I know you are all wondering what my pesky blog is up to this week. Well, the blog just recently got up to 34 followers! I know right?! Unfortunately, at 32 s/he started sending out job resumes so s/he could move out of my basement and stop playing World of Warcraft so frequently, but somehow the blog just hasn’t had any luck getting interviews. Maybe YOU could be the next follower to help my dear ol’ blog hit the mid-life crisis phase of life. Who doesn’t love a mid-life crisis? A few hot flashes could help the blog combat the winter cold that is settling in on Maine. So go follow, now!

It’s early to mid-morning, and the smell of the turkey that has been cooking for 5 hours is really starting to fill the house nicely.  My Mom is busy preparing enormous amounts of food in the kitchen, and my Dad is down puttering in the garage.  My Mom announces to my sister, my grandmother, and I that it’s time to come over to the table to make the rolls.

We take our seats at the dinner table, still without a table cloth due to the amount of flour that is about to be dumped onto it.  My Mom pushes Grammy Gilman over in her wheelchair since she had a stroke, but she is cheerful as ever and ready to tackle the task ahead.  My Mom brings over a large stainless steel bowl, overflowing with the dough she made last night, and remarks about how much it rose.  Gram’s clover leaf rolls have been a Thanksgiving staple since before I can remember, and since she can’t make them on her own anymore, she’s decided to teach us how to assemble them with her.

My Mom brings over the large can of Crisco, and we are each given a muffin tin.  Gram proceeds to dip her hand into the Crisco and shows us how much to rub into each of the cups in our muffin tin.  We follow suit, and soon we are ready to fill our tins with 36 clover leaf rolls.

My Mom dumps a pile of flour in front of each of us, and after rubbing our fingers in it to avoid getting too sticky, we each rip a huge handful of dough out of the bowl.  Grammy demonstrates how big of a piece to take off of our clump of dough, and shows us how big of a ball we should roll it into.  We give it a try, filling each cup with three equally-sized (hopefully) little dough balls.  Gram’s always come out perfect.  Mine tend to be a little big and I have to focus on making them smaller.  We joke about what a giant roll will come out of some of the cups in my muffin tin.  I always love to hear Gram laugh, and I’m thankful she survived the stroke.

We finish, and even with the flour I have quite a bit of dough stuck to my fingers.  I wash them off and my Mom takes over the clean up after removing the pans so they can rise.  She returns Gram to the living room to watch the parade, and I soon join her and we look at all the cool inflatable characters.

When it comes time to eat, the rolls come out perfect. We joke again about how big some of them got, and how they must have come from my tin.  I take one and begin my annual count of how many rolls I ate this year.

This was 2004.  Gram has been gone for three Thanksgivings now.  Two years ago, I attempted to make her recipe (having only formed them in the past), and while they were edible and enjoyed by Jenn, Stacey, and Sandy, they weren’t quite the same.  I tried them again this year, and taught Jenn and Stacey to be my helpers (oddly enough after having had a stroke myself), and they came out PERFECT.  Grammy Gilman’s tradition lives on, and now I will share it with the Blog World, in the hopes that it will etch itself into the Thanksgiving traditions of other families, too!  Happy Holidays everyone!

Ingredients

2 cups lukewarm water (note: I had it pretty hot, not scalding, but hot)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup shortening
2 packages of yeast
1 egg
3 cups of flour
Additional 3 1/2 to 4 cups of flour

Sprinkle yeast over warn water and let dissolve (note: I did this in a fairly large bowl).
Add remaining ingredients.
Turn on to floured surface and knead till smooth and elastic (note: I gently stirred the ingredients in the bowl until it had a “batter-like” consistancy, with some lumps. I also didn’t measure the amount of flour I turned it onto, I just threw a bunch down and added as needed to get the desired consistancy.  I also turned the mixture onto the flour in small parts until I had a big dough ball.)
You can either shape and let rise, or put the dough in the refrigerator until ready to use (in a greased bowl covered with a wet towel. It will start to rise in the refrigerator) (note: I did the latter and used Pam).
When ready to use, spread Crisco in muffin tin.
Roll dough into three small balls and place into each cup.
Let rise for a hour, and bake.

Rolls: 375 degrees F for 15-20 minutes

Or you can make little bread loaves, as Gram sometimes did: 400 degrees F for approximately 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to the 2nd Edition of Kid Quote Friday 🙂 Hopefully they will make you laugh as you stand in line at Wal-Mart, feast on leftover pie, and listen to your 24 hour a day Christmas radio station!

Me: How are you today?
Kid: Really busy!
Me: With what?
Kid: I got a stuck booger in my nose! I’ve been working on it all day!  -4 years old

soft light.
dancing eyes.
belly laughs.
full heart.

smells ignite memories
that are then spoken out loud,
remember when?

around the table,
thanks is given.
for family.
for hope.
for everything,
and for nothing.

it is a day of remembering,
of dreaming,
of coming together.

taking time to be present,
to be humbled by the truth,
that no matter how hard tomorrow is
or yesterday was
we would not be who we are
without the difficult lessons

we are thankful to simply be.

My husband, sir Casey is a huge nerd Daughtry fan. I bought him the newest CD as a surprise last night. He loves it. This morning he sent me a text saying that one of the songs was about a miscarriage. He did some research, and it was written for a friend of Daughtry’s. The lyrics kinda hit me like BOOM. So, I figured I’d post them- because he pretty much wrote my heart out in this song.

“Gone Too Soon”

Today could’ve been the day
that you blow out your candles
make a wish as you close your eyes
Today could’ve been the day
everybody was laughin’
instead I just sit here and cry
Who would you be?
what would you look like
when you looked at me for the very first time?
Today could’ve been the next day of the rest of your life

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you
I’m always asking why this crazy world had to lose
such a ray of light we never knew
gone too soon, yeah ….

