March 11th

Hi, it’s Christina –

My poor Bananabeans. At fifteen, her back molars have finally decided to break through, and she is absolutely miserable. She can’t chew, even soft stuff. She’s living on Motrin. Today for lunch, I packed her a smoothie. Hopefully it will only be another day or two before the tooth breaks all the way through and she can be pain free and be able to eat again. The last thing that child needs is to lose any weight!

Yesterday’s detour to the other side of Vermont wasn’t too terrible, but it was far enough away that I ended up having to fill my gas tank three times during the trip instead of only twice. King Arthur Bakery was a neat place. The store / gift shop was great. My mom got me an early birthday present. I like the plain silver cookie sheets, the ones with no coating, and they had them on sale, so she got me three. Yeah!!

After I put all her purchase in the car, she had three bags worth, we had lunch in their café. Let’s just say, if I’m ever in the area again, I won’t be eating there again. I had the butternut sage soup which had so much sage in it it tasted more like lamb then butternut. I had a Reuben (did I spell that right?), and the pastrami had the consistency of a rubber band. Even the iced tea was terrible. My mom, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed the fresh turkey sandwich with Cabot cheddar and cranberry chutney, she ordered.

I don’t know how restaurants who have peculiar food combinations on their menu survive. It’s ok to have one or two, but every item? Personally I think that’s suicide. You have to have some staples without adding things like apple fennel or quince to every item on the menu. There were probably a dozen choices on the King Arthur Café menu, and I can honestly say there was something unappealing on each choice. These are supposed to be master chefs at this place, yet no one realized pairing a dominant spice like sage with the delicate flavor of butternut, the sage would completely take over? Seriously? Anyone with a nose could figure this out, even without any kind of formal culinary training.

Lunch aside, it was a nice afternoon. Since we were now in a section of Vermont I was not familiar with, I plug home into my GPS. It wanted to take me on a route through Mass, then through Hartford (a traffic nightmare), and finally over the Tappan Zee Bridge to home. I really hate going that way, so we elected to take Route 9 across the bottom of Vermont, which eventually wound its way to 7, then 787 and finally to my usual way home, Route 87.

Let me tell you, Route 9 has a whole list of drawbacks to be considered a viable alternate route. It is a twisty, turny, pothole laden road with steep inclines and descends. On the plus side, it is much more scenic than traveling the thru-way. At one point it had us going through Molly Spark State Park. I asked my mom if she had any clue who Molly Spark was, and she did not, so I looked it up this morning. (I know, I’m a dork. When traveling I see someplace named after someone, and I don’t know who that someone is, I look it up.)

Molly Stark, wife of Revolutionary War general John Stark, became famous because of her husband's battle call of "There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!” That and she was the mother of Freedom Fighter, Caleb Stark. Okay, am I missing something here? I’m sure she was a lovely lady, and any woman who raises eleven children should be given a medal, but I don’t see how she warrants a State Park to be named after her. Perhaps some of my Vermont readers can enlighten me.

Alright, I’m going to wrap things up now and go be nosy. Our town is blowing up at the moment and I want to see if I can find out what’s going on. Every emergency vehicle we own has rolled by my house, lights flashing, sirens blaring. When fire trucks from the far side of town roll up here, something major is going on. The last time this happen was when Agnes DeWitt Girl Scout Camp’s main building was hit by lightning and burned to the ground.

After I’m done being nosy, I need to make my hubby some lunch, get him out of the house, FINALLY finish the taxes and get the FAFSAs filed. Oh, by the way, Lys didn’t get the RA position at school, so no break on housing this year. Better luck next year.

I hope y’all have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

June 30th Writing Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

We had a fun time at our town’s fireworks last night. It is amazing to see how much the town has grown since I moved here thirty five years ago. There are SO many people now!

 

Got to sleep in a little today, which was nice. At 7:30 this morning I went to let the dog out and it was like walking into a bowl of hot soup. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an air advisory today. YUCK! Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to hibernate in the air conditioning all day. We need to run to Kohl’s to take advantage of our 30% off coupon and get the sheets for vacation (of course we need sheets for the one size bed we do not own), then to WalMart for coffee, and finally to Costco to pick up the graduation thank you cards.

After all that, we will be spending the remainder of the day moving my daughter into my son’s old room, after it gets a thorough cleaning of course. Again YUCK!! There is even dust on the walls. This will be the first time since she was three that she had her own room. Although it will only be for a few weeks (she’s leaving for college), she’s still excited.

My neat and organized daughter has been sharing a room with her slob of a sister for the past fourteen years. Now, for the first time, they will each be able to have their own room. The youngest one says the room is always so messy because there was no room for everything with two of them in there. Let’s see if having the room to herself will have a positive effect. I’m not holding my breath. LOL. I wonder how, come end of August, my youngest one is going to react. For the first time in her life, she is going to be an only child.

Since this is the last day of June, that means camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, so for the next 31 days, this blog is going to be short and sweet. PLEASE have pity on me during this next month and email me ideas for writing challenges so I don’t have to come up with them. christinapaulbooks@yahoo.com any and all suggestions are welcome and I am even temporarily lifting the “you need to post” requirement to have your challenge featured. PRETTY PLEASE…with sugar on top. J

 

Your last challenge was:

I’m going to miss…

 

Five days shy of my son’s twenty-third birthday he moved out. Not far, only a half hour away, but I’m going to miss his not living at home. We’re moving my middle daughter into his room, but in seven short weeks, she’ll be moving away to college, and I’m going to miss her too.

Every parent comes to this point in their life, and although we know it’s coming, the emotions still take us by surprise. As much as I complained about the noise and insanity that comes from having a house full of kids, mine and the inevitable add-ons of the “adopted” sons and daughters who come with them, I’m going to miss the constant stream of kids through the house. Luckily I have one more daughter still at home, along with her gaggle of friends, but what am I going to do in four years when she flies the nest as well?

 

You probably guessed that was coming, huh?

 

Your Next Challenge is (an oldie but goody):

 

If you can have lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

 

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.