De-decorating

Mike and I spent Sunday packing up the Christmas decorations. Mike took care of the tree and the ornaments and I managed the rest. My part was not necessarily an easy task given that we have at least 5 nativity sets and some decorations in almost every room of the house. The large mantel over the fireplace holds a collection of Santas (some fragile, some not), and I’m always worried that the stuff won’t fit in the available boxes. (Good news. It all fits!) I still have the outdoor lights and the mini-tree in the kitchen to pack up, but that should be no problem.

Instead of carrying everything in the attic, we store the decorations in a large closet in the garage. We keep the wrapping paper there, too. It is pretty convenient, but sometimes I wish that I had that closet for the gardening stuff as I try to find spaces for the terra cotta pots in the fall.


I also managed to send out the Christmas note on the back of the card that we sent. This year it was a photo of all of us in Maine where we spent our late summer vacation. (Check an earlier blog entry for more detail.) The text of the message is copied below.

I hope you are all well. Sometimes it seems like a lot has changed sometime it seems that nothing has changed.

As you can see from the picture the family spent a week in Maine together. It was a relaxing week together. Many thanks to Libby and Allen Harville for their hospitality.
Mike is still at St Francis at the Heart Hospital on the south side of Indianapolis. The commute is farther than he would like, but the work is engaging. It is great to be part of building an organization.

I’ve been working at Eli Lilly for 8 years and last year began working as a training project manager. I work on a variety of training development projects with a number of different departments.

Mollie and Joel live in Chicago. Mollie works for the Feds at the Government Accountability Office as a senior health analyst. Joel works as an environmental engineer for a consulting company. They have a two bedroom condo in Lincoln Park that is a little crowded since Nolan was born. The baby was born in November of 2008 and is now a toddler. Everything is new for him. He’s a cheerful little guy. He laughs and we all laugh along.

Dan spent a couple of years in retail and decided it wasn’t for him. So he is now working for a catering company as a bartender. His passion is travel. This spring when his tax refund arrived, he traveled to Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.

Nora is working as an office manager for the modern language department at Florida State University in Tallahassee. She gets to take two graduate classes a semester free of charge. Plans are to move back to the Midwest when Ben, her boyfriend, finishes graduate school.
Please let us know if you travel through Indianapolis. We’d love to have you stop by.
Happy New Year! Jody and Mike

For me, the most exciting thing about sending the card is that it went out before Easter. There are so many ways to stay in touch, I’m very grateful for those friends who still send out Christmas cards.

My favorite gift...

That's a LOT of Pizza

My brother Joe says that his family has a joke. After they share a huge home-cooked meal, someone will push themselves back from the table, look around and say, “Well, should we order a pizza?”

Nora and her friend Ben and their dog, Finnegan, were the first to arrive. I had some meals planned including Pumpkin Lasagna, roasted chicken and homemade rosemary stuffing, as well as beef tenderloin on Christmas Eve. Pizza take-out seemed like a good idea for one evening. We needed a night out because we were not as ready for Christmas as we had hoped, there was still a lot of shopping and wrapping to do. So, we ordered pizza from Bazbeau’s one evening. The kids were happy to drive down and pick it up. The Bazbeau’s in Broadripple is a favorite haunt of theirs. When I first went to Bazbeaus for pizza, we were new to Indianapolis. The restaurant was in a converted house…including the garage with the door that opened up to the back yard in the summer. My first introduction to a bucket of beer, Amstdel Light, and barbeque chicken pizza. They moved into a fancier building, but the pizza is still good.

We also had pizza on Christmas day. Can you believe it? We spent the day eating at the Hertel’s beginning with variety of appetizers and continuing on to a dinner that included. Barbeque pork, roast beef, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, chicken salad, chicken and noodles, warm rolls and fresh bread…(and salads that I’m not even going to begin to list). Dessert also included Christmas cookies, and candy with everybody contributing their favorites. By the time we got home from Batesville, Mollie, Joel and the other kids decided that they were hungry again. No pizzerias open! After calling around, the men went out and came back with Red Baron frozen pizzas. Joel spent about 10 minutes prying the pepperoni and sausage off of one half of a pizza so that Mollie, the resident vegetarian, could eat it. It wasn’t home made, but it was what they needed.

I didn’t expect to eat pizza again until 2010, but a trip to Milwaukee early in the week found us in Balistreri’s an Italian restaurant across the street from our old house. We arrived early enough that we could go there for dinner. Mike and I shared a half order of their deep fried eggplant strips (served with marinara sauce). We also ordered one of the popular thin-crust pizzas that we enjoyed so much when we lived in Milwaukee. We looked around the restaurant expecting to see someone we knew, no luck there, but Mike and I shared some special memories. We parked across the street from the old house and looked at it wondering how we ever managed to park two cars in that driveway?

