Category Archives: Life at Home

Suspended in Time

29 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

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Sugar frosted flakes are covering the world outside my window.

Inside it’s warm – thank God.  No power loss for us, though others are less fortunate.  My husband came to bed last night telling of an entire town, just an hour south of here, going to bed without power.   I wondered how many others were left to huddle in the dark and cold, as I turned over to turn out the light.

This morning I woke to an outdoor skating rink.  Gingerly, I stepped outside to salt down the back porch.  But already the lazy falling snow is blunting the slick ice, and soon it will be safe for even this thin-boned woman to venture out.  I don’t imagine I will; I prefer my experience of winter delights from an inside perch.

Like my mother before me, I do love to watch a pretty snowfall.  Suspended in time, each flake finds its own way to earth, riding an invisible magic carpet of air.  About twenty feet up from the ground, some reverse direction to go up, making somersaults in the air as they fall back to earth.  Some fall and turn sideways while others twist and turn in a spiral of snow ribbon.  Fast then slow; thick then thin, the flakes build to cover the ground in mass.

The dogs can’t resist the snow.  In and out… in and out… inandout… the door blurs in constant motion.  Sometimes they go to answer a nature call, but mostly they go out to play.

I look out to see Max grazing on snow; he reminds me a graceful deer at a salt lick.  Once he gets his fill he looks up and our eyes meet through the window.  I know he expects me to drop everything to let him in, even without courtesy of bark.  And like the dutiful mind-reading canine mom that I am, I open the door and in flashes a dark fur coat full of icy rhinestones.

Replete with snow, the dogs are now napping, insulated from an outside that has gone strangely silent without buses running up and down Walker.  I’m ready to settle into the silence as well.  I’ll carry a good book to curl up in my favorite spot.  And between book covers, and the covers of a warm blanket and the cover of snow that has put the neighborhood to sleep, I’ll enter a new world.   Between three layers of covers, I’ll be suspended in time.

Whether that new world will be one in a book …or one in a dream…. it’s too soon to tell.  But I’ll keep you posted.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

27 Wednesday Jan 2010

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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On the Irish Ruins of The Quiet Man set

Buying my father a Christmas gift has never been easy.

Just ask my brother Jon  —  he’ll tell you all about the time he learned too late that  Dad was not a Willie Nelson fan — at Christmas or any other time.  But one year, about sixteen years after that Willie Nelson Christmas, I thought I had finally come up with the perfect gift for Dad, when I offered to take him to Greece, to see the land of his father’s birth.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Greece was not on Dad’s radar.  Instead, my father wanted to go to Ireland.  And not just any old place in Ireland — Dad wanted to make a pilgrimage to a city I had never heard of where a movie I had never heard of had been filmed.  In other words, Daddy had his heart set on a visit to Cong where the movie The Quiet Man had been filmed.

Being the gracious gift-givers that we were, we exchanged Greece for the Irish vacation of Daddy’s dreams.  And before travel plans were finalized, the trip grew to include three days each in Paris and London.   All this horsetrading of countries taught me that my beloved father — the quietest man I had thought to ever know — could be quite vocal when it suited his purpose.

In the end, it didn’t matter where Daddy wanted to go.  To his three traveling companions, it was all good.   The days and nights were a blur of memorable sights and sounds, that collided and bumped into each other like fast-moving scenes from the roller coaster ride my sixty-eight year old father rode at Disneyland Paris.

There were the soaring spaces of Paris — Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tour and the Arc de Triomphe — the green rain and gorgeous plump flowers of the Irish countryside, along with lazy sheep crossings on the way to an intrepid picnic on Dingle Bay shared with sea gulls — a ‘mind the gap’ tour of London tubes and seeing history come to life with visits to the Tower of London and walking in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper.

And then there are all those special memories I will always hold dear, like when Daddy, wearing his new tweed jacket and cap, was mistaken for an Irishman by tourists.  And then there’s the photograph of Dad above, standing near the ruins of the “White-O-Mornin” cottage featured in The Quiet Man.  Daddy took in all fifteen days with wide-eyed wonder.  All the memories are precious, especially as I think of how quiet Dad has really grown over the last year, so that he can no longer string two words together.

Amidst all the changing scenery and countries was the constancy of my sister’s chosen dessert of chocolate cake.  It is because of this shared trip with Daddy, that I can no longer see a slice of chocolate cake without thinking ‘Christi.’   And the sweet irony of the association is that I don’t even think chocolate cake is my sister’s favorite dessert — on her birthday, she always asks for a light lemony cheesecake instead!

But two days ago, when I was enjoying a slice of my family’s favorite chocolate cake, I thought of Sis and this shared memory of a fifteen day tour dotted by pieces of chocolate cake.  And with today’s visit to Dad, it seemed right to flip through the photos from the trip and share this recipe with you, along with the few memories that will forever be held together by crumbs of chocolate cake.

Make a chocolate cake memory and you’ll see what I mean.  From my life to yours.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter
1 cup water
4 Tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

In a large bowl, sift together all dry ingredients.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring butter, water and cocoa to boil.  Add the hot mixture to flour mixture.  Sitr well.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well.  Pour in a greased jelly roll pan (10″x15″x2″) and bake at 350 for 20 mins.

Chocolate Frosting

1 stick butter
4 Tbsp cocoa
6 Tbsp milk
1 box powdered sugar (16 oz)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

In a mixing bowl, add powdered sugar.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring butter, cocoa and milk to a boil.  Immediately pour over powdered sugar, mixing with an electric mixer until smooth.  Mix in vanilla and nuts.   Immediately spread over hot cake.

Morning Glory

25 Monday Jan 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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The navy sky will soon fade from the sun’s washing of light.

For now it’s dark in Mesta Park.   I sit in my favorite living room chair looking out my dining room window.  The house is quiet, my husband off to work at the smallish former servant’s quarters outback.  The dogs, replete with food, have settled in all around me to sleep.  The candle is lit, bouncing light off the walls, while a prayer-book and Bible wait in my lap.

The words will keep, while watching the blue colors change outside my window will not.  I’ve no popcorn to eat, but I hold a strong cup of coffee to help me wake up with the day.  The curtain of clouds is open today and the promise of color waits for its call.

This morning glow show is one I never grow tired of — navy turns to unwashed denim to washed denim and corals and oranges and pinks mix into the crowded blue — meanwhile the artificial light, that glows through the windows of other houses surrounding me, reduces from stark contrast until lost in the sea of sunshine.

Eventually, my eyes let go of the scene playing on the screen outside my dining room windows.  I turn my head to look out another window, but my eyes get caught by the light playing over my favorite Thomas Kinkade print, one appropriately called, Morning Glory Cottage.

I love everything about this charming little cottage — the blue roof, the fence out front, its name.  And though I cannot detect them with my eye, I know riotous heavenly blue morning glories grow somewhere on the face of that old cottage.  Yellow light glows behind the windows, and I think, how good my cobalt blue glass would look sitting on the window ledge.

Someday, I hope to live in a cozy cottage like this one, when I’m too old to climb the stairs of this lovely old two-story of mine.  Or maybe I’ll downsize to a one-story before then, when I’m ready for a smaller place.  Someday will come all too soon.

For now, morning has broken and its glory surrounds me.  I look out my sanctuary upon the sky in worship.  Only then can I break open the prayer-book to read.