Tag Archives: blog post

Wrist to Forehead Sunset Boulevard

Posted on January 25, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

And earlier she just says, “I’m ready.”  At no time does she say,  “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” as I have heard many people quote.

We just watched Sunset Boulevard for perhaps the 8,467th time (I just made that number up, it’s probably a lot fewer than that).  Usually I like to spend my Wrist to Forehead Sunday watching crime shows, most notably Snapped. Sometimes we mix it up a little by watching movies.

It was not always that way, if I may be forgiven a short detour down Memory Lane.  There was a time when I was quite burnt out from my Monday through Friday job and Sunday was a very sad day for me.  The saddest sound on that sad day was the ticking clock on 60 Minutes.  My solution in those days was to watch movies all day, so I would not be constantly reminded what day it was.

These days I do not find Sunday to be so terrible (see? Detour over).  For one reason, Steven only works till 1 p.m. if at all, so we get to spend the afternoon together.

Why then, one might reasonably ask, is it so often Wrist to Forehead Sunday?  My first impulse is to answer, “It just is, leave me alone.”  However, since I am trying to get a blog post out of this, perhaps I could attempt a better explanation.

I think my problem is that I get very little done during the week.  On the weekend, I have two whole days to make myself useful.  Write, clean, organize, cook, and, oh yes, have Mohawk Valley adventures to write about in the blog.  Why in the world would I think I can get all that stuff done in two days? It is especially silly of me to think it when I have the experience of many previous weekends when I did not get stuff done.

And yet, I keep hoping.  I tell myself that I KNOW I won’t get EVERYTHING done. I find it not unreasonable to suppose that I might possibly get SOMETHING done.   It becomes a little wrist-to-forehead-inducing when I do not.

Then again, is not the purpose of one’s days off to relax and renew?  I spent some time relaxing.  And is it not of great importance to me to spend time with my most beloved husband?  I certainly enjoyed watching Sunset Boulevard, especially watching for the famous quote.

I did, in fact, get a few things done.  Some laundry, the dishes, cooked one dinner, typed up character sheets for that murder mystery I’ve been talking about. And two blog posts.  This is the second one.  Happy Sunday, everyone.

We’re going to watch Network next.

 

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Cooking Without Wine

Posted on January 24, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

The only reason I cooked dinner tonight was so that I could write a blog post about it.  I’m afraid it was not a very inspired dinner, but it was cheaper than sending out (although then I could have given a shout-out to a local business), and it was quite tasty.

Basically, I cooked some sausage and garlic, then added tomato sauce, tomato paste, canned mushrooms, basil, oregano and a VERY few hot pepper flakes.  I put this sauce on Spicy Tomato Linguine from The Pasta Shoppe in Utica, NY.  My favorite sister, Cheryl gave me and Steven the pasta for Christmas.

What makes this recipe different from many of the recipes I write in the blog about is that I did NOT cook with wine.  I did enjoy a wine glass of seltzer with fresh lemon while I cooked.  Yes, I continue to resist the devil on my shoulder I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

WARNING!  I am about to mention my headaches.  If you are sick of reading about them, READ NO FURTHER!

I feel especially happy I did not have any wine yesterday, because I woke up with a horrendous headache this morning.  In spite of the pain, I enjoyed the vague feeling of vindication with this further proof that alcohol in not the source of my headaches. And then I started to feel like I shouldn’t feel so delighted about it.

And now I begin to feel like maybe I shouldn’t be writing so much about it. Am I obsessed with wine?  Ah, wait, no I’m not. I talked about this before.  It’s the Doughnut Effect (I’ll put one of them there links so you can click back and see the blog post where I talked about that).

In any case, my headache has subsided by now.  Dinner is eaten and the leftovers put away (Steven nicely put them away). Time to get in with my Saturday evening.  Hope to see you all on Wrist to Forehead Sunday.

 

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Waiting for 19 Crimes

Posted on January 23, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

I thought I would take today’s Friday Lame Post to give an update on my 30 Days Without Wine.  Or you may call it 30 Days of Whine, although I must confess to doing more than my fair share of kvetching even with the wine.  Be that as it may, this is Day 27.  Yes, I’ve been counting.  How else would I know when I got to 30?

