The first week back to campus after the summer break is always an adventure and it is even more so at the local community college where I take my fashion design sewing classes and my husband teaches.  Aside from the terribly lost freshmen trying to find their classrooms, traffic is snarled around campus because everyone actually is going to class and parking is at a premium.  The smart students are the ones who ride their bikes to campus.  There are plenty of racks and poles where they can park their bikes.  Unfortunately, some of the bike riders have a tendency to engage in behaviors found in this filmstrip from 1958.

As you listen to the dialogue, pay attention to the rhyming scheme.

Bike Behavior (A Cathedral Filmstrip) Approximately 7 minutes long

Click here if the player is not working for you.

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.”

– Coach John Wooden

I was in a real live bookstore recently (yes, they still exist…sort of…) and was struck by the displays of books touting total makeovers of one’s body, finances, life, whatever in 3 minutes or less.  Okay, I exaggerate but you know what I’m talking about.  Late night television is filled with infomercials that tell you that belly fat can magically disappear or that if you give up your life, you, too, can look like a body building cartoon hero.

And people fall for it when they feel like they are in a desperate place.  I see this with homemakers all of the time–they get disgusted with their house and go bonkers cleaning everything, clearing out closets, and driving everyone crazy.  Only to fall into bed exhausted and doomed to repeat the pattern over and over and over again.

To live a fabulous technicolor life, we need to follow the wisdom of our grandmothers: Baby steps.

• When endeavoring to change eating habits, choose one new habit to replace an old one–such as drinking water instead of soda–and stick with it until it is a new habit.  It can be as simple as “I will have fruit at every meal.”  You may not lose 50 pounds in 10 days or by your class reunion next month, but eventually the excess weight will melt off and it will not feel like deprivation because you are easing into it.
• Injuries occur when trying to use muscles that are used to sitting on the couch for intensive exercise or when switching exercises and thinking you can do it at the same level of intensity.  After several months of only doing walking exercises, I was able to restart exercising with weights.  For the first week, though, I completed the exercises without any weights just to remind my body (muscle memory) of what it was supposed to be doing.  I felt silly but within a couple of weeks, I was able to feel my body reclaiming its strength and moving differently, even though I’m still only up to 3 pounds.
• Build your housekeeping routines.  And “routine” is the key word here.  I like using The Slob Sisters Sidetracked Home Executive card system to remind me of what needs to be done every day.  What I like about it is that it is a living entity.  When I started, I was still teaching myself how to keep my home clean.  It had just the basics–dust, vacuum, declutter, etc.  As my routines got faster and I started noticing more things, I added cards for them.  Moving to new houses necessitated adding new cards and removing others that don’t fit anymore (such as sweeping basement stairs…oh how I miss having a finished basement!).  As my housekeeping needs have changed, so have my cards.

The list can go on and on but I think you get the idea.

In the introduction to fashion class, yesterday, the goal for the day was to introduce our students (remember, I’m the tutor for the class) to the industrial sewing machine and help them sew a straight line.  That was “it.”  But it was enough since the machines are so powerful.  Our students will learn a lot during the semester but, as the professor told them, they will not be making bridal and prom dresses by the end of it.  They will learn to sew and design through a mapped out sequence of courses going from beginner to intermediate to advanced to couture.  Their first project will be a tote bag and then a year and a half later they will (hopefully) be ready for the couture sewing.

When we use the “all or nothing” approach to life, we are using “black and white” type of thinking.  And it’s hard to live in technicolor if we’re thinking in black and white.

When I was a teenager, The Beach Boys were my favorite group.  I’d wrangle my baby sister, Jill (Alice’s mother), into acting out their concert album using her Fisher Price Play Family Village people (those little wooden dolls).  We spent hours and hours and hours listening to the Beach Boys.  I wanted to be their Surfer Girl. (We won’t discuss my BFF Diana and I trying to learn how to surf using her father’s longboard in her backyard pool…crazy teenage girls! *laugh*)

Since we’ve been (mostly) having fun all summer long,  it just seems appropriate to close out summer’s Theatrical Thursdays with The Beach Boys singing “All Summer Long”…

Click here to watch the video on You Tube

So, I had some pork chops in the freezer and I decided to give “Pork Chops Diane” from The Complete Round the World Meat Cookbook by Myra Waldo (1967) a shot.  Is it a “keeper?”  Let’s find out.

Pork Chops Diane

So far, so good.  There isn’t anything out of the ordinary in the ingredient list.

Trim the fat from the chops.  Split the chops in half horizontally (to make thinner) but do not cut entirely through.  Open flat like a book.

I didn’t have six chops but three pork chop steaks.  Because they were already thin and large, I didn’t butterfly them (this is the “official” term for what the recipe describes above because you are opening the meat so that it looks like a butterfly).

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet; brown the chops in it on both sides.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter

Browning the chops

Remove the chops.  Heat the remaining butter in the pan, add the onions, and saute’ 3 minutes.

Saute' onions in 1 tablespoon butter for 3 minutes

Blend in the cornstarch, salt, mustard, and pepper.  Gradually add the broth, stirring steadily to the boiling point.

This is where I ran into trouble.  I used prepared mustard as instructed but I think mustard still in its powdered form would have been better.  I combined the ingredients before adding them to the butter/onion mixture and the dry ingredients clumped to the prepared mustard that then just stayed kind of lumpy when added to the skillet.  After whisking it a little bit, I added the broth and whisked some more.  I was able to get rid of most of the lumps but it just made for unnecessary work when the dry mustard would have worked just as well.

Add seasonings and broth

Add the Worcestershire and return the chops.  Baste the chops several times, cover and cook over low heat 20 minutes or until the chops are tender.

Add the Worcestershire and return chops to pan

Serves 6.

I took one chop and cut it in half to make a perfect serving size for each of us.  Since it was a hot night, and we didn’t want to eat a lot, I served it with sauteed cremini mushrooms and some applesauce (because The Brady Bunch has drilled into us that pork chops have to be served with applesauce).

Verdict: The sauce never thickened like I thought it would so it was pretty runny when I spooned some of it over the chop on the plate.  That in itself is not a deal breaker.  However, neither of us felt that this recipe was anything more than “okay.”  The chops were still pretty bland tasting.

No, this recipe is not a “keeper.”

When I was a child, I was surrounded by “the can do spirit.”  This attitude seemed to permeate all areas of our culture and as a result we had an era of amazing growth and prosperity.  Shoot!  We even managed to do the impossible!  We put a man on the moon!

In modern times, the idea of “the power of positive thinking” is believed to be a bunch of hooey.  But if we go a little deeper, we find some interesting stuff.  Here is what we know from language, cognitive psychology, and positive psychology research: Our thoughts and language impact our world view and how we move about in the world.  We will look and find examples to substantiate our beliefs and world view. For instance, if we believe the sky is green, we will search the internet to find proof that the sky is, indeed, green.  We will find other people who also believe the sky is green.  We will get into arguments with people who say the sky is blue and claim it is a government conspiracy, etc.  We will find examples in our daily life that reinforce our beliefs.

A modern retro woman still holds a positive world view and a “can do spirit.”  She knows that being optimistic and being careful to use positive language opens up amazing vistas for her and her family.  It is how she overcomes obstacles that the world can throw her way.  She really is able to look for the silver lining.  So what if it is raining, hard, on the last day of the family vacation!  It gives the family a chance to re-enact Gene Kelly’s famous “Singing in the Rain” dance!

When Ralph Kramden used to threaten his wife, Alice, with sending her to the moon in The Honeymooners, I doubt he thought that one day man really would be walking on the moon.  What is your “moon” and what thought shifts can you make to get you there?