I Find Out About You-Tube

Well, Good Morning, glories!

I was going to call this one "The Internet is of the Devil, Part Three," but then a little something happened to throw a monkey wrench in that plan: I figured out that this thing called cyberspace isn't just a cesspool of temptation. I figured out how you can use the blog thing to raise the dead!

More on that in a minute!

I've got to tell you I'm proud of this fact: I haven't even been doing this internet thing a week, and I already know how to do the YouTube! Calm down, now, Trixie. Don't get the big head over it!

Now, I did have some help. Here's how it all got started: Delores next door came over for our Eight O'Clock Cup of Eight O'Clock Coffee, and we started in on the usual gossip, which keeps us going just as sure as Lipitor keeps the blood flowing.

Just so you won't think too bad about us, it's not usually real viscious gossip that we do. Not usually. Whenever we slip into that, I always remind Delores of what Ollie Pearl used to tell me: "Trixie," she used to say, "Don't speak unkindly about somebody, because when you are pointing a finger at somebody, you've got three fingers pointing back at yourself."

I remember the first time I ever heard her say that was when I was just a knee-high girl staying with her at Laurel Terrace in Saluda--that was back during the Great Depression--and I'd figured out already that Frank, who lived there, and who would end up my first husband, was the devil. (Frank's mama owned the inn and I stayed there some Christmases with my Aunt Ollie Pearl because I was an orphan--long story for another day, but you can read all about it in that book called The Days Between the Years.)


After Ollie Pearl said that to me about one finger pointing to somebody made three fingers pointing back at yourself, I got to thinking and wandered into the kitchen and asked the cook Naomi about it and she said that yes, she'd heard that, too, and she reckoned there was something to it, but knowing that hadn't kept her tongue from wagging too much over the years. (She let out a big whoop! when she said it.)

I remember sitting on that stool she always kept for me by the big butcher block for when I helped her with the baking, when Frank, who was older than me--a teenager then--walked across the yard on the way to the shed where he was always tinkering on the old car. I pointed my finger at Frank and went, "Pow! Pow! Pow!" making out like I had a gun, you know, and noticed, sure enough, three fingers pointed right back at me. I guess it didn't take a genius to figure that out, but I'd never noticed it before.

Well, Frank's mama, Edna Templeton--who'd become my old mother-in-law some years later--heard me and saw me pretending to shoot at her precious Frankie. She came after me, ran me off my stool and down the hall and smacked at my bottom, hollering that I was the reason she had to take so much Anacin, which had made a hole in her stomach. So there's a little history for you.

Well, anyway, back to the present day: This morning, Delores and I were just on the tail-end of speculating whether or not it was true what was being said about that new preacher over at the church, when her grandson pulled up in her driveway next door. I'm talking about Delores's grandson, the one whose shoulder I was looking over just the other day when he was over at her house trying to show her how to do the blog thing. (For the past few days he'd been dropping by her house in the mornings before he went to his job at Sam's Club, trying to teach Delores to do what soon-to-be-ex-President George W. Bush called "do the Google," which lead to his (her grandson, Bush) trying to show her how to do a blog.)

If you read what I wrote about that the other day, you'll remember she wasn't paying much attention because her little dog, Tippy, was dancing with her leg, but I sure was (paying attention, not dancing with her leg) and I took it all in and came home and wrestled with the computer and cussed the Google people until I learned how to do it. And I'll go ahead and admit right here that it wasn't until Delores decided she wanted to learn to Google and blog that I got the itch to give it a try. More on why that is a little later, but you can guess there's a little bit of the green-eyed monster in there somewhere.

Well, Delores's grandson's name is Annis. I've thought again and again how sad it was that his parents named him Annis which sounds to my ears, for all the world, like Anus, though I never breathed a work to that to Delores. She's surely thought the same herself, but it's one thing to think it and another to have your friend to say it. Delores didn't like that name--she admitted that much--and told her son to name him John or David or Matthew or something, but you can't tell young people a thing.

Now, I haven't said this to Delores, but I think his being burdened with that name is how come he walks stoop-shouldered, hair plastered to his head like stewed spinach, face like he's been doing chin-ups on the curb, and doesn't have a girlfriend, at least not one he's willing to show.