Thought that was that…but our visit to Mike’s uncle Chuck and aunt Ellie in Watertown Wisconsin found them carrying the Papa Murphy’s pizza in the house as we pulled into their driveway.

Well, so, tonight, (New Year’s Eve) should we order a pizza?

Don't Mess With Thanksgiving

I don’t mess with our basic Thanksgiving menu. You will NOT find roasted parsnips and other root vegetables in places of the mashed potatoes, NOR will you find butternut squash tossed with olive oil and rosemary in place of the baked sweet potatoes. You will NOT find unfamiliar vegetables on the table…no brussel sprouts or swiss chard at this meal. You will not find any dishes made with fresh herbs unless there are twigs in the refrigerator left over from a dish made the previous week.

Thanksgiving dinner at my table focuses on the traditional seasonings (salt and pepper) and fresh vegetables prepared with a minimum of messing. The meal also focuses on making the meal ahead so that maximum time can be spent talking with relatives and friends.

What can be done early is done early (and you’d be amazed at what can be done ahead).

After years of popping the turkey out of the oven and recruiting Brother Joe to carve…minutes before serving and then slaving over the juices to prepare the gravy at the last minute, I changed my strategy. The turkey is made the weekend before Thanksgiving sliced and frozen in light gravy and thawed and reheated. The potatoes are mashed they day before mixed with plenty of butter, sour cream, and cream cheese and plopped into a casserole for warming the next day. The only dishes actually prepared on top of the stove on Thanksgiving are the cooked vegetables, this year, corn and green beans.

The menu for the Gifford-Hertel Thanksgiving—

Appetizers (Noon)
Crudites with dip
Spreads, cheeses and crackers
Chex Mix (Jackie's special contribution...a favorite of all of us)

Dinner – Served buffet style (2:00 pm)
Turkey and bread stuffing with pecans
Honey Baked Ham
Mashed Potatoes
Baked sweet potatoes with butter
Fresh whole green beans with garlic
White corn in butter sauce
Broccoli Salad with Cranberries
Pina Colada molded salad with cranberry sauce
Freshly baked rolls with butter

Coffee and Dessert (4:00 pm)
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Slices (ala mode)
Ginger Cream Cookies

The meal has many contributors. I don’t want you to think that I produce this by myself. I am always grateful for the contributions that come--and all the guest who share a smile, a laugh, recent stories, and past memories.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Maine-ee-acs

We got an email from Libby. She’s beginning to work on Christmas wreaths. Greenery isn’t cut for those wreaths until after there have been three hard frosts. They have had their first snowfall too (4 inches). Interesting how the weather changes across the country. This weekend in Indianapolis we will be enjoying 60-70 degrees. Dan says his friends on the river are planning on putting the boat in one last time.

We were in Maine close to 8 weeks ago. In early September the evenings were cool and the days a very comfortable 75-80. It rained the first day we were there, but it was virtually cloud free every day. This was our first trip with the whole family (as adults…so to speak).


We rented a “cabin” with pond (Great Pond) access—quite a large inland lake (in Indiana speak). Mollie, Joel and the baby had the upstairs room. Dan and Nora shared the loft, Mike and I had the bedroom on the main floor and Harry had a room in the lower level. We made do with one bathroom pretty well. Our dinners alternated between Lilly and Allan’s and our place.

We flew into Portland and drove to our Great Pond location in the Belgrade Lakes area. Unpacked cooked a meal and planned our tourist strategy. We had decided on spending one night in Bar Harbor so that we could see the sights on Mt. Desert Island and go hiking at Acadia National Park.

The coast was as beautiful as I remembered it. The sky was unbelievably blue and the water clear and a shade darker. We took an easy-moderate trail and then walked along the water. Near Devil’s Punchbowl and Sand Beach. It was hard to believe that the week before 7 people were washed into the water from one spot because of hurricane weather.



Our remaining days were spent with our Maine friends, swimming, canoeing and short shopping trips. Oh, and evening games of Uno. I thought that there would be a dust-up when one evening a two hour game was called at midnight with no winner.

Probably a week that we'll remember and talk about later with pleasure. They don't happen often enough, do they?

One Year Later

Typing on a laptop in the car is difficult. Bumpy riding doesn’t make for a great experience. And then, on this sunny Saturday, it is difficult to see the screen. So here I am almost typing blind.

On my way to Nolan’s first birthday party and remembering his birth day—November 12, 2008.

Mike and I decided that we wouldn’t be there for the baby’s birth, but leave a day or two after so we wouldn’t need to hang around the hospital. Yah, right. We got the word in the early morning that Mollie was in the hospital and that the baby was coming and we were in the car on our way to the hospital by 11:00.

Chicago is on Central time which means that they are one hour behind us. Plenty of time right…not when you consider the traffic. We arrived just as Mollie was ready to go into the operating room. The baby’s head was too big to deliver so it was a c-section.

