This Bud's for You!

I wake up when early spring nods its sleepy head. I don't want to wait for the raucous symphony of blooms ~ I prefer to watch the first act, as the plot develops. I can get to know the characters better that way.

And, yes, forsythia is my favorite spring plant. A woody bush, which grows in all kinds of whompy-jawed kinds of ways. Perfect prop for playing hide-and-go-seek, as the neighbor kids did the other day. My sister and I performed similar rituals as wee ones.

And, no, I didn't take this Superior Snap. It was captured by a photographer named Teri Chandler and I snagged it especially for this special post.

Today's the third anniversary of the day I decided to make my life ~ or parts of it, anyway ~ public. A blank canvas upon which to paint. Or a budding forsythia bush. Take your pick.

Happy Blogoversary to me. And to you, dear readers. Thanks for helping this idea bloom.

Give Me That Old Time Religion

I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon cleaning out the shelf above the microwave. We replaced said appliance yesterday after an unfortunate meltdown earlier in the week. We store our cookbooks and whatnot above the 'wave, and that area of the kitchen hasn't been spiffed up in an awful long while.

Of course, I initiated the little bit of spring cleaning not because I really desired to "clean the cave," as my Mom would have said. I only wanted to put off grading an avalanche of AP Lang papers. The end of the quarter is growing nigh, and Mrs. Scribe has to clean up her own act, vis-a-vis grades for my cherubs.

Time to pull down the detritus of several years and pull out the 409 and a rag, don't you think?

One of my self-imposed projects involved sorting through old recipes ~ both mine and those of my Mom ~ which had accumulated in a metal filing box of unknown origin, and were also overflowing from an old wicker basket, made just for that kind of crap, I suppose.

Most of Mom's recipes were cut from magazines and newspapers and didn't look at all familiar. I imagined my Daddy flipping through these periodicals and clipping them in hopes of getting more than spaghetti, meat loaf, Shake 'n' Bake and the occasional blueberry pie. I don't know why he'd want to, though. Mom was a great cook, and these were her staples.

So I started a "keep" and a "discard" pile. And then I came upon a bonanza that could only be considered an historical find by La Familia Scribe: The original recipe for "May Williams Meatballs." Methodically written out in pencil on both sides of a piece ripped from a yellow legal pad about 40 years ago.

This, my friends, is a classic dish. It really tastes mostly like Swedish meatballs, and has that tinny Campbell's Soup tang to it. But my sister and I loved this special-occasion casserole as kids, and my family adores it to this day.

Mom acquired the recipe, pictured above and written out below, from our neighbor, May Williams. I had no idea that she had also called it "Meatballs Provencale." In fact, the title of my "find" is "Meatballs Provencale...May Williams' Way."

I sat there for a good five minutes, trying to digest the magnitude of what I'd just uncovered. I remembered sinful smells wafting from our tiny apartment kitchen, when May had just bequeathed this gem to my Mom. I recalled Mom bustling around a much more accommodating cooking space in our ranch-style house, à la 1960s Dallas. May Williams Meatballs were special, and even rated a place at the dining room table when Daddy brought the boss home for dinner.

I framed the wrinkled, soiled and creased sheet of paper and hung it by the stove. And I want to share it with y'all. So here, across the decades, I give you a very special ~ and incredibly easy ~ late winter/early spring supper, May Williams' Way.

May Williams Meatballs

2 lbs. ground chuck

1/2 lb. lean ground pork

1 large onion, chopped fine, and sautéed in butter

2 beaten eggs salt, pepper to taste

2 tbs. parsley 1.5 cups Pepperidge Farm Bread Crumbs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 can Campbell's Beef Broth

1 package wide egg noodles

Directions

Mix together chuck, pork, onion, eggs, salt and pepper, parsley and bread crumbs 'til fully blended. Keep your hands wet while shaping small meatballs. Place the meatballs in a covered glass bowl overnight. The next day, sauté the meatballs in hot oil; they should cook very fast, until they are light brown. Drain the meatballs. Place them in a greased casserole dish. Pour out the grease from the pan you used to sauté the meatballs. Return the pan to the stove, and turn the heat to medium. Mix together both cans of soup, undilluted, making sure to pick up the residue from the sautéd meatballs as you stir. When these ingredients are well-blended, pour over the meatballs. Bake the meatballs, with the lid on the casserole, for one hour at 350 degrees. Serve over wide egg noodles. Enjoy!

La Zona Rosa

Write a 26-line poem; each line must start with a letter of the alphabet, in order, from "A" to "Z."

(With apologies to my children.)

All's I wanna do is
be here with you;
call you baby and be your
designated driver.

