For the past week, the weather has been perfect along our gravel road. The daisies, phlox, and peonies are blooming, the trees are in full leaf, and the grass in the ditches is a rich, luxurious green. Maybe that’s why these three thoughts for Thursday are mostly about my favorite season – spring.

1. Mom had her springtime doctor’s appointment in Des Moines the same day Mitt Romney spoke a few blocks away. What a relief to not see the fella and tell him in person that I can’t be his running mate in the fall. I’m not sure he would understand that being a first time grandma leaves no time for politics.
2. Apparently, there’s a blue jay convention in our town this week. They are everywhere. Talk about noisy, uncouth, overbearing tourists!
3. My teacher friends are trying to motivate kids to learn their multiplication facts, study the three branches of government, and conjugate Spanish verbs on this beautiful spring day. The thought makes me want to bake cookies for them.

Who would you bake cookies for on this fine spring day? Leave a comment.

When I read the name of recipe in USA Weekend Magazine the weekend before Mother’s Day, my reaction was…breakfast salad? Are you kidding me? But a quick skim of the ingredients showed the recipe met the requirements for our healthy eating checklist:

Non-dairy for me √
No sugar for Hiram √
Lots of veggies for both of us √
High protein for high exercise days √
Easy to make √
Easy to substitute ingredients √

So last night, we tried the recipe – turning it into supper salad by serving it with baguette on the side – and it immediately received the coveted Hiram seal of approval. Not a wow-this-is-good seal of approval. But a wow-how-soon-will-you-serve-this-again seal of approval. Yup, it was that good. Don’t take my word for it, though. Try it and leave a comment about your family’s reaction to breakfast salad…any time of day.

Breakfast Salad

8 slices Canadian bacon (original recipe called for 4, but no way would Hiram go for that)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice (original recipe called for balsamic vinegar)
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
8 cups lightly packed, washed baby spinach leaves (about 8 ounces)
1/2 cup sweet red, orange, or yellow pepper thinly sliced (original recipe calls for 2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half)
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped

Cook Canadian bacon in lightly oiled skillet over medium heat until golden brown, about 5 minutes, turning once. Remove from skillet and cut into 1/2″ strips. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and pepper. Place spinach leaves and sweet peppers into a large serving bowl. Add dressing and toss to coat evenly. Spoon spinach/sweet pepper mix evenly onto four dinner plates. Top each serving with 1/4 of egg and Canadian bacon. Serve immediately.

My dear, dear daughter fixed the clasp on my new black leather fanny pack during our recent Ohio visit. Since our return, I’ve been prancing down the road, showing off the pack during my morning walk. But on Sunday, I had a conversation with a young woman in our church. She described fanny packs as “so 1980s” and “old-fashioned.” She’s right on both counts, of course. Even so, here are ten reasons why I’ll continue to buck fashion by wearing my pack whenever I please:

10.  The Goldilocks reason: A backpack makes me slouch, a shoulder bag pulls unevenly, but a fanny pack sits just right.

9.   The Artful Dodger reason: Wearing a fanny pack makes a pick pocket’s job much harder.

8.   The platform shoe reason: When platform shoes are in fashion, anything goes…including fanny packs.

7.   The “I remember when” reason: I remember when fanny packs weren’t invented yet. Life is much better with fanny packs than without them. Toilet paper still has top billing in the before and after impact category, but fanny packs aren’t far behind.

6.   The used tissue reason: Who wants damp tissue innards soaking through their pants? No one, and that’s why God invented fanny packs.

5.   The free hands reason: Fanny packs leave a mother’s hands free for snatching children bald, wiping chocolate smears off faces with a little spit, and for herding cats children to safety.

4.   The fashion-is-a-moving-target reason: Since my high school days, I’ve watched earth shoes, Doc Martins, platform heels, Chucks, shoulder pads, bell bottoms, skinny jeans, baggy jeans, big glasses, small glasses, big hair, smooth hair, no hair, dyed hair, big purses, little purses, back packs, and book bags go out of fashion and then reappear as the best thing since sliced bread. The return of the fanny pack is coming, and I’m ready for it.

