Obesity, Deadly Sins & The American Plague

The first part of July was very full of relatives here at the homestead, and my relatives run the gambit in ’size’ designations between morbidly obese and thin as rails. I’m a sort of in-between person. Weigh the same now (approaching my 40th anniversary next month) as I did the day I graduated from high school and the day I got married. Don’t tend to gain or lose and never have. Hubby is one of those ‘high metabolism’ sorts who could look like a starving Ethiopian with little trouble just by skipping a few meals, but keeps firm muscles under the no-fat covering by getting way more exercise than most guys these days. Comes from the homestead lifestyle, heating with wood (thus cutting and splitting), maintaining the acre of up-and-down yard, and playing lots of ‘challenging’ disc golf.

Our daughter takes after him. You’d swear she’s got a giant tapeworm or something watching her woof down more food in a single sitting than I’m likely to eat all day (or over two days!), never gains an ounce and has to eat lots to maintain what little she’s got. Her son takes more after his father, and could easily put on significant weight if he’s not careful. Of course his diet is worse than ours – he likes fast food burgers, fries and soft drinks, whereas we are mostly vegetarian, seldom eat out, and drink primarily our great spring water in herb/green teas or plain, or mixed with straight fruit juices like blueberry, cranberry, pomegranate or some combo. All of us get sugar cravings occasionally and are known to pig out on chocolate or other candy, but that’s rare enough not to be a big deal, living as far from town as we do. Daughter likes a little coffee in her sugar, when she’s not here a pound of sugar can last for months. Hubby and I don’t use it in coffee or on cereal (though we do like fruit on our Cheerios), and don’t drink milk straight-up ever. Daughter can consume a gallon a day without even trying.

Out of five kids in my family, 4 of us siblings tend to be slender like me. Yes, the poundage has rearranged quite a bit over the course of my 58 years, but you’ll have this (it’s a gravity thing, I think!). The youngest, my baby sister who had a 17″ waist when she got married, is now morbidly obese. She and her three children spent four days here, took grandson back with them to Florida. Her two sons are like her hubby, high metabolism guys whose plain old nervous energy keeps them skinny. They don’t exercise or even go out of the house much at all, so that’s not a factor. Her daughter is just now ‘chunky’, risks being fat as she gets older if she isn’t careful. Our parents weren’t fat folks, in fact, Mom was a runway model with long legs and perfect posture, lots of grace and beautiful chestnut hair – a real beauty. Grandparents weren’t particularly large on either side, though my father’s sister was a fat woman as was my mother’s grandmother. So there are no doubt a few fat genes in the mix, where there seem to be none on my hubby’s side.

And indeed genetics do play a role. Primarily, I suspect, in how metabolism is regulated, along with hunger signaling and tendencies to store fat. But my observations also tend to support my strong suspicions that most of it is diet and exercise habits. Primarily diet. This was doubly confirmed during their four-day visit, when we had to be the food suppliers.

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Another Grandchild Makes the Grade

Pictured is Grandson #2, Michael, who graduated from high school last month and will be attending a college for the artistically gifted, which of course he is. This marks two grandchildren to make it to college, two with rather extreme artistic talents who ought to do very well in the world, and one very, very proud grandma!

We’ll be seeing Mikey and his folks and sister for the week following the 4th of July. Now this is going to be a little bit tricky, but I’m looking forward to Mikey’s complaint-less help in harvesting blackberries for the cobbler he loves so much. We are leaving this coming Saturday for Oklahoma to visit Great-Grandma, who will be 87 in August. We’ll be on our second day homeward on the 4th, and will have to swing through Kentucky on the way home to meet with other sisters, brother-in-laws, nieces and nephews to send my little sister’s ashes over Cumberland Falls, something she made us promise to do before she died a couple of years ago. It’ll be the first time we’re all together since then, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Meanshile, Mikey and family will be leaving Atlanta on the 4th to come here. I’m going to give them the ‘break-in’ secret for getting into the house if we’re not home yet (and we might not be), because we’ve been having a bit of bear trouble this year. Don’t want them camping in the yard, for very good reason.

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Papa’s Last Great Balloon Launch

Wooly Bully, Amen.

In true Rainbow Traveling Show style, there was much fireside sitting, heavy binge drinking, tearful goodbyes and storytelling belly-laughs at Papa Dollar’s Memorial and Wake in sunny Florida on Wednesday, February 25, 2009. With just about every one of the ‘usual suspects’ up to no good from start to finish.

