What could possibly still be useful after 43 years?

My husband and I will celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary this week. I'm not sure where 43 years have gone or if I even have a good comprehension of them. The old adage keeps creeping through my mind: The days creep and the years fly.

I was thinking, besides my husband and myself, which of the wedding gifts we received do we still find useful?

I'll have to start by exempting the fine china (Franciscan Royal Renaissance) and crystal (Franciscan Elyse) from the list. Is it still useful? Yes. Is it used? Not really. More's the pity because it's beautiful and rich and comes with service for 12 and all the serving pieces. It was bought with the idea that if we didn't get it as wedding gifts, we'd never have the money/time/see the sense of getting it at all. And that's true. It's no longer made, it's worth more than it was listed for 43 years ago, and is… beautiful. But in a drawer. Or two or three.

We still use the silverware (Oneida Michaelangelo), good stainless steel. I have service for 18 or so since my mother had it also and my sister and upon my mother's death, we split her service for 12.

There are steak knives from Neiman Marcus, with very good bone handles. I know who gifted them. As I do the porcelain hanging lamp in the living room, the one with the orange flowers. It's subtle and since we've had the thing rewired at least 3 times, it's with us to stay. The yellow Club aluminum remains in the presence of the huge stock pots which I use to make jelly. I even have an original set of sheets because they were so fine I didn't use them until recently. A card table and 4 chairs purchased with my mother's green stamps. (If the 43 years didn't date me, then THAT just did!)

There's some Corningware, a strainer, a set of avocado green measuring cups which I finally retired to the cat food box. An electric carving knife. A few utensils that ended up in our wedding share when my father-in-law's business moved.

And, of course, the grapefruit spoons. Four of them, stainless steel, serrated edge, perfect. Just four spoons from a family friend. Selfishly, we thought surely there would be something else. It was JUST four spoons. Perhaps she was giving us the greater lesson, because we use these all the time. Not the steak knives, not the Club aluminum, not the card table or carving knife. These.

Useful. Used. Remembered.

39 and counting

Tomorrow we will be married 39 years. 39. Where does the time go?

So I got to thinking about what, besides the "selections" of china, silverware, and crystal, we still have that we had when we moved into our first apartment.

Two pieces of Club Aluminum. Harvest gold. I may have switched to other cookings pots (on my second set of Calphalon), but I keep the two big, 8 and 12 quart, pots for making jelly.

Steak knives. A gift from the best man's family. Bone handled. Bought at Neiman Marcus. Just as beautiful and sharp as the day we opened the gift.

Four grapefruit spoons, a gift from a good friend's parents. How little we thought of the gift then. How much we use them now.

A cache pot. Really. Think big white vessel we keep an ivy perched in. It developed a crack along the way. Who hasn't?

Hanging lamp from an uncle. It has orange flowers on it, tiny. We've had it rewired twice, no, three times. Love it.

My little gray plastic tool box which keeps the picture hanging materials now. At one time, it held all our tools.

Avocado green folding chairs. Acquired, along with a card table, with S&H Green Stamps. The table tore up long ago.

A crab/shrimp/corn on the cob cooking pot. It's decorated with all sorts of colorful creatures. We used it for years and now it sits on a shelf, but I'm not discarding it.

Avocado green Rival crock pot. Doesn't hold diddley compared to the new ones, but I still have it until it is needed elsewhere. I occasionally see it at antique stores for $5.

Various church cookbooks.

The hassock. It belonged to my parents and we have photos of me when I was two pulling the cat around by his tail as he lazes on top. He was definitely a good and patient cat. John. Mother had it recovered for us and gave it to us as a footstool cum coffee table. And it still is, 39 years later.

Oh--and we still have each other!

My Kind of Month!

It's my birthday month and time for all those businesses which I support and allow to have my email address to pay up! In other words, I have birthday coupons!

So far:

Chico's: $10 off. What can I say? It's spent already!

DSW: $5 off. No minimum purchase. Expires 8/31. I sense a shoe trip coming on.

Papa Murphy's pizza: free cookie dough with pizza purchase. Expires 8/31. Definitely doable.

Landry's restaurant empire: $25 has been added to my membership card. Expires: 9/15. Very generous, especially considering I have to drive a minimum of 40 miles to find a restaurant in the group.

Chamberlains's Restaurants in Dallas: This is an anniversary offer (August is a BIG month for me). Free creme brulee with dinner purchase. Alas, expires on the anniversary and I don't think we'll make it in.

Surely, there are more to come?

August 24, 2010

I started this blog 4 years ago today, so happy anniversary to me. I had just set up my first laptop. It was shiny and new and I was going to play with it! I still have the laptop, some of the key tops are worn off (a,s,e,n) and I've upgraded the OS, but I still love it, even if it's not shiny and new.

In the good news/bad news column, I found baby-baby hornworms on my tomato plants today. Of course this is bad news because they were eating my tomato plants, but good news because I captured the 7 I saw and have confined them to a jar. Here we go, I'm trying again. Since the grandest grandkids are coming to stay Friday night, maybe one of the blessed worms will still be alive so we can watch it munch away.

Whereas their predecessors were about 4 inches long and as big around as my little finger, these guys are about an inch long and skinny. But they do have that distinctive horn and it is disproportionately large. I could say something, but I won't.

Our 35th

Today is our 35th anniversary. We are spending it in typical anniversary style: he is golfing, I am doing the laundry. (To be fair, we are spending the night in Dallas and going to dinner and brunch and shopping next weekend.)

But the day of our anniversary always has me thinking of the ones that came before.

The first: Memory is hazy. I think I dug the top layer of the wedding cake out of the freezer and we had a bite and discarded it.

2-14: Haven't a clue.

15: Oh, I remember number 15. We were on the RV adventure to Maine, coming home. The day before our anniversary we'd been traveling on the New York State Thruway (or somesuch) and noticed our friends and their RV were no where in sight. We circled back (not easy to do) and found them with a broken down transmission. After taking their kids aboard, we watched as their RV was crated off to a dealership in Syracuse. (Or was it Rochester?) Long story short, the part to fix it was coming from Boston, would take several days, and after we all spent the night in the Toyota dealership lot, we had to part ways because we had to be home. We went on to Niagara Falls without them. So on our 15th anniversary, we were 4 sad little sacks without our travelmates, eating baloney sandwiches in our RV in the parking lot. It was, sad to say, our last RV trip before we sold it.

16-19: Haven't a clue.

20: Spousal unit made arrangements and whisked me off to Dallas in the middle of the week for a night at The Mansion on Turtle Creek. We had a lovely meal, a relaxing night, and ate breakfast at McDonald's so we could be home in time for the office to open.

21-28: Started the night in Dallas routinely. DIdn't always do it.

29: Night at The Mansion, treated sons and girlfriends (now wives) to dinner on the government's $600 tax refund. Spent more than $600. Took kids to the Ft. Worth Zoo the next day.

30: Celebrated a month late, but we went to Santa Fe and stayed in a B&B near downtown. Great time.

31: See 21-28 above.

32: Didn't stay the night, but we planned our Australia trip with the travel agent.

33-35: Pretty much a night in Dallas, or at least a day.

Here's to 35 more!