3.    The I-just-rearranged-the-pockets reason: It took me over a week to figure what to put in which pocket of my new fanny pack. No way am I going to abandon it now.

2.    The circular reasoning reason: I walk every morning to stay slim and trim enough for my fanny pack to fit around my waist. No fanny pack. No walk. No waist. ‘Nuff said.

1.   The they’ve-been-around-since-the-dawn-of-time reason: Those strategically placed fig leaves Adam and Eve fashioned after they listened to the snake weren’t undies. They were fanny pack prototypes. What’s good enough for Adam and Eve is good enough for me.

If you still wear a fanny pack, leave a comment about why you’re a trend setter rather than a fad follower.

NPR ran a story about an intriguing concept this morning. The host interviewed Taylor Jones, a 22-year-old who created the website www.dearphotograph.com. Here’s what Jones, in an article at www.npr.org says about how the website came about:

He came up with the idea last year while sitting at his parents’ kitchen table. While flipping though a family photo album, he stumbled across a picture of his younger brother, Landon. “It was his third birthday,” Jones says. “He had a Winnie the Pooh cake, and I was sitting in the same spot my mom was when she took the original photo.” Landon was also sitting in his same birthday seat. So, Jones held up the old picture — taking care to line up kitchen cupboards just so — and snapped a photo. He posted it on his blog, and the rest, he says, is history.

People can go to the website and submit their own photographs, all of which must begin with the words Dear Photograph.

Like I said, an intriguing concept. So intriguing, I started thinking about what picture I would like to rephotograph in the same setting as it was originally taken.

• One from our South Dakota days? Too far away.
• A wedding shot? Too unoriginal.
• A Kodak Instamatic shot of the Badlands from the famous camping trip with my uncle and aunt? Not sure where that one is.
• Something from my teaching days? No, they tore the school down.

Undecided, I opened iPhoto, and there was the scan of a newspaper clipping we found when cleaning out Mom’s house 3 years ago. The clipping records one of my earliest clear memories – the day my aunt took her two daughters, my brother, and me (I’m the one closest to the camera)  to watch a parade in our home town. I don’t remember the parade as much as the newspaper photographer who shot the picture. I do remember how safe I felt with my aunt, how much help she said I was, what a big girl I’d become. Heady stuff for a middle child whose major talent at the time was tripping over her own feet.

The caption says 8,000 spectators watched the American Legion Parade that day in 1961. It also lists our names, ages, and the address of the corner  where Aunt Donna found a quiet, shady spot (Central Avenue and Fourth Street SE) so we could watch the National Guard trucks rumble past.

Mom and I are going to visit Aunt Donna in a couple weeks. Maybe I’ll take the original clipping along, find that street corner, line up the clipping with the present day location, snap a picture, and submit it to www.dearphotograph.com. I know what to write beneath my submission.

Dear Photograph,

Fifty years has taught me it’s more fun to join the parade of life than to sit and watch it go by.

Jolene

our town’s freshly painted, newly filled swimming pool,

two goldfinches playing king-of-the-hill at a bird feeder,

Papa Gander, Mama Goose, and the goslings out for their morning constitutional,

and a bluejay in a tree, I wasted a good portion of the morning.
So no, I won’t take it along today.”

My decision seemed like the right one at first.
The swimming pool looked much the same as yesterday.
The bird feeder was abandoned.
The pond was still as glass and empty.
The bluejays were nowhere to be found.

But just past the pond, an unfamiliar chirping made my head lift.
Only a yard away, at eye level,
An indigo bunting perched in a sapling.
It glowed in a shaft of sunlight,
puffed its chest, and sang a clear and piercing song.

Yesterday, I took my camera.
But today I chose
Time over nature,
Time over beauty.
Time over a picture I’ve been waiting years to capture with the lens.

When will I learn that time hoarded is opportunity lost?

