by jphilo | Sep 7, 2012 | Family
Hey all you Camp Dorothy fans, here’s an update on Mom’s 84th birthday celebration. It was a great success even though supper at the Outback meant the birthday girl abandoned Wheel of Fortune for the high life with her son, middle daughter, and their spouses.
Pat and Vanna soldiered on bravely in Mom’s absence, but they missed one totally fun party. Mom doesn’t want them to feel bad, so please don’t pass on the following highlights of the evening to them:
- The waiter was one of my bro’s former students. Mom smirked every time the guy called her son Mr. Stratton.
- Mom was so giddy she ordered iced tea rather than her usual water with lemon.
- She was quite pleased with the perks that come with having a son’s former student as your birthday supper waiter – extra attention, extra bread, and samples of secret ingredients for tasting and testing.
- The blooming onion appetizer was a big hit, too.
- Birthday girls get a free ice cream sundae at the Outback Steakhouse.
- Birthday girls can have extra chocolate sauce and Oreo cookie crumbles added to the standard ice cream sundae when the waiter is a former student of her son. This birthday girl did.
- Polite birthday girls share their free ice cream sundae with the other diners at the table. This birthday girl was extremely polite.
After an entertaining, delicious, and exhausting evening out, Mom headed straight for a rest in her red chair. After unwrapping her present, she wasn’t too keen about standing up to pose with the signed and framed poster she received from Chinese artist, Kairong Liu earlier this summer.
But apparently, the blooming onion, the extra bread, and the iced tea gave her the gusto necessary to rise to the occasion. It’s a good thing, too, because the poster’s big. Seated, she was barely visible over the top of it. Standing, both she and the inscription could be seen.
You can see both of them, too. Mom’s the one standing and holding up the picture and wishing she was sitting in the red chair. The inscription is in black, near the bottom and on the right just below the picture and above the printing. It says, “To Mrs. Stratton from Kairong Liu.
I bet neither Pat or Vanna has that combination of letters!
by jphilo | Sep 3, 2012 | Uncategorized
Mom turns 84 today. This year, we didn’t think she had the stamina to make the trip to the Labor Day Reunion being held in northwest Iowa. So in honor of her birthday, the post written for the occasion last year has been reposted below. If you read to the very bottom, you’ll find out there is something new to give a woman who’s 84!
What Do You Give a Woman Who’s 83?
Mom’s birthday was Saturday, and as was mentioned in a previous post, we (meaning 20 people in her extended family, including her baby sister, Donna, pictured above) celebrated in style with the traditional family birthday cake. What wasn’t mentioned in the post was my personal quandary that has grown more perplexing as Mom grows older.
What do you give a woman who’s 83?
Mom doesn’t like to be given stuff because once it’s hers, she frets about it.
“What should I do with it?” she asks.
“Where should I put it?” she asks.
“Do you want it?” she asks.
Kinda defeats the purpose of giving a gift, when she wants the giver to take it back.
This year, I rationalized away the quandary this way.
“Baking the German chocolate cake is my present to her,” I thought.
“Sharing my bed with her for the reunion weekend is my present to her,” I thought.
“Hiram sleeping on the floor for the reunion weekend so she could sleep in our bed is our present to her,” I thought.
“Hosting 20 people at my house for the weekend is my present to her,” I thought.
But do you know what?
Throughout the weekend,
the more I watched her listen to the young adults describe their forays into grownupdom,
the more I saw her enjoy watching everyone play yard games,
the more engaged she became during several rousing games of Catch Phrase,
the more I realized my thoughts were not rationalization.
Instead, those thoughts were the answer to the quandary.
What do you give a woman who’s 83?
The gift of your time.
This year, the sibs and I came up with something to give Mom. We had the signed poster she received from Kairong Liu, the Chinese artist she tutored when he was college student, matted and framed. We’re taking her out to supper tomorrow evening and giving it then. So shhhh, don’t say a word!
by jphilo | Jul 27, 2012 | Family
I’m not sure how to break this to all you Camp Dorothy fans but the Happy Birthday to Dorothy’s Daughter Camp, scheduled to begin today, has been cancelled. I know, I’m disappointed, too.
No Jeopardy.
No Judge Judy.
No Wheel of Fortune.
No listening to Mom relive the details of my birth while I blow out the birthday candles.
