The Possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination. ~ Emily Dickinson

We have found the elusive "Keepy" the grandboys and I were searching for a few weeks back! Dylan was looking thru the photos on Facebook his mom had taken of them when they were visiting Long Beach in Washington State this past summer and all of a sudden I heard him yell, "Gram, here's Keepy!" When I came over to look, this photo was on the screen. That's Dylan on the left and "Keepy" on the right. Who is Keepy, you might ask? Why it's none other than Cooper's daughter who went looking for Dylan's daughter and granddaughters when they got lost at the beach. That's who Keepy is.

Mystery solved.

Who's on First....

My Dear Hubby deserves a medal in patience. Have you ever seen this classic clip with Abbott and Costello? This is what it's like to live with me.

I have a refrigerator magnet that says it all, at least for my long-suffering Dear Hubby who's been with me 36 years now. It says: "You can tell a Swede. You just can't tell them much." I don't know how many times I've caused that poor man to shake his head at me and say, "For someone so smart, how can you be so dense?!" Because I am. Dense.

A couple of days ago we went to a corporate center to a company where we had to sign some documents. I had the Mapquest directions in hand and navigated us to the building without any problem. As we walked into the huge main lobby I consulted the notes I'd taken and told Dear Hubby, "It's Suite 200 so we need to go to the second floor." So we found the elevator and got on and Dear Hubby pushed the "2" button. The doors stayed open so he pushed the button again. The doors slid shut. After what seemed an eternity the doors slid open again and I could see the number 2 etched in to each side of the door posts so I said, "We're on the 2nd floor now." "We are on the 2nd floor," Dear Hubby said back. I gave him kind of a weird look and said, "Yes, that's what I told you. We're on the 2nd floor." As I started to step off the elevator I said, "Boy, that was the quietest and smoothest elevator I've ever ridden on!" And he said, "That's because it didn't go anywhere." I stopped in my tracks and looked at him. "What do you mean?" I asked. "It went to the 2nd floor." "No," he rolled his eyes at me, "we're on the 2nd floor." "I know," I said, "because we just got there."

We each took an exasperated sigh and tried again.

"What I'm telling you," he explained ever-so-patiently, "is that we were on the 2nd floor to begin with. The reason you had such a smooth ride is because the elevator didn't go anywhere. There's another floor below us that's below ground."

The light bulb finally began to flicker.

Author Update: Linda brought it to my attention that "Aren't most floors underneath the ground the basement?" so I must explain that this is a building built into a hillside. The main doors to the lobby actually do open onto the 2nd floor. The floor underneath is the 1st floor, with huge windows looking out over the valley. Underneath that is the basement, haha!

Salad, anyone?

I was supposed to provide a Mandarin Orange Jello salad for our Christmas dinner yesterday. I think it was supposed to look something like the one I have pictured here. I had never made one before so my daughter-in-law kindly emailed her recipe for it to me and I'd gone out and bought the ingredients for it the other day. As I perused my list and saw "2 boxes of Tapioca" and then gazed up at the Minute Tapioca boxes on the top shelf I thought to myself, "Man, that sure is a lot of tapioca!" But I bought it and then on Christmas Eve day I brought the boxes of tapioca, the cans of mandarin oranges, and Cool Whip out to whip it all together. Poured the two boxes of Minute Tapioca into the pan. The water/juice combination. And began to bring it all to a boil. Oh my my. Right away I knew something wasn't right. It looked like joint compound you could spackle walls with. And it took about 5 cups of water...maybe 6...to make it look even remotely...ok. Hmmmmmmmmm. My daughter was watching me as I'm going about it, getting the giggles as she looked at my pan full of...goooooooooooo...and said, "Mom, I don't think you're doing that right." I said, "Well, this is what the recipe says and I'm following it," handing the paper over to her. She looked at it and had to admit I was following directions, alright. As it cooled and I added in the oranges...and a can of pineapple, too, because the salad looked so 'empty' with just the orange slices, we both looked at it rather dubiously and said, "Well, who knows?"

Yesterday as I started loading up the food I'd prepared out of the refrigerator I picked up the pretty cut glass bowl I'd put the jello salad in. It must've weighed 15 pounds. It'd turned in to cement overnite. I quickly whipped together a Pumpkin Mousse and tossed the orange salad in the trash.

Come to find out, I was supposed to have used 2 little boxes of Jello Tapioca. But I'm of the 'old school'. Tapioca is Minute Tapioca, like my mom used to stir and simmer on the stove.

Duh.

Oh well.

Another one of those Christmas bloopers like the one years ago when I got a cute little wicker basket with a patchwork chicken cotton topper and I said, "Finally...something to keep my buns warm!"

We still laugh about that one.