My Daisy, Kaylee

My granddaughter, kaylee, was inducted into the Girl Scouts this weekend. She is now a Daisy! Congratulations Kaylee...

Genealogy

The genealogy bug bit me when I was very young--maybe nine or ten. ( FiftyYears ago!) My Great Aunt Gertrude had researched my grandmother's family with the hope that my mother would join the Daughters of American Revolution. I was captivated by the history my Aunt Gertrude told me about our ancestors having fought in the revolutionary war. Then I married and decided to research my husband's family since they all lived in the same little town in Pennsylvania, but no one was interested in giving me any information. Then my cousin, Maureen, and I decided to check out my father's family in New York City. So now, my Aunt Kathleen (Marueen's mother) and I are mopping up what research has been done on the Greene, Hock, Vieser, McCann, Moylan and other related families. None of my children appear interested. Oh well, maybe a grandchild will be. BTW Family names of interest are: Greene, Hock, Purdy, Hallock, Secor, Best, Bold, Smith, Martinez, Moylan, McCann, Rogers, Murphy. Kuhn...

Ants Go Away

Black dots that move. What could they be?
Little spots of light and dark that come
and go without a thought of where they've
been, only that they are seeking and hoping
to find, the white dots that smell of sweet perfume
and taste of sugar. Black dots be gone!
RAID....

Perseverance

Sticking with something until the job is done is what I call perseverance. I thought I had that quality, but I have decided not to stay with my writing group even though I was elected to a position until next June. I cannot get along with one of the other elected officials and I think she is better, perhaps, than I am for this group. I get angry whenever she sends e-mails and tells me to do something. I do a lot already. I've been membership chair for three years and contest chair for two. She just came in and is supposed to write grants. Instead she's telling all of us what we should do. Problem is that she is right. Problem is that I don't want to do what she says. So, I have wrapped up this year's contest and will have the directory for February, but I will do no more.

Promised myself

I had promised myself that I would write evey night on this blog. I realized last night that I had not done so. I then promised myself that I would write this morning, but just now I realized that it is nearly 10:00PM and I had not written. So I am writing but I have nothing to say.

Baking

The annual white elephant sale is this weekend at our church, so I decided to bake cookies and cupcakes. I had baked cookies and cupcakes often when my children were little. We lived in small towns in Arizona, Wyoming, Texas, and New Mexico where bakeries did not exist and mommy's stayed home and cooked all day. My chocolate chip cookies were pretty good, but I have had no luck baking in Florida. I decided that, since I had my oven tested and the thermostat fixed last year, I'd bake.

So, I found my Christmas Cookie book, complete with my daughter's bookmarks on cookies she had planned but never gotten around to bake.

I chose an old standby. I took the chocolate chips I had stashed in the closet (they were actually discolored from lack of light and age), found all the ingredients,(I had purchased new baking soda and a new product called Baking Sugar Light and extra eggs), read the instructions, measured correctly, and followed the instructions.

The first batch was burned beyond eating, so I changed the oven temperature from 375F to 350F and decided to watch the clock closer, from 20 minutes to fifteen.

The second batch was also burned but just crispy, so I decided to save those for home eating and start over in the morning.

This morning, I used the second bag of chocolate chips, heated the oven to 350, set the timer to 12 minutes, increased the flour by about 1/4 cup and decreased the amount of chips by about 1/2 cup. The cookies were super fantastically delicious. I wrapped them into sets of a dozen each and set them aside.

I then decided to bake another favorite, peanut butter cookies. Using the cookie cookbook, I made allowance. I kept the oven temperature to 350F and baked the cookies for 12 minutes. I placed a chocolate kiss inside each cookie.

The secret to baking in Miami appears to be that the oven needs to be at a lesser heat than in the recipe, there needs to be a slight bit more flour than in the recipe, and remember to take the cookie off the baking sheet immediately because the cookie continues to bake outside of the oven.

I also baked four dozen cupcakes using a boxed mix.

I enjoyed my day of baking. The house got really hot! It smelled great too.

Memory Snippets

I lay on my bed napping and little snippets of memory bounce from one to another. They are like thumbnails on a computer screen that bring peace and smiles to my mind. For some reason, I had been thinking about my young life in Hawaii. Scenes of walking home from school, sitting in the back seat of the car driving around Oahu listening to "Mr. Sandman" on the radio, to the playground across the street from my home puffed into my head bringing peace, calm, security, and beauty. Where did these flashbacks come from?

The phone rings waking me from my rest. Life must continue, yet I still think about those scenes. These same moments had been used in the past when they conjured up feelings of disappointment, pain, and anger. Why are they used by my brain in a different way? Have I matured over the years? Are the painful moments I held on to for so long, gone?

I hope so.

Freelance Writing

After quite a long hiatus, I am back attempting to blog every day. Today I want to vent about my attempts at freelance journalism.

I spent a long time writing, rewriting, editing etc my 600 word article about kangaroos for Hopscotch magazine. They had an open theme for 2007 about Australia. I even mastered my fear of asking for interviews and found an interesting and willing interviewee on the web with the Kangaroo Conservatory in Georgia. My writing teacher loved the piece, so I sent it off to Hopscotch following all the rules and guidelines.

My article was returned within less than a month. The editor, Janet, wrote a note on the rejection slip that there was no open space for that theme.

Now, after reading several articles about freelance rejection, and after having received a few simple checked rejection slips, I have decided that the fact that it was rejected so quickly and with a hand written signed note, means that I have made some progress.

I just wish I knew what kind of progress I have made.

I want to simply send it out again, but how on earth do I figure out to which children's mag I should send it? The market has been cornered by Carus Publishing. They are not accepting any unsolicited manuscripts at this time.

Should I just stick it in an envelope and mail it haphazardly, or put it in my file with everything else?