Mom's Birthday

I've spent some time wondering what I might write about Mom this year. I feel I'm overlooking something that would be obvious had the world not gotten so weird of late, but there it is. Then I remembered a Facebook meme sent by my friend, Vivien. 

My reply was that either this was addressed to younger people or it was a British more than American thing. I could only identify a few things I remembered Mom as saying, and quite I few I couldn't even imagine her ever coming up with.  She may have said "Because I said so" or "Ask your Dad", I'm sure she said the thing about taking someone's eye out. 

Were you born in a barn?  This is a saying that circulated in the US not long before Mom died. She would have said "Shelley! Mind your manners. When ____ we do ____.

Move away from the TV, you'll get square eyes. She may have said I would hurt my eyes, but 'square eyes' wasn't mentioned. She often encouraged me to 'sit up straight'.

You wait until your Dad gets home. Mom was the primary disciplinarian in our house. She may have said something like Your father will not be impressed with this.

Who's SHE? the cat's mother? I think this is quite British. I gather - reading between the lines - that it's considered rude to refer to someone as 'she' if they are present. I am guessing they are supposed to always be referred to by name. No idea if this also applies to He. 

Do as I say not as I do. I think Mom may have said this a couple of times, but more along the lines of sheepishly acknowledging she didn't set a good example than to issue orders.

Eat your crusts, you'll get curly hair.  I'm not sure if this is a stick (that curly hair is bad) or a carrot (that curly hair is desirable). In any case, I've always liked bread crusts - in fact they are my favourite part - and I spent a good part of my childhood in hair curlers.

There is no such word as CAN'T  I don't believe she said this, but rather "You won't know unless you try."

Say 'Pardon', not 'What'  Pardon would have been considered an affectation where and when I grew up. She would have instructed me to say 'Excuse me? I didn't catch what you said'. I gather from various reading that here in Britain 'Pardon' is working class or perhaps regional (Bill's daughter Helen says it since marrying a man from Manchester). As I recall people here seem to say 'Sorry' for when they can't hear or when they bump into people. 'Excuse me' seems to be used when they want someone to most out of their way. We say that for the same purpose in the States, only followed by 'please'.

I've told you a thousand times   I'm sure Mom must have said this - doesn't every parent? - but I can't remember her saying it. She might ask me 'What have I said about...?'

What did your last slave die of? Mom didn't employ sarcasm, she was just straightforward. I do remember the first time she said 'Get it yourself'. I thought I'd die of shock, but at 12 years of age it was long overdue.

I want never gets  Not an American saying. However, I was definitely taught not to ask for things. I could say what I would like to have in a general way, or issue a wish list for Christmas or Birthdays, but not to whine and wheedle to my parents all the time - that was the surest way NOT to get something. And it was supremely bad manners to ask anyone else to give me anything; they had to offer first. When we were in funds I was allowed to chose one treat at the supermarket and I remember eating a basket of cherry tomatoes or a bag of cherries in the back seat on the way home. I expect I could have had candy, but I didn't like it nearly as much, which is very much down to the way they raised me. Being taught not to ask for things has sometimes proven to be a handicap. I have wondered, would  they would have trained a boy in the same way?

Back in my day... Mom's childhood was different - and in some ways far more privileged - than mine. Her father's family was well known and respected in southern Oklahoma. Her father was a road contractor and she and Grandmother travelled with him for at least the first five years of Mom's life - they lived in a tent until then. This sounds hard but they had servants AKA as 'coloured help'. I often heard about Gussie, who brought Mom a chocolate bar and a bottle of Coca Cola for her breakfast in bed. She said Gussie spoiled her. There were times when they were quite poor, but everyone was during the Depression. When Grandmother married a second time to an astute businessman Mom had quite a few luxuries again. But I always understood Mom made her own luxuries through her creative talents. I don't remember complaining about having it hard, because she was so clever about making things pretty or special in a way that other kids' Mom's didn't seem to know how to do. 

What's for dinner, mum? Shit with sugar on. Mom didn't swear beyond 'damn' or 'hell' and only then when really annoyed. She did sometimes fix S.O.S. which in military parlance was 'Shit On a Shingle' (meat in white sauce on bread). She never called it anything other than 'chipped beef on bread'.

No pudding unless you eat your dinner We rarely had pudding - dessert - and I don't expect there were many times I didn't eat my dinner; a lot of the time I asked for seconds. The only time we routinely had dessert was at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes she did make pudding (AKA custard in Britain) for a snack or a treat, but not as part of a meal.

If your mate asked you to jump off a cliff, would you? She may have said this, I don't recall. What I do remember was complaining about what other kids were allowed to do. Her reply was that I wasn't Jill or Sarah, I was Shelley J__ B___. I recall one time when she was trying to get me to conform to something she said, Why not be more like Joanne or Mary? My smart reply was because I was Shelley J__ B____... She laughed.

