Winner, Winner, Winner! Part Two

They are always saying, “It’s not what you know but who you know.”  Well, sports fans, it’s true!  Here in Salt Lake City, the local oldies but goodies station (KODJ 94.1) had a “Who Do You Know” contest.  You were supposed to get a celebrity to call in for you, mention your name, and win you a boat-load of prizes.  The prizes this time are:  two round-trip tickets to San Diego, two nights at a great hotel, and two all-access passes to the San Diego Film Festival.  Oh, and don’t forget, two passes to the San Diego Zoo!

 

On Monday, my brother’s friend, Bill Paxton, called the station and gave them my name.  About 10 minutes ago, I was listening to the radio to see how it was all going, and they announced that I had won the contest!  Woo-Hoo!  Now, I have to find someone that needs a vacation as badly as I do.  Oh, my gosh!  I can’t believe it!

 

It’s funny, though.  About ten years or so ago, I won the same contest because Jerry Orbach, a friend of my sister’s, called in for me from the set of “Law and Order.”  That time I won a trip for two to Mexico.  This is so cool.  I reap the rewards without having to be in that extremely cutthroat business.

 

Okay.  I have to get back to work, but I just had to write this down.  How cool is that!

Movin’, Movin’, Movin’ . . .

It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I haven’t been myself for weeks.  During the holidays, I fell ill to excruciating pain in my back.  Turns out it was two bulging discs (4L and 5L).  Woo-hoo!  This coincided with my move from my apartment to a house so I wouldn’t have to climb stairs.  The honest truth, I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for my son, his wife, and my two best friends, Bonnie and Alice Ann.  It was a huge comfort to have my son and his sweetheart take over for me the awesome and daunting task of moving my stuff.  I couldn’t do it alone.  I wasn’t able to lift anything heavier than a can of Crisco.  A small can.

 

Jimmy and Teresa spent several nights and days getting my stuff to the new digs.  Bonnie and Alice Ann each spent several days trying to make the new place inhabitable, without me tripping all over the boxes left by the stalwart priesthood group.  Honestly, I don’t know what people do without the priesthood.  What wonderful people.

 

I still have many boxes left to shift and things to put onto shelves, but that will have to wait until I can pick up something heavier than a basketball.

 

Christmas came and went without me.  I was in so much pain, I had to drive myself to Kathy and Charlie’s house on Christmas Eve to tell them I couldn’t come for dinner and the party.  I didn’t have a phone, in case you’re wondering.  Then on Christmas, I spent the day in bed.  My son was supposed to pick me up at 1 p.m. to take me to my daughter’s house where our Christmas dinner had moved to (new stove didn’t work) but didn’t get there until 4:30.  It wouldn’t have made any difference.  The outcome was the same—I got to see his little girls open their presents from me, and I stayed at home in bed.  Christmas dinner was a banana and some Godiva chocolates.  Great stuff! 

 

It wasn’t an Ozzie and Harriet kind of Christmas, but hey, I got through it.  I was able to witness first-hand the sweet, true meaning of the season.  I was tenderly cared for by my son and Teresa, friends from work, and my sweet neighbors who live in the upstairs mother-in-law apartment in my house.  The Lord taught me a valuable lesson about priorities, charity and dear friends.  It was probably the best Christmas I ever had.

Beep, Beep, Honk, Honk!

The arrogance of some people!  I thought I had seen it all, but apparently I was mistaken.

 

This morning, while driving to work in the ice and snow, I encountered a tailgater.  Not an unusual occurrence in Utah, particularly in the winter.  I looked in my rearview mirror to give the fellow a good scowl and saw that he was looking out of a small peephole he had scraped out of his windshield.  His car was completely covered in snow—lots of snow—and he had only cleared a face-sized hole in the front and directly behind his head on the back window.  Both sides of his car were covered in snow, as were his brake lights.  The only other thing that could be seen on the car was the Jaguar hood ornament.  Well, thank heavens he cleared that off.  That excuses everything!

 

Frankly, if you can afford a Jaguar, you can afford the good manners that should come with the gratitude of owning one.  I hope he made it to wherever he was going without hurting anything or anyone.  As for me, I’ll stick with my Chevy Malibu and Walmart ice scraper.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year . . .

My granddaughter, Caely, spent the night with me on Saturday.  We had so much fun.  We watched three movies and gorged ourselves on ruby red pomegranates.  Ah, yessssss, she is her grandma’s girl!

