I won’t be posting for a couple of weeks. The hubby and I are leaving tomorrow on our trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We only have two weeks. We have to be back for the daughter on June 11th. I hope to take a LOT of pictures, and I look forward to sharing what we have seen.
Archive for May, 2007
A Way to Save
Published May 24, 2007 Articles of Interest , Recipes and Stuff , Retirement 2 CommentsMy little sister is an engineer with a specialty in environmental engineering. In addition, she is pretty determined to save money and has taken a finance course from Crown Financial Ministries. When I saw her over Mother’s Day, she gave me a recipe for both liquid and powder homemade laundry soap, and I plan on trying it. One of its ingredients is a favorite from my childhood: Fels Naptha Soap. The last time I looked for Fels, I resorted to the net to order some, but my sister steered me to the local Meijer and, sure enough, they had it. And it only cost $1.29, far less than what I paid over the net.
The recipes come from debtproofliving.com. I couldn’t find a direct link, though, so I did a search for homemade laundry detergent. These soaps will not make a lot of suds in your water, and my sister said that the Fels is a pain to grate and you need a sharp grater. I plan on letting the hubby help me, but if you want to make this soap and the grating doesn’t appeal to you, you can buy grated Fels here. The soap is supposed to cost about $.02 cents a load, but I don’t know if it works out that way if you buy the grated soap. My sister also said she finds herself spotting things. Then again, she is washing for a six-year-old, a nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old. I would guess that spotting laundry just comes with her territory.
Anyway, besides the Fels, you need Arm and Hammer SuperWashing Soda and 20 Mule Team Borax. Here are the recipes:
Liquid Laundry Detergent
3 pints water
1/3 bar Fels Naptha soap, grated
1/2 cup Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
2-gallon bucket
1 quart hot water
Mix grated Fels Naptha Laundry Bar Soap in a large saucepan with 3 pints hot water and heat on the stove over Low heat until dissolved. Do not allow to boil. Stir in Super Washing Soda and Borax. Stir until thickened. Remove from heat. Add 1 quart hot water to 2-gallon bucket. Add soap mixture, and mix well. Fill up bucket with some additional hot water, leaving a few inches at the top, and mix well. Set aside for 24 hours, or until mixture thickens. Use 1/2 cup of mixture per load. Note: This recipe multiplies well, but you’ll need a 5-gallon bucket.
Powdered Laundry Detergent
1 cup grated Fels Naptha Laundry Bar Soap
1/2 cup Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
Mix and store in airtight container or bag. For light loads, use 2 tablespoons. For heavy loads, use 3 tablespoons.
Note: To make a large batch grate 6 bars of Fels Naptha Soap and then add 3 cups of Super Washing Soda and 3 cups 20 Mule Team Borax. Mix well and store in a covered container.
Tip: These recipes will NOT make suds in your washer so don’t be alarmed. Fels Naptha is a pure soap, which makes it perfect for use in the new high-efficiency (HE) washers as well as traditional washers. The only proof you’ll need of how well this laundry product works is to take a look at the dirty wash water. You may also notice the need to either reduce your laundry softener or even eliminate the use of softener
I’ll probably make my soap (the liquid) when we come back from vacation. The hubby would like to celebrate retirement with a trip “from sea to shining sea.” I haven’t figured out what to keep it in yet. If you make it before I do, let me know how it works, OK?
One of our retirement goals is to cut down the times that we eat out. We look for new recipes a lot because we eat in more frequently when we have a plan. We had these pork chops for supper tonight, and boy, were they good! The recipe comes from the May 2007 edition of Taste of Home’s LIGHT AND TASTY magazine.
SAUCY SOUTHWESTERN PORK CHOPS
4 bone-in pork loin chops (3/4 inch thick and 7 ounces each)
1/4 t. pepper
2 t. olive oil, divided
1 can (14 1/2 ounce) diced tomatoes
1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies
1/3 c. water
2 T. enchilada sauce mix* (see note below)
4 T. sliced ripe olives, divided
1 small green pepper, cut into eight rings
2 c. hot cooked rice
Sprinkle pork chops with pepper. In a large, non-stick skillet coated with non-stick cooking spray, cook chops in 1 t. oil over medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side or until browned. Remove and keep warm.
