Refrigerator Adventures and Extending the Dream...

A few days ago I used about ½ can of coconut milk to make curry and put the rest in a small round container in the refrigerator so I could make soup today with Thai tom yum (hot and sour) paste.

This morning I suppose I was thinking too much about Christmases past when I made my usual morning smoothie with yogurt, banana, and pineapple juice. It had a wonderful taste that I wasn’t expecting but didn’t think anything about it.

After I finished, I began chopping vegetables for the soup and then went looking for the coconut milk. Couldn’t find it. Got Richard involved tearing apart the refrigerator looking for it (he often moves things around). He couldn’t find it either.

Then I suddenly remembered I had gotten my containers mixed up and had used the coconut milk in the smoothie instead of the yogurt. No wonder it tasted so different.

So I opened a new can of coconut milk, used about ½ can of it, and put the rest in a small round container in the refrigerator.

Now I must make sure not to grab the coconut milk instead of the sour cream when I start preparing for the meal this afternoon.

And rewinding back to Saturday night:

Some young girls dream of being a ballet dancer but never the chance to even try. But for girls in this area who dream of tutus and dancing en pointe, the Children’s Ballet of the Ozarks gives them that chance. We were invited to see the girls next door dance in the CBO performance of The Nutcracker Saturday night.

We went and were very impressed with the entire performance. But what impressed us the most was that CBO has extended that dream to girls who do not have the typical “ballerina body.” Several of the teenagers in the corps de ballet were noticeably overweight. These teenagers will almost certainly never become professional dancers in elite ballet companies, but I liked that these young women are also being given the chance, at least for now, to have a taste of that dream.

And Merry Christmas to you all.

Who Are You?

Well, who are you?
(Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know

I find myself sporadically humming bits of the chorus to the classic Who song “Who Are You” (well, not the bits with the serious 4-letter word).

Much to our delight, quite a few Red Breasted Nuthatches have decided to spend the winter here. We have had the odd one at the feeders on occasion, but never this many. They are just adorable, and relatively fearless. I had one land on the feeder while I was still hanging it up -- I have to bring the ones that hang in front of the window where I work in at night because of raccoons. They talk to each other with their high-pitched “tinny yank-yank.” Unfortunately, nice picture window in Richard's office through which I have have the best chance to take a good picture of birds at the feeder is cracked and has become fogged. Pictures are not turning out.

Which is unfortunate because I could have used a picture to help figure out…

The Mystery Bird.

Husband and I spent probably 20 minutes or so the other day peering out the window at the suet feeder waiting for a bird to show up that we have never seen here before. He saw it first and alerted me so I joined him at the window with my trusty Peterson Field Guide.

This little one is a yellow/olive green in color, no wing bars, and a faint yellow eye stripe. There are 2 pages in the bird book of "Confusing Fall Warblers," and this one certainly was confusing. We finally decided it was a female Wilson's warbler, but questions remain.

Sometimes birds we have never seen before will show up for a day or two and then we never see them again. One can only spend so much time trying to figure these things out before you have to stop.

And then there is a Mystery Person.

My mom gave me the National Gallery of Art “Book of Days” early in the 1990s, but I had never really used it, so the entries for most days were blank. I decided last year in January to write a scripture verse every day from my daily reading. And as I moved into December I saw that on December 13 I had made a note to send Christmas cards, with a short list of people. Among those on the list was someone named Cody Davis.

Who?? I don’t have a Cody Davis in my address book. I have no clue who this person is. Of course I plugged his name in at DuckDuckGo to see if the results would ring any bells.  No bells are ringing. Cody Davis is a football player and seems to be a very decent man for a professional athlete. But no, I would not have sent him a card.

So again, I am left pondering “Who are you?”