Having so much fun with her reminded me of times I spent with my grandma, Grandma Thomson.  She was my dad’s mother and was raised in Scotland.  She and her family had many traditions back in the old country, when it came to celebrating Christmas.  Everyone in the family played an instrument or sang.  All of the girls knew how to sew and bake.  My grandma was a master at all of these tasks.

Every Christmas she would bake light fruitcakes (no, they weren’t diet; they were light in color but heavy with fruits and nuts) and buttery-rich shortbread.  We would go to her house every Sunday after church, and it was during the holidays that I loved going there the most.  When you walked into the house the aroma of sugar, butter and love would hit you and send you reeling.  We’d run into the kitchen only to find its counters groaning under the heavy load of hundreds of cookies and hundreds (I kid you not) of loaves of fruitcake.

When Granddad died, Grandma came to live with us.  By then she had pretty much lost most of her short-term memory, and we would find scraps of paper all over the house with her coveted shortbread recipe.  She NEVER gave it out.  When the time came to pass it on, she sat me down and taught me how to make the buttery pillows.  Why didn’t she teach my older sister, you ask?  I think it’s because she blew up a pan with two hard-boiled eggs in it.  Shortbread takes a light hand.

Grandma’s version always had a whole cherry on top of each piece.  At $5 for a small container of the cherries she used, my shortbread only has a half of a cherry on each piece.  She made me promise not to give the recipe out. That promise has since been broken.  Not to worry.  Even when I give the recipe out, the same people ask me to make it for them because theirs always turns out like hockey pucks.  Ahhhh, the real secret is in handling of the dough!

I think one of the most cherished gifts I’ve ever received was a copy of Grandma’s shortbread in her own hand.  My brother found it when he was cleaning out Dad’s stuff and framed it for me.  I’ve taken three or four blue ribbons at various county and state fairs for the stuff.  We even served it at my son’s wedding luncheon as part of a Scottish meal.

I’m going to teach all of my granddaughters how to make real Scottish shortbread.  It’s a family favorite.  My grandson, Tyler, always asks if I’m going to make those white cookies with the big old cherries on top.  I’ll gladly share the recipe with you if you think you might want to try it.  Ah, I can hardly wait—It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Movin’, Movin’, Movin’ . . .

It’s official.  I’m moving.  Again.  Yep, I’m moving a whole block away from my current residence and yet, I’ll be in a different ward.  That pretty much breaks my heart.  I love these people.  This will be a hard move, but I just can’t navigate stairs any more.  That, and my mother is going to move in with me.  She’s 83 and can’t live alone any more, and my poor brother just can’t deal with her.  He’s taken care of her for almost 10 years.  It’s my turn.

I’m going to be painting the new/old house I’m moving into.  If any of you out there need something to do, I’ll buy you a brush!  It’s a great house.  You’ll have to come and visit.  I’ll fix meatloaf.

Winner, Winner, Winner . . . Part Two

Saturday night my family and I went to dinner at the Garden Room (“high atop Temple Square”) to receive the prize I won for the recipe contest held by the Deseret Morning News.  We met Mr. Neil Wilkinson, the Director of Marketing for Temple Square Hospitality, whereupon he gave me a present, a gift certificate and treated us to dinner.  They featured my recipe, Grandma Reinie’s Meat Loaf (I’m Grandma Reinie, just in case you were wondering), all that day and evening. 

 

We had so much fun.  My son and his wife and my daughter and her husband celebrated with me.  It was so much fun to have dinner with adult children, and because they grew up on the meatloaf, I was the only one who ordered it.  It was fabulous!  The chef served it with garlic mashed potatoes and teriyaki glazed vegetables.  Unbelievable! 

 

We had the best service I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  In fact, one of the waiters who wasn’t even ours would come by and give me the score on how many had ordered it while we were there.  (When we left, I thanked the line chefs and they told me that they were just given five more orders for the stuff!)

 

Since the meal was on the house, my children (the two in white) thought it only proper to sample the appetizers first, so we had the deep fried pickles and the artichoke & spinach dip.  Ohmyheck!  You have GOT to go there and try the pickles.  Terrific!  Yes, I know it sounds weird, but they were oh so good.  I make my own dill pickles, so I’m going to try it at home.

 

Everyone had a different entrée, all completely wonderful, and we ordered four desserts for the five of us.  You should definitely go there and try their steak.  It just melted in the mouth.  My son ordered the tri-tip roast.  He said it wasn’t as good as mine, but I noticed he didn’t leave any evidence of food ever having been on his plate.

