KattyWilly

I am always looking for a more readily available alternative to the
wonderful Pleasant Ridge Reserve and
have found something that is close.

At our Easter dinner over with the folks (photo should be posted soon)
Lindsey and I made this Asparagus on toasted bread with almond garlic
paste side dish that has a melted cheese topping.  When we originally
made the recipe we used plain grocery store Cheddar, but this time I
thought we could experiment a little.  I had some Lorraine Swiss and
grocery store Cheddar plus I decided to try some Fontina and this cheese
I found at the Fresh Market, Midnight Moon. 
We snacked a little on the Midnight Moon  while we were cooking
and it was the favorite of the cheeses we had on hand.  It was still
quite pricey, and is a different cheese that the Pleasant Ridge, but it
is closer than anything I’ve been able to find locally up to now.  The
folks still have some Carr Valley 4 yr old white Cheddar so we made some
with that too.  It was way potent.  This was not the best recipe for
that cheese.

“Once someone has died, the past is no longer shared. I can’t be
corrected. Whatever I remember becomes the truth for now.“

This is something that really bugs me.  Cindy was so good at
remembering things.  I am so bad at remembering things.  I
worry that the girls having lost so much will lose even more because of
my terrible memory.  When they ask me about their mom will I be
able to remember enough of the important details to be able to give
them an accurate picture of what she was like?

Cindy had such a good memory that she could identify what the popular
song was during the summer of the year in question.  I can’t even
remember what year it was.

Julie wonders “What would I do if one of my daughters wanted to pursue figure skating or something similiar?”

We tried all kinds of athletic endevours as the girls were growing up. 
We tried Ballet, Gymnastics, Soccer, and living in Florida there is the
requisite swimming lessons.  As I remember it and Cindy isn’t here to
correct me 🙁 but we tried skating with our youngest as an attempt to
fix our view that she was walking “funny”.  I think she had a tendency
to walk with her toes pointed outward and someone told us that we
should put her in skating lessons as that would force her to keep her
feet pointed straight.  It didn’t take long for our older daughter to
join in as she was tagging along anyway and skating looked to be more
fun than sitting on the bench.

I think one of the things that attracted our girls to skating was that
it focused on the individual.  When we were playing soccer we had
troubles with the team aspect.  Lindsey in particular would pay close
attention to all the instructions of the coach and do her best to do
exactly what she was instructed to do.  When the coach said don’t go
past the 40 yard line when you are on defense, you would see Lindsey
standing alone back on the other side of the field as this swarm of
kids followed the ball all around the other end of the field.  Several
of the boys on the team were less focused.  I think that Lindsey
developed a certain amount of internal stress because of her fear that
the coach would be angry with the team because of the behavior of her
teammates which she had no control over.  Chelsey was on a team with a
superstar, the coach’s daughter, who got all the attention and playing
time.  So the team sports didn’t seem to apeal to the girls.

Figure skating was a way for them to excell at their own pace.  There
were some skaters that were better than they were and others that were
not as accomplished as they were yet.  But it didn’t affect the way the
girls skated.  They were able to work hard on their own to get to the
next level and it didn’t matter what the other skaters were doing. As
long as they did what the coach asked and were able to improve they
were happy.

I personally like figure skating for the girls.  As a discipline figure
skating requires plenty of physical effort.  They constantly work on
endurance, strength, flexibility, balance, and plenty of falling with
style.  For a sport that looks like ballet on ice it sure is ugly and
painful while they learn to do it smooth and graceful.  Then there is
the whole performance aspect of the sport.  As a individual sport it is
like few others in the way each competition is also a performance.  An
attmept to make a very physical and demanding routine look effortless,
graceful and beautiful.  I can’t imagine a sport that I myself would be
more terrified of.  But Lindsey seems to thrive on the discipline, and
really enjoy the performing.

One last thing, there are a few cars in the parking lot at the rink
with the following on the rear windows, “Driver has no cash – daughters
are figure skaters”.

This is so cool. One of my earliest memories is of this toy we
had when I was 4 years old. It was this wierd robot thing that
had these strange hypnotising rotating eyes, arms that flung around to
through these balls which they called missles, and it’s head opened up
to fire rockets. It was remote controlled by the operator using
this device which had some sort of knob you turned to control
stuff. It is one of the things that for some reason is stuck in
my mind. I can see it in my memory.

Today I saw it on the web!

The interweb is the coolest man. And they even link to a page
where I could buy a box for a Robot Commando for the bargain price of
$249.99. 🙂

Halley is talking about some things today and as I read them I had that, “hey! I’ve done that too!” feeling.