Joel was in the delivery room and about 7 pm the Nolan was delivered to the grandparents for inspection—Mike, and I, and Joel’s father, Harry. There is nothing like a new baby to remind you of what is important.

So we join family and friends for the birthday party. Aunt Nora and Uncle Dan will be there as will the same grandparents that arrived for his birth one year ago. Now Nolan is almost walking, exploring on his own and beginning to make sounds, pointing, smiling, and just being adorable.

Being a grandparent is so much fun.
More fun than toys is the ribbon and wrapping paper.

Uncle Dan and Aunt Nora guarantee a good time!

Gifts

An old friend reminded me that I promised to post at least one article per month…so much for New Year’s resolutions. Let’s try it again.

Some things have been happening to me lately that I have come to think of as gifts.
Coming home from running an errand on Saturday morning, thinking that I really should start to clean up the front flower bed, the leaves rustle beside the stairs leading to the front door. I look down thinking that I might get a glimpse of a chipmunk. Not so. What I see is a tiny painted turtle as big as the tip of my thumb. The bottom part of his shell was deep gold with a red diamond right in the center. The top of its grey-green shell has small red dots in along the edge. Perfect. Tiny flippers. What a miracle. I kept it in a plastic dish long enough to share it with Mike and then released it by the lake.

For much of the early spring we chased a pair of Canada Geese off our driveway. I like watching them on the water, but don’t care much for what they leave on the pavement. Anyway, the two dogs think of goose feces as some sort of special hors d’ouvres. Yuck. I was happy, though, to see six adult geese near our dock with escorting nine downy goslings.

This winter Jackie saw a fox trotting across our frozen lake. I had a short sighting myself at dusk—a vision with pointed black ears and four black feet. Just a glimpse.

So many birds! The morning overflows with song. I can tell the cardinals from the robins. Mike does even better. The blue heron has a harsh call, they hate being disturbed, but it is always a joy to watch them take to the air.

Even cherry tree on the court, old and full of cherries, a limb gives way and we spend a gentle evening picking…not even having to reach very far. Bright scarlet. We quickly filled up a half a large bucket. With three of us it only took about forty minutes to pit and bag four quarts. In the freezer now, perhaps a pie soon. That’s a gift.

These are all gifts. Gifts of the place we live. Sights that requiring us to slow down and observe in order to appreciate. Yep, gifts.

A New House on a Lake

It has been a long time since I blogged.

I sit at my computer on a snowy day, looking out of the window and enjoy a view of trees and docks and animal tracks across a frozen lake. I have an urge to record the story of how after 20 years in one house, we end up the next year in a new house on a lake.

How it Began
It started with Mike's random comment, sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 2007, that he would like to live on a lake--a random thought, nothing more.

We have friends in Maine who don't live on a lake, but live close to a "pond," Flying Pond, and we have enjoyed visiting them and canoeing in the slow evenings. Mollie and Joel tell a story of visiting one summer and taking the canoe across Flying Pond in the evening...getting toward dusk and being deviled by some kind of biting insect. They neared the middle of the pond and suddenly a crowd of bats surrounded them like a cloud eating the insects and leaving them suddenly after they finished their meal.

Back to my story...Several weeks later, at work, I share a meal with some colleagues only half attending to the conversation. My attention becomes more focused when I realize that one has been talking for several minutes about readying her house for sale...yes, her house is on a lake. Sounds good, so I tell her to let me know before she puts it on the market because Mike and I are interested. (Mike more than me.) Just after Thanksgiving (2007) she invites us to visit and see the house. It was beautiful. We went back several times and inspected, but couldn't agree on the price given the appraisal.

Back to the Drawing Board
Now, I was on a mission. I looked at lakes in the city. (Mike and I agreed that Indianapolis would remain our home.) We visited friends who had just bought a condo on a lake. Took Sunday drives and wrote down telephone numbers and called. We even got a realtor to help us look. No luck.
Then in March of 2008, I checked the Internet and a condo, price reduced, turned up. I took my sister and we looked and then dragged Mike over. He wasn't enthusiastic until he realized that he knew some residents of the community and checked the place out with them. (Apparently, many here only want to leave to be buried.)

So it happened. Not without a lot of work. We lived in the same place for 20 years. A house with a large yard, a shed, a basement, and a large attic crawl space. We move to a condo, no yard, no shed, no basement, smaller attic. We got rid of a lot of stuff and hauled a lot to Goodwill. Lighter we are, and happy.


Mike bought a kayak, probably we will follow the lead of our neighbors and buy a pontoon boat. We share a dock with a neighbor and the kids have been swimming in the lake. The house is designed for entertaining and we have--twenty-three here for Thanksgiving 2008, and a nice crowd to bring in the new year, but that's another story.