I love a nice jubilee

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

Today I am writing from New York City, which makes me feel really worldly and grown-up. I’ve just enjoyed a business dinner with some of my best-loved colleagues, at a gorgeous Chinese restaurant. (We are gathering from all of our distant points for BookExpo.)

The absolute best part of my day was Tony from our London office walking into the hotel lobby, and seeing me, he says he has a surprise for me! He produced this confection from his always over-stuffed briefcase. An Official Jubilee Programme! For me, all the way from The Commonwealth, on this day of days.

I feel rawther like a princess.

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solo for the summer

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

This weekend, I saw many, many signs that summer is here. Roadside day lilies and Queen Anne’s lace. The corn is almost knee-high. Turkey Run is open for canoe trips. And when we stopped in to say hi and ‘bye to Dave and LuAnn at the bait shop, a little girl and her daddy were leaving with a bucket of shiners and a box of sparklers.

Now, if you’ve been down to our lake house, you know that we use and re-use and re-re-use Solo cups all year long, until they crack almost in half in your hand. We keep a few Sharpies in the junk drawer, so you can write your name on your cup. And it is okay to use a pre-named cup, as long as you keep track. This weekend, it was kinda strange to look in the “picnic” cabinet and not see a single Solo cup. Thank goodness, we have a stash of emergency necessities in the laundry room (bottled water, toilet paper, batteries, NOAA radio, and Solo cups). Done! Stack of shiny new red Solo cups, ready to serve!

Turns out that summer doesn’t begin with the Solstice. It begins with the Solo!

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the wabash cannonball

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

    

Oh, listen to the jingle, the rumor and the roar

As she glides along the woodland, o’r hills and by the shore

She climbs the flowery mountain, hear the merry hobos squall

She glides along the woodland, the Wabash Cannonball!

About four years ago, we found this undercarriage of a railroad handcar in the woods next to the summer kitchen. I didn’t feel all that romantic about the rusty ol’ thing, but my friend LuAnn convinced me not to scrap it. She told me that it would make an awesome planter or coffee table. So it has been hanging out on the edge of the woods, rusting some more, getting all tangled in creeper, and waiting for my muse to inspire.

Wait a minute. Did she just say they found a handcar in the woods? Nowhere near a railroad? Yup. Now, what do you reckon somebody was planning? My guess is some good ol’ boys figured to rig a rail from the summer kitchen down to the lake, for ease of toting their beer and fishing gear. And then they realized they’d have to push it back up to the kitchen. So they abandoned their scheme, and bought a golf cart.

So LuAnn was right. We’ve been working on this piece of land for about three summers now. And the rusty rustic railroad scrap relic is an unexpected garden feature.

Although I do have to say, I’m a little worried about our dare-devil nephews visiting this summer. “Hey, Aunt Ginny, watch this!”

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Robert Burns Was Right

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

    

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men–um–jumped out the window, because their refrigerator at their lake house conked out on a holiday weekend. But because I am mouse who is usually okay with Plan B, the weekend was not a wash-out. (Which is good, because the clothes dryer is currently held together with a bungee cord.)

So here are two strong men trussing the dead fridge to haul it away.

And here’s the reason it probably died: three jars of cocktail sauce, five half-jars of tartar sauce, four pounds of sliced American cheese, goodness knows how many mustards and ketchups, and well, you  can see for yourself. The poor thing just gave up.

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my random name

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

In 1973, I got this POW bracelet. When you sent in your $2.50 for one, you got a random name, unless you made a special request. You were supposed to wear it always, in hope. I wore mine for as long as you can expect a teenage girl to wear one — two, maybe three, years. In preparing for this post, I have read stories about people who have worn theirs for 30-40 years. I didn’t, but I have never forgotten S/SGT. CHARLES KING 12-25-68. Back in the early 1970s, I had no idea who “my” POW was, or what he did, or where he was lost.

Today, I do know. He was lost in Laos on Christmas Day in 1968. He was declared a prisoner of war in 1973. And in 1978, Charles King was declared killed in action. Years later, he was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross Award.

This is the text of Charles D. King’s Air Force Cross Award:

“The Air Force Cross is presented to Charles Douglas King, Airman First Class, U.S. Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an opposing armed force as a Pararescueman in Southeast Asia on 25 December 1968. On that date, Airman King was aboard a helicopter engaged in the recovery of a downed United States Air Force pilot from an extremely hostile area. With complete disregard for his own safety, Airman King voluntarily descended on a rescue hoist more than one hundred feet to the ground to aid the injured pilot. Once on the ground, he carried the rescue device to the pilot, freed him from the parachute, secured him to the rescue device and then used the cable hoist to drag the pilot to a point near the hovering helicopter. Suddenly, enemy soldiers closed in and directed automatic weapons fire at Airman King, the injured pilot, and the helicopter. Though wounded, Airman King, in an extraordinary display of courage and valor, placed his comrades’ lives above his own by refusing to continue their exposure to the murderous enemy fire. Without taking time to secure himself to the hoist cable, he radioed that he was hit and for the helicopter to pull away. Airman King made this selfless decision with the full realization that once the helicopter departed, he would be alone, wounded, and surrounded by armed, hostile forces. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, Airman King reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.”

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still scouting after all these years

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

      

Here’s my good deed for the day, in honor of 100 years of Girl Scouting.

I give to you the time-honored recipe for Girl Scout Fire Starters, which I still make for grilling and campfires. You’ll need  common sense, cardboard egg cartons, cedar chips from the pet store, a metal coffee can, and Gulf Wax. Using your common sense, choose a place that won’t be ruined by melted paraffin. Place the cartons there, and fill the egg parts with cedar chips. Now you can melt the Gulf Wax.