I've also wondered if that's why he lets his britches sag below the divide in his behind, but Delores says that's just the way young men are dressing these days, and from what I've seen on Main Street, I'll have to say that's a fact. And Delores said when she told her son to say something to Annis about the way he looked, her son told Delores, "Mama, you can't tell young people a thing." So you see how history repeats.

Okay. So Delores and I were having our coffee when Annis pulled up in Delores's driveway next door, and she jumped up to leave. Well, I laid my arm on Delores's and told her to just stay, and to ask him to come over here, for a change. I had a couple of reasons for doing that, neither one of them especially holy. One was because I didn't want Delores to get ahead of me on doing the Google and the blog thing, which she surely would if she kept getting regular lessons from Annis, and the other reason was I thought if I could break the ice with Annis, get him comfortable with me, I might one day convince him to hike his britches up above that divide in his behind because I was sick and tired of looking at it every time he walked up the driveway next door.

So, Delores took the bait, in part because she wasn't in the mood to Google, she said, she was so worked up over what was going on with the preacher. So, up jumped Delores from where we were both sitting at my kitchen table. She'd ripped the kercheif off her head when she'd come over, but she tied it back around her head before she stuck it outside the door, for fear that poking her sweaty noggin out in the cold, damp air would aggravate her neuralgia, which I agreed it might. "Annis!" she called out, "Annis!" And I cringed just like I do everytime she said that poor boy's name which sounds like what I've already said.

And over walked Annis. But I see I've gone on too long here. I'll be back with the rest of the story. Just hold on to your hats, as Uncle Jarvis used to say.

The internet is of the Devil--part two

Okay, I'm back. Betty says I ought to watch out for that Wolfgang Zailskas, the man who read this blog thing and sent me an email from a foreign country. She's feels just like me when it comes to the men. We've lived a while, and we've both got two simple words of warning, for young and old alike, when it comes to the men: Watch Out. Especially if you get a strange one from a foreign country, groping at you over the internet!

Now. I believe it was yesterday--seems like a week ago!--that I promised a recipe for a Christmas sweet that I don't believe many people make these days, and that is sugar plums.
You might remember that Night Before Christmas book where it says something about children snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums dance in their heads. I remember being little and Ollie Pearl reading that to me, and I would wonder what in the world a sugar plum was. She said she recalled her grandmother talking about sugar plums, but couldn't remember the details of just what they were. Anyhow, I grew up thinking a sugar plum was some kind of a fairy. You'd naturally get that idea if you grow up hearing that book read and having the thought of sugar plums dancing in your head at night drilled into you.

And you'd think after all those years of baking cakes and cookies and what not, I would have thought to find out about sugar plums, but making them just wasn't what my grandkids call "on my radar" because you didn't see them in those cookie exchanges the women have this time of year, or see Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray or Paula Deen making them on TV. At least, I didn't.

So, yesterday, I found in the Hendersonville-Times News a whole article about sugar plums from somebody called J.M. Hirsch. The article started out "Sugar plums may dance in your dreams, but chances are you couldn't identify one if it hit you on the head." Well, I thought that was a clever way of putting it, and it sure hit the nail square on the head for me.

She says what you need is this: a half of cup of granulated sugar; 1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom; 1/2 teaspoon of cinammon; 1/2 cup of pecans; 1/4 cup pistachios; 1 cup pitted dates; 1/2 cup dried apricots; 1/2 cup dried figs; 1/4 cup golden raisins; 1/2 cup dried cherries; and 2 tablespoons orange liqueur or rum.

In a big bowl, mix up the sugar, cardamom, and cinammon. Mix it up good and set it aside. Then rough chop the pecans in a food processor, if you use one of those. Add the pistachios and chop some more. Then set that bowl aside. Then throw into the processor the dates, the apricots, and the figs. Give them a quick chop. Then add the raisins and cherries and give everything a good chop until it gets all clumpy. Then add the nuts and the rum or liqueur. I guess then you stir that up good in it. Then roll the stuff into little balls about a teaspoon at a time, then roll it in the sugar until each one is good and coated. Now you've got sugar plums. Put them in a Tupperware in the refrigerator. You can keep them in there for a month.

Now, see, you don't even have to turn on the oven to make some.

Well, would you believe that after I found that recipe I went looking in one of my very old cookbooks and found a recipe? I must have overlooked it all those years ago. It was a little simpler, too. Went like this:

2 cups whole almonds; 1/4 cup honey; 2 tsp grated orange zest; 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon; 1/2 tsp ground allspice; 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg; 1 cup finely chopped dried apricots; 1 cup finely chopped pitted dates; 1 cup confectioners' sugar.

