Tuesday September 10th, 2013

Snazzy title, huh?

Guess what today's national holiday is?  Well, there's a few. So I'll go over the main ones that overlap on the websites I'm checking out.

1.  TV Dinner Day. It was introduced in 1953 by Swanson & Sons and changed the prepackaged meal industry forever. Wanna know the first meal? The first Swanson TV dinner featured Thanksgiving Dinner. The meal came with turkey (and hopefully some gravy), cornmeal dressing, peas and sweet potatoes.  Not exactly what's on *my* table, but for an easy dinner, it passes inspection by me.  The original tray was made out of aluminum and had separate compartments for each food. You had to bake it for 25 minutes.  Because consumer microwaves didn't exist back then.

***I remember when everyone in my family got one around 1985.  I thought we were five minutes from living it up like the Jetson's. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we were closer to flying cars when the amazing microwave came out in the 80s compared to the "electric car" of today.

So each meal cost around 98 cents and they expected to sell around 5,000 their first year.  To their great surprise, they sold over 10 MILLION of them.  If you do your math, that's just short of 10 MILLION DOLLARS in 1953! Of course the TV dinner has evolved since the first year. It has added a dessert compartment, started selling breakfasts in the 60s, the Hungry-Man meals in the 70s, microwavable meals in the 80's (SEE?!!) and in 1986 the original Swanson TV tray was submitted to the by  the Smithsonian Institute into the Museum of American History.  Good stuff.

Thank you Mr Swanson, or I wouldn't be on a consistent diet of Smart Meals & Lean Cuisines!!

2. National Swap Ideas Day.
   This day sounds stupid, was my first thought.  Basically it encourages people to share ideas to help each other out.  It sounds like a painful brainstorming activity in High School that your teacher just randomly decided to do out of the blue, and picked out your group members for you, on the day everyone forgot how to think and communicate. On second thought, this sounds terribly painful to me. This one gets 2 thumbs down.

3. Lace Making Day. I guess this is pretty self explanatory.

4. SEWING MACHINE DAY!!!
   Apparently there are 2 days that this is celebrated on. The other is June 13th. Nobody knows who came up with either day. Makes sense for today, since September is National Sewing Month. I sew on a basic Singer 2932:

5. World Suicide Prevention Day.  Go check out the facebook for today.


Did you know there are actual calendars based on FOOD?! Today is TV Dinner Day, but yesterday Sept 9th was :

Wienerschnitzel Day!!!

Humongous Text is what I get for copying and pasting. This website (AKA my new favorite site) actually goes over each day of the year (and some days have more than one food!) AND THEN links to a recipe of that food! Mmm.

I found out there are also entire months dedicated to specific foods. I bet you're dying to know what's under the September Food List!

National Chicken Month-YUM!
National Honey Month-YUM!
National Mushroom Month-DISGUSTING. BLECH.
National Papaya Month-Yum.
National Potato Month. TRIPLE SUPER YUM.
National Rice Month. yum.
Whole Grains Month. Yum in toast.

So of course after today's September 10th Lesson, I'll leave you with 3 interesting events from This Day In History.

1897. The first drunk driving arrest: On this day in 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building. Smith later pled guilty and was fined 25 shillings.  In the US the first laws about operating a motor vehicle while impaired with alcohol became legal in New York in 1910.  In 2005, 16,885 people died in alcohol-related crashes and almost 1.4 million people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

For some reason, I thought cars were invented much later! And the most meaningful to me:

1991. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released as a single. I have probably spent hours wondering what Kurt's life would be like today. Go ahead, entertain that though. Would there be another bean? a few new wives? a reality show? the coolest guy alive still?  Go buy Bleach. then Unplugged. then Nevermind. But you should have all 3. Then buy In Utero. You will thank me.

Teen Spirit on LP: Nevermind

And the most surprising to me:

1977. The guillotine falls silent. ? The guillotine is what they used in France to cut off peoples heads starting in The French Revolution. The French thought this was more humane than the other execution methods like hanging or a firing squad.  So a French DECAPITATING MACHINE was built based on machines already in practice in England and Ireland, tested on CADAVERS, and on April 25, 1792 a highwayman became the first French to be executed by this machine. It was named "guillotine" after physician and revolutionary Joseph-Ignace Guillotin won passage of a law requiring all death sentences to be carried out by "means of a machine."

More than 10,000 people lost their heads during the revolution including Louis XVI (16th) and Marie Antoinette (former king and queen of France). In 1981, France outlawed Capital Punishment.

I seriously can't believe that lasted so long! I thought this was a 1700 thing. Not a 1970 thing! Don't know what one looks like? It's a big huge razor blade of death. 

Your head goes over the bucket and you face down until the blade falls and cuts off yer head

Isn't that crazy?! Oh, the things you learn, when you are googling something else!

