T'is the Night Before Christmas

T'is the night before Christmas
And all through our house
Only Nana and Papa
And a wee little mouse.

No stockings are hung,
Tho our small tree's alight,

Our hearts are in Portland,
But we're here tonight.

We climb into our jammies,
Then schlep off to bed,
To wait for the big man
Whose all dressed in red.

When we're both snuggled down,
All cozy and tight'
We say"

"Merry Christmas to all,

And to all a good night!"

Pula,Coffee, and Gibbs

Here I sit on Christmas Eve eve morning writing to you, drinking my coffee, eating Pula and watching NCIS.

Grandma Mary would have approved of the first two ,she might have thought computers were neat, and may have even thought about trying to use one. NSIC? She might have thought that Jethro was a dish.

Who is this Grandma Mary? Well, she was a sweet, feisty woman who loved her grandkids and never failed to let them know it, she was even gracious enough to put up with me when I tagged along with Aunt Sassy for a weekend visit to her house. Then I married her #1 grandson, also known as DaddyKaos,and Papa.

Grandma Mary was born and raised in Finland, and came to the US with Grandpa Gus in the early 1900's to start a new life. She was also GG's (DK's mom) mom. The reason for this mini-biography? DK and I made Pula yesterday. It is the first time in over tweleve years that I have made it (Finnish Cardamom dough). Pula is Finnish for bread, and it is good stuff. If you have never tasted it try it if you get a chance, it is different, and you either like it or you don't. Finding it will be the biggest challenge. We use Grandma Mary's recipe, it is a way to bring her into the holiday, I usually use Grandma Marys big ole yellow, farmhouse bowl to make Pula in, but like so many things , it is packed away, and "I'm not unpacking anything until we know where we are going to live."

Cami mentioned making Pula to Mei. Mei said," Why for Christmas, it's an Easter bread." We always thought it was a Christmas thing. It doesn't really matter, anytime is Pula time, I just remember it at Christmas.(Message to Mei, maybe Grandma Mary would be a good subject for a Friday Meiography. She was a very special, not a real earth shaker, but quit a gal, a pioneer of sorts.)

Clue, when making Pula and it is about 12 degrees outside, takes a little bit longer to rise then in warmer weather, those little yeasties need warmth to grow, and it is a little hard to find anyplace warm enough when it is that cold outside.

Well, there is half an hour left of Gibbs, and my coffee needs a reheat (the Pula is long since gone) and there are other things to do. I need to start the chicken going in the slow cooker for the Christmas Days "GUMBO" fest. Just DK and me. What in the world will we do with all of that left over goodness? FREEZER! ;)

Santa Claus and Polar Bears

What do Santa Claus and polar bears have in common with NanaKaos?

We are all slightly more then chubby.

It is acceptable for the bear and the man because they live at the North Pole and need their fat to help keep them warm. Right?

As I write this it is 1:00 PM and we have reached our temperature high of the day. It is 1 degree out there, people, if you count the wind chill it is -17 degrees. Yes minus 17 degrees!

You can even build a snowman, throw snow balls , build a snow fort, and go for a sled run down the hill. That is of course, if you don't mind freezing to death. When DK shovels snow, icicles hang from his beard and mustache , frost decorates his cap and clothes.


You can't see the icicles, but believe me they are there.

I took this picture of over the fence in my backyard for you,through the window, I was going to take a couple of the front yard too, but the glass in the storm door frosted over so bad that you wouldn't have been able to see what I was photoing, and I was not going to open that door just for you guys. Flash-freezing at it fastest.



So, the next time you start thinking how much fun it would be to live were it snows a lot, think again, It was quaint and charming for a couple of years, but after 10+ years, believe me ,there are other things that are far more quaint and charming then freezing your nunnies off.

Our "Baby"

Look at this face. Would she hurt anything? We lovingly called her "Butterfly Butt". The markings on her hind end looked like a butterfly.




She was our last "Baby". Her name was Gracie, and she was My dog. I say she was named for Gracie Allen, and DK says she was named for Grace Slick or Grace Jones. DK brought her home to me for my birthday 1995. She was the sweetest dog I have ever known. My apologies to Sally and Ginger, they were wonderful dogs also, but there was something special about Gracie. Maybe it is because she was of an infamous breed. Or maybe because she was mine.


I first fell in love with rottweilers when I saw one for the first time on the original Santa Clause movie, I couldn't believe the sweetness in that face. That is when I started to believe that a breed of dog wasn't all bad. Nurture, not nature.


Gracie really was a "junk yard" dog. Her mom and dad were the " nightwatchmen" at a local junkyard in the town where we were living. He spent some time watching them and knew that he had found my " baby". When he brought her home he was wearing a black sweater so I couldn't see her. Then she looked up at me and I saw her brown muzzle and those shining, black eyes and I was a goner.

Why this story now? We watched "The Dark Knight", tonight and it hurt my heart to see my "baby" vilified. I know it wasn't personal, but for those of you who have never met a "Gracie", they are a sweet loving , loyal bred. She gave so much to us and when she died a little of me died with her. It was 7 years ago that we lost her, and I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes.

You just can't judge a breed of dogs by what you see in a movie or read in the news. It is the owners who are bad, not the dog.