Earlier today the little devil on my shoulder (you know, like in the cartoons, when the character has a little version of himself in horns on one shoulder and one with a halo on the other?) kept saying, “27 is practically 30.  Aren’t you being a little anal retentive about this?” She went on to say, “Anyways, isn’t this no alcohol thing a bit self-aggrandizing?  Just another way of calling attention to yourself? Shouldn’t you just get over yourself and have a beer?”  I didn’t even know she knew the word “self-aggrandizing.”

The Devil Me would probably also call me out on thinking something magical might happen if I go all 30 days.  How illogical and immature, she would say.  Of course I stopped listening to that bitch when I remembered she is also the one who thinks I’m such a terrible writer.

The Angel on my other shoulder did not contribute a whole lot to the discussion.  She merely pointed out that while PROBABLY nothing magical would happen on Day 30, how would I know if I didn’t wait that long?  Anyways, there isn’t a bottle of dry red in the house, and that is what I chiefly feel like drinking.  For Day 31 I have promised myself a bottle of 19 Crimes, one of my favorites.  I think that’s worth waiting three more days for.

Right now I am reinforcing my dry behavior by watching World’s Dumbest Partiers (why is my computer underlining “partiers”?  That must be a word! What else would you call these people?).  I don’t imagine the one little glass of 19 Crimes I intend to have on Tuesday will cause me to act like one of those guys.  However, if it does, I promise to write a blog post about it.

 

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This Writer Thing

Posted on January 22, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

As the weekend approaches (VERY slowly), I begin to think about what sort of adventures (if any) I might have.  And before I go further, my apologies to anybody who does not have weekends off and is jealous of anybody who does. Don’t hate. I’ve been there. I may be there again.

To continue, I say “if any” regarding my potential adventures because I really might be best served by NOT going adventuring but by staying home, off the phone and the internet, and WRITING.  I have a murder mystery to finish.  I have a novel flapping in the breeze.  I have a million other ideas on hold.

On the other hand, I also have a blog and a standing commitment to submit articles to Mohawk Valley Living magazine.  For the blog, I can and do limp along publishing nonsense like yesterday’s post or lesser adventures such as what I fixed for dinner (as you see, I take a broad definition of the word “adventure”).  For a classy magazine like Mohawk Valley Living (and it is a wonderful publication; check it out if you haven’t already), I must be more selective.

Another consideration is that I cannot repeat myself for the magazine as I do in the blog.  For example, this Saturday (Jan. 23) is Coffee and Conversation with a Cop at the Baptist Church on the corner of Washington and Green streets in Herkimer, NY.  This monthly program promotes healthy relations between the community and the police force.  I mean to attend and write a blog post about it.  I wrote an article about the program for Mohawk Valley Living some time ago.

So I have one blogworthy but not magazine-worthy adventure planned.  The question is, can I have another adventure, worth writing about for the magazine, and still have time to progress on my other projects?  The answer has to be yes.  Now there are other questions such as What adventure?  How will I find time? Am I just kidding myself with this whole Writer thing?  Wait a minute, don’t answer that last question.

 

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Wrong Writing on Wuss-out Wednesday

Posted on January 21, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

Sometimes you don’t have a reason to feel the way you feel.  Sometimes you just feel a certain way and you just have to keep feeling that way until you don’t feel that way any more.

Yes, it is Wuss-out Wednesday, and this is Yet Another Post About How I Can’t Write A Post.  On the brighter side, I  do not intend to go on an on about how it makes me FEEL.  Don’t you just hate it when people go on and on about their feelings?  Oh yeah, like YOU never do it!

Where was I?

I spent all day trying to think about something to write for a blog post.  Sometimes, for a change of pace, I thought about that novel I started to write a couple of years ago that I VOWED I would finish.  Remember that novel?  Remember Finish That Novel May?  That was, of course, last May.  The novel still isn’t finished.  However, I remembered a trick I read about re-energizing a stalled novel.  You write a brief summary about the story as a whole, perhaps in the form of a rave review or a book flap blurb.  I tried it.  I’m not sure it worked, but I wrote a page anyways.

As I have stated on this blog before, any writing counts.  My problem now is to get to the RIGHT writing.  My novel.  The murder mystery script.  A better blog post.  We’ll see what I can come up with on Non-Sequitur Thursday.

 

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Monday Menu Meanderings

Posted on January 19, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

I really, really want to finish my blog post before my dear husband Steven arrives home from work.  Alas, I did not write anything while at work today.  I worked on anacrostic puzzles in a puzzle book I really should have left at home.  In my defense, I LOVE anacrostic puzzles!  And doing puzzles is good for your brain.  Surely my brain needs all the help it can get.