Preheat oven to 400. Arrange almonds on a baking sheet in a single layer and toast in oven for ten minutes. Set aside to cool and then finely chop. Meanwhile, combine honey, orange zest, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in a medium mixing bowl. Add almonds, apricots, and dates and mix well. Pinch off rounded teaspoon sized pieces of the mixture and roll into balls. Roll balls in sugar and refrigerate in single layers between sheets of wax paper in airtight containers for up to one month.

I guess from those two recipes you can figure out your own way of making sugar plums. I'm that way with recipes. I'll look at one to start with, them my contrariness sets in, and I end up doing it my own way. What I end up with might not taste as good, but I get the satisfaction out of singing that Frank Sinatra song in my head: "...I did it my way..."

Bye for now. I'll check on y'all later.

The internet is of the Devil

I tell you what, if this internet is of the Devil, I just about don't care because I've having a ball. Reminds me of that old song that goes, "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right."

And to think, not one week ago, if I'd had a hammer (now, there's another song that'll be echoing through my head all day long, now that I've thought of it!) I would have laid into this computer and smashed it into smithereens.

It just goes to show that every now and again, in certain rare circumstances, I can be wrong, a fact which my kids Lou Ann and Terry Wayne think they have to remind me of two or three times a week.

Well, just to show you how much I've got into this: Delores stepped over here this morning for our eight o'clock cup of Eight O'Clock coffee, walked right in the side door to the kitchen, and hollered out to me and I didn't even hear, so busy was I peck peck pecking here at this keyboard and staring into this screen.

Oh, wait a minute, now the phone's ringing off the hook! Hello! It's Betty from over at the church. I'll get back to this soon as the two of us chew each others' ears for a few minutes. I promised a recipe, and I don't make a promise I can't keep. Try not to, anyhow. Stay tuned.

I start to put up pictures on my blog

Now, I know this is not what you all had in mind, the ones who have said you wish I would hurry up and put up pictures. You want to see pictures of the people I've started gossiping about, or the people in that book about my life called The Days Between the Years, not animals at the zoo, not that there's a whole lot of difference between one and the other, if you want to know what I think about it.

But I took these with the little teeny camera (no bigger than the palm of my hand!) some of the kids got me for my birthday back in August, and I'm kind of proud. I took them at the zoo in Asheboro, NC. Or maybe it was Greenville, SC. What difference does it make? I never did get any medals for memory.

The one on the top is of a gorilla. The one on the bottom is what I reckon you'd call a regular monkey, which I guess you can tell. My second husband, Buck Goforth, was big on monkeys. We'd go to the zoo, and he'd want to hang all day at the monkey section. He'd say to me, "Trixie, tell me how a man with half a brain could doubt we're kin to them?"

I'm not much on deep thinking, but the gorilla climbing up the hill makes me think of the long, uphill journey of life, which I know a little something about, and the monkey looks like he's asking, "Which one of the Ten Commandments will you break this day?" as if you are bound to break at least one, sure as the world, and he knows it better than anybody. Maybe I've got too much imagination for my own good. I've been told as much, a time or two.

Three Times is a Charm

Or so they say! Here I am back for my third time doing the blog thing, so I guess that means I'm in it for life--however long that is. I don't know how long that will be, but neither do you, no matter how young and hale and hearty you are, so don't go and get cocky on me about it. Take every minute and every hour of every day and get what you can out of it, and take heart that there just might be more to come, the likes of which neither you nor me can even start to imagine. If you keep your nose clean, that is. "Eye has not seen nor ear heard," and if you don't know where that saying comes from, then you just don't have much sense.

I'm tickled to death that I'm hearing from people from all over western North Carolina. And that's not all, folks, as the bunny used to say. Though it would have bowled me over just to hear from as far away as Shelby or Charlotte, I just heard from somebody clear on the other side of the world, and he was a man.


Now, THAT I've got to watch. He didn't say anything out of line, but what little bit I know about men with something on their minds is they like to start slow. They'll tip their hat and offer to buy you a sandwich. Next thing you know, they're suggesting something ugly.


