Category Archives: My World

Apr2

Wobbling

Posted on by
Standard

     Finishing my (grow up) years of 11 to boarding the bus for the Navy, Milbank offerred a quiet place for quiet people. 
Not for me! 
     Those years for me were filled with trial and error, learning from my mistakes, and wonderment. 
     I wondered as I wandered there, seen by everyone, remembered by most. 
You could wake up in the morning there and walk downtown where everyone remembered everything from the day before! 
When you screwed up ... you owned it forever! 
Well, at least, until the rememberers died, and you managed to blend a bit better.
     I find it curious that living in Tucson, you could make a decision wobble, get in your vehicle and drive away from it, and it would be forgotten amongst the thousands of personality, learning, and mental wobbles going on at the same time! 
     Now, as I look back, I can see the 'wobbles' going on all around me in the village of wobbles. They had their own prairie village brand, absolutely!!!! 
     Even I remember personality wobbles that didn't seem too important, so immersed in my own day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute self. 
Even here in Tucson, I had a few learning wobbles, corrected, adjusted, and witnessed by few. Admonishing myself or not, I walked away never to let that situation happen again. 
     Forgotten in moments, minutes, hours or days, soooooo much people noise was going on that little Ron goes on smarter, a little more worldly and full of experiences that we get caught up in and that we had nothing to do with. 
     I am one that is happier this way. 
I don't carry so much baggage anymore because no one really cares. I only matter because I stay under the radar of the ambient noise of all of those other baggage carriers. 
     And it's true ... I 'wobble' much less.      
     This month, I turn 72. 
     I simply do not have the energy or time to 'wobble' much anymore and if I do, I might not even notice!!!! LOLOLOLOL
Advertisement
Sep2

Ron’s World Famous Hockey Puck Brownies

Posted on by
Image

Ron’s World Famous Hockey Puck Brownies

 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees (depending on your oven strength)

One pouch of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate mix.

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

Mix with a strong whip or spoon.

Spoon evenly in 12 cup silicone muffin pan on cookie cooling rack for support. That way when you take them out of the oven, they are already on a cooling rack

Mine are the shallow ones. With the full cups, fill 2/3 full.

The recipe calls for 35 to 40 minutes and with the silicone pan

does use that much time. Begin to test with a toothpick at around 30 minutes until you establish the baking time in your oven.

When done, slide the silicone pan on to a cookie rack to cool completely.

Remove each puck when you feel that the chocolate chunks inside have set up a bit.

Enjoy! Each puck will be as chewy as the corner piece from a cake pan if it’s baked just right. rdd

Of course you can use your favorite chewy brownie mix. If you do, adjustments may have to be made in bake time. Sneak up on the finish! rdd

 

Jul19

Solace

Posted on by
Standard

……………………………… SOLACE ……………………………….

Wow.
No insult intended to anybody else, but I did not realize I was on my last nerve. They were just being themselves and I tried to get some time in my ‘man sanctuary’, but with the heat and everything here ….
Anyway, I just took the most peaceful nap in my chair, golf with my earbuds in, dogs not startling me awake.
I think I’m healing from many directions at this moment.
Lots to do, but I’m not putting any pressure on myself today, except for a little headache in my eyes from allergy stuff.
I can fix that.
In my dozing, I can hear the water noises on the golf course. Good earbuds pick up those noises.
No planes droning overhead today.
Just quiet golf shots, no cheering except from across the fence, commentators speaking in normal voice. Rahm a nice lead, quietly working.
I dreamt I put one line in the water at a friends cabin, then found an inner tube and slowly drifted around a small island.
I realized I was getting a little far out, even on a glass lake, and slowly worked my way back passed the tip of the island to shore.
I couldn’t find the cabin or my rod, but did discover a rickety garage holding the bones of a Rambler (two tone blue).
I realized I had turned the wrong way on the beach and headed back.
Watched myself walking away.
At this moment, I have no stretched nerve and remark to myself, “I’ll bet the others noticed that I was wound pretty tight.
I also realize that way out there, as quiet as the stream noises, was the world, noisily destroying itself.
A column of smoke marks the distance … ….
Solace knowing that they won’t come here.
Too much quiet for them, and nothing to gain. rdd
hmmmmm

Jan8

Last of the Peppermint Stick

Posted on by
Image

Last of the Peppermint Stick

 

Good Morning,

I can’t remember if there was an occasion that brought out this childhood joy, but I think more often than not, it happened on Lawrence Welk night!
You could see the Admiral from the small dining room table when it had the leaf on the room side flipped up and you put the back down on the first lazy boy in the small living room on 1st St.
Grandma Anna would come out of the kitchen with a cold box, presented on a tray. I don’t know why!
I think, for a grin and the drama.
I’d lean so close to watch that I had to be told to “get off the table!”
It was Neapolitan Ice Cream in a box.
A crazy time for me. These people never adventured!!!!
She’d lay that box open to the pink/chocolate/white (what my mind at that age saw)
Then, so we could bear witness, she slice it so we all get some of each color, down the middle and begin to divide it in perfectly equal portions for all of us, with always the slightly larger mistake end to the grandpa.
Didn’t care!
Seems a little strange that I should ask you if you remember Lawrence Welk night, as I sit here this morning satisfying my craving for Peppermint Stick ice cream this January 8th morning.
All of this is to remind you that Peppermint Stick ice cream is quickly disappearing with the season!
We’re on our last box, so get out there and check the shelves at your grocery!
A smart grocer would use it as a loss leader and advertise, “Last load of Peppermint Stick ice cream folks!”
And then add as a postscript.
First load of Chocolate Mint is arriving, January 14th!”
Make room! rdd