In the same skillet, saute onion in remaining oil until tender. Stir in the tomatoes, chilies, water, sauce mix and two T. olives. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for three minutes. Return the chops to the pan; top with green pepper rings. Cover and simmer for 9-12 minutes or until meat is tender.
Remove chops and pepper rings; keep warm. Stir sour cream into sauce until blended. Serve with pork and rice. Garnish with remaining olives.
* I make my own taco seasoning because the hubby isn’t supposed to have salt, and 2 T. of this worked well in the recipe above. Here’s all you need:
2 T. chili powder
1 t. ground cumin
1 crushed garlic clove
Sandi from Always a Work in Progress tagged me. Here goes:
1. When we first moved to Indiana, I ended up teaching visually impaired children instead of teaching English. I was appalled at first, but I really think special education is my niche.
2. For some reason, I have rapport with high school children with problems. I don’t know why. Sometimes I think it’s because they need someone to love them…
3. I have a daughter-in-law who loves me and tells me so. I know that is a blessing.
4. I reconnected with my cousin Denise after not hearing from her in more than thirty years. I can’t tell you how nice that is and how much we have reminisced and shared family stories.
5. I loved the parks out west. We went to Yosemite and Yellowstone. But my favorite park is Oak Openings in northwest Ohio, and the hubby took me there for Mother’s Day. Oak Openings is an oak savanna, and its habitat has been declared as rare as that of the rain forest. I don’t know exactly what it is about that park, but it feeds my soul.
6. I used to home can foods. A lot. At one point in Ohio, our shelves were filled with over 250 jars of home-canned beans, peaches, pears, beets and relishes. I learned how to can from my mom. I didn’t really like all the work that went into it at first, but the whole family enjoyed the food and how pretty it looked in the jars.
7. I like wind chimes. I have some on my front porch and in back of the house, and there are smaller versions inside. Their music is so restful…
8. I get to review a book by Robin Lee Hatcher, RETURN TO ME. Ms. Hatcher offered the opportunity to review the book on her blog a while back, and I sent her my information, but when I didn’t hear anything, I figured I wasn’t selected. However–the book arrived on Thursday. I am so excited! Not only do I get the chance to sort of officially review a book (the review will be on my blog, Amazon.com and Christianbook.com), but I got a free copy of the book before it was even officially released. Thank you, Robin Lee!
And now I’m off to Ohio to visit the son and his family. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
…let’s remember the soldiers that are serving our country now as well as those that have died in her service. This video, REMEMBER ME by Lizzie Palmer, is certainly a powerful statement about the what our servicemen and women give to our country and what they give up to do so. They all need our prayers.
When you teach literature, you always hope to make a connection that the kids can take with them through life. I watched that happen today, and it’s a pretty cool way to end your week. To end your school year.
I spend seventh period every day in a class of juniors. Practical English. The way that translates is, even with Core 40 requirements, we are just trying to get these kids through high school. We aren’t trying to get them high SAT scores. Nevertheless, you keep hoping something will click.
Anyway. We have five days of school left, three of which are exams. To end the year, the junior teacher opted to teach OF MICE AND MEN by having the kids watch a more recent movie version starring Gary Sinise as George. She taught LAST OF THE MOHICANS this way, and I really can’t say I blame her. Sometimes teaching in this way allows you to address literary elements that are just lost on the practical kids as they plod through the reading. And really, showing the movie exemplifies what special education is about. The kids are supposed to study the same subject matter as their peers; the method of delivery just has to differ sometimes.
Anyway… the kids got the movie. Really.
Do you know the story? The title is based on Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse,” which states that “the best laid plans of mice and men” often go astray. The poem talks about how a field mouse’s world is destroyed by a plow but you don’t have to have lived very long to know that plans go astray a lot. And evidently this class of juniors has lived long enough. In the story, which takes place in the 1930s, the plans of George and his mentally handicapped friend Lenny go terribly wrong. The two men are on hard times, just as so many were during the Depression years, but they do have a dream.
