A Donde va el tiempo???

As we convened for our weekly Family Dinner Night, I was gently reminded that many days have passed since my last post. It seems only last night that we last gathered and received the call reporting Poppa Norton's passing! The weekend was made bearable by the cancellation of soccer due to the inclement weather but as always seems to happen, the work fills the time available. The wake and funeral were emotionally tough. The return to work and school came immediately on the heels of the funeral! All week I was/am at my "real" job. Auntie Peggy seems to think I should still have had the ability to squeeze out at least a post if not two during this period! Seemed to me that countless hours of dental exams lack sufficient inspirational qualities for a post. My co-workers are lovely people who work day in and day out to serve the needy children of our county. We have worked together for almost 17 years now!! During that time we have shared births and adoptions, marriages and divorces, potty training and proms.....A donde va el tiempo??? The weather is STILL nothing to talk about! The leaves are turning all the comforting shades of fall but..... they are also falling off the trees FAST this year! The ENDLESS days of clouds and rain have taken their toll on both me and Mother Nature. The Indian Summer we had hoped would give us a buffer before the snow falls does not appear to be in the cards this year :( But I've already blogged endlessly about our no good, horrible, very bad year of weather. I look at this sea of rain soaked leaves and try to imagine they are the sands of Lido Beach down in 'our Sarasota'. The unexpected expense of replacing our whole HVAC system has pretty much been the last nail in the coffin in which my hopes of a holiday trip south lay. It has been 10+ months since I soaked in the sun and surf I so crave and I'm falling into a S.A.D. cycle deeper and deeper with every passing SUNLESS day. I cannot believe that I will go more than a year WITHOUT 'our Sarasota'....A donde va el tiempo??? Now for a hopefully humorous end to this gloomy post! I have recently had a series of 'aha' moments that one would think a geriatric citizen like myself should have experienced much younger. As Julia happily munched into her Bob Blue Snowball during dessert I was reminded of how much I looked forward to those very rare times that my Mom bought 'junk food'. There were NINE of us kids and money was an endangered commodity so we NEVER had pop, chips, or snack cakes as kids. The ONLY time she ever splurged on Twinkies was for one of our birthday parties and I would count the days until my next siblings birthday in anticipation. Depending on how much money was in the coin purse that day would dictate whether we had one or one AND a half of a Twinkie! I LOVED those things. Now a days we have the gluttonous richness to have dessert whenever we choose and it is mostly a homemade cake or brownies. Tonight we had a fresh baked German Chocolate cake! Tuesday it was homemade Dutch Apple Pie. Peggy was happy with the offering and enjoyed sharing with Alyssa. Have to admit that I was happy to indulge in a piece too. So with Bob Blue Snowballs in the house why am I opting for the German Chocolate homemade cake? Sometime between my childhood and young adulthood someone at Hostess tweaked the recipes..that's why!!!! I went years during my starving student days without any money for luxuries like snack cakes and during that period they stole the best ingredients from my Twinkies! I cannot even find words for the profundity of my shock and disgust when one day, after I had graduated from dental school, I decided to pamper myself with an old comfort food and pulled into a QuickMart and bought a Twinkie...YUCK!!!! Since then I have had many a caring friend try to tell me that my taste buds had just "matured" and that Twinkies had not changed. So if 'mature' taste buds are the explanation can you please explain this??????............ YES! That is Patrick diving into his Bob Blue Snowball. His taste buds are definitely more 'mature' than mine yet this was his dessert choice tonight!?!?! My theory--he was raised even POORER and in Ireland so he never had the chance to taste the REAL Hostess products from the 'old days' and therefore knows no disappointment in the OBVIOUS theft of ingredients. Now for another 'aha' moment that should have happened when I was much younger. I am the oldest daughter in a family of nine children. The significance of that statement is you ask...what? Well let me tell you! Picture your laundry and cooking load with your two-three kids and multiply by three!!!! While Peggy gravitated to the cleaning part of helping with housework I claimed the cooking. I have been cooking a loooong time. When I was 11 years old my Mom landed in the hospital on Thanksgiving Eve and with some help from my brother Peter I MADE our turkey dinner. I knew how to make stuffing, how to clean and stuff the bird. I knew how to peel spuds and mash them when they were boiled. I knew how to make gravy! I was ELEVEN and already knew all these skills so you can guess how long I've been cooking. The thousands of yards of wax paper, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil that I have pulled are no exaggeration. So how it it that no one ever mentioned (and I never saw!!) the little tab on the end of those boxes until I was in my FORTIES?!?!?! Yep! That little perforated tab that reads, "Press here to lock roll". My Mom, my home ec teachers, my aunts, my friends who all cooked with me and NEVER once mentioned that little feature that would have save me from those extra days I'll be spending in Purgatory for taking the Lord's name in vain as the rolls popped out and ran away from me as I pulled!!!!! So to rectify the wrong done to me, I tell you dear readers this little piece of advice! Push in that handy little tab found on the end of all your rolled goods! The roll stays put and gives a nice clean tear....and you won't have to explain in your first pre-school parent-teacher conference how your toddler learned those curse words!