We arrived home safely yesterday evening from a road trip to see our Ohio kids. The four days with them flew by. But since our return, the boring business of unpacking, sorting, laundry, plant-watering, grocery shopping, and figuring out what I was working on before we left continues with no end in sight. All these menial tasks left plenty of time to think up this Thursday’s three road tripping thoughts:

1. Surely some mechanical person could invent a washer/dryer unit to attach to car engines. Travelers could start a load during every potty and gas break on the trip home, fold clothes in the back seat, and check laundry off their to do list when they pull into the driveway. YES!
2. There’s nothing like entering the house after a long trip and realizing the cleaning lady left shortly before you came home.
3. No matter how hard I try, I’m not a good packer. How could I know there wouldn’t be time to read the two books tucked in the suitcase, but that the Road Kill Cookbook and Granny Clampett would have come in handy after Hiram nailed a possum strolling across the highway?

Have you been traveling lately? What thoughts do you have about your adventure? Leave a comment.

How does a person live to the age of fifty-five and not know she has a dairy allergy? If I knew the answer to that question, my allergy would have been diagnosed long ago. Instead, the was confirmed by “a moderately positive response” to a blood test at the Allergy Clinic of La Crosse. The doctor recommended eliminating dairy from my diet for a month to see if doing so would clear up my sinus issues.

Two days into the diet, my sinuses felt way better as did various parts of my digestive tract. (That’s all I’m going to say about that.) Feeling better was the easy part. The hard part is finding tasty and effective ways to avoid milk products in our dairy lovin’ society. One of my most successful attempts so far has been the non-dairy strawberry-banana smoothie pictured above. Not only is it pretty, but it also tastes as good as it looks! Here’s the recipe.

Non-Dairy Strawberry-Banana Fruit Smoothie

3/4 cup coconut milk*
8 large ice cubes
1 cup hulled, washed strawberries
1 banana, cut in chunks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon honey

Process coconut milk and ice cubes in blender for thirty seconds to a minute. Add strawberries and blend until they are liquified. Blend in banana and vanilla until mixture is smooth and no chunks remain. Add honey and blend for about 15 seconds. Pour into glass and enjoy!

*Almond milk can also be used, but the coconut milk adds a delicious hint of tropical flavor.

A mere month ago, the phrase “iPad 3″ filled my heart with fear and frustration. But now, I am head over heels in iPad <3. How did such an about face happen? This top ten list of things to <3 about an iPad 3 gives you an idea.

10.  It’s much easier to wrestle from beneath the airplane seat (where the flight goddesses insist it be placed during take off and landing) than a Mac laptop. The strangers seated beside me – the ones normally elbowed black and blue during the technology retrieval wrestling match – <3 the iPad 3 for this reason, too.

9.   The note feature, where I jot down ideas and to-do list items, sends the list to my email box 12 hours later. By then, my 55-year-old brain has forgotten about the list, so the iPad 3 has become my personal assistant.

8.   The Kindle app makes it easy to check out library books or order them from Amazon. So far, no matter how hard I try, it’s been impossible to destroy the process!

7.   The Kindle feature means it’s also easier to travel light. However, the feature does not help me stay awake at night long enough to read more than a paragraph or two. (Apple research and development people, would you get to work on that?)

6.   Fingerprints on the touch screen give the obsessive-compulsive part of my personality something to obsess about. Now if someone would invent a microfiber sleeve cuff, I’ll be set for life. (Another idea for the Apple R & D department.)

5.   Going to Apple Store classes with all the other old people determined to get their money’s worth from their new gizmos makes me feel young, since most of them look older than me.

4.  Thanks to the iPad 3, the Square app, and the card swiper do-hickey, I can now accept plastic when manning my book table. I haven’t used it yet, but my sister says it’s really easy to use. She said the same thing when she taught me to play jacks, jump rope, and color in the lines, and was right, so I believe  her about this, too.

3.  I can buy a month of Verizon service for $20 before traveling. Being able to access the internet in any airport is worth the investment, especially during 6 hour flight delays. And when Hiram and I are on the road and the one in the passenger seat, we love being able to update our websites. (www.jolenephilo.com, www.DifferentDream.com, and www.philoguitar.com.)

2.  Using the iPad 3 to type notes at church or workshops makes me feel so techie and with it and disguises the fact that I need the notes feature in order to remember anything.. In fact, while I type away, the people around me are probably thinking, “Wow, look at that young woman typing on her iPad. Surely, it’ll be decades until she can order from the senior citizen’s menu at IHOP.”