Wanna know what else happened on Sept 10th?

Level 306 Savory Shores!!!

Have a wonderful September 10th, wherever you are!!! 

I want to say Thank you...

To all the new people who kindly chose to follow my blog.  I know many have snooty attitudes about giveaways and new followings, but I find it a fast way to get quick exposure to my blog.  If you don't like me, then you don't get that extra point on the rafflecopter!  If you don't mind, and I'm another blog you skim though, big deal.  If you find me super exciting, then we were meant to be friends, and the giveaway was worth it weight in gold.  Actually, it was funded by items that I have won in other giveaways, so basically it was free for me!  Before I get serious, I'm going to say a few things.  Why does blogger have HORRID spelling suggestions?  See up there, where I wrote "rafflecopter"?  I know it's a brand, and I don't care if I didn't capitalize it, and I know I spelled it right....but when I right-click for it's suggestion, it wants me to hyphenate everything or put a space between the words.  I get really annoyed at the end of the post when there are too many red squiggles.  I hope everyone had a nice holiday this weekend.  I'm not super religious, but more spiritual and I usually like to keep that part of my life to myself!

When you lose a member of your family, it feels like you lost a vital piece of yourself.  It feels like the family unit is down a leg, or missing an arm.  It feels like you don't function at your optimum potential.  You always feel that phantom pain for what is missing.  And it's always more apparent when you have a big family.  And that people in their 50's love to comment on their photos that they take of their family on Holidays.  Unknowingly pissing their "disabled" family the F*** off.  I still feel weird using obscene language, because I want to be professional enough to be taken seriously, but I really like the F word.  Sometimes that is the word that is the most accurate for a given situation.  My family consists of my parents, me, my teenage daughter, and my deceased sister (who was engaged).  I think of us as a starfish with a ghost limb, which would obviously be my sister's part.  She is always here, no doubt.  But you can feel that she's not here (paradox, I know) the most on holidays.  I don't like participating in the activities, because ignoring them is easier for me.  If I'm not eating Easter dinner, then I don't have to see her NOT eating Easter dinner.  If I don't see it not-happening, then it's not as painful for me.  What I'm missing out on, is special time with my family to rebuild some of the substance of unity that disappeared with my sister.  So I'm giving up a lot, in order not to feel that much pain.  Because it still hurts.  I think of the millions of people running around outside or in their houses finding eggs, and I miss when I was little and me and my sister were pushing each other out of the way to find eggs.  She was better at finding them than me, even though she was 2 years younger.  My age definitely didn't make my size two years older, because we were always the same size since she was 5.

People just don't always think, and assume that you are on the same elated level as them.  Scrolling through all the families getting together for the holidays, and people who post way too many pictures (of anything) are irritants to me on days like this.  I'm not trying to bring anyone down.  I'm being about as honest as I can get.  I am going through my almost third year of life without her.  If you grew up with someone and saw them all the time for over 25 years, I don't think 3 years is enough time to get-over-it-already. I don't feel like this every day.  I miss her every day, and that unbearable knocked-out, kicked-in-the-stomach, kneeling over holding your stomach, then kicked-in-your-kidneys (back) as-hard-as-possible absence of-breath feeling from kneeling-over pain is gone.  Basically, when you get gut punched, then fall down holding your burning intestines, and having that guy ninja-fly over your back until he's facing your back and kicking as hard as he can with multiple kicks, in one leap, than turning around and running away to do more ninja stuff elsewhere....  Where your soul is ripped out from the bottom of your heart, mashed up into a ball shape filled with spikey gloom, and punched back hard again, into where it goes by the bottom of your heart and lungs. *this is what I imagine it to be, since I studied anatomy and physiology quite closely, and that's where it hurt the most, when that second of life was ripped out of my body and replanted.  It took awhile for that new memory to heal in my heart.  And it goes through a LOT of emotions, sometimes back and forth in a single day.  I feel like I know the depths of life/death too early, than when I should have.  There are women who lose babies, or can't carry a baby that know this pain.  There are mothers and fathers who lose a child, before they are "supposed" to, that know of this pain.  And there are sisters, brothers, cousins, family and friends, that know this pain, but some are lucky not to feel this until they are 40 or 50, when they lose their parent(s)/other significant person.  Maybe you know how it feels, and maybe you are lucky if you don't.  And if you don't know what to say to someone, it's probably for the best that you don't, and your hug will be a great substitute for words.  Because those are what ring hollow in my head when I get in these funks.  And people can really say some off-putting stupid things, when full of anxiety on what they should say.  That's why humans have non-verbal communication, and that's when you should decide to use that option.  I know that I appreciate that the most.  Because grief is a monster that pits logic and love against you.