Would you have been president?
or a painter, an author or sing like your mother?
One thing is evident
would’ve given all I had
would’ve loved you like no other
Who would you be?
what would you look like?
would you have my smile and her eyes?
Today could’ve been the next day of the rest of your life

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you
I’m always asking why this crazy world had to lose
such a ray of light we never knew
gone too soon.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you
I’m always asking why this crazy world had to lose
such a beautiful life we never knew
gone too soon
you were gone too soon…

and not a day goes by
that I don’t think of you.

You can go preview/download it here.

The other day, I took a kid that I work with to the playground.

I promptly challenged him to a swinging contest.

As my legs started pumping, and I gained speed and height, I begin to feel that feeling.

The one just as you are swinging high. The wind is blowing through your hair making your cheeks red and your eyes water. And you stop for a split second before you come back down. The drop in your stomach. The lump in your throat. The pulsing of your heartbeat, felt in your brain. The silmultaneous feeling of excitement and dread.

The feeling that you are about to plummet. The wondering if anyone will be there to catch you, if the chains on the swing will hold you. The excitement of the unknown. The free fall. 

I remember days when I was younger. The leaps I took off of the swing from that very moment, at the highest point – pretending that I could fly. The forward rolls into space, perfecting the landing, trusting the ground to be there.

I am far too adult to try such a thing now. Fear has replaced much of that adventurous spirit. Some would say common sense, but I believe it’s mostly fear. Because of all those times when I fell perfecting the landing, both literally from swings and figuratively from other life experiences – they have left me cautious about much of the world around me.

But those times when I landed perfectly? The times when I closed my eyes and jumped, believing that I would be okay? The leaps of pure faith and imagination? They stand out in my mind, my heart, my soul. They are the most important times.

They were so worth facing the fear, letting go, and free falling in the unknown. I need to do more of that.

As for the swinging contest? I let him win.

Hey y’all! Just wanted to give a big HOWDY to my fellow ICLW 🙂 You can read about our TTC journey mostly within this post. Otherwise, just poke around and enjoy the ride! Happy to have you!

Everyone else, pay no attention to this post 😉 It will self-destruct in

10…9…..

Hello old friend.

I remember back when I first stumbled upon you. How neat to connect with other people around the world! With classmates from high school! With classmates from college! With my classmate’s mom’s friend’s babysitter’s cousin’s dogwalker’s dog on Dogbook!

There are so many things I love about you. Truly. But can we talk about a few things?

1) I’m a big fan of the notion that the “reply all” button on e-mail should be password protected. Why, dear Facebook, would you create a message system that has NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE than to reply to everyone if you receive a mass distributed message? It’s like “reply all” on ‘roid rage!

2) Much like a toddler, an electronic records system, and life – just when I have you figured out… YOU CHANGE EVERYTHING. I’m not really sure why. We had a nice, clean, simple interface. Now? You are busy. ALL OVER. Too busy. My brain gets overstimulated and I have too much information.

3) As much as I was on the market for a stalker to make my life interesting, I think you went a wee bit overboard. I mean, stalking someone is supposed to be work. Now? You just gotta look at their “check in” on facebook and you know right where they are. Better yet, I can also stalk someone’s click-to-click activity! Charming, really! But let’s put the fun back in stalking and not just give them all the information, mmmmkay? (BTW, Twitter, my new friend. No need to jump on the bandwagon and start a Twitter Activity tab. You can still get rid of it, it’s pretty new. Don’t go to the dark side!)

4) I will thank you a million times over for allowing me to “hide” people from my feeds. This is an infertile person’s key to survival on facebook. I wish though, there was some alerts that you could put on about pregnancy announcements. They are unexpected, and before I can hide that stream, I’ve seen it and can be found crying in the shower at my gym. Could you work on that?

5) Okay, I know that you can’t really monitor what gets posted in status updates. But it would be neat if we could add things like spell check, grammar check, and relevancy check to status updates. That way we can avoid embarassing “your vs. you’re” mistakes, as well as those embarassing updates about the time of day a person is going to the bathroom. A nice little message could pop up, calling attention to the person’s mistake. And if you go with this idea, can we also alert the ppl that speakz like thiz that they l00k like loozers? Thanks.

Again, I apppreciate all you do. I still check you a couple of times a day, and I know our relationship won’t end any time soon. Just a few minor tweaks and we can bump it up to the next level! Otherwise, Twitter is going to become my main social media squeeze.

C U l8ter,
Jenn

I’m officially up to 25 “followers” on my blog! My blog is finally old enough to drink, and is probably shacked up in a studio apartment with 2 other people splittling a cup of Ramen noodles three ways for every meal (if it’s anything like my 25th year, anyway).

I am super sick. Like I got this cold out of NOWHERE on Friday, getting progressively worse through the day, and ended with my crying because I felt so sick, had to throw up at work twice and had to use toilet paper for tissue (because I had none). Thankfully I am now decked out with Puffs Plus (with lotion) tissues, Nyquil, and orange juice galore. Husband and I had a lovely X-Men marathon yesterday, which is always good for the soul. Now if only I had Wolverine’s healing powers.

So far, the most popular post on my blog has been 10 Things Your Therapist Wants You to Know. I’m thinking about writing a sequel to this post, so I’ll throw this out to you- anything you’d like to know from a therapist point of view? Burning questions? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

We are so close to being done with NaBloPoMo, I can smell it. Okay, I can’t smell it, but only because I have a cold. In all seriousness, I have learned a lot in this process but I may or may not be counting down the days until December 1st.

I’m going back to bed now. Have a happy, Sunday!

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post below.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.