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MY HUNTLEY NEWS

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September 8, 2022

Letting Go

There’s expectation in the air. It’s my daughter laying out different outfits on her bed, deciding on the perfect thing to wear to high school. It’s my husband, giving himself a smart haircut early in the morning before heading out to his teaching job. It’s the expanding stash of dorm room supplies growing in a corner, in anticipation of my son heading off to his freshman year at the university.

Even the dog has taken to sitting and staring at us, ears on high alert, playing some type of staring contest where only he knows the rules.

Yay-cation’s Top Five

Our annual family vacation took us more than 1,400 miles away to Utah: Our brand of vacation typically involves lots of driving, camping, and at least one National Park. This year, we visited Capitol Reef National Park and camped beneath a breathtaking view of a huge red cliff that took on ever-changing light and shadows from sunrise to sunset.

Even after being home for a couple days, I’m still feeling mellow and happy in my post-vacation glow. Here are my top five takeaways from vacation:

 

1.You’ve

Sock-timism

I consider it a good day when I remove an even number of socks from the dryer. I always put in an even number, that I know. With military-like precision, I unroll each and every sock from the hamper and verify its mate before throwing it in the wash. But somehow, by the end of the drying cycle, something’s gone awry. There’s usually one, lonely sock.

I keep the single socks. What else can an optimist do? Admittedly, I have looked up articles like, “37+ Unusual Uses for Lonely Socks,” but I just wasn’t really in need of a sock puppet or golf club covers or windshield wiper cozies.

This is Only Temporary

Every so often, I’ll have a week where it seems as if my coworkers hate me. Later that same week, my husband will start eyeing me in that way that convinces me he’s desperate to divorce me. My friends won’t call — a sure sign that they absolutely cannot stand me. And it isn’t just people turning against me — it’s dinner, scorched in the oven; the latch on the window that snaps off in my hand as I hurry to let the smoke from the oven escape.

Little is Cute, and Oh So Likable

Never have I been so reluctant to return a book to the library than Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings. Most of the recipes are mixed in a single bowl, and use simple ingredients. I baked my way through that book, making the cute little cakes. I started with chocolate, then graduated onto oatmeal chocolate chip, lime-coconut, and finally plum-cardamom. Each cake reminded me of my time as an exchange student in Germany when I was in high school.

Each Morning Begins with a Ritual

Our ritual each morning is this: he pads barefooted to the kitchen. He is a fast waker-upper; I am not. Even though my eyes are still closed, I follow along by listening to the sounds he makes. I hear the shoosh of the water from the tap going into the tea kettle, and the click of him turning on the stove. He tends to favor the burner at the back of the stove to the right, while I am partial to the front burner on the left.

Sun City Resident Creates Sharemystories

SUN CITY - Sun City resident Jim Hanekamp has designed a new app called Sharemystories, focused on preserving memories using photos, written word, and audioclips in a timeline format.

Hanekamp, 66, grew up outside of Chicago in a large family. During the pandemic, the six adult siblings, separated by geography, enjoyed regular Zoom calls to reminisce about family vacations and forgotten family lore.

“I started thinking about the things we’ve done and realized, I haven’t really captured these things anywhere,” says Hanekamp.

Facing Another Summer as an Adult

Summer hasn’t even started, officially. But school is out, and as I’m writing this, my teen daughter is waking up on her first day of summer break. Her alarm clock went off at 6 a.m., a leftover relic of our automated life that cruises along during the school year. Instead of hitting snooze, she gets to hit “off.” In less than 24 hours, the clock has suddenly lost its authority.

I, on the other hand, lift my head groggily from my pillow as I always do, trying to formulate full sentences to communicate to someone my dire and immediate need for coffee.

Hope Takes Root

It was a gorgeous day at the garden center. A gentle breeze danced through the heavily perfumed air, playfully mixing and mingling with the sweet and savory scents of the flowers and herbs. The earthy scent of grass clippings and warm soil felt like a tender embrace, comfortable and calm.

The parking lot was nearly full, but as we navigated up and down the rows looking for an open space, the other drivers were surprisingly patient, politely waiting for each other.

Going Up? The Harrowing Ascent to the Yellow Brick Road

For a good five minutes, I was convinced I was going to have to listen to the Elton John concert while stuck in an elevator.

At, least, it felt like five minutes: the time it took for the elevator to arrive to take us up to our seats in the nosebleed section, where our seats were located at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. We were there to see Elton John perform live for his Farewell Tour.

We were relieved, my friends and I, to see there was an elevator operator, who had an air of authority perched on a stool in front of the panel of elevator buttons.

‘Sentimental Journey’ takes you on a trip of a lifetime

The Theatre Company of Sun City’s will present Sentimental Journey, a musical about an entire lifetime and the milestones along the way in a production that is both humorous and heartwarming, featuring familiar songs and dances of days gone by.

The show is created by Rob Kaye, director, and Peter Davis, music producer.

Kaye and Davis created the show for luncheon and dinner theater in the mid-90s, when they worked as partners in a theater production company. At the time, Kaye says he drew on stories told by his grandparents, who remembered the day they brought home their first TV, which seemed enormous with its sixteen-inch screen; they also recounted the sight of military vehicles coming down neighborhood streets to deliver sad news to families of the enlisted during WWII.

There’s no entrance exam for parenthood

Before we had children, my husband and I decided to adopt a cat.

We were in our early 20s, starting our jobs that we hoped would turn into careers, living in a sunny one-bedroom apartment. We had to download forms off the internet, fill them out, and take them to an office where a woman looked at us sternly from across her desk. She asked us if we had a vet.

A vet? No, we don’t have a vet. We don’t even have a pet.