1.  The iGeniuses at the Apple Store love me. They recognize my face when I walk in the store. Most of them know my name. Not only that, they laugh whenever I ask a question. Who knew a 55-year-old, who doesn’t look it and can’t remember any of their names, could bring so much cheer to the lives of lonely, intelligent, twenty-something techie geeks?

Do you have an iPad? Leave a comment about what you <3 about yours.

Life takes unusual turns now and then. We’re reminded of this daily during this visit our daughter and new son in Ohio. Every day, when we drive from the relatives we’re staying with (they have a big house) to our daughter and new son’s digs (a tiny apartment), we drive by an impressive, three story, turn-turn-of-the-century brick building. A prominent “for lease” sign graces the large, grassy front yard, and another proclaiming “office space to let” covers the space where I suspect the original name of the building is engraved in stone.

After driving by a few times, I asked Hiram, “Do you think that’s the old orphanage where your grandma took your dad and his brother Cassius to live?”

Neither of us were sure, so we asked Hiram’s step-mom when we saw her. “Yes, she said. “That big three-story building on Wooster St. That’s where those boys lived when their mother didn’t have the means to care for them.

This morning, when we drove by the former orphanage, the words from “It’s a Hard Knock Life” came to mind…

It’s the hard-knock life for us
It’s the hard-knock life for us
No one cares for you a smidge
When your in an orphanage
It’s the hard-knock life
It’s the hard-knock life
It’s the hard-knock life!

…and thought the lyrics aren’t nearly as carefree and humorous when you know someone who was an orphan. Like Hiram’s father. Who had a hard time his entire life demonstrating love to others. Partly because he was a quiet, non-demonstrative man. But also, perhaps, because he was sent to an orphanage when he was ten. And he felt like no one cared for him a smidge.

I think of my father-in-law, and I think of our children as we drive the few short blocks between the orphanage he entered at age 10 and the grad school apartment where my daughter and new son live. My heart aches to think of that lonely man who felt unloved. But it delights in our children who know we love them dearly.

Why this strange turn of events?
Perhaps to remind us of the blessings God has rained upon our family.
Perhaps to create compassion for a man who never knew them.
Perhaps to make me realize “widows and orphans” aren’t theory but fact.
Perhaps to make me cry.

Spring is lovely along our Iowa gravel road.The rain washes away the dust kicked up by cars passing by, so the foliage is a deep and vibrant, soothing green. Every day is a feast for the senses.

The lingering scent of rain from a night time thunderstorm.
Toads betrayed by small movement in the grass.
Does hiding the shadow.
Cardinals singing in the treetops.
The stream rushing and gurgling under the bridge.
Goldfinches fighting for their turf in low bushes.

Each spring morning, I rush outside to greet new blossoms.
First the magnolias, the rhododendron, the red buds, and the daffodils.
Then the bleeding heart, the tulips and the lilacs.
Now the iris, the clematis, and the columbine.
Soon the peonies and the daisies.

I can’t bear the thought of missing the arrival of these friends. So most years, I stay home in May, determined to fully savor its beauty. But not this year. Not this week. Tomorrow, we pack the car and leave the beauty behind for a few days. I hate to miss the arrival of the peonies and daisies. But I know how much my daughter misses our gravel road after a year in Ohio while her husband finished grad school.

She misses the ancient silver maples in our yard,
The sight of leaves and grass,
The smell of trees and space and flowers,
The fairy ring where she played as a child,
The regularity of a gravel road each mile,
The greenness found only in Iowa,
Beloved by Iowa girls like my daughter and me.

She’s hungry for her home state, as I was during the seven years Hiram and I lived in South Dakota. So hungry, I could hardly bear it. So eager for a taste of home, I lived for my mother’s visits and feasted on the time she spent with us.

My mother left her roses,
And her yard work,
And her rhubarb,
And her invalid husband
To feed her daughter a taste of home.

So the peonies and daisies will have to bloom without us. Hiram and I are off to see our daughter and new son. Packing our car with Iowa air and comfort. Eager to share our feast with our hungry, Iowa-starved children. Bringing them the taste of our gravel road as my mother once brought a taste of home to me.