But, I find solace in knowing London and the International Olympic Committee are throwing a great big party in my honor. They’re calling it the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony, but I like to think of it as my personal birthday extravaganza.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I know the Olympic Committee isn’t pulling out all the stops just for me, an obscure Iowa woman who wants to celebrate her birthday with a maximum of hoopla. They’re throwing it for me and Dorothy Hamill.
You know Dorothy Hamill.
The American figure skater who won Olympic gold in 1976.
Who happened to be born on July 26, 1956.
So our mothers tell birthing stories that happened only 24 hours apart.
I feel kinda bad that they’re throwing our party on my 56th birthday instead of hers. After all, she’s the Olympic champion. I would have gladly agreed to hold the party a day before my birthday instead of the day after hers. But that pesky Olympic Planning Committee didn’t even consult with me about the date. They probably didn’t check with Dorothy either.
But we birthday girls aren’t going to dwell on that. Instead, we’re going to enjoy all the international attention and thank God for blessing our lives with more goodness than either of us deserve.
Happy birthday to us…and let the games begin!
by jphilo | Apr 18, 2012 | Recipes
We celebrated Hiram’s birthday last month with grilled steak (thanks to our unusually warm weather) and strawberry shortcake (thanks to his determination to cut down on sugar due to advancing age). To prove I’m still young, I cut loose. Instead of using the recipe from the old Betty Crocker cookbook, I used my Grandma Josie’s recipe instead. Her recipe was a little sketchy, so below you’ll find her original recipe (submitted to our family cookbook by Cousin Danelle) and then my version of it.
Grandma Josie’s Original Strawberry Shortcake Recipe
1 small cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking power
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter
Stir in rich milk until semi-stiff. Bake at 350 degrees until golden and toothpick comes out clean. Top with fresh strawberries. Recipe can be doubled to fit in a 10 inch pan.
Grandma Josie’s Strawberry Shortcake
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup softened butter
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 quart strawberries, washed, hulled, sliced and mixed with 2 tablespoons sugar
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Cut in butter. Add eggs and milk. Mix with a fork until all ingredients are moistened. Pour into a 9 inch square pan. Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown. Top with fresh strawberries.
by jphilo | Jun 29, 2009 | Reflections on the Past
Recently one of my childhood games, passed on to younger cousins when I outgrew it, was returned to me. The thrill of owning Happy Landings: A Geography Game (Whitman Publishing, 1962) did not overwhelm me when I received the game as a birthday present when I was 9 or 10.
For me, a geographically challenged child from the word go (my best guess is that the game was given after a particularly abysmal score on the social studies portion of ITBS) playing the game was an exercise in failure. The board was a world map marked with red stars. After drawing a card with commands like “Ride over Mackinac Bridge which connects upper and lower Michigan” or “Climb towering Mt. Everest in northern India,” players placed their marker on the corresponding star. I don’t remember ever getting a star in the right place. And since the map, the cards and the markers are in pristine condition, the game didn’t see a whole lot of play at our house or anywhere else.
But as a kid, one thing about the game intrigued me: I could spend hours gazing at the children on the cover. The boy was okay, mostly because he’s holding the pointer which was cool, but the girl was fascinating. She was the epitome of early 1960s perfection. Note the curly hair, the lovely bow in her hair, the unwrinkled shirtwaist dress with it’s own gigantic bow, the lace on collar, cuffs and waistband, and the wonderfully full skirt. And from the look on her face, you can bet she can answer every Happy Landings question without breaking a sweat. She was everything I aspired to be and couldn’t accomplish, no matter how hard I tried. That’s why I spent hours gazing at her picture, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a dress like hers, curls like hers, and smarts like hers.
I’m thrilled to possess the game again because it brings back so many memories: the chalky, booky, dusty smell of the elementary school I attended, girls wearing shorts under our dresses so the boys wouldn’t see our panties on the jungle gym at recess, the joy of discovering Laura Ingalls, the Bobbsey Twins, and Clara Barton inside the covers of library books, and the disappointment of failing another spelling test because I got “b” and “d” mixed up again.
But mostly, I’m thrilled because the game reminds me of how far I’ve moved beyond the child who once owned it and yet how much of her remains. I no longer obsess over lace, bows, ironed dresses, and curly hair. But, I still mix up “b” and “d” when I’m tired, and I still love meeting characters inside a book.
One last thing that hasn’t changed? I still don’t like playing geography games, so please, buy something else for my birthday this year!
