Monthly Archives: September 2016

Apples

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Fall must be here.  I’m collecting recipes for fall baking, particularly things with apples.  Obviously, DH and I can’t eat all the stuff I’d like to bake, so I hope to share some of it with the coffee group that meets following exercise.

The cover of Southern Living features a fabulous Apple-Spice Cake with Caramel icing and pecans.  I bought a Bundt pan and a cake carrier just so I could try this recipe.

I have another magazine with fall baking that features sweet things made of pumpkin, or apple, or cherries, raspberries, cranberries or pears!  Clafoutis, slumps, grunts, cakes, quick breads, cookies….you name it and they have a recipe for it.  I want to make them all.

I love Fall!

Exercise for Seniors

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Dear Husband and I attend an exercise class three days a week.  It seems easier to do our exercise with this group than to do it on our own.  The class is 45 minutes long.  The first 30 minutes involve warmups, stretching, cardio and cool down, followed by 15 minutes of strength training, resistance, balance, etc.  Our leader uses a fair amount of yoga and a bit of Tai Chi.

A number of years ago, I’m not exactly sure how long, but I think perhaps seven years or so, our guru asked if I would be willing to lead the class when she was absent.  I was a band director for 11 years, so I’m accustomed to moving to music, so that didn’t bother me, but I would have to get 35 to 40 other people to move with me.  THAT bothered me!

I made a list of the moves we were doing, and our guru gave me a copy of the music.  I sat down and counted out the number of beats in each cardio piece, and assigned movements to the phrases.  Then I wrote those instructions on posterboard.  These became my “cheat sheets.”  When I lead class, I duct tape the posterboard to the mirrors in the dance room.

Our guru can call out directions as a phrase changes.  She can also tell us which direction to go while facing us, something I will NEVER be able to do.  She will tell us to go right, while she has to go left.  I face the same direction my classmates are facing, and call the instructions as we exercise.

I subbed Wednesday.  The cheat-sheets were taped lower than usual, so I could only see the lower half of my classmates in the mirrors.  It was quite funny, but it was enough to tell me that they could hear the instructions, and that they were all moving in unison (for the most part).  I saw one of the men go the wrong direction and told him “The OTHER right, Jim…”

I sub again tomorrow.  Or, it will be tomorrow in five minutes.  I couldn’t get my brain to shut down so that I could sleep.  Perhaps now, after visiting Word Press for the first time in ages, I might try again.  I want to be ready for class tomorrow.  It will be a good way to begin the Labor Day weekend.

Dear Husband and the flying machine

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When I met my Dear Husband, I learned that he had been interested in flying when he was in high school.  He’d been a member of the Civil Air Patrol.  I thought he might earn a pilot’s license when we married, but a 16 foot fiberglass boat caught his attention, and he shifted to sailing.

Unfortunately, I’m a rotten sailor.  I did well on a Holland America ship, on glassy seas, with no storm in sight, but put me on the Seraphina and I puked.  DH sold her and bought a 32-foot boat we named the “Arr!!” (It SHOULD have been the “Arrrgh!!!”)  I still puked.  I really minded that he went off to sail every summer weekend, leaving me on my own, until I realized that I could quilt uninterrupted, and I didn’t have to worry about preparing meals!

We sold our house, and moved to a tiny lot with no room to store the boat in the winter.  The trip to the lakefront was getting to be less and less fun, so this past year we sold the Arr!!   Oddly, I actually miss her.

Then one day, coming back from visiting an apple orchard, DH discovered the soaring field.  We arranged to go for rides in their gliders.  It was glorious!  Dear Husband has enjoyed it so much that he has been pursuing his glider pilot’s license.  He has soloed and passed the written test.  He has enough hours in the air.  Now, he just has to pass the flying and oral test, and he will get his license.

I hope that he will be able to complete this by the end of the flying season this year, but he’s willing to accept that he might need to do it next spring.  He’ll be my magnificent man in a flying machine.  Cool!  Way Cool!

Where has all the time gone?

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My high school class will celebrate our fiftieth reunion this month.  FIFTY YEARS!  Where has that time gone?  I can remember as a child thinking that the summer would NEVER pass.  I was always eager for school to resume, to get back to band and interesting studies.  As an adult, I’ve always been able to entertain myself, but as a child  it seemed that the days moved like molasses.

Now, the reunion looms, followed by an anniversary, and another birthday will pass in a month or so.  Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, funerals, reunions, they are all reminders to take a look at our lives.

Like most of you, some of my time was taken up with family.  Dear Husband and I built a house and invited my mother to live with us.  She was with us for 18 of the 25 years we lived there.  For a lot of those years I was a paper pusher for my husband’s company, and a lot of time was spent balancing the books.  That seemed important at the time.  Along the way my stepdaughter married and they gave us three granddaughters.  We measure time by their lives, too.

Now, we’re retired, working at staying well, and getting used to the idea that retirement isn’t actually afternoons spent in a hammock.  It seems that we are even busier now than when we worked. Perhaps that is the secret to the passing of time.  We have always had goals to reach, activities to accomplish.  We move from one goal to the next, not adding up the minutes and hours and days that are passing, until we get to one of those way points in our lives.

I’m glad that we have the chance to look back, to see if there are things we want to add to our lives, or if there are things that we should let go.  Whatever we do, I expect time will pass faster with each day.