Not the least of which was when the heir-apparent put my daughter Tash in charge of the blank-book in which we were all supposed to write something pithy about our old friend’s multi-storied life and times. She asked him what day it was so she could use her beautiful calligraphic skills to etch the title page, and he told her it was February 29, 2009. She (not paying attention to dates much) believed him. And now the precious family keepsake is forever dated Leap-Day in an Odd Year, something that’s never once actually occurred in the entire history of date-keeping!

But the best – better even than the formal Medicine Show eulogies – was the balloon launch, something Ras Papa was internationally infamous for. For this one it had been decided to launch Papa’s ratty old hat with the balloons. Which the 120 or so people present had to shuttle from his front porch helium tank to the mower polo field so they could be tied together into a freeform… thing. The animal balloons had sat in the sun too long, mostly exploded before they could be filled, but we did get a few. People drew or wrote things on the regular balloons with Sharpees before filling them, each with a personal note or charicature that related to Papa’s life.

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Just in Time for Thanksgiving

How to Process that Turkey Carcass

Three of my kids who will not be here for Thanksgiving have called in the past week to ask me what to do with the turkey carcass once everybody’s done eating the Big Dinner. So while there are about a million things you can do with the leftover chunks and slices of turkey meat (turkey sandwiches, turkey & gravy on a shingle, etc.), not that many young people these days know what to do with all those bones and the gelled goo and the fat and skin and stray bits of possible meat that may cling, other than to put the whole mess into a plastic garbage bag and toss it into the dumpster. Or bury it in the back yard. Heck, even the cats won’t clean it off well enough to bleach any bones, and you sure shouldn’t feed it to the dogs!

So here’s the basics to brew yourself up some good turkey broth from this leftover yuck, which in turn can be used to make future gravy, future soups (any kind), or just poured over the dry dog food and mixed to give Fido a feeling that s/he has a feasting holiday too. It’s not hard, you just need a stock pot (or canner) big enough to hold all the ’stuff’ scraped off the platter and roasting pan.

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A Wonderful Family Reunion

Here’s hoping that all my readers had a happy, safe and brightly-lit Independence Day this year! Ours was particularly great, with Grandson #2 (two months younger than #1), his Mom and soon-to-be official Stepdad and 15-year old sister we’ve only met once before. Other guests were at a minimum, which allowed us to just hang out together, tell stories and talk about ’stuff’, hike on the Mount Mitchell Trail a bit, and break in my brand new deck.

We hadn’t seen grandson Michael for four years, which is way too long! Last time he was here – for the 4th of July – he got bitten by a copperhead on day-1 and had to spend the next three days in the hospital. Not much of a birthday vacation! Luckily, copperheads have thus far been absent this year (knock on wood), so Mike and I were able to spend good time together picking blackberries and making cobbler, accumulating lots of thorn pricks and scratches in the process. We only looked slightly war-weary by the time the cobbler was done, badges of honor around here!

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Summer Challenge: Feeding the Grandkids

…what they mostly won’t eat at home

I don’t know about all grandmas, but I know from my own experience with other people’s kids that they often come to spend a week or two expecting to be fed precisely what they usually get fed at home, and can be positively horrified to find that Grandma doesn’t stock chocolate cereals or big bags of candy or white bread and baloney for sandwiches, and there’s not a McDonald’s or Wendy’s in sight.

Now, it’s not that I don’t make some concessions to the basic kid-diet. My non-vegetarian grands and nieces/nephews and such do have the option of a can of beef-a-roni or a frozen pepperoni pizza here and there. I’ve even been known to purchase some turkey-dogs to roast over the campfire. But the grilled burgers are black bean, there will be no “Happy Meals,” and no bacon bits for the baked potatoes.

I also stock lots of fruit, whatever’s available when they’re here. I grow strawberries in the garden, those usually get eaten as soon as they’re picked, and they only last so long into the season. I have some cherry tomatoes that went wild one year, show up in unexpected places all over the garden. Those get eaten as soon as they’re picked as well, one granddaughter swears they’re sweeter than cherries! None of the kids seem to like cooked greens very much, but they’ll eat as many peas raw from the pod as I can possibly pick on any given day.

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Blackberry Winter and Baby Sunshine

We’re all suffering Blackberry Winter here in the mountains. And I do mean suffering. Grandson, daughter and I have all contracted our ‘usual’ spring colds due to radical temperature and weather shifts, and it’s simply way too cold and nasty outside for me to finish tilling a tier of the garden for tomatoes and peppers. We haven’t seen the sun in days. It’s not quite cold enough for heat, not warm enough to get out of our winter sweatshirts and sweaters. Yuck!