Using more of the required common sense, melt the wax in the coffee can in a hot-water bath. And please do not walk away from it. Then, using even more common sense — and mitts — pour the wax over the chips, so that the carton and chips are lightly soaked. Let them cool and harden, then break them apart. One nugget is plenty to start the fire of your choice. Just touch a match to the wax-soaked edge of the carton, and you are in business.

I am seriously considering making some Sit-Upons. If you want to make them with me, you’re still a Girl Scout, too!

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a eulogy with sole

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

      

These are all of my wedding shoes. For better or worse, I decided that since they’d been in a bin in the basement for so long, and were kinda moldy, I’d take a photograph of them, and then say good-bye.

Good-bye, wedding-dress pumps. You made me tall enough so that we didn’t have to have my mother’s wedding dress hemmed. No small thing, considering it had (and still does) a hoop skirt with about a 30-foot circumference. And you were so small (size 5, right?), little girls happily played dress-up in you a few years later. I didn’t wear you for very long that big day, because our wedding lasted 19 minutes, according to Mr. Martin, who congratulated us on having the shortest ceremony he’d ever been to. And as soon as you and I got back to Gigi’s house, I changed into my going-away sling-backs.

Good-bye, going-away slings. What a lovely old-fashioned tradition we shared. Remember walking me down my mother’s staircase, with me wearing a beautiful woolen suit and a going-away corsage? And you with a matching clutch? Kisses and best wishes! And Mama handed me a picnic basket with a little bottle of champagne and two wedding-cake petit fours, for when we got to the hotel. At least you got to go on the honeymoon, and then to work with me. But then “for every child, a shoe-size” happened about a year later.

And good-bye, satin slippers of my trousseau. You perfectly completed the long and flowing peignoir sets that my mother chose for me, with tears in her eyes. You didn’t step out very often, but you did go to the hospital with me, one chilly October afternoon. And you and I walked down the hospital hallway together, to peek in on a perfect little daughter.

The shoes don’t make the man. They make the woman.

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shear insanity

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

When I started writing my ginnygrams, I decided on a few simple rules: Be nice, keep a family rating, and don’t judge.

Sorry, but I have to break all three rules today.

Today, my frolleague (friend plus colleague) Chris and I went for what we thought would be a G-rated walk through our work-neighborhood. Get a little sunshine on our heads, burn a few calories. Holy cow! Look at this topiary insanity! Right here on Kenton Avenue, before God ‘n’ everybody! Thank goodness, Chris had her iPhone. She choreographed a very subtle route over to the house and nonchalantly faced the topes and “checked her email.” We didn’t get caught. She documented. We have proof.

I don’t know what we’re going to do about this, but I’m wishing for either a chainsaw with a silencer or a deal for a new reality show.

      So You Think You Can Prune.

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nope, i just walk this way

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

Yes, my husband did ask the waiter at Hugo’s Frog Bar, “Do you have frog legs tonight?” And what good-manners, fine-restaurant training this young man must have had. He said, “Yessir, and they’re the best thing on the menu.” I myself couldn’t have done it. I know this because I almost got fired from my summer job at the optometrist’s office by answering an old lady, “Okay, you’re a cab.”

Anyway, that big pile of frog legs (and later, big pile of frog-leg bones) made me remember two funny stories from my tadpole days. First, Granddaddy and Danny Bell went frog-gigging with Mr. Montgomery who lived next door. Mar Mar was frying them up, but forgot to break their leg joints. Those darn things hopped all over and OUT of the frying pan! We weren’t the ones getting spattered or cleaning the floor, so we thought it was pretty funny. Related to that gigging, a gravely wounded frog must’ve gotten out of the bag and crawled up-under-somewhere in Mr. Montgomery’s station wagon, and died. Lord help the child who had to ride to the swimming pool with Mr. Montgomery. His daughter/my best friend, Melissa, would plead, “Daddy! Cain’t we take Mama’s car?” Answer? “You want to go to the pool or not?” Sigh. I think that’s how I learned to hold my breath for so long.

The second story (or does this count as three?) is about the big ol’ pile of frog bones on my husband’s plate. Whenever Mar Mar ate her fried chicken, she left a pile of chicken bones on her plate that just tickled Granddaddy to pieces. (Please know that it was bone china and sterling on the table, with dewy glasses of iced tea to wash down the chicken and fixin’s. Mar Mar was a Southern Lady.) Anyway, Granddaddy would always look at her plate from his end of the table and say, “Virginia, it looks like a chicken crawled up on your plate and died.” She’d scold him, we’d laugh, and we’d all do it all over again next Sunday.

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meet the flintstones

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Ginny O'Donnell

     

Well, hello, I finally connected the dots. Our lake house is in ROCKville, which is flanked by CLAY County. So, yes, my husband had to use a pick axe to break up the soil so we could plant our Natural Perennials Project. Which really means that we’re all about planting stuff that doesn’t need babying once they’re happily established. But that plot of land turned out to be waaaaay larger than we thought it was, so we went to see Dane Leatherman, our Cowboy Contractor. Hey, Dane, do you have any really big rocks? To kind of give some interest to the space (aka I’m tired of planting)? Why, yes he did. His granddaddy had a lot of them roiled up from his farm. And he brought me a bunch of ’em, from which to choose.

So here they are, and here we are. First, choosing rocks was like choosing a punkin. I chose two, one of which I’m pretty sure is a gigundo geode. And second, this is our Cowboy Contractor — I told him he had achieved legend in Chicago, where I tell of his rodeo prowess and big ol’ trucks. He’s a good egg, and let me pose with him for a photo. He’s the tall one, and to give you an idea of relative size, I’m six feet tall.

In 12-inch heels.

Yabba dabba do!

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