The kids caught nuances of meaning that I was sure would have been beyond them. In about the middle of the movie, the men working on the ranch persuade Candy, an elderly ranch hand with a mangled hand, to let them shoot his dog. The dog is old and it smells. They want to put it out of its misery. The men tell Candy that they will shoot the dog in the back of the head so he won’t feel a thing. And although they do finally persuade him, the dog’s death breaks the old man’s heart. He tells George that he shouldn’t have let anyone else shoot his dog. Things like that are what makes reading Steinbeck so hard. His stories are good, but they are also incredibly sad.
Candy hears George and Lenny talk about buying a place of their own, and that gives him hope. He wants to join in with them, and he convinces them by offering the money he got when he lost his hand as a stake. Candy tells George that when he is no longer useful, he will lose his job and he won’t have anywhere to go. And he won’t even be shot to end his misery.
The kids caught the parallels between what Candy said and what happens to Lenny at the end of the story. Through a series of events forced on him by others, Lenny does something terrible, something for which it looks like he will be lynched or used for target practice. And George, in order to save him from such a fate, shoots him. He has Lenny look away from him and tells him about their plans for the future, for a place of their own, and just when Lenny gets to his favorite part…BLAM. The kids were glued to the screen and they totally got that scene. George had Lenny talk about something happy. He shot him in a place where he wouldn’t feel a thing, where he would die instantly. And by doing so, he saved his friend from a much, much worse fate. It’s not that I’m in favor of mercy killing by any means. But in this life, sometimes there are hard choices, and you do the best you can and then live with the consequences.
Many of the kids with whom I work changes schools two or three times a year. They work to help their parents pay the bills. A lot of them don’t even live with their parents. They live with friends or, well…wherever. They understand hard times. When their teacher explained the meaning of “the best-laid plans” quote to them, several of the kids said they had never heard it. She responded by saying that now they would, now that they had something to connect with it. And I bet they will.
Good literature. Good teaching. And a true lesson of life. Those are not bad things to carry away from your junior year. Not for students. And not for teachers.
My dad was a teacher. Now you might think this doesn’t have much to do with what I have to tell you, but it’s really where it all started. See, I never saw my dad’s hand without his wedding ring on it. So, when I married a man who worked with his hands, it was quite a surprise to me that he actually couldn’t wear a wedding ring at work. It was a safety violation.
The hubby really didn’t want a wedding ring anyway. He had seen enough marriages fall apart; he thought that wedding rings had little to do with the commitment involved with them. Fortunately, he finally realized that a ring was important to me, but he didn’t have one at all for many years.
The hubby traveled a lot throughout our marriage, and the fact that he was ringless really bothered me, so much so in fact that eight or nine years into our marriage, I bought him a ring for our anniversary. And he really tried to wear it. But he couldn’t wear it at work, and he would forget. I got used to seeing the ring hanging on a hook in the bathroom. After a while, I actually forgot about it.
However–I am NOT the perfect wife. Over the years, especially in Indiana, the amount of time the railroad took made me angry and sometimes, in anger, I would tell the hubby that I felt like his mistress because I got his left-over time. The railroad got what mattered.
Which is why I cried yesterday when I saw his hand. With the wedding ring on. I noticed it about twenty minutes after I got home. He was sort of disappointed that it took me so long. But while the ring looked really good on his hand, it was what he said that brought tears to my eyes. He said, “I meant to put this on May 1. And then I was going to say, ‘Look! I really am married just to you!’”
Have I mentioned that I married a really good man? And this proves it. He really does listen.
In his heart a man plans his course,
but the LORD determines his steps.
—Proverbs 16:9
We thought we had planned everything so well, looked into every possible scenario.
Evidently not.
Two weeks into retirement, we found out that if the hubby takes a job that pays into Social Security before he is sixty, I will lose my portion of the retirement benefit that he worked so hard to get. I swear we asked this question; we did not get complete information. And my portion, over–I hope–twenty or more years, is too big to give up. What started setting off warning bells was little pieces of information that we had gleaned from several sources. We put them all together and did not find what we expected.
