marypat57

I too am a member of the very pale group. When I taught kindergarten, my little ones looked with interest as I lathered on the spf75+ sunscreen before we would go on an outdoor field trip. I generally never go to the beach before 3pm. I would sometimes play word games with my kinder kids. I would describe a classroom object and the children would have to guess what it was. One day I was giving clues like soft, white, fluffy while describing the classroom bear. One sweet little girl said “the teacher?”. I’ll admit to being soft and white, but not fluffy :)

@SunnyBeBe This is a trick that might work. It works for tomato sauce stained plastic containers, so I’d give it a try. It’s really easy. 1. Find a sunny window sill or a sunny table in your yard. 2. Put the ceramic spoon rest on the sill or table. Make sure it gets lots of sun. 3. Check it in a few hours. You may be pleasantly surprised. I could not believe it when I saw the improvements in the badly stained plastic containers. You could hardly tell there had been tomato sauce in them.

When my best friend got married in 1973, she walked down the aisle to “Morning Has Broken”. The priest who married them played the guitar and sang. Some of us sang along with him.

I seem to remember that Sheldon “knocked three times” during a Young Sheldon episode, which would place that habit long before his dad’s “infidelity “. I cannot remember which episode in Young Sheldon it was, however.

@Turquoise Congratulations on moving into your new house! May you and your family enjoy many happy and healthy days in it!

@Turquoise: Thanks for the lovely photo of the azaleas 🌺. They are one of the things that make spring so special for me. I love the different colors they bloom in. I also love forsythia. Those yellow flowers just shout “spring” to me. However, there is this one lowly forsythia bush that is planted at the back of my church. The church is a old stone building that hold the warmth, and this bush has been known to have a few blossoms even in December. But I think my favorite of all are the lilacs. The color is amazing and the scent is wonderful. They are usually out in time for Mother’s Day, and I have begun to see a few of the local bushes with their blossoms.

One of my younger brothers (I have 6) was just about the shortest boy in the 8th grade graduation lineup. He started to really grow that summer. Because you wore mostly shorts, swimsuits and sneakers during the summer, my mom didn’t realize how much he had grown until she had to buy school clothes in late summer. He needed school shoes that were a full 2 sizes bigger than the ones he wore in June. He finally grew to about 6’1”.

@GeeGolly: Shepherd’s pie is one of my favorites, too! I use beef, the very tiny frozen peas, onions, some beef stock, and chopped fresh carrots. Besides salt, pepper and garlic powder, I also season with Worcestershire sauce. I have been known to put tater tots from Trader Joe’s on top instead of mashed potatoes. It is quite yummy. I may now have to make it this week......

I knew that I had heard the phrase “the milk of human kindness” somewhere else besides Shakespeare. In My Fair Lady, in the song, I’m An Ordinary Man, Professor Higgins is complaining to Col. Pickering about what happens when you “let a woman in your life”. : ......I’m a very gentle man Even tempered and good natured, who you never hear complain Who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein... I’m looking forward to Anderson Cooper’s second week as host.

Emerald Fennell won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman!!!!! Hooray for “Patsy”!!!!!!!!!!!

@doodlebug I had to laugh when you told the story of the nun who insisted on calling Liddie by the name of Lydia. I remember that all the boys in elementary school were William, Thomas, Anthony, Joseph and never Billy, Tommy, Tony or Joey. The girls were Elizabeth, Patricia, Kathleen, Theresa and not Liz, Beth, Patty, Kathy or Terry. This stopped in high school, when even the nuns used whatever name you preferred. It was a little strange, because some of the nuns from my elementary school were transferred to my high school, which was a few blocks away. During the time my high school was being built, you could watch the workers lift the steel girders into place from some of the elementary school windows..

I remember seeing the Sound of Music in a theater (probably Radio City Music Hall) when my grandmother took me in 1966. A few weeks later, as a very special treat, my mother took us to see the movie after mass one Sunday afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it both times. Of course, I watched on tv whenever it was on. I even went to a Turner Classic Movies big screen classic showing of the film in a local theater. It was really wonderful to see it on the big screen more than 50 years later. While I was watching Ben Mankiewicz introducing the film and explaining the “extras” in the blu-ray version, I actually ordered the blu-ray edition from Amazon while I was waiting for he movie to start. I loved seeing how special a movie outing was for Shelagh and Patrick, and also for Sister Julienne..

@doodlebug: I hope that your birthday was wonderful and that you may have many, many more of them. I was a junior in high school for that first Earth Day. I went to a large coed Catholic high school that was built on a former potato farm. I seem to remember that on the first Earth Day, that a group of students got together to clean up and maintain the courtyard. The courtyard was an open space between the library and chapel. @SunnyBeBe Thanks for adding the video/song Mama’s Arms. I couldn’t figure out how to upload the video from YouTube..

