My Son, The Musician

We always liked when our children became interested in playing a musical instrument.
My background is in the "Arts", so I was always keen to find out when one of them showed an interest in something cultah'd.  

We found that the oldest son was a natural stage actor and singer from the age of 5.  It's hard to ignore when at the school wide chorus concert he was in at that time, when you overhear many parents in the audience asking their companions, "Who is that child?  He is amazing!"
And no, I was not imagining it. ;-)
He dabbled in the arts but by high school decided it wasn't for him.  His "acting" ability will stand him in good stead though as he pursues his goal of being a high school or college level History teacher.

The middle child, the Daughter, well, she was gifted in math and science, with nary an artistic bone in her little body.  She did take up the trumpet in middle school but I think that was more as a social thing to fit in.  She also sang in the school's chorus and performed in the musicals.  Though she was no prodigy, she did discover an affinity for the guitar as a pre-teen.  She taught herself to play it and when she continued to show interest we did pay for lessons.  She performed(or played back up for singers)at high school events but she hasn't decided to pursue music as a vocation.  It's a hobby she enjoys and the urge comes and goes.

When it came time for the youngest son to decide if he wanted to join the elementary school band class, he was MORE than ready!  I guess seeing his older siblings both learn and play the trumpet(plus his sister played the guitar and was teaching herself the keyboard), he wanted to do that(play music) too.  He never gave any indication as a little guy that he was artistic and we figured he'd try it and lose interest like so many kids do once they realize the work involved in learning and mastering an instrument.
But then, he told us that the hand-me-down trumpets, from his siblings, he would get to learn on were not to his liking.
HE wanted to play......the flute!
He was drawn to the flute from day one.  So I went on eBay and found a really good quality used instrument for cheap money so when he lost interest after a couple of years, I wouldn't feel bad about spending the money on it, and I might be able to resell it to boot. ;-)

His siblings tried to dissuade him from playing "that girly instrument".  They knew he's be teased for not playing the drums, the sax or one of those other loud brass instruments.  Despite their advice and influences, he decided on the flute.

And instead of losing interest after a year or two, he stuck with it.  He moved up to the middle school band and then was invited to join the high school marching band while still in middle school.  Once he was actually in high school, music became his life as a student.....well that and French class.  A day without a lesson or a music class or a musical after school activity was a day without sunshine for him.

At this point we decided to upgrade his instrument to a better quality one.  He was taking lessons through the school but the time came that private lessons were needed to get him to the next level.
He stumbled upon a wonderful flute teacher.  The local music store had an arrangement with instrument teachers and she was working with them.  Youngest got assigned to her for lessons and the two just clicked.  After a few months, the teacher went out on her own and youngest son decided to follow her instead of change teachers at the music store.  Then his 1/2 hour lesson expanded into 45 minutes.  He is pushing us now to pay for hour long ones.

This is all just a very long way to introduce this video(albeit a questionable quality video as it was taken with Daughter's phone) of #2 Son playing at the student recital for his flute and piano teacher, which was this past Friday evening.  It was his very first public performance as a soloist.

Youngest has been taking "serious" lessons for about a year now.  Though in the music world, he is considered a "late bloomer", he has made great strides in his technique. He has decided to go to college for music(if he gets accepted into a program)and work in some capacity of the music industry/business as his vocation.

Without further adieu, here is Noah performing "Sicilienne" by Gabriel Fauré

Sluggy

The New Way I Grocery Shop

Having to cut sodium down to the bare minimum in my diet and having decided to incorporate juicing into my way of eating, my grocery shopping looks somewhat different from what it use to.

I made my first trip in May to the grocery store on Thursday.  I spent a whopping $113 plus change.

