Focused at Fifty

Ann and Joe Verno, Arizona 2011 I ended up having minor surgery in the beginning of December due to some complications from my hernia surgery a couple years ago. It was successful and I am basically on the mend. In fact, this first blog for December was going to be all about that surgery. I know, I know TMI. That all changed a couple days after the surgery. Quite unexpectedly, John's Mom passed away on December 7th and everything changed as it does when one loses a parent. I know that very well as you know with my Mom passing several years ago. The horrible fact is that John has now lost both parents within 6 months of each other. John's father, Joe, passed away on May 30th of this year. He was 96. And as often happens, the spouse passes soon after. Mom Verno, as I lovingly referred to her as, passed on December 7, just after her 94th birthday on the 2nd. I seriously considered her my other Mom. She was the kindest, most genuinely person who did things with...

November 2014, one of my fav pics of Sheryl and I A pic of my big bro Adam (So he doesn't get jealous) Many of you know my older sis Sheryl. She, along with my older bro Adam, have been the rocks in my world. I lean on them for inspiration, laughter, support, and advice. My sister had a difficult Fall emotionally with the loss of a close coworker. You will read the reason why below. Coupled with the recent terrorist attach in Paris, France, she felt compelled to write an early Thanksgiving message below addressing the uncertainty of life and how we need to not take life for granted.  Sher's message comes from the heart. I hope you take it to heart as well and apply it to your life. In the blink of an eye, it can change forever.  -Marc From Sheryl: H ello Family & Friends, So forgive this ramble but I’ve been mulling it over in my mind. Maybe with age I’ve become more sappy / nostalgic or the recent France bombings moved me, but I had a very sad experience...

I have never pickled though I have been VERY PICKLED many times before. This summer, I decided to try pickling some sweet banana peppers which I grew myself on my deck. I started with a young pepper plant and planted it in a large planter with plenty of direct sunlight. Luckily I did not kill it during the first week. It must have felt sorry for me and my pathetic attempts at "deck farming" and soon enough, four small white flowers started to bud. I hadn't planted the banana peppers with the idea of pickling them. Initially, I wanted to grow them and possibly stuff them with Italian sausage as sort of an appetizer. I'm not a big fan of hot peppers so I figured these would be good to try, not to mention they are pretty colorful. The four initial flowers quickly grew into peppers and within another week, I had about 6 more flowers appear. Then a week later, something came by and ate every damn fresh little white flower! ARGH! I wa...

John and I spent a Saturday morning at the famous Renniger's Kutztown Farmer's Market searching for antiques and good eats! We've been there before and I've blogged about it. ( http://frazzledatforty.blogspot.com/2011/06/farmstands-and-farmers-markets.html ) Love this place! We got up extra early, UGH, and I made it there by 7 am... grumbling. I was jonesing for coffee but more so jonesing for antique bargains and immediately found the ultimate serving dish for relishes, pickles, and olives. It is a vintage mid-century heavy frosted glass based divided serving dish with a bird relief on the bottom. Totally incredible and totally affordable at .... $1.00!!!! Couldn't pass this baby up! Vintage Relish Dish After that, we meandered around the indoor flea market and came across a great antique Lincoln-influenced desk lamp for $125 and an oil for $70. Both affordable to our budget but we passed. I'm keeping these in mind for possible Christmas gifts. :)   ...

WORK IN PROGRESS In the course of this past week, I discovered that someone had dropped me on Facebook. Bwahahaha. What? Moi?? LOL Whatever dude.   It happens and it's no big deal. My crazy frazzled life (and subsequent retelling of it in every detail) is not everyone's cup of tea. I totally get it. What gave me pause and a momentary sense of insecurity was that I was actually pretty close to this guy back in my college years. I thought to myself, "What did I do?" And then I quickly got over it with a chuckle. You do that when you hit your 40's. Thankfully stuff doesn't bother you like it used to. You realize there are FAR MORE important things to deal with than someone not being friends with you or acquaintances or whatever the fuck that you may call them on Facebook these days. To that dude that dropped me:  I say good-bye, sayonara, adios, auf Wiedersehen, arrivederci , au revoir BUTTHEAD. I was intrigued though on why I felt that...

Tovolo Pot Lid Lifts In keeping with the theme of a previous blogpost of my favorite kitchen tools, http://frazzledatforty.blogspot.com/2015/02/favorite-kitchen-tools.html , I wanted to tell my readers about some other favorite items I love to use in the kitchen. This time, I included a couple food products I use often as well as one non-kitchen item, my Alessi hedgehog paperclip holder. The first item that I really like is my "Lamb" Tovolo Pot Lid Lift. My sister Sheryl picked up this little gem for me while we met up one morning at Amy's Place, a kitchen store in the Reading Terminal Market in Philly.  Sheryl picked up the pig while I picked up the lamb. It is so whimsical yet it works and helps keep your pot from boiling over.There is also a chicken available. If you can't get to Amy's you can pick them up on Amazon.com. My "Lamb" Tovolo Pot Lid Zipstrip The next favorite kitchen gadget that I love is my Zipstrip by Chef'n....