 

Since I thought I was going to be picking up the tab, I didn’t bring a whole lot of cash.  We wanted to give the server an extra special tip, so I dumped what I had out on the table: a five, five ones, and a mountain of change.  My ever-creative son and daughter-in-law took the bills and made a frog out of the fiver and a spider out of the ones.  I added a check to the pile and we all left with silly grins on our faces.  What a great adventure!

 

Fallout

I found it interesting that the big gay/lesbian protest over the results of the passing of Proposition 8 in California, wound up at the Los Angeles Temple.  There is also a protest scheduled this morning/afternoon/evening at the Salt Lake Temple on Temple Square.

 

Firstly, you cannot imagine the ridicule and hurt that has been perpetrated on innocent people, just because they happen to be Mormon.  Never mind that Evangelicals and Catholics were high on the list of supporters of Prop. 8.  Never mind that the largest majority recorded of African-American voters voted for Prop. 8.  Where are the protests in the black neighborhoods?  Where are the protests in the predominately Catholic neighborhoods?  What about the Baptists, Methodists and Jews?

 

Why protest just the Mormons?  For that matter, why protest at all?  It was a measure on a ballot that passed.  Barack Obama won the presidency.  Have all the republicans and conservatives gone crazy and protested at the altar of Obama?  (Joe Biden I can understand, but that’s another story for another time.)  When the Hogle Zoo proposition passed, did couch potatoes line the parking lot in front of Hogle Zoo in protest?

 

My thought is that it is just plain bigotry.  Mormons feel very strongly about the family and family values, according to the laws of the gospel.  We’re really big on supporting Heavenly Father and His Eternal Plan.  For that, we have been persecuted for nearly 200 years.  We’re used to it.  We don’t like it.  It hurts, but we’re used to it.  Now, unless I miss my guess, it is our right as citizens to support the causes we feel are just.  When something comes up that we should support, we do.  When, in an election, our cause doesn’t pass, we go about seeing how to legally bring it up again for a vote, how to get it back on the agenda.  We don’t go and protest at the altars where the victors worship.  We don’t accost their members in the street, calling them unprintable names, doing unspeakable things to their properties, frightening their young children.

 

What these people are doing is picking on Mormons, specifically, because we chose to support Proposition 8 and our belief of what the family is—what we believe Heavenly Father tells us constitutes a marriage.  This is wrong.  If Proposition 8 had failed, I wouldn’t have sent a contingency over to Ellen DeGeneres’ house to protest.  I wouldn’t have picketed just about every corner in San Francisco, shouting obscenities to passersby.  I would have just picked up my socks and set about seeking ways to change things.

 

Now I’m not going to say that some of my best friends are gay.  They’re not.  But I have relatives who are, and I love them more than you can imagine.  It’s the sin you despise, not the sinner.  I support my relatives in whatever way I can and still hold true to my values and conscience.  I will always love them and hope they will still love me, even though I’m a  . . . MORMON!  Woooooooo!  It who you are, your heart, that matters to me.  I can’t speak for other Mormons and I shouldn’t.  I am responsible for my own thoughts and actions, not anyone else.

 

What I’m trying to say is, get over yourselves.  Think about what you’re doing and how you are presenting your case to the world.  Is this really the best way to go about it?

We the People . . .

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

The Preamble to the US Constitution is something everyone who has attended school in the United States has read, heard or studied at some time in his/her academic career.  People who have applied for US citizenship have had to study this document.  Reading it is a daunting task.  It was written in a language that we no longer use, with passion, directness, and hope.

 

I decided to read it before I went and cast my vote, just because the way things are going, I’m not sure what it is we’re trying to preserve.  If we as a people were really familiar with this document, I seriously doubt we would be in the mess we are in today.  We wouldn’t be so cavalier with our voting right.  Instead of trusting our opinions to those of people in the public eye, such as actors and celebrities of every ilk, we would be armed with information and have our own opinions of how things are progressing in our country and how things should be dealt with.  Instead, we end up with the mob mentality of going along with the pack.  Good heavens, people!  This is your opinion as much as it is theirs.  Have you no opinion of your own?  Do you not care who it is who represents you in Washington?  Do you not care who it is who speaks for you in Congress?

 

We complain and complain how our representatives are screwing up our nation, but who put them in there in the first place?  Were we really informed before we cast our vote?  Did we study the options or did with just throw caution to the winds and pull the lever because that’s the way Oprah did it or Sean Penn or Alec Baldwin?  These people make their living off of you (and a darn good one it is).  Why should you let them manage the course of your life?  Is it just too much trouble for you to take a few minutes to look at the document that is responsible for our way of life?  If so, then we deserve every little bit of hardship that comes our way.  If we can’t take the responsibility for our own vote, for our own government; if we are willing to give our privilege away and go with whatever so-and-so says, then we deserve to go down in flames.