Welcome to the Table

Last week, a group of dear college friends came to my house for fondue. Every few months, for the past 20-some years, we track each other down and have dinner together. Each time we gather, a new chapter is added to our ongoing stories: We’ve shrieked over engagement rings, attended each other’s weddings, compared swollen ankles during pregnancies. We’ve rocked each other’s babies and handed down clothing. We’ve helped each other move out of apartments and into houses. We’ve held each other at funerals and during divorces.

Pandemnesia: How will our memories smooth out the rough edges of these past two years?

It could be argued that, between the fact that my husband is a band director at a large high school and that all four of our children have either gone through or are going through the music department at the same high school, I have attended dozens —-maybe hundreds? —- of concerts.

I enjoy the concerts, but you could say that over the course of a couple decades, the novelty of attending these live performances has worn a bit thin.

But last week, I found myself in the school auditorium, sitting at the edge of my seat toward the front of the auditorium, waiting for my husband (and my son, who plays tuba), to take the stage for the winter band concert.

Confessions of a Library Lover

My childhood library stood directly across the street from the church where my father was a minister. When I wasn’t helping Dad in the church folding bulletins, or sharpening the pencils in the pews, I was across the street, exploring our local library. I spent hours there. Each time I entered the front doors and heard the soft trickle of water coming from the fountain in the lobby, I felt as though I’d walked into a space just as sacred as the sanctuary across the street.

Online word game spells out L-O-V-E for long distance couple

HUNTLEY - Rose DeMay wasn’t looking for romance. But an online word game laid the groundwork for an unlikely friendship with a gentleman in Australia which, over time, developed into a second chance at love.

Today, she wears a shiny new engagement ring given to her by Don Pritchard, who hails from Nambour, part of the Sunshine Coast Region in Queensland, Australia. At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, while visiting her in Huntley, Don asked Rose to marry him.

Missing my Forest Retreat

When we bought a little teardrop camper in 2019, we had no idea how much we’d love it. And, much to our surprise, our winter camping outings became even more cherished than in the summer: something about the near-vacant campsites, the icy glare of the moonlight reflected in the snow. With fewer humans around, we became more intensely aware of the hooting of an owl, or the skitter of deer as they ran to a stand of trees.

By the winter of 2020, my husband and I developed a wintertime routine: precisely at 5:30 p.m.

My Word of the Year

As much as I love the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, I rarely make them.

Many folks choose a word of the year, and I’m one of those people. I choose a word rather than making a goal that I know, at a cellular level, that I can’t reach. Behind me, I leave a trail of unrealized New Year’s resolutions.

One year, I made the resolution to exercise. Cliché, I know. I got a gym membership, exercised a few months, then skipped the gym and kept paying the monthly fee because “I might go back.”

Imposter syndrome

Ever feel like a phony?

I have been feeling like an imposter for the last few days. I pride myself in being a minimalist, talk about simplifying life, and blog about wanting less…yet, if you were to come to my house today, you’d see that a corner of my bedroom has overflowing stash-and-dash boxes filled with who-knows-what miscellany, and I have laundry in various stages of dirty, clean, sorted, unsorted, folded, and yet-to-be folded throughout my house. There’s a suspicious-looking potato lurking in the very back of my fridge.

Singing My Hallelujahs

On a whim, I signed up for a community choir audition. My voice trembled for the entire audition. I struggled to reign in my voice, which doesn’t respond the way it did in my younger days. My voice now is weaker, and sometimes even raspy. To make matters worse, I had to sing the Star Spangled Banner. Unless you have a multi-octave range with a penchant for belting, the Star Spangled Banner is very difficult to sing. Our national anthem is, in my humble opinion, one of the most unsingable songs ever written.

In the Mood for Food

Is there anything better than eating? It doesn’t matter if I’m eating with my best pals, or eating alone by the light of the refrigerator, or just testing a bit of something off the wooden spoon as I lean over the stove burner. The sensory cornucopia that is cooking and eating is often the highlight of my day: it’s one of those few activities that employs all five of the senses at once: seeing the vibrant colors mix as you chop red peppers, orange carrots, white onion, and green broccoli for a stir-fry; the warmth of something coming out of the oven; and smell of vanilla or cinnamon or maybe even chocolate; the sound of oil crackling when it hits the hot cast iron skillet.

Chicago area shelter provides a safe haven for women escaping trafficking, sexual exploitation

On Refuge for Women's homepage, a graduate is quoted: ““Having a chance to be in a safe place to heal means somebody thought I was worth it, even though I dared not believe I was.”

Refuge for Women is a non-profit, faith based organization that provides emergency and long-term housing to women who have escaped human trafficking or sexual exploitation. The Chicagoland area program home, in an undisclosed location in the McHenry County area, opened in 2016 and is one of 11 program homes across the U.S.

Throw Out Your Microwave

I want you to throw out your microwave. I know that's not a popular opinion. It’s the beginning of soup season, for pete’s sake. The Bureau of U.S. Labor and Statistics reports that more than 90% of American households have a microwave oven. But when I wrote a blog post titled  Three Things I Don't Need (Since I Bought a Small House), I explained why I got rid of mine shortly after we moved into a home of less than 1,000 sq.

Carving Out His Niche: Local Artist Is A Jack-o-Lantern of All Trades

HANOVER PARK - Dennis Franzen is an accomplished artist — his work has been featured on billboards and commercials. His sculpture entitled “America’s Hero,” featuring the image of a firefighter, has even been featured prominently on several episodes of the hit TV show, Chicago Fire.

Franzen, based in Hanover Park, prides himself on being a versatile artist — he is an illustrator who also paints and works in metal, wood, and glass.

Three years ago, he discovered another medium for his art: pumpkins.