Blank Writing Books

Buying a white covered 8x11-1/2 blank book shouldn’t be that hard. But for me it became my quest of sorts.

Before a few of the stores closed in the area where I live, there was a school supply store called Holcombs. Since they carried every imaginable school supply, the store became one that I frequented a lot.

That was the store where I found small and large hard covered books. They were white books with 28 pages inside. The book had exactly the same amount of pages in found in a professionally published children’s’ book, for a budding author to write and illustrate his or her own book.

I would purchase a number of these books and gave one or two away as a present to my grandson, Matthew, who loved to write his own stories and illustrate them, too. I even found those blank books in a kit at Target. I bought them as well and would put them away for later use. I stored them for a later time when I would need them. Then the school store closed, and Target stopped carrying the book kits. At least I had a few of those hard covered books squirreled away.

I started to look for those hard covered books everywhere. On my computer, I Googled blank white covered books, and ordered some but they were never the right ones. One day as I was looking at the back of one of the older books that I had, I noticed a SKU number and a name – Ashley. I typed in the name, and blank hard covered books and I was rewarded with a site on Amazon for Ashley books. I found exactly what I was looking for, and ordered a few of the blank white covered books. I now have a source to buy more of these books.

I hope the books will be around for a long time. All I know is my grandson has his own library of books that he has designed and written by himself. Besides giving him more blank books, I am planning on keeping enough for me, so that I can write a story about each one of my grandchildren and put photos in them.

Maybe some day if I’m lucky, my grandson will write a story about his tenacious grandmother, who never gave up searching for 8x11-1/2 white hard covered blank books.

Anyway , I did pat myself on the back for a job well done.

The Missing Christmas Stockings

While cleaning out my closets I actually uncovered the ten Christmas stocking that I thought got thrown away a few years ago. The first four, I bought from a quaint shop in some small town in Missouri. The stockings were hand made, and quilted in colors of red and green. The three that I bought for my boys had lollipops on one, a train on the other and a figure of an Amish looking boy. The other one was for my daughter and it was of a little Amish looking girl.

Then we had a set of twins and another little girl. I found someone who took orders for quilted Christmas stockings. The three matched in various colors but the lady added a ruffle on the top for a little girl. Then when I had my last two children…I bought the material and made a quilted stocking for both, and one each for myself and my husband.

My husband actually cut a strip of wood and hung it up under the mantle of the fireplace. It had enough hooks to hang our 11 stockings. The wooden strip with the hooks is still up and every Christmas the stockings hang there waiting for Santa to fill them. Even long after my children have grown, I still hang up those colorful stockings, which is always a reminder of the past and when nine little children would wake up Christmas morning a few hours after we, Santa’s helpers, would go to bed. They loved what they found in their stockings. I still fill up the stockings of my grown adult children…the ones who are not married yet.

For the last two years the stockings were hidden underneath junk in my closet. It wasn’t until I pulled my closet apart to clean it that I found the missing stockings. I felt overwhelmed with joy and happy to have found them. Now I can continue my tradition of hanging my Christmas stockings under my mantle. Maybe this year, Santa will fill mine with a reward for finding and hanging the stockings back up.

For everyone else – Merry Christmas!

Continuing Work in the Kitchen

I arrived in the catering kitchen a little before my daughter. I looked over the list that she had dictated to me…make two garden salads in big bowls. Use greens from bottom shelf. Make cucumber salad. Dressing is labeled.

I start off by cleaning the food trap in the dishwasher. Rinse it, replace it, fill dishwasher with hot water. Washing my hands, I pull out the two salad bowls off the shelf. I walk into the big Walk in Cooler/Refrigerator and pull greens from bottom shelf. I notice that the Romaine lettuce that I had cut the day before and take that as well. Usually I am supposed to mix the two. The Romaine had turned brown and some of the mixed greens look slimy. I do my best to find good greens, and mix them together. Halfway, I pull out some tomatoes, and cucumbers to put in the salad, along with olives. Picking through more greens, I add this to the remainder of the bowls, and at the top I put on more tomatoes, olives and the whole, sliced cucumbers. I wrap the salads and labele them for Saturday’s wedding.

My daughter walks in and goes ballistics. “What is that? I told you to use the mixed greens, not the Romaine. What the hell happened to the Romaine?”
“That is how it looked…I picked through it. Besides the mixed greens looked awful as well,” I sputtered, and then clammed up. I listen to her yell some more and then both of us pick out the cucumbers, tomatoes and olives and threw away the mixed greens.