The sad thing is, I’m really supposed to be figuring something out for dinner, not typing in a blog post.  I’m hungry.  Steven will be hungry. There is food in the house, but I fear it requires work.  Unless we just heat up the beef soup I made yesterday.  Ah, I know, a few words about the soup will serve for today’s blog post.

We recently purchased a lovely roast that was on sale.  I can’t remember what cut it was, but it was substantial.  It went into the freezer to  await cooking.  Then last Sunday (that is, a week ago yesterday), I discovered the few carrots I had left had gotten kind of… not crunchy.  I thought they were still good, they just didn’t look as if they would be good raw, which is pretty much the only way I like carrots.  However, one does what one must, in this case, cook the damn carrots.

A day or two later, I put the carrots in the crock pot with the beef, half an onion, Worcestershire sauce and water.  I had to add water, because the beef had not thawed in the refrigerator.  How delightful it was to arrive home that evening to the smell of roasting beef.  It made a fine supper.  I even ate some of the carrots.

Steven saved all the drippings, which were considerable due to the water I had added.  I said I would use it to make beef soup, which I did on Sunday. There really wasn’t much to that recipe.  I chopped two potatoes and put them on the boil.  Then I put the liquid, onions and carrots in a pot on the stove.  I chopped up a goodly amount of the beef to add.  When it was boiling, I added some frozen green beans for good measure.  When the potatoes were done, they went into the pot too.

We ate it with slices of Heidelberg French Peasant bread, my new favorite (edging out sourdough).  It was a fine dinner for a cold day such as Sunday.  Today is a cold day too.  I wonder how Steven will feel about leftovers.

In any case, this concludes my blog post.  Can we consider it a Monday Mental Meanderings or should I start a new feature: Menu Monday?  Any thoughts?

 

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Mid-Winter Wrist

Posted on January 18, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

Is it the Mid-Winter Blahs, the Mid-Winter Blues, or just a common or garden Wrist to Forehead Sunday? I’m hoping it’s the third one, because tomorrow it will not be Sunday any more, but winter will last at least a couple of months more.

In other words, anybody who was hoping for a post of any substance from me today is doomed to disappointment.

I was ambitious enough earlier to drive to Chadwicks for church with some members of my family, notably my most adorable year-old great nephew.  He was quite interested in pulling my necklace.  I had taken the precaution of putting on a long strand of fairly tough beads in case of just such an emergency.

It was a fine drive over Higby Road to Graffenburg (oh dear, I’m not sure if it’s Graffenburg or Graffenberg; another reason to make the wrist-to-forehead pose).  Bare roads, not too windy.  We went to Salvatore’s in Washington Mills for breakfast after church, so my drive home was all Higby.  Nice views.  One day perhaps I’ll have a camera and can share some of the sights I see.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that before church I did the dishes, often the extent of my Sunday ambition (if in fact my Sunday ambition extends that far; it doesn’t always).  I did not dry and put them away, of course.  Waste energy drying dishes?  That’s crazy talk!  Anyways, by that time I had to get ready for church.

And now I’m over 200 words.  Hmmm…. This seems to me more like a Scattered Sunday than Wrist to Forehead. No matter, in the blogiverse (you know, like universe.  I think I’ve gotten too big for the blogosphere), 200 words is 200 words.  Happy Sunday, everyone.

 

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76% Remaining

Posted on January 15, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

The computer woes continue, and I sit here trying to think rapidly and type even faster to get this blog post done while the battery lasts.  It’s a race against time!  Actually, it’s a race against battery.  What does that even mean, anyways, “race against time.”  Isn’t any race where you’re being timed a race against time?  And does time ever go any faster? Now, let’s not get all philosophical about that!  Oh well, I guess you can if you want to.

Where was I?  Ah yes, Non-Sequitur Thursday.  I’m thinking this has been a rather lame week, and I’m pretty damn happy that tomorrow is Lame Post Friday.  I tried to write a real post while on breaks at work today.  I got over a page written about an old movie I watched last weekend.  I don’t know that I would call it a cheesy movie exactly, but I thought I was saying some pretty good stuff (or do I flatter myself?  Always a possibility).  However, it is not finished yet and I do not have the mental wherewithal to finish it now.  Sorry about that.