It'll all end in tears  She'll have said something to this effect, but not these words. 

It's like Blackpool bloody illuminations in here.  I'm sure I never heard of Blackpool until moving to Newcastle - and having been once I can report that there are a lot of neon lights there. I'm guessing this is a complaint about too many lights on in the house. I don't recall us being very conscientious about the electric bill in this way, though I expect we should have been. 

Mom wasn't at all like the person described in these sayings. She was tough as nails in a determined sort of way, but decidedly a Southern lady in all her endeavors. Her hardest battle was to try to make me into one. 

Grandmother's Birthday

It doesn't seem a year since I last 'celebrated' Grandmother's birthday. I guess that is a sure sign of my own increasing age.

Last week a cousin - a third cousin to be more precise - posted a video on Facebook. It was by a group called Anthem Lights and the song was 'In the Garden'. Though hymns aren't at all my thing, this took me back quite a few decades to my childhood and I was surprised at remembering all the words - to the first verse anyhow. 

I commented that it reminded me of evenings in Grandmother's kitchen. She would be puttering around making cherry pies or boiling minced beef (for her dogs) and all the while she'd be humming hymns. I particularly remember 'Rock of Ages'. 

To be honest, I always thought the words were a bit strange: wanting to hide inside a rock? And lots of stuff about blood. Never mind, she sounded content and so all was right with the world, for the moment. Until something happened like a dog peeing on the floor and then she'd screech and swear at it. That was a good time to quietly back out of the room. 

I grew up knowing that a very scary lady loved me an awful lot, but it didn't pay to push ones luck. Happy birthday, Grandmother!

Caveat Emptor

Bill and I went into lockdown the evening of 16 March. I'd intended to nip into the Coop convenience store for milk and cookies for the WI Craft group that evening but when several members sent emails saying they wouldn't be coming because of the PM's announcement telling people to stay home, we cancelled Craft Group. I went to the Coop anyhow to pick up some fresh fruit and veg, not knowing what arrangements for shopping would be in future. Bill came home from his running club that evening and we were AT HOME.

Just that day, we'd been into every shop in North Shields looking to buy hand sanitiser and paracetamol. We found some water soluable paracetamol (horrible tasting stuff, but needs must) but no hand sanitiser in any shop whatsoever.

So I got onto eBay and ordered some. As I recall there wasn't a lot of reasonably priced stuff on offer, but I selected a seller that offered a reasonably large bottle for £11 and I ordered two, which somehow gave me a discount. We never had need of it since we didn't go out except to walk and we never needed to touch anything while walking (well, I never did, Bill forgets occasionally). So I forgot about having ordered the stuff until a few months later when I sat down with a bunch of papers to figure out where my money had gone. When I found the Paypal charge I realised I'd never received the hand sanitiser. It was by then too late to claim back from eBay.

The £17.60 wasn't going to break me, but I was annoyed with myself for not looking more closely at this seller. It was also my own fault for a) not following up promptly and b) being too lazy to read through all the instructions on eBay...all their FAQs are for irrelevancies and I couldn't find an actual person to write to for the protocol. So I figured the seller would likely continue to get away with this, though I see she's not sold anything for the past month, so perhaps there is a limit to fraudulent behaviour that even eBay will tolerate.

Then it occurred to me to contact Paypal. Fortunately their complaints procedure is much simpler. I just got in touch with the Chat line and they transferred me to the complaints department. It took a couple of weeks, but even though the seller never replied to their inquiries, they refunded my £17.60! I'm pleased I didn't give up even if I was very late in following up. Sadly I suspect this is like with bankruptcies, where the costs to the businesses are passed on to other customers. 

I will definitely be more cautious in my eBay purchases from now on.

Bill's Crackers (but you knew that)

This story begins with a bucket of yogurt. I've had reasonable success freezing and thawing yogurt for later use, but I've learned that success may vary with different brands. It always separates to some extent, but stirring generally does the trick. Not with this latest purchase however. Lovely and creamy when new, but not only did it separate but the solid part was grainy and Bill couldn't cope with this. 

So I strained it overnight, putting a double fold of linen towel into a strainer suspended over a bowl. The result was a jar of whey which I will put into some muffins and a tub of 'yogurt cheese'. I knew I could put garlic, herbs and salt into this to make a kind of dip but before I did that I asked Bill for ideas. His response was to make some cream crackers. I think they should be illegal. 

On the other hand, this is in keeping with the recommendation Michael Pollen makes in his book, In Defense of Food. If you want unhealthy snack food, don't buy it at the store, make it yourself. This will limit the number of times you'll eat it. Not that crackers are terribly unhealthy, they're just terrible. Because we eat them, not just with yogurt cheese but with peanut butter or regular butter. The carbohydrate and the crunch combined with something fattening is almost irresistible. I think this is the recipe he used. 

