"Quack Daddy"

"Quack Daddy!"

LOL, that's not one of the kids asking dad to act like a duck.  Nope, it's the name of a donut shop in Pendleton where Spen lives and where we love to visit.

At its website I checked out their hours, but it says, "Donut Worry, Be Happy".

"Donut Worry"  that was funny, too.  So was the artwork on their wall, "Donut make you want to dance.  Donut make you want to smile."

Sitting in Annie's living room, she and Spen are discussing whether or not they've ever visited Quack Daddy Donuts and how many times and how recently and what kind of donuts they ate.

Quack Daddy's specializes in made to order, fast, and hot donuts.  You can pick the icing, and toppings, and order as many as you want.  Popular are combos of maple icing, bacon,  strawberry icing, and Cinnamon Swirl cereal.

With Conversation Hearts, Fruity Pebbles, and Sea Salt on the menu, you can see how it tickles not only the senses but the funny bone, too.

Spen:  Have you been to Quack Daddy's recently?
Annie:  In the last year?  Yes.

Spen:  I love their Maple Bacon!
Me:  Ew!
Annie:  No, it's good!
Me:  You've had 'em?  Yuk.

Spen:  I had a Chocolate Covered Bacon Donut!  It was really good !  I love 'em.

And I'm contemplating all that's wrong with that donut, excluding my personal aversion to that combination -- calories, caffeine, fat content.

Annie:  Did you have to ask for forgiveness?  Ha, ha, ha.
Spen:  No.  I ordered more!

Can't argue with a bacon lover.  But you can give him a cup of coffee.  Coffee always accompanies a donut, right?  They weren't actually eating donuts, but they were imbibing coffee.  From her Keurig cups Spen chose hazelnut.

Annie:  How's that coffee?  Any good?
Spen:  It's coffee!  Coffee's always good!

And we sat there dreaming of our favorite donuts that should've accompanied our coffee,
"Quack, Daddy!"

"Go Play, or Else!"

Life, I'd say, was more innocent and care free. In the 60's we weren't near so busy, and we didn't know everyone else's business in a worldwide way!  We'd just go outside and play. 

Some acquaintance said, "Would love to hear your experiences, and what you had to contend with; day to day life, meals, days out, what your day as young children was like."

My mind went zinging.  It went zinging right back in time to when my brother and I jumped off dad's homemade picnic table into a #2 tub of water.  Boy, we had to have been really little tykes to think it was full enough to dive into!

We weren't allowed to answer the phone, because it was dad's business phone. Before that it'd been a party line of what they called "3 old biddies" and he needed it free to get calls for his carpentry work housebuilding plans.  After he got the business phone we learned to always get a name and a phone number or "let someone else answer the phone!"

We made trails in the weeds, and tunnels in the hay bales stacked in the barn. We nailed boards to a tree for a ladder and then built a tree house. It always started with one of the boys getting a great idea, then we girls could play right along.

We pretended the pedal cars were real cars and would pass each other on that long sidewalk from the office to the house, and we'd parallel park along that sidewalk in the grass-free dirt.

We walked the sheep trails down over the hill along the river where we pretended to fish, and poked at minnows and crawdads until we heard a faint far in the distance call from mom to come home.

We didn't get t.v. until 1969! And even then it was black and white.
I was shocked at t.v.'s soap opera. Billy caused Peggy to have a baby out of wedlock? Some man stabbed a woman with scissors? Then there was the movie over which mother caught me crying. Bonnie and Clyde had been shot to death!  Horrors! We'd never seen such stuff!

Mom taught us every nursery rhyme you could think of, and we sang the radio songs right along with her,  "Hello, Dolly!"  They kept the record player going, too, popular tunes from Elvis and Tennessee Ernie Ford, gospel songs, kids sing-a-longs "Its a Very Good Habit" and polkas "She's Too Fat For Me".

Didn't know a thing about sex, or violence, or criminal acts.  The times were so uncomplicated that we fed a hobo a sandwich or two while he sat on that picnic table.

A #2 tub was a swimming pool.   A swingset was an amusement park. 
A blanket over the fence was a tent. Mayonnaise on bread was a sandwich.  An old shed from a remodel worksite of dad's was our playhouse, and yes, we made and ate mud-cakes.  And the outside brick structure of the fireplace was a stepping stone ladder to the roof!

We had to leave dad alone for a spell after work. Supper was on the table for him just in time. We drew his bath water and he taught us to shine his shoes.

If mom were sick, no matter any of our ages, WE cleaned house!

We were respectful to ANY ONE older than us -- ANY ONE, no matter their station in life.  