One of the things she talks about is the Palm Sunday church
service. She describes it from a view she has outside the church
on one of those long winter just turned to spring days. The kind
where there are still plenty of reminders of the long hard winter that
has been and sometimes may still yet to be even when the calendar says
that it is officially Spring. My last winter in the Chicago area
was one of those. We suffered the indignity of an April Fools day
blizzard that year. Those early springs are ones that are filled
with more hope for spring than actual spring. She describes the
effects of the big piles of snow that keep holding on even though the
weather is warm enough to melt most of it. These piles of grey
and dirty reminders of the deepest the winter had been able to force us
to dig to make our way through our daily tasks. It forces our
normally neat and organized lives to become more random and
different. The normal nicely arranged lines of cars parked in the
lot outside the church turn into a wild looking scene of cars parked in
all manner of different angles and arrangments, none of which seem to
have any organization to them.

She also talks about plam fronds and the rituals of the Palm Sunday
services. I remember as a child going to Palm Sunday
services. They were one of my favorites for some of the same
reasons I just described above. They were different from the
normal services. We dressed different, there were those special
hats the ladies wore, the practice of handing out the palm
fronds. For a young child these palm fronds are almost like
simple toys. Something to play with. I would try to imagine
where all these palm fronds came from. Were there palm farms
somewhere? How did they grow them in the winter when it was so
cold and miserable? I undserstand now where all those palm fronds
come from 🙂

She talks about driving behind a large vehicle and not being able to
see the road ahead. I have on occasion become so frustrated that
I would do as Halley did and try to pass just to feel more comfortable
and safe being able to see the road and traffic ahead. I have
also done the opposite and done my best to drive a little slower to
allow more of the road ahead to move from in front of the big vehicle
in front of me to to behind it. I have also on occasion purposely
tried to stop at a light that the big vehicle was able to go through
just to take me out of that situation. I drive different than I
used to now.

Finally the thing that Halley talked about the really gave me the “I’ve
done that feeling” is when she stops to take some time to cry.
Although I have to admit, as I have heard from many other widow and
widowers, that we do some of our best crying in the car rather than
out. In the first months I would never have been able to go
anywhere if I couldn’t cry and drive. The car was about the only
place that I could feel alone with my feelings. It was also the
only place where I had the time to think about things. The rest
of my days were spent trying to be a single parent of two girls working
full time. And as Halley says crying is one of the best ways to
release. Those first few months were filled with so much emotion
that it felt like at times we were exploding. Long hard crying
sessions were the only way I could find to release them. There is
such a feeling of calm and release once I was done.

Years later I sometimes long for those days of emotion.

One of the Widownet members pointed to her weblog post on “being
a widow with children“.  I can especially relate to these thoughts
“You believe that if you can love them and give to them twice as much
as
is humanly possible, that it might just make up for their horrible
loss.”

This morning we are off to the rink for a USFSA testing session.
There will likely be plenty of praying going on this Sunday Morning at
the Ice Rink.

Update:

We got to the rink a little early. Pulling into the parking lot
there is this older guy wandering aimlessly through the lot. As I
cautiously approach he suddenly decides to turn and walk right in front
of my car. I’m really glad I was watching him so closely or he
would have been squished.

So we went into the rink and checked in with the coaches and early
skaters. It sounds like the judges are pretty strict and several
of the early skaters didn’t pass their tests. They were
resurfacing the ice as we came in so we couldn’t see who the judges
were. All the skaters love the judges, we just love some of them
more than others 🙂

After the resurface the next group of skaters went out for their warmup
and I waited for the judges to come out. I noticed Aimless
Wanderer coming out of the hospitality room where the judges and
coaches go for refreshements. He proceded to go out to the Judges
area. Hmmm… I suddenly wondered how almost running over
one of the judges in the parking lot might affect Lindsey’s scores.

Lindsey skated her moves in the field well even though she did fall on
one series of moves. Hearing how tough the judges have been I was
worried that Lindsey wouldn’t pass. This is our second attempt at
this level and some skaters have tested several times at this level
before passing. One of the other skaters in Lindsey’s group also
fell and she passed so I wasn’t worried about that. We waited for
her scores and she passed! Now we could relax a little as there
might not be as much pressure for her Freeskate.

She skated great in her freeskate warmup. Landed every Axel
perfectly. She skated first in her group and skated well.
She struggled on both of her Axels and the judges called her back to do
another Axel after she finished. We weren’t very encouraged as we
waited for her results. I’ve seen her skate that routine better
but all in all she skated well. And it turned out to be good
enough to pass.

Congratulations Lindsey, all that hard work pays off.

r>

I just read, or probably re-read, The Long
Tail article on Wired.

“Perhaps the best way to do that is to stop charging for individual
tracks at all. Danny Stein, whose private equity firm owns eMusic,
thinks the future of the business is to move away from the ownership
model entirely. With ubiquitous broadband, both wired and wireless,
more consumers will turn to the celestial jukebox of music services
that offer every track ever made, playable on demand.”

This is a description of the Portable Internet Streaming Radio concept.

I love the Inkernets! Today I’m reading Kottke’s blog and there’s this
item about some
excitement at Technorati about employee blog posts and all that stuff.
Anyway it leads me to a site that has old WW2 posters . Chelsey has an assignment for school
that has to do with coming up with her own version of one of these
posters. She’s going to love seeing all these examples.