Hodgepodge Wednesday

Ta-da! Today is the Hodgepodge and I'm back in the game. Thanks to Joyce, our hostess, for the weekly questions!

1. Sunday was the first day of spring. So they say. Ahem. What is your favorite outdoor springtime activity?  Cleaning up the yard, actually. I love getting it spruced up and planted -- such a great and thorough change from the dead winter!

2. Who would you want to come into your kitchen to cook dinner for you?  My friend, Erin, who is an amazing cook. Any time she'd like to come on over, I'd be happy to see her ....

3. When did you last fly a kite? When I was about 11, I think -- at our house. There is quite a lot of kite flying on the beaches of NJ all summer -- beautiful and complex kites -- but I never was part of that particular activity.

4. What topic puts you to sleep faster than anything? Philosophy; i.e. man's thinking about man. I'm much more interested in God's thinking about man, actually.

5. Which flowers do you associate with specific people, places, or events? Daffodils -- my mother. She affectionately called them her "daffy-down-dillies" and she looked forward to their return every year.

6. What significant historical events took place during your elementary school days? The early space missions (John Glenn, all the way up to the early lunar missions). The assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK.  The Vietnam War. Kent State. Hmmmm..... I was in elementary school from 1963 to 1969 (6th grade). I could google for additional events, but it's more fun to try to remember them myself and to read them from the blogs of others who are participating today.

7. Do you swear? Do you pseudo-swear? (You know crap, shoot, friggin'?) I occasionally swear and often pseudo-swear. I'm not proud of the swearing. The pseudo-swearing bothers me less.

8. Insert your own random thought here. Randomly speaking, I miss the cookies known as Mallomars. A Mallomar, which is an incredible dark chocolate shell coating a teaspoon of marshmallow on top of a graham cracker crust, is truly is the world's most perfect cookie. They are (were?) a staple of New Jersey grocery stores all winter long. And they are neither seen nor heard of out here in the West.  Sigh. I could eat the entire package in one sitting. Of all the "native foods," of NJ, I miss Mallomars even more than pork roll -- and that's saying something for a Jersey Girl.

 

- Catherine