Neurotic! I have come to realize that as we get older, so much of what we do is so routine based. It has helped me to understand that if someone is their 40's and single, it is much more difficult to merge households in a relationship than someone say in their 20's. You are much more "set" in your ways ... or routines. Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks, eh? Or it may just be a bit more difficult. The routines which drive me have been established over years of a repetitive nature. It is a comforting and relaxing. My routines may seem a bit neurotic to others, but to me they give me peace and allow me to continue parts of my day stress-free. Other's routines I may find downright odd but I accept them nevertheless as they are what drive themselves. I guess we shouldn't judge another's routines! Accept theirs because yours maybe be a bit quirkier. LOL Sometimes you may find a friend in your life that you are in sync with and what a wonder...

Hercules the Spider I grew up in a home built in 1927 in Wenonah, NJ. I have fond memories of that house: it's creaking floors and stairs; the great big trees in the yard surrounding the house; the large wooden front door; the steep staircase and elegant wooden oak banister; the 70's style kitchen. There are just too many to list. Curiously, we also had a bunch of house spiders. Not too many, just here and there. They would hide out in the room corners of the 10 foot ceilings. The other evening I was in my current home in Lake Wynonah, PA , (yes basically same name, pretty ironic, huh?) and came across a VERY LARGE furry wolf spider. I was fascinated by it. He was by far the largest spider I have seen in the last couple years. This sucker was a good 1 1/2 inches across if not larger! He was pretty bold and didn't try to get away until actually went after him. And so I named the brave spider Hercules. I called to John who was in the next room to come and see this hug...

This blogpost is a bit sad and melancholy. As the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, arrives at sundown, so begins the 10 days of Atonement, culminated by the most sacred of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur. After a day of fasting, we ask for forgiveness from G-d of our sins. We also say prayers to honor the departed in our lives, the Yizkor or the Kaddish. I guess that is one of the reasons I began to think about those that have passed on in my life. I was listening to CNN awhile back in which reporter Anderson Cooper was speaking about sadly losing the memory of people's voices as time moves on. I have been lucky enough to remember most of the voices of those that I was close with. His report got me thinking that we often remember people's faces and experiences with them, but how often do we actually try to remember our conversations with them and what they sounded like? One of negative aspects of growing older is that you start experiencing forgetfulness sometimes referred to as...

I came home one day from 1st grade in tears. My sister, Sheryl, 5 years older, came running over to me asking me what had happened. I started crying and related how a couple of big kids had come over and called me a bastard! I was so upset and I didn't even know what it meant! My sister hugged me and comforted me. She told me it was alright and that the word just meant 'bad man.'  Now ... the debate is still up in the air on whether my dear sister was merely trying to comfort me and steer me away from using the word OR she didn't know what the word meant herself. Sheryl is currently claiming ignorance of the entire event. Right .... LOL.  For those of you that don't have a 25 pound Webster's Dictionary lying about, the word 'bastard' traditionally means 'a person born of parents not married to each other.' I am, as the definition goes, not a bastard. I don't even think those mean older kids knew what it meant. Nevertheless, ...

A fellow old soul urged me to share something which has been on my mind as of late. His advice has always been sound and after some consideration, I decided to listen to him and write this post. By doing so, I am giving myself a bit of a kick in the ass to keep moving on with this passion of mine:  writing! I have come to a crossroads within my passion of writing. When I started this blog 5 years ago as almost an homage to my departed Mom, I wanted to document my life turning 40. I have notebooks filled with potential blog posts which I have not yet written. Some are just mere ideas or snippets of a memory. Others are fully fleshed out memories almost ready to post. They range anywhere from work, to play, to life, to relationships, to even a more private side of me that only close friends and family know. Some I may never publish, I am just not ready to get that personal with certain subjects in my life. Others are well ... LOL... just NOT...

Logo from CHP campaign I decided last week to conduct a very unscientific experiment and keep track of how many people I passed on my way to work who were either talking on their cell phones or seen obviously texting. There is room for error as some people may have been looking for someone's number on their phone. THIS, by the way, is not an acceptable excuse because you are still reading and scrolling through your phone's contacts while driving. Each day, I travel a pretty long commute from Schuylkill County to Allentown, the seat of Lehigh County, PA. It's about 40 miles, most of it on one major highway, Route 78 which is highly traveled by commuters and tractor trailers alike.  When I'm on Route 78, I travel with the speed of traffic. And by the way, I won't be divulging my rate of speed except it allows me to pass those in the slow lane.  :) I counted about 50 cars that I passed over the distance of 40 miles. Within those 50 cars, I counted...

Bobalu's Florida Keys One of Mom's favorite restaurants in the Florida Keys was Bobalu's Southern Cafe' on Big Coppitt Key on US Route 1. When she and my stepdad Barry lived in Key West, they would often go there for lunch. It was a favorite restaurant of mine as well when I would visit. I would always get their conch fritters and upon the urging of my Mom, it was the first place I ordered fried green tomatoes. Mom said she loved them and so did I. Bobalu's still exists and has been open for over 20 years. It has changed owners since Mom and Barry lived in the Keys but still has the great carefree Key West atmosphere which has attracted years and years of tourists and locals. Even though this recipe is technically an Amish  one, I still thought of Mom and the Florida Keys while making it. Now I can only surmise that Mom had chosen this recipe so she could make them on her own when she came up North to her home in Lake Wyononah. Well unfortunately she ne...