Whey.

So I'd best fight back by making those muffins, right?

Putting a Mask on It

I've been absent the last couple of posting days. On Tuesday last week the neighbours (the ones from which we are 'semi-detached') began a major overhaul of their kitchen / dining / utility room by taking out a wall and putting a door to the outside where a window once was. This is the second wall they've removed and Bill teased me that their house was going to fall down and take ours with it. I didn't find that in the least funny. I'm hoping they aren't creating an echo chamber next door as we already hear far too much of their lives as it is. However, it's out of my hands and I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.

I had the bad timing on Tuesday to have a migraine about the time the hammering and drilling began. I took some ibuprofen and went to find refuge in the back seat of our car. After a couple of hours I felt well enough to finish the post I'd started but that was all I could manage on my Writing Day. And strangely enough I forgot all about this blog over the weekend. So while the plasterers and electricians carry on their work today, I'm very pleased to say I have no headache.

On the inside. You can see how the wire bends over Bill's nose.

A couple of weeks ago, Bill had asked me to make him a mask. I've been going through all the fabric stash in my craft room and pulling out what I thought were suitable cottons, zigzagging the edges and putting them through the wash. I expect I could make a couple hundred masks if I needed to, but I think half a dozen for each of us should be ample, particularly since we largely stay at home. I went into the post office last Monday to send off my US tax returns (because I'm married to a foreigner and filing separately I'm not allowed to file my taxes online). It was fairly scary but I think I may have got away with it. Bill just went into a small local DIY store this morning, having scoped it out at the weekend. He chose it because a) they are a local one-off shop and b) they hardly have any customers in ordinary times. We have groceries delivered or Bill goes to shops or cafes that serve at their front doors. We have no plans to visit any pubs, restaurants or supermarkets for the foreseeable future. We both feel very fortunate that we are able to stay safe at home most of the time.

So I wasn't in any hurry to make him a mask, but I finally did. Out of Winnie-the-Pooh fabric.

From the outside. 

I chose a pattern by a German lady named Iris Luckhaus, who was a professional pattern drafter at one time. She reviewed a lot of different patterns for masks, decided they all had shortcomings and then drafted her own. She explains it all here. I will make this again, I think, only I may try to figure out how to put a filter between the two cotton layers. It's a pretty straightforward pattern using two 8" squares and two small rectangles and two lengths of elastic. It also has a channel in the top for a piece of wire which can be removed for washing. I used florist wire. The hardest part was figuring out the pleats - I've never made anything with pleats in my life - but I eventually got there. She has quite a few diagrams and I finally found the one that clicked with my somewhat deficient brain. 

I put the elastic through the tubes made by the small rectangles and then had Bill put it on. I tied the elastic behind each ear and adjusted the fit per his instructions, tying a double knot on each side. Then I tightened the knots, trimmed the excess elastic and pulled the knots into the tubes on each side to keep them out of the way.

Sadly, you can't tell it's Winnie the Pooh fabric, but I have a number of other children's cotton prints that I put aside for Bill. Those of you who know him will likely agree this is entirely suitable. 

Not Quite Keeping Up

I chose the book for our WI Book Group for June: Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo. I chose it based on the fact that it won the Booker Prize for 2019 (or perhaps half - it was the first ever shared prize, along with The Testament, by Margaret Atwood.) Also that it appeared on Barack Obama's list of favourite books he read in 2019. I can't say I'm an Atwood fan, though I recognise she is a powerful writer. It's just that I find her books to be rather depressing and I prefer a bit of escapism in my reading. I'm not sure I'd call what I got as escaping, but Evaristo's book was far from boring.

Every one in the book group said they really enjoyed the book and our discussion was lively. They congratulated me on a timely choice, as though I knew back in May that George Floyd would be murdered and that his death would cause protests world wide. 

Without getting into the story line(s) of the book, it did strike me as being as much about sex as it was about race. I remember telling Bill that the first character, Amma, was not only black, but gay, worked in theatre and lived in London. I commented that I couldn't find a character more opposite to me: white, straight, stuck in my left-brain and definitely a suburban girl. Fortunately the book has many stories and Amma's is only the beginning. I never came to like Amma but I definitely respected her.

While making my way through this book my attention was drawn to the controversy around J. K. Rowling's essay that revealed a sad past of abuse. The essay highlighted her concern that women's private spaces were potentially about to be invaded by men claiming they were women (in spite of no hormone therapy or surgery) and therefore entitled to be in the women's toilets or changing rooms. She saw this as a potential threat to the safety and well-being of women. She also questioned the motivation of young women wishing to become men; was it because the world treats women as less than men?