“Why did you use these cucumbers?”
“Well there were three containers and I took the ones labeled for Saturday’s wedding,” I explained. I thought that was logical but I guess not in the kitchen.

Finally, my daughter has vented enough. She apologizes and said something appears wrong with the Walk In. It seems to be 10 degrees warmer then it should be and she will have some one come in and look at it.

Finally, I make the cucumber salad using the half sliced cucumbers and cut the remaining ones in half, mixed in the salad dressing. I add more salt and pepper, dill, and paprika, and then cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and set it on a shelf in the front refrigerator.

While working in my daughter’s kitchen, I have learned a few things - nothing goes smoothly, try not to react because the chef is always right, and everything can be remedied.

I Love Pressure Washing

I live alone now I have to either hire people to help me out, or if it is my kids who are helping me – I usually throw in a dinner to pay them back. Since this will be the first year that one of my kids do not live here or no one has moved back in, I am totally on my own.

My friends and family knows that I hate asking for help. Then I feel guilty about asking for help because my kids have their own lives, families, homes and responsibilities. I wish that my kids would just come over to help without being asked.


But this weekend things changed for me. The young man who does my lawn showed up to mow it, and he picked up the leaves around my house. The next day, my youngest daughter came over with her boyfriend and he brought along his pressure washer.

For four hours he cleaned the moss off of my house and then he worked on my cemented patio. I never even knew that one could clean off their patio. He worked hard and long and cleaned half of my patio. It was a contrast from black and white. Finally, I made him stop. Poor guy, he even missed the entire Steelers game to do all this work but I did scrounge up three beers and gave those to him. And of course I had a lot of snacks, dinner and apple pie to serve him and my daughter.

He left the machine and suggested he would come back next week to finish the job. I said that I would call one of my boys and let them finish it. Afterwards, I made two phone calls to two different sons; one I called and asked to clean out my gutters, which now seemed to be sprouting small trees in different places. The other call was to my youngest son, asking him to clean the rest of the patio and to do a few more chores around my house. Both said yes.

The next day – something very interesting happened. I looked at my book on Home Repairs with Rosie the Riveter on the cover, flexing her muscles, and I stared at her long and hard. With an unspoken message, I changed into my work clothes. I pulled in the grille and took down the hammock and put both into the garage. For my finale, I hooked up the pressure washer to the hose. For 1 -1/2 hours, I worked on the rest of the patio. The machine is light and not bulky, making my job pretty easy. Yet, I have to say it is a tedious job. But, once I found a nice sweeping rhythm, my job moved along and when I was finished…I was pretty excited. The patio looked great, and I did half of it myself. I jumped around singing…”I did it! I am woman hear me roar,” as the next door St. Bernard barked along with me.

I love that pressure washer and I know next year, I can and will do both those jobs on my own.

Paper Clips

Love them or lose them. I, in face love them and covet paper clips. If you would look inside of my writing bag, or on my desk, or in some of my drawers, you would find quite a few packs of them.

I hate the small ones. I hate the boring metal ones. I don’t like the metal ones because they get old and rusty if they are the cheap ones. I prefer the jumbo sized paper clips. I love the metallic neon colored ones – the delicate pink, lovely blue, funky purple and mellow green ones. They perk up my papers. They perk me up. Paper clips help to keep me organized and orderly, and my individual stories together, my blog pieces together, and my research information together.

When I start to run out of them, I sometimes have to check two or three stores to find the right ones that I prefer. I guess I am what you might call a paper clip geek. I admit to this vice. I just wish that I had been the one to have invented this little gem – the paper clip. Instead, give thanks to the Norwegian, Johan Vaaler who invented this simple but clever little gadget in 1899.

I guess I really got so hooked on paper clips was when I started to mail out my stories to publishers and editors. In order to keep the pages together, I used a paper clip. Most publishers and editors do not want a writer to send their stories in stapled together. They request the writer to use paper clips. Now it is acceptable to send out ones stories within the email or as an email
attachment. This keeps the cost of paper and mailings down for the author. And the editor doesn’t have to bother to return the author’s work.

Whatever, those metallic jumbo paper clips serves an important purpose. Besides that, I like them. If you are interested besides holding papers together there are many other uses for paper clips…

Use as a zipper pulley.
Hang ornaments on trees.
Hold together a bag or plastic bag shut.
Hook together and use to count the days for the end of school or to count down toward a holiday.
Poke someone.
Clean your nails.
Use as earrings.
Get into a lock to unlock a door.
Too many more to list.

