Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Up the road

Down the road

Waiting for Grandma

All went according to plan. I parked in one of the two remaining handicap spaces. All the street parking obviously has been occupied since before the snow began, overnight. There is no parking area in the vast area of green (ahem) occupied by the Teachout-Price building, where Emily is waiting for me to catch up. Look how clean the walks are at 8:45 a.m.. Their maintenance crew has my seal of approval.

We didn't learn anything I didn't already know, and that Emily confesses she still can't figure out. When the first award letter came, there was a large award sum, then deductions, including a loan fee. Emily's eyes glazed over. 

I called the admissions officer, and eventually teased out the amount of the guaranteed loan  part of the "award." Loans are not free, which the admissions officer  admitted, but this generation seems to think that "other people's money" is the same as theirs, and a monthly loan payment is the same as buying groceries.

After noshing a lovely snack bar and sitting through the Financial Aid presentation, with me making a note of one grant I had not heard of, we met Emily's admission officer. Lovely woman, who could not lay her hands on her email of the initial award, but worked out with paper and pencil a set of figures $2,000 better than the number I remembered from the award letter.

I asked if that was the Ohio College Opportunity Grant. Well, yes it was. She just hadn't included it in the first letter."Now we're down to fifteen thousand short," I explained to Miss Glazed Eyes. Pay attention; you will be doing this every year hereafter, too.

To her credit, on the way home, Emily said she really did get it. Avoid loans. Apply for every scholarship and grant she could find, and if she got too much money, all the better. We've put a lot of hard work into this so far, and have come a long way from the initial fifty grand. 

Isn't that a shame. Fifty thousand dollars a year. I sent her mother to college for ten thousand a year.

Another weekend of weather

April showers bring May flowers. April snow storms exceed the norms. 

It seems last weekend’s three inches, which melted over the course of the day, will be replaced this weekend by five inches, forecast to fall and accumulate Saturday.

Who cares, you ask. The chauffeur for tomorrow’s trip to Hiram College, for a financial aid forum cares, that’s who. I know the roads will be cleared at 8 am, when we leave, but accumulating and slushy. I really dislike that sloshing through slush.

Then, Hiram College is built on top of a hill. Literally, all on street parking faces uphill or downhill. Add to that, there is very little parking anywhere at the college, built on a huge Connecticut Western Reserve green, unspoiled by parking lots. The building we must report to is smack on top of a hill. 

Prior reconnaissance reveals exactly three on street handicap parking spaces adjacent to this building.

The plan is to arrive before the staff, for all practical purposes, and lay claim to a parking space. Theoretically all the parents attending are young and healthy and can leg it from wherever they park (in the surely very wet snow that will be falling. Tee-hee).

The narcissus after two snow storms. A little bedraggled. 

The jonquils are slightly more defeated, 

and the anemone stay closed all day, to come out and play when the sun shines. 

Another decade may have passed…

Liver and onions are a meal no one confesses to. It simply is not politically correct.

When I was a child, organ meat fed many a working class family. Liverwurst in a length of intestine…yum, yum. Sometimes Mom said it was braunschweiger, but made no difference to the kids who could say neither, and called it spread meat.

Liver was a special treat in our house. Family story had it that my dad came home from work, inhaled deeply, and said “steak” on the exhale. Mom had to say it was liver, which he could not bring himself to eat. The difference in the palates of the granddaughter of a German grocer and the grandson of a Presbyterian Irish schoolteacher. Ever after we ate liver when Dad was out of town on a business trip.

We ate Mom’s liver because it was pretty good, and the onions and mashed potatoes were great. Then my brother, the Old Cornmudgeon came back from England with his trophy wife. Oh, our Hazel. She made Yorkshire pudding so wonderful that my uncle, a WWII veteran who shipped out of England, got up and waltzed her around the kitchen.

Hazel’s liver became a family gathering. Hazel taught us you only turn liver once, and voila, no more tough liver on any plate in our family. But the sixties rolled into the seventies and eighties, and suddenly all the best food was no good for us. I’m sure liverwurst remains available at good delis, but don’t expect to find it at the current incarnation of the local A&P.

And so, liver went out of our lives. Until the year Hazel called from England. We could say no, she said, but it would be a great favor if we would allow her to bunk at our house while she showed off her America to her husband, Bill. The question went round the house, to a unanimous YES. So, Hazel and Bill came to visit. Often, as it turned out.

Of course, not many days went by before someone said, Remember those liver and onion dinners! And, of course, Hazel made liver and onions and I believe Walt even came up from Southern Ohio to meet Hazel’s husband and eat liver and onions. I’m thinking that was in the early nineties.

Now, it’s liver and onions when Hazel comes over. Or, a friend visits from Texas and leaves a fifty pound sack of Vandalia onions in our living room. Mighty fine eating.

Supper tonight. Eat your hearts out.

Narcissus must know, and bloom anyway

Yesterday afternoon, on the way back from the library,

I stopped to enjoy the narcissus bed.

And from my bedroom window this morning,

I find snow appropriated the chairs.

A two day birthday extravaganza

In truth, two regular days, with the addition of people celebrating my birthday. I went to breakfast yesterday with my BFF Carol, who I met in 1972.

Carol and I go to breakfast about once a month, to a little hole in the wall near me. We take up a corner booth for the better part of a morning, between the breakfast and lunch crowds. 

Between the mountains of Pennsylvania, and the ravines of northeast Ohio, Carol has always lived in a snow belt. A year ago February she put her house on the market, sights set on Charleston, South Carolina.

To her dismay, though not mine, the house didn’t sell. Then, yesterday, “The house goes under contract tomorrow!”  They probably won’t be gone before July. The good news—another place to visit. So, bacon and eggs and home fries and cake and which of two houses Carol will buy. She’s pretty excited.

When I picked up Laura from art class, I found Mrs. P and Laura giggling. They had not been caught shopping for a present for grandma, instead of painting a still life. A lovely bar of lemon soap.

At home, a beautiful stir fry for supper, then cards and cake. Such a cake. White almond (think marzipan!) with raspberry filling, whipped cream frosting and shaved white chocolate. I had two pieces.

And today, a birthday lunch with Beth and Bill, Ruth, Caroline and Francis, the last two still on spring break. Caroline to the left of me, Francis to the right. I wanted to hear about France’s bike trip.

France is my fourteen year old grandson; two weeks younger than Laura and far taller than either of us. His parents have raised extremely free range children. France has bikes stashed at the homes of friends, the easier to get around to after school jobs and activities. A year ago he and a friend were riding from school to Little Italy, to get a latte and a haircut. An old Italian grandma stopped sweeping her sidewalk to brandish the broom and tell them to ride in the street. “My mom won’t let me,” France had to confess.

Here’s an even better Francis story. Last December he turned fourteen, got his work permit and went on the official payroll of a restaurant near school. He came through the door waiving his first paycheck, indignantly, overhead. “They’re nickel and dimeing me to death!” he protested.

France and a classmate wanted to spend part of spring break bicycling from Columbus, Ohio to their home in Cleveland, using back roads and parts of the Buckeye and Towpath Trails. Bill and the two boys drove the route first, and arranged suitable overnight accommodations. 

The actual trip took them four days; the weather was beautiful and they didn’t see much more than cows out in the farmlands of rural Ohio. For those of you who know where they were, they picked up the Towpath Trail in Canton, where industrial civilization begins, and rode on home.

Francis had the house burger, which comes skewered with that knife.

In case you can't make it all out, there is a beef burger, bacon, cheese, lettuce, a fried egg, and possible more.

Salmon for Caroline.