I'd read about the actors who distanced themselves from Rowlings viewpoint but didn't read her essay until a New York Times opinion piece titled "Harry Potter and the Scales of Justice" claimed that Rowling's essay was full of hate. That seemed so unlikely that I had to go read it for myself; it certainly is not. However, I found that I needed to look up a number of words to understand her meaning, which made me aware that I've just not been keeping up with the goings on in the world. Just in case you haven't either, I shall share some of the things I learned.

I think I've always used the terms 'sex' and 'gender' as interchangeable, but nowadays they are different things (or perhaps they always were). Simply put, 'gender' is what is in the brain and 'sex' is what is in the pants. Also, 'cis' is from the Latin for 'on this side of ' which is the opposite of trans, meaning 'across from'. So a person who is 'cis-gendered' is lucky enough to have been born with the same genitalia as how they feel in their mind.  

Non-binary can be someone who doesn't necessarily identify as either male or female, but apparently non-binary is a term that means different things to different people and it is important to ask an individual who identifies as non-binary what it means to them. They may well wish to be referred to as they-them rather than he/she-him/her. The character Megan / Morgan in Evaristo's book was actually one of the more popular with our book group, simply wanting to be able to be themselves without having to live up to the expectations of either a feminine or masculine stereotype. 

Another thing that was cleared up for me is that the sex that comes after the word 'trans' is what that person has become, not what they used to be or changed from.  Also, that sexual orientation is a completely different issue to sex or gender, referring to whom one is attracted. For example, a person born male who became female can be attracted to either men or women; or a woman who became a man can be attracted to either men or women. 

All these terms and concepts were news to me and though I'm glad I looked them up, I don't feel hugely wiser. How many people aren't happy about being men or women? Have there always been this many and I just didn't know? One thought that I cling to is the idea that I just need to treat people as human beings, I don't necessarily have to understand them; after all there are plenty of cis-gender people I've never really understood. 

I wonder how all this will be looked back on in fifty years. Will the idea of male/female identity be outdated? What will have replaced it? Will people look back on this as a time of great change and confusion out of which good things came? Will women of any ilk have equal pay and equal representation in places of power? Will Black Lives Matter have achieved their aims? And, most importantly in my opinion, will we have saved our planet from ruin? I can't say I'm optimistic about much of this, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Hearts

Our WI Craft group Zoomed in May to chat and share what each of us had made during the past month or so. Someone suggested we have a theme for what we made in June and they came up with 'hearts'.  After we all signed off, I promptly forgot all about it.

The committee for our WI decided we should join Zoom for the £12-13 a month it costs so that we didn't need to bother with the 40 minute limit. We Zoom for our regular meetings, for committee meetings, book groups and book social meetings, craft group and other chat meetings and, soon, coffee mornings. While it is true we aren't bringing in money at face to face meetings we do have a substantial financial cushion and the Zoom fee is something like 20% of the rent we paid to rent the Parish Hall.

Some email or other about booking the Zoom call reminded me about hearts and so that very Monday I sat down with my three cookie cutters (bought for crafting, not baking) and came up with lavender bags. I have about three years' worth of dried lavender from my seven or eight bushes which are growing nicely just now, but not yet in flower. Except for the French lavender which has done it's best ever this year. 

I started with some black net fabric that was in my Aunt Rita's stash. Sadly the plastic red hearts stamped on the netting stuck together after being folded for years. I liked the silver back better than the now patchy red and silver fronts. My sewing machine didn't like any of it, so I sat down to do some hand sewing. I don't care for the look of the lavender through the net, but Bill liked it.

Years ago I played around making heart and star shapes out of sheer fabric bits in my stash. My sewing machine liked this sheer fabric better, apparently (a sharp, new needle, perhaps) and I sort of got away with making these shapes. I called them 'fairy bandaids'... no comment. Anyhow, I found a couple of these and stitched them together for another lavender bag.

Finally, I tried something larger with some more solid fabrics. The back solid is a kind of textured silk I imagine Rita making a cocktail dress from. The front vintage print is in polyester. I think it was given me by one of the sewing ladies from the Linskill group and I imagine it dates back to at least the 70s if not 60s. I had to look up how to do a blanket stitch again and putting this last one together took the most time, but I think I like it the best. They all smell delicious!

The two other ladies produced hearts in a similar fashion as lavender bags, though I think theirs may have been stuffed with something else. One new person had made a great hanging of three hearts in different blue fabrics from old clothes plus some twine and a couple of sticks. Someone else had worked on a cross-stitch for their first grandchild, a girl, which had lots of hearts in it. One lady made some paper cards which employed hearts; I envy her great eye for design. And one of our very clever knitters knitted a three-dimensional snail character whose shell was in the shape of a heart. 

Our theme for next month is flowers. I'll be working on the knitted flower squares of a blanket I'm making, which is a bit boring, but I'm looking forward to seeing what the others come up with!