I have a couple of emails I have to send regarding theatre business.  I tried writing them earlier too, in hopes of saving time later.  Naturally I am second guessing what I wrote, wondering if I ought to edit further, and obsessing over who I ought to courtesy copy.  There’s a social land mine, if you like.  What if I cc the wrong people and they send me a nasty reply?  What if I don’t cc somebody who thinks they ought to have been cc’d and they yell at me?  I hate to be yelled at.  What if I cc somebody who doesn’t give a rat’s ass and they roll their eyes at me?  In the scheme of things, I suppose having eyes rolled at one is not the worst thing that could happen.  Still, I find it unpleasant.

Now I see I am over 300 words of this nonsense.  I hope I have at least been amusing.  I’ll try to finish that movie write-up so I can post it in lieu of Lame Post Friday (I really like that expression “in lieu of”).  Happy Thursday, everyone.

 

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Woe and Wuss

Posted on January 14, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

Today is Wuss-out Wednesday due to computer woes.  I must compose quickly and get off my device while I still have power.

My plan had been to write something BEFORE getting on the computer.  Did I? Of course not!  I had Blogger’s Blank.  Ooh, nice alliteration there.  Usually I have Writer’s Blank, but in fact I wrote a couple of pages on a letter, most of an article for Mohawk Valley Living, and a page and a half in the TV Journal.  I can write fine!  I just can’t seem to write a blog post.

Winter continues to pummel the Mohawk Valley, but unevenly.  Some places got lots of snow, some a little, but everybody at least some.  And it was COLD!   I know, I know, it’s January.  I wasn’t complaining about it, I was just reporting.

After work today I met with a lady who wants to do a dinner theatre as a fundraiser for her church.  She reached out to Ilion Little Theatre for help, which I say was a very good choice.  When the matter first came up at one of our dinner meetings, I said, “You know, you do have a member that used to write murder mystery dinner theatre and is dying to do another one!”

A few actors expressed an interest.  I started writing.  Today, as I said, I met with the lady from the church, and it looks as if this is going to happen.  That will definitely be worth a blog post or two!

For today, however, this is all I got.  At least it is over 250 words.  I’m going to go back and write some more in the TV Journal.  Happy Wednesday, everyone.

 

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Musings on Medium (or Medium Meanderings?)

Posted on January 12, 2016 by mohawkvalleygirl

Today is a real let myself off the hook day.  I did not run, I have not done anything remotely useful around the house, and I did not write a blog post earlier today.  It’s going to be a Monday Middle-age Musings or Monday Mental Meanderings (take your pick; I’m not even making myself choose one).

One thing I often notice in my writing is how what I’m writing on and writing with makes a difference.  At least, I have not done a real study on if it makes a difference in the writing itself.  But I definitely notice a difference in how I feel.  I’m thinking this is because I love the physical act of writing so much.  Putting words on paper (or screen, as the case may be) is fun.

I like writing by hand in a spiral notebook.  My handwriting is messy, and I sometimes get writer’s cramp, but in general I love the movement and I love watching the squiggly lines appear.  I write in pen these days.  I prefer a thin ballpoint.  I can live with a medium point, but anything over 1 mm is too bulky for me.  I used to write almost exclusively in pencil.  I liked the sound of the scratching.  I must try that again one day soon.

When I first started this blog (May 23, 2011, in case you were wondering), I would write my post on paper, then type it into the computer.  Sometimes I would write it the night before, sometimes just earlier in the day.  Of course, being me, I could not keep up that level of preparedness and was soon composing at the keyboard, as I am today.

Today I am on my desktop, which has a full-size keyboard.  For quite a while now I have been typing my posts on our Acer, which has a smaller keyboard.  Not one of those bitty, baby things you see on some people’s devices, but small enough that it took some getting used to.  Right now my hands are rather enjoying stretching out.  They feel bad-ass.

Of course, if I really want my hands to feel bad-ass, I must haul out my old manual typewriters.  I used to whale on a manual typewriter!  I have a minor collection now.  Sometimes I find them at garage sales or second-hand stores.  My parents recently gave me a fabulous old Remington.  I must clean it up and display it somewhere.  Maybe I’ll first roll a piece of paper into it and see what comes out.

For now, though, I see I am over 400 words.  That is more than respectable for a Monday!  I’ll try for something other than a Tired Tuesday post tomorrow.

 

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