Hanford, CA, My walk down memory lane

Yesterday I responded to a reader, telling her about the little town DK and I grew up in, I told her the name, said I didn't know if they had a web sight or not. I looked, oh, they have a web sight alright, not a single picture of the beautiful old building that I was talking about, so I thought you might like to see part of our childhood. Now, Mei spent part of her childhood there, so she might remember some of these buildings.
Alas, I don't have a photo of the most important building in all of Hanford, "Superior Dairy" and the superior tells it all. They make the best ice cream that I have ever tasted, especially their chocolate. CamiKaos and Droid Whisperer will tell you the same thing, we used to go to the "Dairy" every time we visited my folks, who still live there. When DK and I go back we make it a point to go there for a shake.

This first picture is where my Daddy worked as a Deputy Sheriff for many years, the second and third, he worked in as the bailiff .

This was the old jail that has since been turned into a restaurant and has also served as a museum.They call it the "Bastille" Gallery. We used to hang out, out front waiting for a ride home after the Tuesday Afternoon Nurses Movies. I can still remember the odor of stale cigars and only God knows what else on the inside the building , outside the wooden "gate".



The front of the Old Courthouse,


The back of the Old Courthouse.





Next is the Civic Auditorium,


There was a summer enrichment program they ran here during the summer, I got to take ballet lessons for two summers. Always remember that I am not clumsy, I'm just not graceful.

And this was one of my favorite places as a child.


The old library, it is one that Carnegie built and held many wonderful adventures in its pages. I believe that it is a museum now. I used to head for the stacks at the back of the children s area and hide while Mom did her business, I always came out of there with a big stack of books. If you look behind the library you see a palm tree. When we were little there was a huge oak tree that shaded the whole back of the building. In the summer we had a morning story time where we all sat in the shade of the tree and listened to stories. An afternoon story time was impossible outside, we regularly had 100+ degrees during the summers and you didn't go outside unless you had too, also we only had swamp coolers, no air conditioning.

They tore down one of the most beautiful building in Hanford about 35 years ago. It was the building that we went to high school in, the building that DK and I both graduated from, Aunt Tuna, both of my sisters, my mom and dad, and too many more generations for me to count graduated from it too. They said the building was an earthquake hazard. The kicker? They had to finally bring in the extra heavy duty wrecking ball to bring it down. It seems it wasn't as big of an earthquake hazard as they thought.

One more point of interest, oh patient readers, John Mellencamp made a music video there a few years ago. It was about social and racial prejudices. It was right to film it there. They still have those problems. Superior Dairy is one of the building featured, that and the "new" library.

This concludes my walk down memory lane.

Remembering the good old days

In the past few months we have started doing things that we used to do at the beginning of our marriage. DaddyK was in the military and we didn't need anything but a roof over our heads, a little food, and each other.

But military pay is notoriously inadequate and we had to live. One of the things we did was keep a change jar. DK has never liked to carry change, so this was perfect. At the end of each day he would dump his change into a big old water bottle. Some of you will remember the big glass bottles that weight a ton even when they were empty.

After a few months of pinching pennies, we realized that we could use the "change jar" to make it through the last week of the month. It worked fine. We learned to buy the store brand bread, cash in any deposit bottles and walk to the grocery store, Mayfair Market was still alive then and they would let us take the shopping cart home, knowing that we would return it.

I learned how to make gingerbread, from scratch, we popped corn and used no butter, and learned how to drink unsweetened ice tea. An occasional pop for me and beer for DK was a real treat. As time went on we also realized the value of the day old bread stores.

A couple of months ago they stopped making our favorite microwave pop corn, and we didn't like any other brands, besides that it had gotten so $$$$$$ that we just couldn't do anymore.

People, a bag of pop corn cost about $1.28 , and we get about 30 small poppings. The microwave stuff is about $2.50 for 12 poppings. The chemicals and additives in that stuff are enough to kill a healthy horse.

We have been drinking unsweetened tea for years now, I guys we got used to it and saw no reason to change back. In fact sweetened tea tastes nasty to me now.

Today, we went to the day old bread store here in town. The bread DK likes is almost $4.00 a loaf. We got a comperable brand 2 loaves for $4.00. English muffins (my breakfast) were alot cheaper, the weren't the nook and cranny brand but when I put homemade pomegranate jelly on them who really cares.

We proceeded to a low cost grocery ( we a boycotting Wally World) and found most of what we needed at lower prices then our neighborhood Hy-price grocer. Their produce wasn't too bad, the only things we really had to go to the "Price Palace" for was a few things we couldn't find and lunch meat, somethings you just need to get the good stuff.

We did good. It brings back the days of $00.25 a loaf bread and a dozen eggs for $00.50.
But I don't think we could get a slice of bread for a quarter.

The first of December

Well, December has arrived and we haven't. We are still here in our cozy little home, that nobody else appears to want. With the economy the way it is, I don't know if we could afford to move even if our house did sell.

It is really depressing, to put your all into making your house market ready, and then see the filthy houses that some people would rather buy. Just because there is a kitty litter box in a home doesn't mean that the home is dirty, don't get me wrong. But there have been a couple of houses shown on our "house for sale TV" network that have prominently displayed their cat's bathroom in their homes. This is a small thing I guess, but what about kitchen counters piled so high with "stuff" that you can only guess at the condition or color of the counters. I know, picky, picky but work with me people, I'm a little depressed and want to move closer to my kids.

We did decorate for Christmas this year, after a fashion. It is nothing like the past, but I packed stuff for the move and I'll be damned if I'll unpack it until we move or decide that we aren't going anywhere!