Sep30

The School of Hard Puckers

Posted on by
Standard

I went to take an ‘after trip’ nap and found I needed to finish putting away the basketed clothes from the dryer still on my bed.
The dryer had created static which is a nothing to me. I’m in the bedroom next to a bathroom you see.
This reminded me of a day a year or so ago when Kathy was complaining about the static in the dress she was putting on in the same bedroom and I told her to slap it up against the bathroom faucet. With questioning eyes, she did do it, and the static went to ground, and the dress hung freely.
Of course you can put it on first and then touch the faucet with your tongue if you want (or finger) and get the spark orrrrrrrrrr, just touch the garment before you put it on! lol
So, on that day she asked me how long I knew about that trick, and I said “Probably all my life!”
Then she puckered up and scolded “You mean we’ve been married all of these years, and I’ve had this same problem and you just got around to telling me?” !!!!!!!
So, now you know the story, and for all of you people that I’m married to somehow (there is more than one way to be married to women…. it’s a possession thing I think), I’m telling you now!
Touch the friggin’ garment full of static to some grounded plumbing close by before you put it on.
You have now been told.
And, if it generates it’s own static while you’re swishing, spray the dress with the magical anti-static atomized spray that is made from old plumbing parts (I guess)! LOLOLOLOL rdd

Aug30

08/30/2019 Time to Harvest some thoughts.

Posted on by
Image

Good Morning.
Read the posts, read the news.
FOX stuck on the same few people again. Round and round we go.
Today, I’m thinking about American farmers.                            
I think it was triggered by the empty shelves in Florida where the hurricane preparations are taking place.
The food chain is a dynamic thing and we must be smart enough to support the farmers closest to our own. Especially when it’s under attack by ignorant politicians connected to big money and politics, and a world taught to grow things better, with our help.
I’m not there nor am I a farmer, but I drove the roads, saw the cycle of growing food supplies, met the people and went to school with the kids that were agriculturally oriented.
Each farm is a manufacturing ‘plant’ with individual style.
They maintain their own equipment with well worn hand me down tools and assimilated hand me down skills, taken for granted and carried for a lifetime no matter where they go.
The educated ones improve their land, don’t waste, don’t pollute, and think ahead constantly. From farm to farm, you can see management differences and skill, failures and successes.
I don’t live there at the moment, but I do go back to visit and am forced to re-absorb.
A little slower pace, a familiar palette for my eyes and ears, the roots that grow steeples, corn, silos, green everything that has a purposeful life circle.
I miss that!
I have to consciously downshift from my protective city attitude to recalibrate so, in a few days, I can become comfortable and enjoy a dose of real earth time, surrounded by dirt instead of concrete.
I have to say … it’s good for the heart. rdd

Aug13

My World Famous Flakiest Pie Dough

Posted on by
Image

My pie pastry with lemon
(if you get this right, I promise the flakiest dough you’ve ever made)

3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tbsp. of sugar
1 1/2 tsp of salt
1 1/8 cups of shortening
2 small eggs separated
1 1/2 tbsp. of lemon juice
3/8 cup of milk

Combine dry ingredients
Cut in the shortening
Combine the egg yolk, lemon juice, and milk
Stir into the dry ingredients with a fork to make a soft dough just enough stirring to make a ball.
Roll out the pastry between two sheets of waxed paper
as needed for bottom and top
Flute the edges and brush on the spoon whipped egg white
and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
Don’t forget to slice in some steam release holes in the top crust for apple or cherry pie.

Jul2

Proper Bitching

Posted on by
Standard

Instructive Creative Writing:
Proper Bitching

You’ve agreed to meet somebody 15 minutes from your home, you start early to make sure you are there when they are.
Over time, the occasional tardiness due to traffic, lights etc. is expected and met with understanding.
In more time, you notice the irregularity in their arrival times growing from five minutes to seven minutes until one day, after waiting twenty minutes, you call to make sure they weren’t in an accident.
The phone call comes back, “We’re on our way!”
Ten minutes later they arrive.
I waved, received my passenger, and drove away.
I was in no mood for conversation.
There are occasions when, if I had bitched, let’s say at the 15 minute mark, this 30 minute late mark, wouldn’t have happened!
Being nice and patient with people is a good thing … until it isn’t.
Sometimes I practice the art of ‘shut up’ and other tactical things that work to my advantage …, but in that bag, I have a special place for ‘Proper Bitching’!
When done right, it saves embarrassment, time, hard feelings, and mis-trust, far outweighing the mistake.
Having said that, I need to mention the nooooomerous times I hear them remark back “What’s amatter with him? He’s never like that!”
LOLOLOL … Yes I am! You just pushed too far. rdd