I found out about Blackberry Winter the first spring we spent here, in 1993. That was the year of the Great Blizzard on March 13 that buried us under 3-4 feet of wet snow and cut the electricity off for two full weeks. It was also the year of our first forest fire on April 13, exactly a month later and pretty scary (I’m used to them by now). Then, right around May 13, the lovely seasonably warm weather turned suddenly dark, damp and relatively cold (low 60s during the day, 40s at night). It lasted for nearly two weeks, and I was hard pressed to figure out what’s wrong with May around here. I’d seen May be the hottest month of the year in several states we’d lived previously!

That’s when my new friend Margaret informed me rather dismissively that it’s just Blackberry Winter. Happens every year during the first half of May, she said, and in the 15 years since I’ve found that to be true and entirely predictable every single year. See, the blackberries bloom during that time, and the cold weather always coincides with the appearance of their white blooms. Not with the crocus and jonquils, not with the dogwoods and redbuds, not with the apples, pears or cherry blooms. Always with the blackberries. As soon as you see the buds starting to open you know for a fact the weather will turn within a day or two, and stay dismal for as long as it takes for them to be pollinated and drop off.

Thus it was with joy and gladness that I received the news in my head-stuffed, achy spring illness that our daughter and son-in-law will be visiting Granny, Grandpa and an Aunt Granny nearby next weekend with baby Sunshine! Of course that means I have to scramble to finish that darned quilt, but I can’t wait to hold that baby and kiss her soft cheeks! The weather should be great by then, the blackberries are almost done doing their thing. Our colds should be well over with by then too, and we’ll disinfect the house thoroughly for the occasion.

I’ll take lots of pictures! So stay tuned all you Moms and Grandmas out there, this Grandma is ready to show off big time!

A Good New Fangled Irish Wake

Well, we made it home in one piece from the funeral of our dear old friend Rick, but only because Grandma did the driving (everyone had been up all night at the wake, I was the only one in any shape to drive 8 hours home!). The funeral crowd overspilled the ample sanctuary of Rick’s Mom’s Catholic church, SRO inside (including the entire foyer) and others standing outside. The priest was a bit taken aback, and rightly suspected a lot of these people had probably never darkened a church door in their lives. But he did fine anyway, and all our hearts were broken – we were there for Mom, no one was going to cause any trouble.

In the immediate family circle are O’Sheas and Coins and O’Cains and O’Rourkes and other names so blatantly Irish nobody could confuse the issue by the number of Rastas and Buddhists and Presbyterians and atheists (and God-Knows-Whats) in the crowd. Even though we did outnumber them. After the mass there was a photo collage presented in the fellowship hall, probably 600 people stayed to see it.

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Managing The Weaponry

…and Laying Down the Law

It was an action-packed weekend. A total of 4 daughters (one by birth, three by stray whose kids call me “Aunt Granny”) one stray son and five semi-grands plus #1 grandson. Here for the youngest semi-grandson’s eighth birthday on Sunday. To make matters worse, the weather was absolutely dismal so there could be no friendly campfire for Peep-roasting, the ins and outs of having all those people coming and going from the cold and wet into the house completely trashed the place so that it’s taken two days just to reclaim the living area.

There were some issues that arose, particularly in regards to the younger boys (8 and 10) and 17-year old #1 grandson’s ample collection of serious weaponry that he just can’t seem to keep put safely away because he practices with them so often. I had to collect ninja knives and Samurai swords, one rapier and several heavy fantasy swords from them at various times, which they’d managed to fish out of some gawd-awful corner of grandson’s outrageously messy room when nobody was looking. The girls (4 and 14) were, as usual, perfect angels – ratted out those boys every time…

#1 Grandson lives here, graduates high school this year, and is an only child. This place is far out in the country with no immediate neighbors, surrounded by National Forest. When he was younger (about 8), we began allowing him to collect wooden practice swords and staffs, gave him form lessons to keep him busy. Our son (who died when grandson was just 2) had a double black belt in a weapons form of Kung-Fu (was also an amazing juggler and seasoned performer who once toured demonstrating his weapons skills on stage with his master). Grandson had inherited a lot of practice and show weapons, bought more once we allowed that beginning when he was 12. He makes spectacularly detailed Samurai armor by hand too, as well as fantasy chess sets from Sculpy – he’s extremely talented, we’ve always encouraged it.

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A Happy Family Holiday

…from the lake cabin!

One daughter, her annoying (and very loud) boyfriend, one niece and her not-annoying boyfriend, two semi-sons and their wives, one grandson and three old Navy buddies (plus 2 wives). It’s been a busy week here at the lake house for Mama and Papa Elf, who always stretch out Christmas over the entire length of the holidays. That’s a perk we give ourselves after a grueling season at the mall contributing to the Pagan trappings of the consumerist frenzy.

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