A House Without Bananas?

A house without bananas sounds to me like a day without oxygen. Every morning after my exercises, I need some additional energy and it is the perfect food with no prepration required. I keep a fruit bowl filled with bananas and fruits from mangos to kiwi fruits and everything in between. My grandchildren know where to find the banana bowl for afternoon snacks when they visit.

As a preschool youngster, my family journeyed to the wake for a great aunt. There was a lot of food available, but my dad was aware of picky preschool food preferences and had brought along a large bunch of bananas. My brother and I ate those exclusively. Bananas are among the first solids for babies for very good reason. They are tasty and filling, nutritious and easy to digest. As I grew older, we made banana sandwiches with mayo on bread slices. We baked banana bread, banana puddings, banana muffins and we made banana shakes and ice cream banana splits. They are great for smoothies with strawberries and ice cream or yogurt. 

 

Curiosity led me to explore the history of my favorite fruit and I was surprised to learn that bananas have been available in the U.S. for less than 150 years. Due to the fragility of the fruit and the distance of the countries that commonly grow bananas, it was not transported to the U.S. It was introduced in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and sold for ten cents each. I'm glad they are readily available now. Today, our bananas are grown in tropical regions in the Central and South American countries.

I can't think of a more perfect food for any occasion--camping, auto travel, a day without electricity. It's like peanut butter as an all-purpose food. It is at the top of my shopping list of staples I buy at the food store. I've probably eaten a pathway through several "banana republics."  If we are what we eat, I must be at least one sixth banana and nutty as a fruitcake.

September "Walkabout"

I take liberal literary license with that term "walkabout" because it is how I think of my life in September, post retirement. To me, it represents an escape from routine.

 








Retirement to me represents a special frame of mind that encourages impulses and flights of freedom, mentally and physically. It is like Christmas every day and dessert for every meal. When September comes each year, I give in to the impulse to celebrate my freedom because I retired from education. There were many days and ways to enjoy the profession and not a few frustrations. But I perservered for 32 years, getting up at 4:50 daily to make sure I was in the building before most teachers and students. The long hours and attention to the routine of the days, months, and years lead teachers to notice greatly when it no longer exists.  

So when September rolls around, I celebrate that I can go to a museum, a beach, or travel, or read all day and drink coffee until my feet bounce on my way to the bathroom attached to my office. Teachers know what I mean when I celebrate the freedom to race to the bathroom whenever I want and as often as I want during the day. It has been said on more than one occasion that teachers have the strongest bladders due to our need to limit bathroom breaks to one or two daily.

 


I celebrate that I can put off the laundry for another day and change my routine to accommodate a surprise trip out to lunch with friends or a quick trip to the casino. If there is rain, I declare a rain day, put up my feet and dive into the pile of library books that wait on my coffee table.

My main rule for September Walkabout is no rules. I do anything I want and nothing that I "should" do.

All photos were taken at the Delaware Art Museum.

You Are My Sunshine

We went to our granddaughter's school for Grandparents' Day and they sang "You Are My Sunshine" to us. Twenty-two six-year-old voices are really adorable. They had practiced all day and had all of the words firmly in mind. I wanted to adopt the children who were in tears because their grandparents couldn't attend. The teacher was very sensitive and put  them in charge of the refreshments so they could feel important too.

 

The teacher had an art project for the students to produce and to present to the grandparents. It holds a place of honor on my refrigerator door with her other art projects. I always marvel at how much we worried about her and how far she has come in six years. She was a breech birth, emergency C-Section, near preemie. A few developmental problems seemed present for a few early years, but she seems to be doing very well now. She chats nonstop and uses some advanced words correctly which thrills me.

 

While we played on my computer last weekend, she asked me what I did with my time while she wasn't visiting. I told her that I love to read. I pointed to all the stacks of books in my office and said I loved reading all of them. I told her that I go to the public library as she does to check out more books every week. Later in the day, she showed me that she was reading a book on her mother's Nook. The new e-readers are a great developmental tool for children who are learning to read. I was amused to read the directions on the first grade wall directing new readers on how to learn to read.

 

I had not thought about the little song that the students sang to us in a very long time. It has greater importance to me today because my grandchildren are really my sunshine. However, even little rays of sunshine need a behavior chart in their classroom!

Prelude to Fall

When the hurricane season appears and school begins, fall isn't far around the corner. As a Florida native, I thought I had left hurricanes behind when I moved to Pennsylvania. Irene was one of only a few that I have experienced in 45 years in this region. Fortunately, my personal experience wasn't as dramatic as the problems that other people encountered, but I never underestimate the power of even a category 1 hurricane or a tropical storm.

I know from experience in the South that hurricanes can be devastating so I did not object when officials and weather people warned that we should get prepared. They did a good job in preparing for the worst case scenario. It is good that the storm didn't intensify and I don't mind that I prepared more than it turned out that I needed. I would rather do that than needing something and not having prepared. I didn't feel it was "over-hyped". We were just lucky it didn't get worse. It is unfortunate that some people lost their lives and some had awful flooding problems. They probably don't think it was "over-hyped". Kudos to those responsible for emergency preparedness. I'm celebrating that it wasn't worse.

We had only a little dampness in our basement, but the whole community lost electrical power. We were lucky that it only remained off for 27 hours. We had planned to head for a motel if it stayed off for a second day. When the stores sold out of batteries in advance, we were able to order online and get them shipped overnight express. They arrived in a nick of time. We prefer using flashlights and avoiding the danger of candles, but we played scrabble by candlelight one night. It is a good reminder to appreciate the basics.

