Cooking and Crying Over A Good Book....What I Did Over Labor Day Weekend

It's the last day of a blissfully long weekend and like I said to my cyberbuddy Bren a few minutes ago..I am soaking up every precious drop! Travel-free days are cherished during the school year...especially during football season. In about an hour or so I will begin preparing Paula's Farmer's Pork Chops....this recipe is from her very first "The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook". As I mentioned in a previous posting I am so thankful to this dear Southern treasure...as she, like Julia, has really helped me in the culinary department over the last few months. Honestly the recipes that I have tried so far in both Julia's Bible and Paula's ....have been "YUM"! Lord I better hush as I feel I am starting to repeat myself!

I finished Laura Bush's memoirs yesterday and I have to say it was pretty good. The section about September 11th was particularly moving as I found my eyes blurred with tears and had to stop reading for a little bit and wipe my eyes...just knowing someone would wander in for something and ask "What's wrong with you?" When I read memoirs like that I often come away learning so much more than I knew before...I felt that way when I read the Reagan Diaries last summer. I was really sorry to be finished with that one. It was an amazing read let me tell you. I've only come away wiping my eyes twice when I read a book...last summer when I read "Honky Tonk Angel"...about Patsy Cline ...and our former first lady's "Straight From THe Heart". I'm not sure how I ventured from cooking to crying over pages in a book but it happened. Shoot when Dale Jr. drove the Wrangler number 3 car to victory lane at Daytona back in July with his Daddy's old paint scheme I had tears rolling down my cheeks....I've always been pretty tenderhearted I guess...let me rephrase that...a crybaby at times...but even though I have toughened up a lot since my nightmarish school days...there are just some things that really touch me ...and if someone is reading this I'm sure you have your moments when that giant lump forms in your throat and emotions and tears spill to the surface. Events and images...and even words on a page can do it.

The house is coming alive with noises of various decibel levels now...soft at one end and I would have to say at a volume level somewhere in the mid-30's on the television in the living room....and the urge to holler..."Turn it down!" is getting harder to squash...or maybe I'll just turn on my iPod to drown it out...LOL since the person who is watching is way over 21...and there is a pretty good chance that that something that his folks have done in the last three years...that really got to him when visiting...he is doing now too although I know he wouldn't admit that just now. So let's go fix some pork chops how about it?? Loveyameanit...Queenie