Here is what I got.....(I tried to group the items by category)

Produce
*12 Apples
*1 Jicama
*1 large Ginger Rhizome
*1 bunch Asparagus
*1 bunch Kale
*1 bunch of Parsley
*1 bunch Red Leaf Lettuce
*1 red Bell Pepper
*1 Watermelon
*2 Cantaloupes
*1 box Grape Tomatoes
*5 lb. Carrots
*2 Grapefruit
Meat
*1 package Chicken thighs
*2 packages natural Bacon(low sodium/no nitrites)
*1/3lb. low sodium deli Turkey
Canned & Bottled
*3 cans Crushed Tomatoes
*1 bottle Sesame Oil
*1 bottle Mediterranean blend Spices
Frozen
*2 bags frozen Ravioli
Dairy
*1 container Sour Cream
*1 qt. container Greek Yogurt
*1 cup Yogurt w/almonds(sweet snack)
Beverages
*8 bottles of 100% Juice
*3 2ltrs. Diet Soda(Sucralose sweetened)
*2 pt. size diet Sodas(ditto)
Breads
*3 packages Bakery dinner rolls(small sized rolls)

Now here is the stuff I bought for the family that I can't eat....
Stuff Sluggy can't/won't eat
*3 small frozen Pizzas
*2 packages Lunchmeat
*2 boxes Belvita breakfast cookies
*2 1 ltrs. of Diet Soda(not sucralose sweetened)
*2 x 1lb. blocks of Cheese
(Except for the cheese and diet soda, all of the above was for #2 Son's consumption only.)

Here's about all the types of processed food I bought......

I  brought a coupon for only one item(2 boxes of Belvita), but I still bought some items now because they were needed AND they were on sale, even if I had no coupons.  If an item wasn't on sale and could wait until next week, it stayed in the store for now.

The Northland brand juice was a great buy.  They were the dark fruit varieties that go for $5 a bottle around here so at 50% off, it was a deal I couldn't refuse.

All the bakery products were off the 50% rack.
The chicken thighs and natural bacon had Instant Discount Stickers making them 50% off as well.
I would have bought none of those items if they weren't 50% off. The meat will be frozen for later use and I incorporated the rolls into this week's meal plan.(We used some for Sloppy Hoe's Joe's last night and will find uses for the rest of the bread or freeze the leftovers.)

This is my new normal.
I still will use a coupon, buy on sale, and stock-up on items if the item fits into our new way of eating.
You probably won't be seeing savings rates of 50%, 60% or more like in past years.....unless I need to go back to Rite-Aid for the deals and start getting toiletries and such for free again. lolz
For now, a savings rate of 30% off regular retail on the food I buy is what I'll be shooting for.

And I'll still buy some junky snack foods for the family within reason.  I think I can resist the urge to devour it all if it's in the house with me.
My resolve is high......at least for now.  ;-)

Sluggy




 

My LS Sloppy Joes Recipe

I went searching online for a low sodium Sloppy Joe Sauce recipe.
Most of them I found called for using low sodium Ketchup and a full cup of it at that.
Yah......about that.

Why would I use over half of the small 14 oz. bottle of my LS ketchup, which cost over $3, to make this sauce?
So I used tomato paste and just added or increased the other ingredients that are in ketchup into the recipe.
This first batch was trial and error but I think I have come up with a pretty good sauce.
It's a lot less sweet than the stuff you buy in the can or in the dry mix packets.

Here it is.....

Low Sodium Sloppy Joe Sauce
makes 8-12 servings depending on how saucy you like your Joes

1 6oz. can tomato paste
1 6oz of water(use empty paste can to measure)
1 tsp. garlic, minced
4 TB. brown sugar
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce(or use reduced sodium version to save 20mg of sodium)
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. cumin(you can substitute cilantro double the amount)

Brown your meat and onions and/or other veggies you put in your Joes.
Add all ingredients above and mix well.
Wait 5 minutes until hot and serve.

I plan on making up a double or triple batch next time to freeze into meal sized portions so this can be a quick and easy dish that Hubs and the kids can make without having me around.

The sodium savings?
Reg. ketchup=160mg in 1 TB vs. LS ketchup=25mg in 1 TB.