I was very nervous about our trees; fortunately, we had small branches blown down but nothing major. There was no sleep for me Saturday night and I stayed downstairs in case a tree fell on the house. Maybe the strength of the entire forest held up the trees. Isolated trees seemed to have more damage.

In an all electric house, it's good to have power again--warm showers, warm food, flushing toilets. Now that we have made it through Irene, I don't want to go through another one. We had a busy week with an earthquake and a hurricane just days apart. I was three times lucky--we made it through the earthquake with no damage, the hurricane wasn't devastating, and I won $150 at the casino.

I didn't take any pictures of the hurricane since I had used my memory cards to store videos of the house in case they were needed for insurance purposes.  

August in Atlantic City

We day trippers in my region find this month to be a great time to drive east to the coast and Atlantic City is the closest shore point but not as the crow flies. Southern New Jersey is expressway-challenged in the east to west directions so we Pennsylvania natives cross the nearest bridge over the Delaware River and head south-east on the Atlantic City Expressway. When traffic is good, which isn't guaranteed in the summer, it takes about an hour to drive to the coast.

 

Atlantic City offers beautiful, wide, well-tended beaches and is one of the few free beaches in New Jersey (Some charge for beach tags). The Atlantic Ocean has beautiful surf and nice crashing waves at times, for anyone addicted to the sounds of the shore. We like to look at beaches but find the boardwalk and the mall to be fun also. Atlantic City is very crowded during the summer with tourists on the boardwalk, in the casinos, on the beach and in the mall.

 

The three floor mall that stretches far into the ocean on a pier located across the boardwalk from Caesar's Hotel/Casino contains some unique shops(LeSportsac) and restaurants(Phillips Seafood). Along one side of the mall are floor to ceiling windows to overlook the ocean and the boardwalk. 







Visitors can have a sanitized beach experience in air conditioned, bug-free comfort by sitting in the Adirondack chairs and sinking their bare feet into the sand. Restaurants are located behind this area so diners can enjoy their lunch and the ocean at the same time.

 

Entertainment is as close as the end of this mall/pier with an outside deck to view the ocean and the rows of casinos. Also at the end of the pier is an indoor dancing fountain show stretching three floors up, complete with colored lights and lively music for about seven minutes beginning every hour. Restaurants also line the boardwalk and our favorite is Pickles, open only in the summer. They serve bowls of assorted pickles for appetizers, and ten-inch tall slices of cakes for dessert. Who cares about the main course!

 

The casinos are a big draw for tourists, and a small part of the Atlantic City experience for us. We like to spend a half hour to an hour on a few of our favorite slots. There are so many different casinos and interesting sights, it is just part of the variety of the day. The music from the beach bars drifts up to the boardwalk and the long walk up and down the boardwalk is a never ending parade of people just walking and enjoying the weather. That is about all of the activity we can pack into a day but not the end of the many activities available with beaches and communities stretching north and south. It is never boring at the Jersey Shore.

Lucky People

In the past, when we have traveled to the beach with friends and played games of chance for large stuffed toys, I'm not the person who wins. On one occasion, we were with two friends and the guy won a large purple, stuffed elephant which he and his wife stuffed behind them inside a convertible MG, vintage late 1960's, and proceeded to drive home. It was so much bigger than our friends, you had to look twice to tell that there were two humans in the front. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of it, but the mental image will never leave my memories; however that is a whole other story.

I've never considered myself to be a particularly lucky person, but upon reflection of several events in my life, maybe I am lucky. I've had a few "narrow escapes" and some time after the event, I was struck by the feeling of having escaped disaster. One particular event occurred in 1968 when hubby and I went to Estes Park, CO. We decided to try horseback riding into the hills as part of a group trip from a local ranch. We had never ridden horses before and they were very tame which was why they were used for tourists with no experience. The guides told us, "They know what they are doing, you're just along for the ride."

 

We rode into the mountains and the trails narrowed more and more as we ascended. Then we met another group on horseback coming back down the mountain on the same trail. Their protocol was that the group headed down the mountain got to pass to the upside on the mountain. We were passing to the outside of the trail which also was on the edge of a cliff.  At one point, the horse I was riding seemed to step to the side of the trail which put his rear hoof toward the downhill side. I knew nothing about riding horses, but my natural inclination was to lean forward and shift my weight to the uphill side. The horse caught his footing, the other group had passed and we moved on up the mountain to a beautiful mountain lake as blue as the sky and as smooth as a mirror but cluttered with jagged dead wood.  We let the horses drink while we relaxed and wandered around.


We returned to the stable from the mountain trail. As I handed the reins to the guide who was traveling in the rear of our caravan behind me, he said, "I thought we were going to lose you up there." I asked what he meant and he said the other group needed too much room and the horses could barely pass each other. The horse I was riding seemed to catch his balance and nothing happened, but I couldn't see this event from behind the horse I was riding. The guide saw the whole thing but said nothing until we reached home. Then I realized I could have been lying dead at the bottom of a steep cliff if the horse had lost his footing and the two of us had tumbled down the cliff. Dumb luck!

Being young and stupid, it didn't occur to me to question the unwise practice the tour group had of bringing two groups on horseback on the same trail to pass each other. I wasn't screaming my lungs out at the time, I just assumed that they knew what they were doing. It has only been in retrospect that I realize how lucky I really was. It taught me a valuable lesson to the effect that when I go on vacation, I shouldn't leave my common sense at home. I tend to apply an abundance of caution about the things I am willing to do all in the name of "having a good time". It wasn't the first time I've had a "narrow escape" but I try to minimize the number of those occasions.

Never having won "things" my greatest win has to have been my life, even though I don't even do extreme sports.  I'm still alive and healthy so I am the luckiest person I know.