Announcing New Blog

In light of my recent desire to update the Arnett Family Cookbook, a new idea came to me while soaking in the tub this morning. It’s this: I am starting a new Cooking/Recipe blog for all Arnett wimmens, (and menfolk too, if they care to participate) called The Humble Pie (as this is the year I am renouncing my A.S.S.dom )

As soon as I get my technical advisor (um, that would be ld) to help me figure out how to let everyone post on it, I will be launching it by this weekend. I can’t wait. There are so many great cooks in this family, and it will be fun to share. What think ye?

The only criteria to submitting recipes is that you have to be an Arnett, or descended from one, or married to one, or related to someone who knows an Arnett, or a friend of a friend of an Arnett, blah blah blah. You get the idea.

Arnett Wimmens Unite! Bust out those fav recipes.

Here Jeff

Under the Ramada at Cibola

On Acacia

Waiting for Candy 1957

Ethel Rose

Today would have been my mother’s 83rd birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom.

I remember a conversation I had with her while driving home from a doctor’s appointment, let’s see, that would have been like 18 or 19 years ago. The realization that she might not live as long as she had hoped and prayed for had begun to sink in, I think. We were talking about her radiation treatments and when the next scheduled one was, when suddenly she blurted out, “You won’t forget me, will you?”

Fat chance, Mom. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t remember and think of you in some way. Because it’s the month for Mother’s Day and because it’s your birthday, here’s a little poem I have always loved. For you, Mom. Loved, missed and never forgotten.


A Mother’s Love Determines How

A mother’s love
Determines how
We love ourselves and others.

There is no sky we’ll ever see
Not lit by that first love.

Stripped of love,
The universe
Would drive us mad with pain;
But we are born into a world
That greets our cries with joy.

How much I owe you for the kiss
That told me who I was!
The greatest gift—a love of life—
Lay laughing in your eyes.

Because of you my world still has
The soft grace of your smile;
And every wind of fortune bears
The scent of your caress.

Nicholas Gordon

a little stroll in The Park…on a Sunday afternoon

like moths around a flame

Penee’s ability to strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere and anytime is legendary. She is famous for this and takes a fair amount of teasing about it.

Her family and those who know her have witnessed this many, many times. Most recently, on our return flight from NYC, I had to smile to myself. I was sitting a couple of rows ahead of her (due to a delayed and missed flight) and could hear laughter and animated conversation coming from the back of the plane. I could make out Penee’s voice and knew it must be some good convo they were having.Turns out it was.

HB drove us all home from the airport and Penee shares:

Pen: I sat next to the nicest lady on the way home. Oh, we had a good time. She was molested when she was a child.

HB: (he expresses what we are all thinking) Penee! How is that possible that people just reveal that kind of stuff to you, I mean how does that come up in the conversation?

Penee chuckles, shrugs and passes it off. It’s an unknowable.

But I will tell you why.

Her ability to engage others in divulging their hearts and souls (as in recent surgical operations, their cats proclivity to depression and their bra size!) is due in large measure to Penee’s goodness. People sense a good woman, with a delightful and warm sense of humor and are drawn to that.

Who can resist a kindhearted woman with a genuine interest in them? When you throw in her willingness to reveal her own hilarious antics and uniqueness, well then, it’s little wonder.

Penee attracts people simply by being Penee.

So glad you were born, Pen. What would the world look like or be without you? Love you. Happy Birthday. (belated!)

nyc musings

I meant to post as soon as we got home from New York but I came down with a killer feel like crap cold/flu. So much for my healthy running streak. I started feeling feverish and terrible on the flight home and have been sick since. So sick in fact I would even label it ‘a man cold’, that’s just how crummy I feel.

But I can’t let any more time pass without making comment on our trip to NYC. Oh people, we had a great time. Ld and I saw all the typical sites: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Times Square. Even took in a Broadway play. Oh, and the Brooklyn Bridge, we walked across. Very cool. Loved it all.

My all time favorite places visited, though, were the Metropolitan Museum of Art (including the Cloisters, Lacy! You were right) and strolling through Central Park. Those places were absolutely amazing and so aesthetically enriching, I kid you not. They were so wonderfully memorable that on dark days I will be able to pull up a memory and it will be enough. I won’t even have to be there, like Julia says in Orwell’s 1984 about the room she and Winston escape to, “it’s enough to know that it exists.”
Such beauty hung in the halls of one’s mind, that should get anyone through the day, eh?

I will carry with me forever the sights and sounds of NYC: the bright lights, honking horns, hordes of people and most all of them in a hurry, sirens blaring, the stench of cigarette smoke, steam rising from the ground, pigeons, street vendors, musicians playing in the subway, bagged garbage stacked onto the street, and so much more. What surprised me was that I didn’t feel shocked at anything I saw and that includes the homeless on the subway or the beggars or the ethnic diversity. In fact, when we ate at a highly recommended Mexican restaurant in Harlem all I could think of was that it reminded me of Benefield’s in Ripley (only on a much, much larger scale) So, I guess you could say if you’ve lived in Blythe, you’ve seen New York☺.

I loved it all and I loved seeing it with ld. He is essential to travel with as I’ve mentioned before his great skills in deciphering a map. He is also, umm, how shall I put it, interesting to travel with as he is game to see everything and walks purposely, sometimes leaving me 3 paces behind. But he always noticed if I fell too far behind and would turn around and clutch my hand tightly so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowd.

The only downside to traveling with ld (okay, the most exasperating thing!) is he likes to see his sights with music blaring in his ear and more than once he had to be reminded to ‘take the dang earphones out’ of his ears so I could talk to him. Seriously, this was quite an embarrassing problem.

I guarantee you would all cringe with chagrin if you had sat next to him on the subway with his Ipod blaring:

Ld: (speaking really really LOUD) HEY, SEE THAT GUY OVER THERE, THE ONE WITH THE ORANGE PANTS? DO YOU THINK THAT GUY NEXT TO HIM IS HIS GAY LOVER? PRETTY SURE THEY ARE GAY.

Me: (I put my finger to my lips and shoot him a stern look of reprimand) Shhh, they can hear you. Take. Out. Your. Earphones. NOW! And stop talking so (I’m blinking wildly for emphasis) loud!!

Oh, the mortification. You have no idea how unsettling it is to be out and about with such unpredictable outbursts. Imagine walking around Central Park trying to look nonchalantly mainstream when ld comments, (loudly, did I mention LOUDLY?) on a distinguished looking man who has just passed by:

Ld: WHY DO GUYS USE GRECIAN FORMULA ON THEIR HAIR? WHY DOES IT ALWAYS MAKE THEIR HAIR LOOK RED? HUH, WHY IS THAT?

Again, I try to shush him. Is it too much to just speak in normal tones?

Or try this horrific scenario. We are sitting on a double decker tour bus, Penee sitting next to me, ld behind. We are oohing and ahhing over the sites when I turn around and my earphone plugged in hubby looks me in the eye and pronounces solemnly and matter of factly (only it wasn’t subdued as he doesn’t realize he is shouting)

Ld: I’VE GOT GAS.

I smile weakly. For this very reason alone it was impossible for ld and I to look like anything other than what we were: a couple of eccentric country bumpkin old fart tourists. The ones who talk REALLY LOUD and don’t know it because they have earphones in their ears. But, I am here to tell you people, that once I got past that, once I accepted my inner tourist, I simply didn’t care.

It was a once in a lifetime trip. And ld, lest you think I have been too harsh in my poking fun, rest assured I can’t think of anyone, past or present, I would rather have made the journey with.

Thanks for taking me.