A summer pic-nic staple is the potato salad. It seems as if everyone's family has their own recipe. As with many of the recipes that I have posted, there are just so many variations out there. My mother's recipe is a family favorite and below, you will see that I have chosen to tweak it to suit my own tastes. I had always wanted to make potato salad and when I started this project, I was pretty excited to discover my Mom's recipe. She made this for our spring and summer pic-nics and barbecues. While preparing the ingredients, I have such a new found respect for my mother and sister Sheryl. It's not that it's hard or difficult, it is just a bit time consuming. And you gotta love a recipe with only four basic commands: boil, chop, mix, chill! In retrospect, it did seem like Mom was making it for hours in our 70's kitchen in my childhood home. Always chopping and mixing and then ordering us kids to get out of the kitchen. Like the previous recipe I posted for...

This is a great article from the April 2015 issue of  The Atlantic entitled "Meet the New Bitch" by writer Britt Peterson about the origins of the word "bitch." I really enjoyed it and wanted to share. It makes you think of how words lose old meanings and gain new ones over time. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/meet-the-new-bitch/386246/ The biggest example that I can think of is the word "awful". This word once referred to the inspiration of awe, fear or wonder. These days, it refers to something so horrible or unpleasant. How it got from one to the other beats me. I didn't get that far. LOL Another word that I remember which once meant something else is the word "myriad." I specifically remember this word from my SAT vocab study courses back in high school. It's a noun meaning a great number but it once meant 10,000 of something, such as a myriad of troops. So the next time you are saying something, realize ...

Colorful Ingredients! This is a great summer pasta salad which my Mom made throughout a good couple of decades of Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day festivities as well as the occasional family BBQ. It is a favorite recipe of my sister Sheryl's, too. It is a "Haynes go-to recipe". Can't decide what to make or bring? Make the shrimp salad recipe! LOL. You really can't go wrong with it. I like it because it is not too heavy and pretty refreshing. For my salad below, I doubled the recipe for a summer cocktail party I had hosted and ended up using a little bit more French dressing than called for but it still came out great. Instead of pimentos, I substituted chopped roasted red peppers. I also substituted an olive oil mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip. If you want to use the medium canned shrimp or fresh frozen shrimp, you could do that as well. The canned shrimp is used for ease in preparation and it still tastes so good. Lastly, I used ch...

My sis and I do a lot together. Besides my brother Adam, she is my best friend. Back about 4 years ago, Sheryl and I found ourselves in NYC overnight. I was supposed to see friends and then share a hotel room with Sheryl. My plans fell through and I was so upset. My weekend was ruined. Being my big sis, Sheryl made sure the rest of the trip went great. We decided to bring our friend Elsa to a piano bar called the Duplex in the Village to listen to some music. We got there and it was sooo crowded. As luck would have it, two small tables opened up right next to the piano and we snatched them. We had such a great time that night with the singer on the piano turning out songs from the 70's, 80's, and 90's, keeping us entertained with jokes in between. What an incredible evening it was. The singer belted out Chicago's "Saturday in the Park".  I looked at Sheryl and Elsa and we all were singing along to it at the top of our lungs! I remember looking at my sister...

Happy 45th Birthday to myself!! It has been a rough week for various reasons. I wanted to put up a post for my birthday that was whimsical and fun. While going through a box from the attic, I found this paper out that I filled when I was 9 years old waay back in 1979 in ACE class (a creative class run by one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Elaine Arbo) at Wenonah Elementary School. It was actually titled, "It's Neat to Be Me." You can't make that stuff up! I reference war and world peace a lot which I figured out was due to the Cold War deterioration in the 70's. I still want to be a billionaire but I don't think I'd give all my money away to the poor. I never became a surgeon, sorry Mom (looking up towards Heaven). LOL Some answers are so typically 70's such as the velour shirts that I liked, the TV show "Dallas", and liking disco. Actually I liked disco A LOT but was embarrassed to put it down so I said I liked rock ... and a little disco...

A couple weeks ago, the weekend of Mother's Day, I had to attend the funeral of a beloved fraternity brother from the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, Tim Reeves. I received an email from my other fraternity brother Kent, who informed me that Tim had passed from cancer that Tuesday and services would be held the following Saturday morning.  Best friends Tim and John H. Tim was 46, very private about his medical issue and had kept the gravity of the situation, for the most part, secret. Needless to say the email came as a shock. I had no hesitation when I emailed Kent back that I was rearranging my schedule so that I could make it. There was no question about it. I needed to attend and support Tim's family and my fraternity brothers who were close to him. I had met Tim when I went to Rutgers University. By the time I became a brother, he was no longer at Rutgers but still remained a brother for life coming to our events whenever he could....