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Monthly Archives: December 2012

Fiesta Ware Learning Journey

Not long ago, I wandered into a most fun and cheerful kitchen wares place.  I didn’t die and I didn’t get sick.  This is such a cheerful place, that I actually enjoyed it.  I discovered Fiesta Ware.  Good Gad.  Too bad I’m old now.  If I had discovered Fiesta Ware back when I was trying to cook and eat at home, I would be Fiesta Ware rich now.

Today I revisited the kitchen place.  A young man was telling his parent family about his wife’s collection of Fiesta Ware. I imagined the family was his mother, his aunt and his father.   He pointed to some plates and said, “This is what she uses.”  One woman said, “Why don’t we just get her a couple of pieces.  What color does she have?”  The young man explained, “She has all the colors.”  There was silence from the family.  “All the colors?”  They gazed at the huge collection of “all the colors.”  I could hear them thinking, “She has all this!  My goodness!  The family was overcome.  One of the women asked, “Does she have enough plates of the same color to serve the family?  I wondered that too.  Clearly, our minds were on the matching road.es

The young man explained again, “Every person gets a different color at the table.  When Fiesta Ware comes out with a new color, she buys all the plates and dinner ware in the new color.  She doesn’t buy everything all at once.  It takes her a while to buy every piece in the new color.”  Me and the parents were overcome again by the thought.

Fiesta Ware…we should have bought stock in Fiesta Ware instead of Fiesta Ware dinner plates. I thought about buying a cereal bowl.  i’ve been wanting a new cereal bowl.  I found a one quart bowl for only $8.00.  I decided to pass on getting my own piece of Fiesta Ware.

Boomerang!

My son took me shopping today to a store called Boomerang.  It’s near Westport.  I think it’s called Boomerang because it implodes you back in time.  Nathan told me it was sort of a costume store.  I was unprepared. Boomerang has clothes and household things from back in the good ole days.  I was walking into the most unique costume – thrift store ever.

We entered the store and I nearly fell to my knees in worship. Here, before my cowgirl eyes, were floor to ceiling shelves filled with used cowboy boots!  After determining that I wasn’t having a heart attack, my son requested permission to continue into the store while I continued to stunned-stare at the cowboy boots.  After a few moments of worship, I determined that all boots were men’s boots.  I didn’t see any women’s boots, but it took me a while before my brain could be that analytic.

The boots were shelved on my left.  After about 5 minutes of boot gazing, I was able to wrench my gaze from the left to the right where I discovered two racks  of about 50 “ugliest Christmas sweater” candidates.  I lovingly touched many of them, trying to find the prettiest ugliest sweater in my size.  I was too overcome to consider trying on one of these fine examples of American worst Christmas fashion.  I had barely entered the store and was emotionally on my knees in wonder. The sweaters were tagged about $20. Finally, I was able to continue walk into into the store.

Stumbling around with the sights that awaited me, I found a woman’s dressy leopard hat, and a fine leopard pimp outfit and leopard window curtains.  Again, I was overcome.  Leopard is my favorite color.  The pimp outfit was a leopard cape and leopard pants.  The pimp outfits were not for sale. They were rental outfits.  Oh the temptation!

Another row of clothing had about 10 fur coats and the one I looked at also included a matching fur muff. When was the last time you saw anyone wearing a fur coat?  They are totally socially “illegal” .  Cost was a mere $400 plus for the coat with the matching muff.  Good Gad!  If I were rich, I would have immediately taken out my checkbook and bought it…and worn it as pajamas.  Where would you wear a fur coat in this day and age!  I can imagine me wearing the fur coat around the house and sleeping in it.  sigh

I was able to tear myself away from fur row and came to a row marked 60’s.  This was about 100 or so 1960 style women’s dresses.  Oh my!  Let’s return to my teenage years, but I’m certain my body never wore clothes like that.  There were some Jackie Kennedy dresses in this clothes rack.  Oh my goodness, the joy of the 60’s!