If you used 1 cup of reg. ketchup(as the original recipe called for), your sauce would contain 2,560mg of sodium(or about 256mg per serving)from the ketchup.
My recipe is approx. 400mg of sodium(or about 40mg per serving)from the ketchup.
(There is an additional 65mg of sodium from the Worcestershire Sauce too.)

And here is the finished product.....

 

 

 

 Don't know if you can see the onions, grated carrot and yellow, red & orange bell pepper  I put into the meat mix of ground beef and turkey.

Here's my plate before I dug in.....

Sluggy

The Zen of Sluggy

These are just some things swirling around in my brain.  Some are profound while others are just ridiculous.  Still others just prove that I'm not quite right in the head.

Today's sayings......


"Fast Food is the Salt Lick of our Society but with none of the health benefits."

"If McDonald's is the deity of the fast food Universe, is their High Temple in Salt Lick, Kentucky?"


-Sluggy

The Mystery of Mary Creef's Child

Genealogy is like the world's biggest and hardest brain teaser puzzle.  You have some puzzle pieces but nothing fits until you get that one piece that makes them fall into place.  Sometimes you think you are working on a part of the sky but no, the puzzle is upside down and you are really working on a lagoon or a pot with 300 marbles in it.  Or is it Lincoln's nose on Mt. Rushmore?  You are always doubling back and re-evaluating what you know. You need to jump back and forth and work on this part of the puzzle here or that one over there.  Eventually you have enough filled in to make some educated guesses and figure out the big picture.

So I was talking about my sister in-laws ancestors, Manliff Twiford & his son, Fowler, in my last genealogy post HERE.
Fowler was the gentleman who was tried for "seduction under promise of marriage" to one Miss Mary Creef.
Given the testimony, lack of financial resources by Miss Creef to afford an adequate team of attorneys and that DNA testing wouldn't be available for about 80 years past the time of the trial, Master Twiford was acquitted.  His getting off caused quite the uproar in their small community.

I got curious about Mary and her soon-to-be blessed event.  What happened to them?  So I went looking to uncover the rest of the story. 
I searched on her maiden name and her name came up on 3 censuses--1900, 1910 and 1920.

In 1900, Mary is found living with her cousin's family in East Lake, NC at 2+ yrs. old.
In 1910, Mary is found living with her father and 3 brothers in East Lake, NC.  Mary is listed as 13 yrs. old.  This would put her birth date sometime in 1897. The father, James Washington Creef is listed as married, though there is no wife listed living at that address.
Further investigation turned up that James was widowed at that time, as his wife, Civility had died in Dec. of 1898(from her headstone dates).  The married designation was just clerical error.

In the 1920 census, Mary is living with one of her cousins whom she had lived with as a toddler(from the 1900 census records).  Mary, now 23, is living with her grown cousin, her husband and their children up in the big city of Norfolk, VA.

My theory is that given Mary was under a year old when her mother died, and the only daughter, and the only child of the family under 6 years old, she was sent off to be cared for by relatives nearby.
In the same 1900 census, James and 7 of 8 of his male children are living with him in East Lake, NC, only Mary is not.(From what I can gather James and Civility had 9 children together.  Further information indicated that the second oldest son had died in 1900 at age 23.)

From this point I uncovered a death certificate for a Mary Elliot Creef Muse.  Everything points to this being our Mary.  She passed away in 1972, in her home in Elizabeth City, MD.
Someone named Wally Creef, living at the same address is listed as the informant on the death certificate.
Now having her married surname, Muse, I was able to find the man she eventually did marry-Charles Mac Chestnut Muse.  Their marriage record lists his name as Charley Mack Muse (FindAGrave gives his dates as Sept. 1881-June 1963), and they were wed  in 1930.
However in the 1910 census, Charlie is found living in Beaufort, NC, married to a woman named Elizabeth. They state they have been married for 12 years in that census, so they would have married around 1898.  I found them again as a family unit living in Beaufort, NC in the 1920 census.
Charles and Elizabeth had 7 living children in 1910.  Their children would have been grown by 1930, except for the 2 youngest, who would have been 17 and 18 in that's year's census.  But I don't find these children living with either their father as a widower or their father and his new bride, Mary in 1930.

