Lose Your Quit Quest 27: The Weekly Hodgepodge

 Want to join the party?  Swerve on over to From This Side of the Pond  for the Hodgepodge link-up!

If you're just here for today's Lose Your Quit Quest entry, please scroll down to the "random thoughts" section.  And, as always, thanks for reading Auntie's blog!

This is the last Hodgepodge in April. Share something you learned this month.

I relearned how to use manual hedge clippers.  I used to trim the bushes at home when I was a teenager.  As an adult, since I lived in an apartment complex that barely wanted us to have flowers, much less groom our own yards, I got out of practice.  For my first trimming session since the 90's, I didn't do too badly.  Hopefully, I get another crack at it Friday.

It's National Poetry Month, and we all know you can't escape an April Hodgepodge without a little poetry. Keeping the first line as is, change the rest of the wording in this familiar rhyme to make it your own - 'Hickory Dickory Dock...

I dedicate my ode to the Alabama legislature, who, this year, again couldn't get a vote on the floor to permanently leave us on Daylight Savings Time:

Hickory Dickory Dock

I'm tired of changing the clock.

For goodness sake

Take a vote, you rake

And stop this yearly mistake. 

 

What were one or two rules in the home you grew up in? Growing up, did you feel your parents were strict? Looking back do you still see it that way? 

One rule was that if we asked for food or got it out of the refrigerator, we needed to eat it.  My parents didn't have money to burn, so food wasn't to be wasted.  Another rule was to be truthful.  My parents weren't strict with me because I told them the truth of where I was going and who I was going to be with--which was mostly with the marching band or the church youth group.  I got my fair share of spankings, but, save one, I deserved them all.

Tell us about a kitchen or cooking disaster or mishap you've experienced. Do you have many from which to choose?

I can honestly say that I'm not that great of a cook.  The stalling of last year's A-Z challenge is one indicator.  I'm not sure I would call this a disaster, but more of an enigma.  I can't make white biscuits and brown gravy from scratch, but I can make brown biscuits and white gravy.

My mom's white biscuits and brown gravy were a staple on our breakfast table.  I'd watch my mom mix flour, buttermilk, and lard (yes I said lard), kneed out by hand the perfect cat head biscuit (no cutters, rolling pins, or measuring).  Then she'd bake them to a perfect golden brown on the bottom, not by using a timer, but  baking them until she "thought they were done."  I don't know what kind of voo-doo mom worked when making gravy, but it was always good and never lumpy.

Then there's mine....

I get out all the tools, follow a recipe to a tee, preheat the oven to the perfect 350 degrees, and cook the biscuits not one second longer than the directions indicated.  I'd do the same for the gravy.  My results?  You could build a retaining wall complete with mortar with my biscuits and gravy.  Have me cook biscuits with white flour if you want to kill a dog that won't stay out of your garbage can.  Run out of wallpaper paste?  I can help; I'll make some brown gravy.

BUT...

Give me those same tools and directions but I use brown whole wheat flour to make biscuits and white flour, milk, and butter to make white gravy, and I can get a job a Cracker Barrel. 

Yes, I know it's crazy, but it's true.  Just ask my mom who's shaken her head at my cooking on more than one occasion. 

Plant a kiss, plant doubt, plant a tree, plant yourself somewhere...which on the list have you most recently planted? 

Not exactly plant a tree, but I planted flowers in hanging pots to start prettying up the front porch.  My plan is to put out a few more this weekend.

What's your most worn item of clothing this time of year? Are you tired of it? 

Sorry fellers, but my answer is the sports bra.  They come in inexpensive packs of 3 at Wal-Mart, and they hold up things fair to middling.  But wearing them every day is getting old.  No, I don't mean for I wear them for working out every day; I mean I wear them everywhere every day.  I really need to get a couple of real bras with better support.  I know my shirts would fit better if I did. However, let's keep it in the budget.

I'm wrapping up the A-Z Blog Challenge this month and our Hodgepodge lands on letter W. What's one word beginning with W that describes you in some way? How about a word to describe your home, also beginning with W?

Me:  Weird   Home: Wry - my housemate and I are masters at humorous sarcasm. 

Insert your own random thought here

Picking up the Lose Your Quit Quest:

Step 27:  Be Grateful

Luke 16:10 in the New Living Translation says, "If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities."  I believe that part of faithfulness is gratitude.

How many of you like dealing with ungrateful people?  Get that hand up.  No one, of course.  I occasionally deal with ungrateful people because I work with humans.  Although I'm to serve all with gladness, serving with gladness those who are ungrateful and feel entitled has to be done by faith and with much prayer (and sarcastic comments saved for later).

Hey, we (hopefully) teach children to be thankful early in life.  We're not very free with privileges to a thankless child, are we?

No, I'm not saying that God holds out on us unless we stroke his ego with thanks.  What I am saying is that we miss future blessings by not being thankful for the present ones.  Why?  A lack of gratitude blinds us to God's handiwork though it's right in front of our faces.  If we don't see God working in the small things, the big things will seem even more impossible, and we will mistakenly think God is holding out on us.

So where does this fit in the quest?  As much as I want to see big changes over this month, I've looked at the small ones and been content.  I'm seeing more small areas of muscle tone that weren't there a month ago.  Today, I upped the weight I use for Silver Sneakers.  Also, some numb nut left a barbell in the middle of the Free Weight room floor at work today.  Without batting an eyelash, I picked it up and racked it (someone [me] would have tripped over it if I hadn't).  A few months ago, I would need an ibuprofen or three to recover from just picking up a bar with no weights on it.  The numbers are moving down, but slower than I anticipated, but they are moving in the right direction. Plus, I'm running/walking faster and cycling further than before.  The more thankful I am for those small improvements, the more improvements I'll see.