I wandered down to the end of that rack and was emotionally felled again by a rack of petticoats.  I lovingly touched a scratchy stiff white petticoat just like the kind I wore under a full skirt. I was crashed back to the 1950’s!   When I was able to walk away from the scratchy petticoats, I looked up and saw about 5 poodle skirts displayed near the ceiling.  The 50’s were making their presence known.

Nathan made a purchase and I stumbled out of the store having to walk by a rack of about 50 plus tie-dyed Tshirts.

It’s amazing that I lived through involuntary immersion into the past.  Although I had a heart beat  and was able to walk, I was emotionally drained!  Nathan revived me with a meal at a Chinese restaurant in Westport.

What a DAY!  Thank you son!

Copper Family

I don’t know where it came from.  It’s been mine for years now.  I don’t remember growing up with a copper kettle, but then my grandmother died after I left home.  I believe that it came to my house upon the death of my mother.

It is a beautiful copper tea kettle.  I thought of it as a beautiful antique.  My mother died in 2007, some five years ago.  Yesterday, I had an amazing thought. What if it were a real tea kettle that my grandparents used?

I decided to put water in it.  When I poured the water out, it was clear.  No dirt; No ugly stuff. The water was clear.  I rinsed it out a couple more times and decided it was time to put it to the test.  I filled it up and put it on the stove.  A nice odor of burned metal faintly filled the kitchen.  About 5 minutes, the kettle was singing so loud, I wondered if the the entire town of Pleasant Hill could hear it.  The kettle has a fine hearty tone. My grandparents are singing through the tea kettle.  I can hear them talking and laughing.

I now have a working copper tea kettle.  I love it! It’s family.

Shooting Crows…

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1923972

Shots rang out very near our two horses on the trail.  It sounded like heavy artillery. Hope and I were riding at James A Reed park today. Hope called the Park Ranger department to report that we were trapped in a real life shooting gallery. Park Ranger returned her call and was on the way to investigate.

We decided to take the park road back to the parking area. I thought the road would be safer than the trail. Plus we might be able to see the shooter if we were on the road.
About a city block later, we spotted a suspicious minivan parked on the side of the road. I yelled out, “No Shooting” a couple of times. Amazingly, we spotted an invisible man wearing cameo in the woods.  He was coming back towards the suspicious mini van.  He became more and more visible as he got closer to the car.
We waited. Jazz would not go forward as he wanted to see what the invisible man looked like. The cameo man walked slowly towards the car. He was carrying a rifle. We could see the rifle because it wasn’t wearing cameo.He might have been 50-100 yards from us on the trail when he was shooting.

Hope was nice to him and asked him what he was shooting.
I heard him sayhe “does” as in female deer plural.
My blood pressure hit the top of my temper thermometer. “DOE’s! You are shooting doe’s in a park where there are people?!”

” Crows”, he said.  “I was shooting up in the air.  I’ve been shooting crows out here for about 20 years.”  I nicely replied at a moderate loud tone, “I’ve been riding in this park for 20 years and never heard anyone shooting so close to where I was riding or anyone shooting crow!”

If I were able to get back on my horse, I would have gotten off Lucky and went to yell at the man close up in his face. Of course, he did have that rifle.  I could have goaded him into thinking I was a crow!  I could have been crow bait today.

Instead, I read his license plate out loud twice and said, “I’m going to report you!” Sadly, there were numbers involved in the license plate and I’ve never been good at numbers or memorizing a letter-number combo, but he didn’t know that.

Jazz had decided the old man was boring by this time.  Hope and Jazz were walking down the road. Lucky Star felt that his place was with Hope and Jazz, not with me yelling at an old man. Lucky told me to “leave it alone” and get with the riding program.  Staying and yelling at the old man was difficult.  Hope called our Lone Park Ranger and told him we had found “the shooter”.  The park ranger didn’t seem so concerned when he was told the man was shooting at crows.  After all, the shooting was directed up.

Lord help us….

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