Not to Worry

I have raised four daughters, and believe me, that comes with many worries and anxieties and concerns and dangers, and fears and uncertainties,  and disasters, and so on.   Over the course of many many years,  I have learned that for me to be eaten up by worry and anxiety adds nothing positive to either my children's lives, or mine.   So I have pretty much learned to shut it down.  I have learned to practice the discipline:  Not to Worry.

At the moment,  my one remaining un-married daughter "Cate" is in transition.  I should use the plural.  She has many transitions going on in her life all at once.  They include leaving her job,  moving,  planning a wedding,  getting married, selling her house. (Not to mention launching a daughter into adulthood).

 The details are like dominoes.  The house closing date and the moving date have to be coordinated.  The house that she is moving into is unfinished. There is the need for a storage shed for some place to put her things.  There is a time between when her health insurance ends, and she can get on her husband's.  And on and on the list goes.

 But it doesn't do me any good to worry.  I am a planner and a detail person in the extreme, so not having all the details worked out may drive me crazy, but I do know that there is no point in worrying.  I work very hard at practicing non-worry.  I have memories of my own mother's high level of anxiety over all things, and the stress that caused in my life.

Worry won't get anything done.   Cate admits that in order to function,  even she has to "let it all go".   In other words, give up on worry.  What gets done will get done. What doesn't doesn't.  Despite all of that, she is still excited about her new life.  And therefore, I am excited for her.

May the next stage of Cate's life bring all good things!  
She deserves it!

Food Evolution

Lately I've been thinking about the evolution of cooking and eating which has taken place in my life over the past fifty years.   Thinking about this has made me realize that there have been numerous factors which have played a role in that evolution.

The food evolution follows my own evolution and it is tied to where I lived at a certain time in my life,  how much money I had to spend on groceries,  what was available at the location where I lived, and so forth.

All of this has made me wonder whether or not people who spend their whole lives living in the same place actually end up eating the exact same foods. Nowadays I think probably most people at least experience Italian (pizza, lasagna) foods,  Chinese, Mexican, and so forth because those are all so readily available.

The factors that have affected my food and cooking choices include:  geography, culture, economic status, and stage of life.

I grew up in the South.  Food often came from what had been put up in the freezer or canned.  Or what grew in the garden or field.   Cantelope. Watermelon.  Corn, butter-beans, black-eyed peas.   Fresh tomatoes.  Cornbread.  Fried chicken.  Lots of things were fried.  Fried okra.  Hushpuppies.  Fish.

In my twenties, I spent a year eating fast food, and really paid the price for that on the scales!   For that decade, I was pretty much in transition,  moving away from the "southern/regional" foods my my childhood and youth, and learning to cook a broader range of foods.  In particular, they were of a more northern variety.

Another thing that has been pretty much a staple in my life, no matter where I might have lived, is the "church potluck supper."

When I was raising a family, anywhere from four of us to six of us,  there was definitely the "casserole stage", a time of stretching the food, stretching the budget.   I was always working, so there was also the matter of limited time.

With young children, especially when I was a single parent with very few resources, there were a lot of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

By the time I reached retirement,  I became much more committed to and interested in healthy food.   By then, I had lots more time and resources, as the family had all grown up and moved on.

I also had a lot of serious digestive issues that needed to be addressed.

In the past five years,  I have moved very much toward cooking and eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, trying to make the vegetables the star of the show, rather than the meat. While not rigid, I am about 90% vegetarian.

As one gets older, you really need less food and are better able to make direct connections between your health and the food you eat.

At this life stage, reading recipes, grocery shopping, cooking healthy food and eating well are the things I enjoy most.

I have probably said this before and will probably say this again.   My husband loves vegetables,  is not picky and genuinely relishes leftovers!  He will gratefully eat whatever I put in front of him.

I have occasionally wondered what that would feel like...to sit down to a dinner every night that someone else has prepared for you.

Hopefully,  I will never know!

Ladies Literary

Whenever I mention that I belong to the Ladies Literary Club,  family and friends always seem to think of it as a book club.

 They ask,  "Oh, what book are you reading now."   I have to explain that it is not a book club.  We do not review books, but write papers, which is much more to my liking, since I enjoy writing.

 Writing a research paper on a topic may involve using one book, or ten books in the process of doing that research.

Each member presents a 20 minute (approximately 10 page) paper on one over-arching theme each year. This year's theme has been: Literary Controversies.   Topics have included specific selections, such as Candide, or To Kill a Mockingbird,  or broader subject matter, like Books Banned from the Library, or Muckrakers. Other years the annual themes have focused on countries-- China or Canada.

Next year's topic should produce some interesting results.  Escape.  It is broad and can be interpreted any number of different ways.   Escape artists.  Prisons.  Immigration.  Slavery.  War, and so on.

It is interesting hearing the papers presented,  and also fascinating to see the direction one goes with the theme.

This particular Literary Club has been around for over 120 years.  It has its origins in the era when women were well educated, but had no employment opportunities.  This was one way of creating their own.   They used their intellectual abilities,  learned from one another, and created a community.

Women are exceptional at all three of those!

Cutting Hair

Today we are having professional photographs done for the church directory, so I needed to do a little trimming of Gerry's hair.

This picture, of course, does not look at all like Gerry, but the cutting tool is the same.

 I have been cutting Gerry's hair for the past 33 years!   Of course, in the beginning, there was considerably more of it.  

Back then, I just used scissors. Now I use clippers. He hasn't been to a barber in that long.  So if you ever think his hair looks scruffy or is sticking out,  it is all my fault.

He always wears a hat in the winter, and where it fits around the head, inevitably there is "hat hair" which drives me nuts!  (even though there is very little hair)!

Back when I was 19 years old and in college,  my hair had grown too long over the summer and I didn't like it.  I went around the dorm and begged someone to cut my hair for me.  And someone finally took me up on that!  It ended up being a "buster brown" cut!   Hating that look, in desperation,  I took the scissors and made layers myself.

The truth is, I have been cutting my own hair now for more years than I want to publish!

Yes, I have grown it out a couple of times.  Yes, I have occasionally gone to the salon for a professional cut, but surprisingly,  I have never liked the result.

For me, it is all about how it feels on my head, and no one else but me can tell what that's like!

My hairdo always looks pretty much the same.

Now you know why!