Wednesday Hodgepodge - Volume 518

Welcome to the Wednesday Hodgepodge!  Here are this week's questions, which you should answer on your own blog and then pop over to Joyce's blog (click on the graphic for the link) Wednesday to add your link to the party.

1. Next Sunday is Grandparent's Day. Share a favorite memory, photo, recipe, or something you learned from a grandparent.

This is my maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Pennington Turner (the younger generation all called her Ninny), shown here strolling along the Blackpool promenade with her sister, Georgina (Auntie Georgie).  Ninny lived independently for most of her life, only moving in with us and later with my mum's sister in the last few months of her life.  She loved to go on outings such as these, and I have quite a few photos of her in a gathering outside a seaside hotel or standing in front of the bus that would take her and her fellow pensioners off on a new adventure.

2. What's a quote from a book (besides The Bible) that has stayed with you? 

How I wish I'd paid more attention to this when I was younger.

3. What's your number one food pet peeve?

Jars that have lids that are almost impossible to open.  I have one of those gripper arthritis-aide things but sometimes even that doesn't do the trick 

4. What's one thing about you that is still the same as it was when you were young? 

I have my original hair color!  There were times when I threatened to reach for the bleach, tired of "RED!" or "Carrot Top" but I'm glad I didn't.  I've seen a lot of hairdressers in our 30+ years of traveling from one side of the Pacific and across the United States, and inevitably the first question they ask is if my hair is my natural color.  I'm happy that the red is fading to gold and the grey is coming in as silver.  It's a nice combination.

5. September is National Preparedness Month...does your family have an emergency plan? Do you have some sort of preparedness kit you keep on hand? If so, tell us one thing that's kept there. 

Ugh, we need both especially in "the big one is coming" Pacific Northwest.  I have a rough one in my head and lists saved with all the necessary items for a kit, but I haven't quite gotten around to putting it together.  This Grab-and-go Bag graphic from PreparedBC.ca is a good place to start.  I do have all of our important documents in one place so I could grab that if I needed to.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Speaking of hairdressers, I have a new one and one of the first questions she asked me was "Where are you from?"  Ugh, that's such a tough one.  I was born in Germany, and my biological mother was German.  My adoptive parents (I was adopted at birth) are Sylvia, a British national and Herb, an American soldier.  Before I was ten, I'd been back and forth across the Atlantic four times (Germany --> Boston--> Norway --> San Francisco --> Belgium, ending up in my high school years in England.  At that point, my family moved to California which is where I lived the longest (12 years).  I live now in Washington, having trekked back and forth across the United States four times with my Navy husband and we are now making our retirement home here.  I have a little family in the UK (Mum's side) and a few relatives in California (Dad's side), but I don't have what many of you have or have had like a hometown, friends from early childhood to high school who lived in the same neighborhood, or a high school prom and subsequent reunions.  I do have, however, friends all over the world through our travels and many adventures and experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything.  So, I may not be able to be specific about where I am from, but I hope my story will interest you.