In the 1940 census we find the Mary(Creef)& Charlie Muse family living in Elizabeth City, NC.
After 10 years of marriage, there are 3 children listed--Wiley L. Muse at 16 years, Margaret Muse at 11 years and Harold D Muse at 8 years.
Hmmmm.....this would put Wiley's birth at around 1923/1924.....the same time frame of Mary's "delicate condition".  The newspaper article about the trial was dated June 1923 and noted that Mary was going to be a mother in a short time.

Further research uncovered Wiley's obituary from June of 2004, which listed his birth date as 3 Nov. 1923.  Counting backwards, that would have put Mary at 4 months pregnant when the trial ended.
Given that there is no indication that Mary knew Charles Muse before Wiley's birth, it's pretty clear that Wiley Muse was a Muse in name only.  In fact, indications are that Charles never adopted Wiley, nor did any of the Twiford men claim him, as his obituary gives his name as Wiley Lee Creef and lists his mother, Mary as his only parent.
I suspect Wiley was the person living with Mary Creef when she expired and the informant was listed incorrectly as Wally, not Wiley.
Wiley Lee Creef, worked for 31 years for the Elizabeth City fire dept. served in the Army during WWII and retired to SC after his mother died.  He never married and had no children.

So we know that Wiley was born in 1923 and his mother married in 1930,
but where was Wiley during the 1930 Census?  He would have been about 6-7 years old then. 
Searching under the name Wiley Creef I found him listed in the 1930 census living in the Pasquotank County Children's Home(an orphanage) in NC.
But by 1940's census Wiley was living with his mother and stepfather and 2 new siblings.
In this census Wiley's state of birth is given as Virginia, not North Carolina.

My theory is that Mary had been living at age 23 with her cousin's family in Norfolk, VA.(This is less than 2 hours away from Elizabeth City, NC.)  When she wound up pregnant she was probably told or sent to stay with her cousin or other relatives out of state in VA, where she eventually had the child.
This explains Wiley as listed as being born in VA, while the Creef family were all from NC.

 Back then, being pregnant was socially unacceptable and something families hid from their community.  Girls would often go away "to school" or go "help out a family member who needed a "mother's helper"in the home if they turned up pregnant.  They would then come home after giving birth.  If the baby wasn't placed for adoption  or given to extended family to raise, it was eventually brought home.
Sometimes the grandmother/grandfather would adopt the baby and pretend that they were the parents and the real mother was an older sibling(like Jack Nicholson's grandmother did), or the mother would go on an extended trip with the secretly pregnant daughter and come home with a baby that she claimed to have given birth to sparing the daughter the social disgrace of being an unmarried mother.

Having an out of wedlock child was a stigma on a single woman.  How did you earn a living to support you and your child when there was no one to support or take care of your child so you could work?  How did you find a good upstanding man to marry you with that scarlet A on your back?
The best that Mary could do was probably to place him in that orphanage at some point, unless the authorities were involved and she had no choice in the matter but to relinquish him.  To be 6 or 7 years old and living alone without family in a state orphanage.  The poor little guy!

It is safe to say that eventually, Wiley's situation improved and he had a fulfilling life as an adult and what seems like a close relationship with his mother.

And that is how this story ends.

Except for my ironic twist on things.......you know I have to have some kind of "life is funny" conclusion.

Remember that this whole thing started with a trial against the alleged father of Mary Creef's baby, Fowler Twiford. 
Even if paternity was denied by Mr. Twiford, Wiley Creef was related to the Twiford line via his mother Mary Creef. 
Wiley's 2 x Great Grandmother on his mother's side is Clarissa Twiford, born in 1800.
Clarissa is also the Great Aunt of Fowler Twiford(She is the sister of Manliff's father, Cornwallis Twiford.   Manliff is Fowler's father).

Aren't small towns and close-knit communities great for tangled up ancestral roots?

Sluggy