These are just a few uses, but you can pretty much let your imagination run away with ideas as how to use those paper clips. I bet once you do, you’ll love them as much as I do.

Lessons Learned

After going through all the events surrounding my stolen purse, trying to order new cards, check, keys, and wait for days to receive all of them, now I am able to breathe a little bit easier. Someone asked me if anything good came from this incident. I thought about it and this was what I came up with…

1. I learned how to use my key pad, so if I ever lock my keys in the car (and believe me I have done this a number of times), I can now open the car from the keypad.

2. I now have two new car keys, a remote, and a start up key (the towing service will be happy). Before I had only one key that I misplaced often and went crazy trying to find it.

3. After having my car serviced by the Ford dealer, they washed my car and it looks brand new! I never washed my car, and depended on the rain to do that chore.

4. The Ford dealer replaced the tire sensor that was causing my tire pressure to lose air, and go flat. The other three tires went through the same problem – lose air, the sensor light was always on, the tire would go flat and I would have to have it towed. Now I don’t have to worry about that for a long time because I have four new tire sensors.

5. I found out that soaked leather purses in dumpsters smell so rank that they make you want to puke. I will never buy another leather purse.

6. Without a debit or credit card, it kept me from spending money for 8 days!

7. I was out $37.00 for gas, when the thief used my credit card. But since it was stolen the credit card company supposedly took the charges off.

8. Thank God for Equifax, who put up a 90 day Fraud alert on all my accounts.

9. My children stepped forward and offered me money, until I had access to my own.

10. I now use my house key and make sure that all my doors and windows are locked.

I learned that now that I have replaced all that was taken from me, I definitely can handle whatever comes my way. Maybe this all made me a bit stronger. I would rather get stronger through my daily exercise works outs, though. But I found that jokes and laughter help the most. I also will be more careful with my purse.

Luxurious Comforter

A few weeks ago, I was at the mall with my youngest daughter. We were at the bedding department at Macy’s because my daughter was looking for a new comforter set for her bedroom.

While walking around and looking at the different displays, my eyes zeroed in on a striking red cover. Actually, my daughter and I saw it at the same time, and we both walked over to it at the same time.

It was a luxurious, rick looking comforter. As I touched it, (I’m that shopper, who has to touch and feel things), the word luxurious crossed my mind. The satin cover was a Ralph Lauren design, a color of bright cherry red with a field of flowers of pinkish and orange poppies, and small white, and blue flowers. The flip side of the cover was a kitchen plaid. The comforter came with a flowered dust ruffle and two European shams.

To be honest, I loved it right then and there. I never possessed anything quite exquisite as this comforter. I have had light weight, inexpensive quilts but nothing like this beautiful comforter.I knew as I touched it, I wanted it. Actually I wanted to jump on the bed and lie on top of the comforter. Then I thought…do I need this or do I want it? The answer was no, I did not need it but I definitely wanted it. There was a sale going on, 50% off the regular price. Yes, the price was right. But I really didn’t need it. A need and a lustful want was where I was at.

My daughter also liked the comforter. Yet, she thought this cover would look great on her other bed. In the end, she bought a different comforter set which was beautiful. We both passed on the flowered comforter.

The next week, I went to the Macy’s store close by my house. I was being led by my desire to see if that comforter was still on sale. I walked to the bedding department and saw my comforter. Unfortunately, the sale was over and I definitely couldn’t justify buying it at the regular price. I kept going back and forth to the mall, hoping that I would find the comforter on sale. Still no luck. But the fourth time, as I stood by the display, a Macy’s salesperson walked by, asking if I needed any help. “No,” I responded. Well, yes, I love this cover but can’t justify the price. I saw it when it was on sale and should have bought it then.”

“Well, you’re in luck because this set will be going on sale on Friday for half price.” My mouth dropped open and he continued. “You can buy it now for that sale price and then you can pick it up on Friday.”

I didn’t know that could be done but I wasn’t going to hesitate or pass on this second chance. I bought it and picked it up on Friday.

The comforter is on my bed now and I love it. That beautiful cover looks like it belongs in my room. The beauty of it made me clean up my bedroom and keep things off of my bed. Everything but the two cats, that is, who love sinking on the plush comforter and curling up and sleeping on it. Funny thing is that I had trouble sleeping but since I bought this cover, not any more.

A need or a want? It doesn’t matter, I am glad and happy that I bought this comforter; it is as simple as that.