@SunnyBeBe: Thanks for sharing that Luther Vandross song. It usually brings tears to my eyes. I was 31 when my father died, and even after all these years, I miss him. It brings me back to what happened the night my mother died, almost 11 years after dad(both had heart attacks in the kitchen of our house). I was driving back from my school’s end of the year party, and as I got near to my house, I noticed lots of lightning, but no thunder or rain. Joshua Madison’s song “You’ll Always Be Beautiful In My Eyes” was playing on the radio. I turned onto my block, and noticed extra cars in front of the house. My initial thought was “Which one of my brothers did something dumb?”. My best friend’s husband volunteered to come outside and give me the news. It was my parents 42nd wedding anniversary. A few months later, I purchased Joshua Kadison’s cd Painted Desert Serenade. I popped it into my CD player, and began to enjoy it. The song before “You’ll Always Be Beautiful” was entitled “Mama’s Arms”, written by Kadison to honor his mother, who died when he was young. I can’t figure out how to imbed the You Tube video, but here’s the link: https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=kbssLGIYYxU If the link doesn’t work, just search it on You Tube

I’d just like to add my two cents worth to the chat about sunglasses.. For many years, I wore just-for-reading glasses, but as I began working, I needed bifocals. I picked the progressive lens, because I did not want to look like an old lady. I even splurged and got prescription (non progressive)sunglasses. One day, as my friend and I were crossing 2nd Ave in Manhattan, one of the lenses popped out and landed in the middle of 2nd Ave, where it was promptly run over by a yellow taxi. I was able to pick up the lens and put it back in the frame. It was barely scratched!

Oh, @QuinnInND, the things those tiny humans say😂😂! My favorite tiny human story came from my first year of teaching, many moons ago. One of my cute little girls came to me one morning and said “Guess what? My daddy and I slept over at D..’s house last night !”(D was a little boy in our class). Of course, I had to ask “Where did everyone sleep?” Apparently, T and her dad “slept on the couch.” I did not ask if her dad slept on the couch with her the whole night............

My parents had their first 5 children in 6 years (I’m #1), #6 came 4 years after #5, #7 came 1.5 years after #6 , and #8 came 3.5 years after #7. I am 15 years older than my youngest brother. It was kind of fun to tease him when he was little. I sometimes would tell him he had different parents—which was sort of true. His bedtime was more flexible. He got to stay home from school when he was sick. The rest of us would joke that we got sent to school with baby aspirin in our uniform pockets with instructions to take it at lunch time. By the time he was a teenager, my parents had already been through it seven times, so they knew what was important to get excited about, and what wasn’t. My little brother did turn out OK—he works for a large government agency in our nation’s capital, and keeps me amused with pictures of his puppies.

I’ve really enjoyed this first episode, and I totally agree with @DoctorAtomic that it provides a fresh prospective on WWII. It has been very dramatic, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the episodes. I knew the actress playing Eleanor Roosevelt looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Thanks to @lark37 for that info!

Texas Roadhouse does have some good family type dishes such as steaks, ribs, chili, chicken. They also have lots of peanuts for you to shell and munch on while you wait for your meal—so it’s not a place for someone with peanut allergies. They also have Wednesday night steak specials. I generally get takeout, since the restaurant tends to be a bit noisy at times.

@doodlebug I came from a large family also, and I remember individual Easter baskets. I remember one particular year when I was maybe 9 or 10 and had made the supreme sacrifice and gave up cookies for Lent. Of course that was the year when a new kind of cookie came out. I remember that they were small, round and had a brown sugar cinnamon flavor. On Easter Sunday morning, I awoke to find a box of that very same cookie in my basket that I did not have to share with my siblings. Needless to say, I was ecstatic! As years went on, for the few of us who remained at home, my mother would simply fill a big salad bowl full of nutritious chocolate eggs and jelly beans, and leave it in the kitchen table. However, we still had our own chocolate bunny—she would write our name on the box—which she left in the communal bowl. I wonder if Jill would even go to her neighborhood CVS or Walgreens this week to buy the half price Easter candy. The children would really enjoy it. I picked up some lovely Cadbury mini eggs, and other assorted goodies.

As some of you know, I taught kindergarten for nearly 20 years in a large urban school district. The emphasis in “formal” instruction in math, reading and writing just about pushed out learning how to get along with each other, practicing fine motor skills so they COULD hold a pencil or crayon correctly. I did try to “sneak” fun things in, like cooking activities that went along with books we were reading, or “field trips” to different places around the school to see how the workers did their jobs. It got harder and harder to do this as time went by...

I never really ate or made deviled eggs until I started having holidays with my friend’s family. Her husband comes from a family of 6 boys and 1 girl, and his mom made the eggs as an inexpensive way to feed hungry boys. I started to make them to bring as my contribution to holiday celebrations. I add mustard, mayo, a bit of sour cream, a dash of cayenne and pickle juice to the mashed egg yolks in a bowl. I put the mixture into a small plastic bag, twist the top and cut off the tip of the bag. That makes it much easier to fill the eggs. I sprinkle a bit of paprika on the top. Yum! Ive also made deviled egg salad by mixing the yolk mixture first, and then adding finely chopped egg whites. An interesting twist on egg salad.

The houses in the Long Island suburb that I grew up in had no basements, with the exception of the few houses that predated our development. The idea at the time was to build as many houses as they could to house returning WWII veterans. If the houses had no basements, they could be built much faster.

I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but OLTL was the $1200 Double Jeopardy clue on this past Tuesday 3/30. The category was: Abbreviations in TV and the answer was ”A soap that was set in Llanview. OLTL”.

Actually, I had some friends who had a daughter last month. Her name is Matilda Rose, and she’s called Mattie. Little Mattie’s father, grandfather, great grandfather and probably great-great and great-great-great grandfathers were named Matthew, and she is named after all of them