 

I can only imagine what the framers of the Constitution think when they look down on us, running around like chickens with our heads cut off, grasping and grabbing every dollar we can get, not caring how we got it.  The fact that possessions and trappings, power and privilege seem to mean more than liberty, freedom, truth, justice and tranquility must make them shake their heads in sorrow and wonder.

 

When you cast your vote today, take a minute or two to read the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and find out the kind of people “we, the people,” are or should be.

“Give Me Something Sweet to Eat”

Why has trick or treating become so complicated?  Has society become so perverse that it has to poison  or insert razor blades, pins, etc., into children’s candy?  Why on earth should we have to take our innocent children to the participating hospitals to x-ray their candy, to make sure they’re safe if they eat it?

 

Then, on the other foot, why is it children complain when they get a toothbrush, pennies, or a little 10 cent toy (is there such a thing any more?)?  I mean, if you don’t give them full-sized candy Bars, and two or more at that, they look at you funny as if to say, “Is that it?”

 

When as kids we went trick or treating, we would always get salt water taffy, homemade popcorn balls, donuts, pomegranates, candy apples, handfuls of candy corn, and big old sticks of licorice.  If we could get our dad to drive us up to the subdivision just north of ours, called “Friendly Hills,” we would get Hershey Bars.  This was way before the mini or snack sized Bars.  They were just Hershey Bars.

 

Before we hit our curfew, we would meet on the corner of Chadsey Drive and Hayward St. to compare grocery bags of candy.  (Oh, that’s another thing:  we decorated large paper grocery bags with paints at school.  Never would our parents buy us something to collect free candy in.)  That’s when we would find out which houses on which streets were giving out the Hershey Bars—keep in mind, that’s when Hershey Bars were good.

 

I remember one year, my sister had grown too old to go trick or treating with her younger siblings so I had to go alone.  Our brother was still too little to go out, so I had to go it alone with Dad as my chaperone.  Oddly enough, the thing I feared the most—being alone with Dad—ended up being one of my best trick or treating hauls.  He took me from the top of Chadsey Drive to the bottom, which included six side streets.  Gosh, I never got to go that long with my sister.  When she got back with her Jr. High friends and saw the stash I had, she vowed to go with me the next year. 

 

But that never happened.  The next year, she was in 8^th grade, and being one of the most popular girls at Hillview Jr. High, she went to boy-girl parties thereafter.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet . . .

I was writing little Halloween notes to my grandchildren this morning, wondering what they would be wearing and wishing I could be with all of them, when I started remembering costumes I had worn when I was their ages.  We always kept it a secret, except from our closest friends, what we were going to be for Halloween.  It was always a challenge because it was the 1950s, and no one had any money for store-bought costumes.  More often than not, my sister and I were either hoboes, pirates or gypsies.

 

One year, I think I was in fourth grade, my Scottish grandmother (who was an excellent seamstress) made our costumes.  It was a big secret—even from our closest friends.  We were harem girls, complete with bare-midriff, yellow satin tops, satin balloon pants, and everything trimmed with black pom poms.  When we got to the school bus on Halloween morning, we kept ourselves covered with our raincoats (October in Southern California being a little damp).

 

When we got to school, it was time for the big reveal.  I was so excited I could barely contain myself.  No one, I mean NO ONE, would have a costume like the ones my big sister and I had.  I got to Miss Tilson’s class and went to the coat room to hang up my coat.  When I walked to my seat there were sounds of “Ooooh” and “wow!” going around the room.  I was a hit.  Oh, yes.

 

At recess, Mark Stringer kept chasing me around the playground, trying to kiss me.  What a goon!  Girls who were the snots of the class kept trying to be my best friends.  Very strange.  After recess, since it was the last day of the month, we held class elections for November.  I was immediately elected president of the class.  That meant I was the room monitor, blackboard keeper, and babysitter when the teacher had to make a run to the bathroom or the office.  Cool.

 

Everyone wanted to go trick or treating with my sister and I.  Unfortunately, it was kind of foggy and misty, so our mother wouldn’t let us wear our costumes out trick or treating, so we had to dress up as hoboes.  Ah, the irony!

 

The following year, I dressed up as Queen Elizabeth the First (because we were studying Sir Francis Drake).  When I got to school, I counted no less than 12 harem girls.  HA!  Trick or treat, smell my feet!