So… what does this mean? Maybe something good. The hubby could work up something in consulting. He has a wealth of experience in construction, rehab, crossings…you name it. He can be self-employed or work for another railroad. Like I said, he doesn’t hate the job. He just actually needed to rest. We had thought that he couldn’t work in his area of expertise, but evidently this is not the case. This option, however, might take some time to bear fruit.
In the meantime, though, our purse strings will be, um….tight. Tighter than we had planned. That’s not my biggest concern, though. My biggest concern is that the hubby likes to be busy, and I wonder what will happen when he gets bored with my “honey-do” list. Although, to be truthful, he hasn’t even made it to my list yet. He is completing things that he has wanted to do for a long time. Nevertheless, he’s fifty-six, and sixty looks like it’s a long way away.
That’s why the verse from Proverbs I quoted above brings me such comfort. The hubby and I researched and researched. Neither of us are stupid. Like I said, we thought we had every eventuality covered. But God knew better. I am convinced that through this, the hubby and I will end up where we are supposed to be and doing what we are supposed to be doing. And happier than we are right now.
I sure didn’t see this coming. But I’m glad Someone did. I always knew retirement would be an adventure!
Not when he married me, but later, the hubby told me that he couldn’t believe I did so many things like his mother did. Of course, I learned those things from my mom, so I figure the two ladies must have been a lot alike. Our moms never met, though. His died of breast cancer the year before I met him.
She must have been a wonderful woman. I say that for a lot of reasons. One is that I did know the hubby’s dad, and as far as I can tell, the good things that I see in my husband did not come from him. And then there’s the fact that in six years she managed to give birth to five boys ( with a miscarriage in there) and raise them to be contributing members of society. Her hubby also was a railroader who traveled. I know it wasn’t easy. Finally, it’s the hubby’s memories of her. She’s been with the Lord thirty-three years now, so he doesn’t talk about her as much as he used to, but when he does, he smiles. Always.
I feel that way about my mom. She’s been in heaven for eleven years, but every spring brings back special memories. Where I live now, I found out that wild violets are considered a weed, but when I was little, one of the sweetest memories I have is going in the woods near my house with mom to look for purple and white violets and bring home handfuls of them. Didn’t matter how many times my little fingers broke the stems off short. Mom would find a way to make a beautiful bouquet of them and displayed them proudly on the kitchen window sill. She said they made it easier for her to do the dishes.
Or there are the trips downtown. We only had one car when I was little, so Mom and I took the bus. (That was when stores were downtown, before the malls arrived.) Our spring trips to the bus stop always included Mom’s pointing out the pansies in someone’s flowerbeds, or the first crocuses, depending. In those days women, at least where we lived in Toledo, dressed up to go shopping, so the trips downtown were big occasions. Mom spent the whole bus trip pointing things out to me instead of lost in her own thoughts. And although money was tight when I was small, she would stop by a nut shop and buy a quarter pound of cashews, which we would share on our way home, savoring the salty taste of each nut,one by one.
I wonder how our mothers thought of the things that are so dear to the hubby and me. Some of the best memories I have of being a mother are of catching the blimp taking off by the airport and stopping so the kids could watch. It was pretty neat, actually, with people on the ground holding ropes and all. And the hubby had made the kids some wooden blocks. The son built mazes with them which mystified his sister. I have pictures of the two of them sitting with mazes that covered his room, big grins on their faces. I have to stop now. The tears are starting to come.
There are plenty of things for my kids to reminisce about that wouldn’t be so nice (yes, children, I do remember slamming MY fingers in the door in anger), but I hope that I have left them with things to remember that make them smile. My friend Hannah told me once that it’s easier to see what God has accomplished when you look in the rear view mirror, that you can’t tell when it’s going on, and I think that maybe being a mom is a lot like that,too. You just do what you can do, and you can’t tell if it worked until years down the line
I guess you just give your kids a variety of experiences and hope for the best. A variety of hopes and let them remember what they will.
And sprinkle it all liberally with love. Maybe the love’s what they need to remember, anyway.
We got word today about the seniors that passed the ISTEP on their final tries. Students A and B, both male, and both in danger of NOT passing, passed. When I found out I got cold chills. I am soooo thankful! HOWEVER…since I know the level at which these students function daily, I am wondering what their passage says about what we in Indiana call “proficiency.”