Plus, he talks funny, like that man in that Borat movie the kids were all watching a couple of years back. Here's part of what he wrote about what I've said so far on this blog thing (and he's the one who can't spell, not me):


"I am puzzled when reading what you have wrote. It sounds very strange to our Europe understanding from the continental point of view. What you say is so colourful and positive orientated. What you say is very funny. I tink you are the kind of woman nobody can understand in my surrounding....But I like that."


That last part's what's got me worried. I've heard people say the Internet is of the devil, and maybe this is why. I can see plenty of opportunity for shennanigans, for those inclined to participate. But not Trixie Goforth. If ever I'm tempted, which I have not been since I was, say, about 70 years old, I say "get behind me, Satan!"


He (that man who wrote me on here, not Satan--well, maybe him too) might keep on writing and even send me a picture. Then what do I do? And I've never been over there to Europe, but I've seen on TV some of what women are like in his "surrounding." Especially those women in Paris, France. They just look at things different over there. And if that don't beat all, his name is Wolfgang Zailskas. I don't know if I want to hear from the likes of him again or not. I'm itching to run next door and tell Delores, but I better hold off, and I've got my reasons for that.


Now, talking about people with oddball names: I just heard from somebody with the name "Blog Hendersonville" and I sure do hope I'll hear from her again. Whenever I can sneak off (the kids won't let me drive--long story) I'm going to make a run up to their Main Street up there in Hendersonville, do a little shopping, and hunt up something good to eat. I sure do hope Blog Hendersonville (I won't hold her name against her) will check in here from time to time with some suggestions. I sure would appreciate that. And I've heard a lot about their Flat Rock Playhouse. They've got real actors there, some of them they lured down all the way from New York City, and they've even snagged Santa Claus for that show they're doing now. Lou Ann's going, and I'm hoping she'll surprise her old mama here with a ticket to a show and the barbecue special over at Piggy's and Harry's.


Now, speaking of Hendersonville, one more thing before I go--lordy, my tongue is loose at both ends today! I get their newspaper from up there--it's called the Hendersonville Times News and it's owned by the New York Times, but don't hold that against it. Well, I found a recipe in there today for something I haven't even heard about since I lived with Ollie Pearl way back when I was just a girl. And Ollie Pearl, who was my great aunt, now, had heard about it from her grandmother! We're talking way back. And it's not fruitcake, either.

So, next time I do this blog thing, I'm going to write that recipe down here so you can make it, too. Maybe we'll get something new started. Maybe it'll sweep the country. Maybe the world. And maybe the world will come right here to this blog thing which is like my doorstep and we can all visit.

Stay tuned.

I blog again

Here I am again.

I guess I ought not to give myself a pat on the back for keeping up with this blog thing after I've just done it twice, but truth be told I didn't think I'd get this far. One thing I wished I had done was go to King's Business College in Charlotte after the war.

Then I could have told my first husband Frank to hit the road.

I could have learned stenography and ten-key adding machine, skills nobody needs anymore and anybody much younger than me has never heard of, but they would have come in mighty handy back then.

I did learn to type, though, and here I am right now just typing up a storm. I can type fast, too, for an old woman with arthritis in her fingers. It feels good to let your thoughts flow right out of your brain down your arms and out your fingers.

Some of your thoughts, that is.

There're others you best keep to yourself, if you can. Only time will tell if I keep this up or quit like Delores's grandson said most people do. Most people who start up one of these blogs lose interest after about a week, they say, so this internet thing is plain saturated with Pure T. Crap.

We'll see. And time will tell just how much I'll let fly that I ought to keep to myself. Stay tuned for that.

Well, it feels good anyway, this typing straight onto the computer screen. I'm admitting that to myself but don't tell them I said it--my kids, I mean. I'm in this stand-off with them because I won't learn the new technology.

Every time they force one of those cell phones on me, I throw it away--accidentally on purpose stick it in a trash bag of clothes I've set aside to give to the Goodwill, then tell them I lost it. Yes, this feels right good, typing away like this. If I could have done this way back when I smoked, I might have found it easier to quit.

Having something to do with your fingers is important in life. You write that down.

I think I'm supposed to put a picture of me up here. So far I haven't found one that looks like me yet doesn't drive home the hard truth of what I look like in my old age. We'll see. I'll put some pictures of how I looked back during the war, though, and some pictures of my good friend Esther and some of my grands, maybe even one or two of Frank, that jerk. And how about my recipe for fruitcake?

We'll see.