Even when I'm sad and blue I
find time to be here with you;
gotta have my fix; gotta
have my whole lotta love.

I know it's been a long time;
just too long a time
kin you feel it?
Love the one you're with.

My man wants me all the time;
no time like the present, correctamundo?
Or that's what I like to think.
Perhaps I'm dreamin', but it's my

quest. To be with you,
run up and down your spine
slosh around in the ocean
tides of your love,

until I get what I been lookin' for.

Vixen, some folks call me.
Well, I'll take that and play it on my
xylophone.

You don't feel it, too? I'm
zoned out on you.

But You MUST Stick the Landing

Don't Worry; Be Happy

When Mr. Fairway and I were first married and the world was very young, I was always struck by my MIL's concern for her three kids. Even though all three were grown, with families of their own, she couldn't sleep at night when they were visiting; that is, until one or the other knocked on her bedroom door, stuck his head in, and whispered, "Mom, we're back."

I've carried on that tradition, but with a special twist. I'm usually on-edge not when they're home, but when they're traveling.

Ella Numera Dos just winged her way back to college and is now safely ensconced in the profundities of campus life; Ella Numera Una finally made it back after 10 days in Ireland, including a Dublin pub crawl on St. Patty's Day (more on that, I'm sure, later). That's one of the Irish seascapes, above, that she captured during her sojourn.

I've trained my chicas well. They call me when they're changing planes, when they've landed and when they've finally "reached"; a term my Daddy coined for arriving home, safe and sound.

Got the last call a few minutes ago; both gals are back on home soil, and although they're not at "home," per se, they've "reached." I have no worries for now, ascribing to the anoymous quote that dictates, "Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday."

Or, as Bobby McFerrin likes to say, "Don't worry; be happy."

Your Taxpayer's Dollars at Work

Au Revoir, Gopher

I've been thinking, lo, these four weeks or so, about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and his strong resemblance to Bill Murray's character from the 1980 classic, "Caddyshack."

Research shows that voters often select candidates based on looks. Sad, I know, but very true.

All I have to say is that if this is the case in Wisconsin, 52 percent of voters in the Badger State were smokin' something last November. But they are making amends four months later, with a mammoth recall effort.

As Carl Spackler would say, "In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher'."

What Would Mark Twain Do?

Every time I'm faced with the daunting task of grading eleventy-gazillion student papers, I ask this question. WWMTD? has become more than a rhetorical refrain in my life.

Samuel Langhorne Clemons wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ~ just shy of 300 printed pages ~ over the course of eight years. By hand. As in, with a pen and paper, as in the photo, above.

I complain when I have a set of 60 student papers. Or 120, as is the case this weekend. But I'm headed to NYC on the Amtrak Monday morning, so I'll have ample time to get a lot of work done.

Or not. Like most folks, I'm an inveterate procrasinator, especially when faced with all that student work to correct.

WWMTD? Probably write wry comments in the margins of my cherubs' written work. Or toss them in the recycling bin. Whatever his choice, I'm confident it would be designed to make them both laugh ~ and cry. And he probably wouldn't get those papers back to them until next year, at the earliest.

I'm not quite there yet. I've made them laugh. I've made them cry. The simultaneous juxtaposition, I believe, would be amazing to behold.

Question Authority. Absolutely.

We're expecting up to three inches of rain today. A real deluge, presenting me with a conundrum.

I don't have a 7th period at the end of the day. The cherubs left me to my own devices around 1:25. Big, fat H20 globules bombarded the ancient casement windows of Room 215.

I enjoyed a late lunch of leftover spaghetti with homemade meat sauce. The fire bell rang, slicing through my momentary solitude.

Frankly, I thought it was a drill, or that a kid had pulled the alarm. I had no students in my room. Unconcerned, I continued to eat, making a consicous decision to keep my butt parked at my desk. Listening to the hubbub growing outside, in a downpour, in the student parking lot below my room. That spaghetti was just so darn delectable.

Then, I heard the sirens.

Just like Elvis, I left the building. I walked out a full 15 minutes after the alarm had sounded. Expressions on the faces of the assembled throng, melting in the spring downpour, alternated between bemusement and scorn.

How could I? Well, I reckon I just did. And the sky didn't fall, after all. Turned out to be a fire in a trashcan. These things happen.

If I lived in the islands, things wouldn't be so rigid.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Flower Power

I was wondering just the other day...

Would I rather have Charlie Sheen's millions, or the splendid view of my neighbor's camelia bush?

Guess.

Serenity Now

I have interim grades due early next week and I'm still captivated ~ and, yes, a tad concerned ~ about the Wisconsin protests, but I have one enduring question:

Why don't yoga pants have pockets?

Walk Like an Egyptian