“Don’t crack your knuckles. It’ll make your joints big.”
The weather is absurd. Yesterday on the way home from my concert, it started to rain, windshield wiper rain. A bit further up, no rain, then further up, rain. At two this morning, I let the dogs out. It had started snowing tiny flakes. The dogs were quick. Nala came back inside. When I saw Henry at the door, I let him in then I sat down, watched TV and did my jigsaw puzzle for another hour or so. Just before bed, I let the dogs out for the last time of the night. It wasn’t snowing. The weather is gaslighting us.
Today is a pretty day with a bright sun and a blue sky, but it is a cold day. We’re in the mid 20’s now, the high for the day.
When I was a kid, I knew certain things. I knew if you made Jiffy Pop you had to be careful. The popcorn came in its own pan, an aluminum pan with a handle. It looked like a pie pan or a frying pan. You had to shake the pan on the stove all the time or the popcorn would burn. We used to take turns shaking the pan. I loved watching as the popcorn popped. The sounds of the popping started out slowly then got louder and louder. The aluminum tent holding the kernels got higher and higher as the corn popped. It was fun to watch. The only way you knew the popcorn was all popped was when you couldn’t hear kernels anymore.
I knew that ketchup never went on a hot dog. Add mustard, relish or piccalilli but never ketchup. I won’t even discuss ketchup on scrambled eggs.
My father taught me that the laziest person in the world left a dirty glass on the counter. He raised his voice to tell us that. He taught us that several times.
I learned how to bob and weave to avoid my mother’s thrown slipper and, much later, her thrown dictionary, the big red one. Luckily that one never went far.
Mashed potatoes were sometimes white and orange, the orange coming from sneaked carrots. My mother explained it away. I believed her. I learned mothers sometimes lied.
According to my mother, if I didn’t wear a hat in the winter, I’d freeze. All body heat escapes through the top of your head.
My mother predicted the winter weather. She taught us it was, at times, too cold to snow. I know she believed it. We did too for a while.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
January 31, 2025 at 12:14 am
Hi Kat,
Yesterday we had lots of rain, four inches at the nearby DFW airport. This morning the sun shined brightly and we hit 68°. There’s still a lot of winter ahead. In 2021 we had the Valentine’s Day deep freeze. When the low temperature hit minus seven degrees Fahrenheit, that’s killer cold. Especially when accompanied by rolling blackouts. A couple of hundred people lost their lives.
Although there was a 1950s TV show called Father Knows Best, we all know that mother really knows best. I believed my mother when she told me that opening an umbrella in the house was bad luck, along with whistling in the house. These ideas came from her mother who brought them over from Ukraine in about 1905.
Although there was a tragic commercial airplane midair collision at Washington Reagan National Airport, our genius resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue determined that the accident was caused by DEI in the FAA. When asked by a reporter how he knew that, the orange pumpkin replied, “Because I have common sense”. That common sense also applied to looking directly into a solar eclipse, or injecting yourself with laundry bleach to prevent Covid-19. 😦
January 31, 2025 at 1:45 am
Hi Bob,
Welcome back! You were missed.
I’m glad you got rain. I am envious of your 68°. If it hits the 40’s, we all celebrate the warmth. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the high 40’s. Weird weather again as it was quite cold today. I had a few stops and couldn’t wait to get home.
Just about whatever my mother told me I believed. I think it was from her mother that she learned all these life tidbits. I think she believed some of it.
Idiot also stated this was both Obama and Biden’s fault. He never mentioned his scrapping the FAA. I saw that press conference. He never did express sorrow about the crash nor did he try to comfort family members. I’m having trouble handling these first weeks let alone 4 years.