweet tea with a bowl of lemons is my poison. One friend asked me if I had any encounters with ghosts. I said I didn't believe in ghosts, then I proceeded with my story...

My mother and Uncle Guice died six months apart the year I was 19. Still the worse year of my life. I never dreamed about them for years, but...My mother would come stand in my doorway every night about 3:00 or 3:30 and smoke a cigarette. I would sit up in bed, smoke a cigarette with her and we would have these short, wonderful conversations. For about two years I would wake up around 3:00 o'clock smelling smoke. I never saw my mother or smoke, but it seemed like she was visiting me.

Then, when Freddy and I were dating, my aunt didn't want me to marry him. He had two children and yegads! lived in a trailer. She thought he would have to pay child support for years and that he wasn't good enough for me. I had the concern that he had two boys, but not about taking care of me or the boys. The mattress was worn and I was sleeping on an air mattress on top of the old mattress. One night I woke up and I smelled cigarette smoke and heard my mother say as plain as day, "It'll be alright, Sis." When I got up I turned on the light and there was smoke in the air and an imprint on the mattress that looked as if someone had been sitting on it! Keep in mind it's hard to make an impression on an air mattress. I was at peace and nearly twenty-eight years later I am still married to the most wonderful man in the world. By the way, my aunt loves him now and I think she thinks it might just work out.

Still, I don't believe in ghosts! My mother and I were so close that I think on some plane she is still looking out for me. How is that? I don't know, the mind is not always rational.

I have dreamed of Uncle Guice and mother many times the last few years and they have all been good dreams. When I wake up it's almost like I had a visit with them. I am sure that if there is an afterlife, that my Uncle Guice is proud of me because I went back to school and my mother is proud of me because I have a happy life.