Life in Daisyland

I haven't blogged for a few days so today I'm going to "catch up" all at once and give you a few glimpses of how things have been in "Daisyland" this past week. It was a busy, but fairly quiet and mostly uneventful, week for me. I spent my time visiting my Mom, working at the library, and walking in the park, among the other usual things I do most weeks.

The photos above and below are ones of my Mom. I'm not sure of the years they were taken, but I think she was probably in her very early twenties in these pictures, so these pictures were probably taken some time between 55 and 60 years ago. Both of these photos were ones my Dad kept and carried in his wallet for as many years as I can remember. His wallet would wear out, and he'd get a new one, but these pictures were always transferred to the new wallet.



On Friday, my brother and his family came up to visit from Dayton. I haven't seen them since last Thanksgiving, so I was glad they could make the trip. His family and mine all went together to the nursing home. (There were 10 of us altogether---there would have been 11, but one of my nephews is working at an internship job in Missouri this summer.)

One of the nurse's aides commented, "It looks like an invasion!" when we all entered the building at once.

We took my Mom out to lunch and had a nice visit. My brother and I even got my Mom to laugh. Any day we can get that to happen, it is a good day. She was thrilled to see us and her grandchildren coming to visit her.

* * * * *

At work, our patrons have been coming to the library in droves wanting to send in faxes to our legislators and/or sign a petition against the governor's proposal to cut library funding. They've also been phoning and emailing them.

Although originally the vote on the proposal was scheduled for July 1st, it has been pushed back to at least July 7th and perhaps to July 14th before the vote to decide the budget will be held.

So we continue to be on pins and needles, waiting and wondering what will happen next. Some of our regular patrons have voiced the opinion that they'd rather see the governor take a 50% cut in his salary than to have the library lose that same percentage of their funding. I don't suppose the governor would be in favor of that idea.

We are already operating on an earlier 20% cut in funding. The governor is proposing an additional 30% cut. If the proposal is passed as it stands now, I will lose my job. It is nice to know that our patrons, at least, appreciate the work that we do and the services we provide for them.

* * * * *

I took pictures of some flowers this past week.

These little pink ones are growing on one of my neighbor's shrubs.

An alumni group from Ohio State University maintains this particular flower bed in our local park. They plant "scarlet and gray" flowers around this white wishing well.

Here is the "O" for Ohio, of course, in flowers.

In another bed I found beautiful lilies in three colors: red,

yellow,

and orange.

My daisies in my flowerbed at home have been blooming for a while but are nearly done flowering. They must be a different variety than these I found in the park. Mine grow on individual stems, but the ones in the park were in huge glorious bunches as you see here.

* * * * *

My husband works as a school psychologist for the county schools here. Since he works in the education field, he has the month of July off for his vacation time. This past week, he spent one day volunteering for charity by parking cars with some of his teaching/golfing buddies at the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic golf tournament.

He came home with this incredibly pink T shirt. One was given to each of the volunteers for them to wear while working at the tournament.

This is a video he took of golfer Natalie Gulbis the day he was there.

* * * * *

My younger son had some grape salad at his girlfriend's family get together recently. He loved it and asked his girlfriend's mom for the recipe. I was a little surprised by this but welcomed his interest in food preparation.

I had just bought grapes at the grocery store and had them on hand without knowing he had asked for the recipe. He wanted to know if he could make the same salad for us. I said, "Of course!!"

I didn't have on hand all of the ingredients that he needed, so he went to the store and bought what we lacked.

At fifteen, I think he is plenty old enough to be set loose in the kitchen with a recipe and ingredients to prepare whatever he wants to make, so I wasn't even home when he was making his grape salad, and he was completely unsupervised.

Well, the recipe called for a mix of red and green grapes, but I had only bought green grapes. We decided it would make the salad less colorful but would not affect the taste that much if he just used all green grapes instead of half and half as called for in the recipe. So I was aware of that small planned change in the recipe. However, my son, unbeknownst to me, had decided to make another change.

Because he "liked the topping part the best," he decided to double the ingredients for that part of the recipe. The topping part of the recipe consisted of just two ingredients, peanuts and brown sugar. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Crazy kid---that sounds like something his mother would do!

Anyway, you can see the finished product in the photo below---perhaps not the most appetizing dish to look at with all the extra brown sugar and peanuts he added and no red grapes to add more color, but it tasted pretty good.

It ended up being extra nutty and extra sweet---just like my son is. ;)

The original recipe the way it was INTENDED to be prepared is below the photo.

Grape Salad

1 pound red seedless grapes
1 pound green seedless grapes
1/2 cup cream cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup finely chopped peanuts
1/2 cup brown sugar


Mix first six ingredients together thoroughly.

In separate bowl, mix together chopped peanuts and brown sugar for topping.
Spread topping over rest of salad and chill for one hour before serving.

* * * * *

My older son, although he has searched, has not found a job for the summer. He has done some babysitting and some odd jobs and yard work, but that is all. Jobs are pretty scarce even for adults in this area, let alone for teenagers looking for temporary summer jobs.

Fortunately, he is spending his summer vacation from college wisely. He has had plenty of time to visit with his friends, eat popcorn, and watch rented movies on the DVD player. Most importantly though, he has had time to learn the best means of attacking and killing zombies so that he will be prepared to protect us in the advent of a zombie invasion.

Thank goodness for that!! I'd hate for us to be unprepared. (Yes, I am rolling my eyes.)