Swat to the butt, pop to the mouth, no book at bedtime, "You'd best take a nap", were quick corrections.

Neighbors trusted us with their fruit trees and their bull and their dogs and climbing their fences.  

We were taught music, encouraged to read, and learned common sense safety measures.

Breastfeeding and diaper changing were done behind closed doors. Speaking of closed doors, if you knocked on the parents bedroom door, you got swatted.  If you were locked out of the house, you'd better go play or else.  You never knew what the "or else" was.  Or that famous "I'll tie a knot in your tail."  Those were surely something terrible!

AND, no screaming unless there's blood! ROFL.

"Go play."  Remember being told to go play.  Wished someone would say that today,  "Young lady!  Go play!"

"One Frog To Go, Please!"

Phones are something else!  They used to hang around ringing on the walls never to be answered unless you were home, am I right?  These days our phones are truly amazing things!  Not only are they handheld but they can do the laundry, too!

When they first came out everyone was agog;  a phone you could carry in your hand with immediate access to anyone AND and it played music like a radio!  Fascinating.

Darling Hubby, aka DH, pokes around on his all the time.  There's an app for anything he wants, just press Play Store or Zedge.  Voila'!  An app to brush his teeth!

His cell phone has Waze.  His WAZE are not our ways, LOL.  His WAZE is W, A, Z, E, an app for how to drive from here to there with estimated times of arrival.  Careful.  These cell phones are so good they just might have an app to tell when the next granddaughter is estimated to arrive!

DH also uses Voice Search like Googling.  And he uses Alarm Clock and Weatherbug.  Part of his poking around is to decide on ring tones, and notification alert beeps, and alarm clock buzzers.  After listening for a half hour or more of things like Baby Shark, I'm A Gummy Bear, Cher's Gypsy Tramps & Thieves, Cotton Eye Joe, to meows, thunder clapping, and farts, he settled on an animal sound.

So, here we are at Bob Evans, more or less killing time.  The power's out, no electric at home, and we're hungry and cold.  The dear sweet waitress confirmed that we were welcome to stay and play some rummy until Duke Energy sends one of their own notification alerts that our power has been restored.

While DH, darling hubby, is ordering his Compound Omelette With a Side of Hurt My Heart Bacon, we all hear "Ribbit.  Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit."  Waitress's eyes shift left, then right, then at me, "I hear frog."

We all laughed!

We pointed to the phone and explained it was DH's ringtone.

This morning, on our third day of "no school due to negative degree weather", I'm in bed listening to DH's phone.  No, it's not ringing.  It's white noise.  Did you know there's a new thing now called pink noise?  Shoot, there's also blue noise and brown noise.  I digress.  We're listening to white noise, a nighttime sound to deepen sleep.  So, here we are lying in our now warm and comfy beds listening to this waterfall.

Imagine it, soft white streams of sparkling water cascading down the side of the hill to spill easily with a swoosh into the waters below.  Lazily stirring, not fully awake, still in the afterglow of a dream state, comes a sound, "Ribbit.  Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit."

How apropos!  Where else but in the waterfall of my mind would a frog be?  In my bedroom, that's where he be!

Even in sleep DH reaches out to make me laugh!

Miss Lilly makes me laugh, too.  Just like her papaw she loves frogs.

Last evening, while we played Euchre, she played with a bucket of miniature animals.  This green labeled bucket comes complete with a little plastic gray mountain, some thin fragile palm trees, a few dinosaurs like stegosaurus, triceratops, and pterodactyl, a sheep, and a frog.  Wait a minute!  A sheep?  Yep, he was a transfer from the Fisher Price farm barn.

She, though, spied the frog.  Frog got a loving "Awwwww".  I shuffled the deck.  Frog got pressed into her cantaloupe slice.  I dealt 5 cards to each of the 4 players, slide, snap, slide, snap, pick 'em up, fan 'em out.  Miss Lilly says, "Froggy in the wa. ter."  Miss Lilly is only 2, and she speaks in a high pitched "meow" kind of voice and each syllable is said like it's its own word.  I'm replaying what she said in the back of my mind.  "Froggy in the wa. ter."

Whoops!  She's headed out of the room!  She's going to the bathroom!  We'd just filled buckets of water for the power outage and I hadn't emptied them yet.  Some are still sitting in the tub.  And...she's gone!

So am I.   Like a burgeoning shot of water out of a garden hose, I had to arrive at the tub before she did.  And...I did!  Miss Lilly was still toddling to the door, holding Mr. Green Frog out in front of her leading the way, "Froggy in the wa. ter."

May I have one frog to go,  please!