Christmas is Next Week

Christmas is coming
with all the Christmas carols:
Childhood memories return.

It is that time of year again when memories of childhood return. One of my fondest childhood memories is my grandmother's Christmas deserts. Grandma always made Christmas cookies, chocolate cake, and pumpkin pie. She also made other types of pies, but my favorite was pumpkin. Another thing my grandmother made during the holidays was cornbread. I loved the sweat taste of Grandma Mary's cornbread. I have tried, but I cannot make cornbread as good as my grandmother.

Writing My Memories of Grandma and Grandpa

I'm thinking a lot about my grandparents. Since I'm thinking about them I'm also writing about them. I'm making blog entries about Grandma and Grandpa Newland. Of course, I had two sets of grandparents.

Most of my memories are about my mother's parents, Grandma and Grandpa Newland. I remember my father's mother, Grandma Darbe, but I don't remember Dad's father because he died before I was born.

I'm not sure why I'm thing about my grandparents. Perhaps it's the time of my life, I'm 62 and will turn 63 on December 24. Age may have something to do with the memories or stress. The years I spent with Grandma and Grandpa were less stressful. I don't know why I'm thinking about them lately, but as long as I think about them I'm going to continue writing about them.

I just read an interesting article about lists

I just read 10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists by Linton Weeks. This is an intriguing article, which tells gives the reasons people like to make lists. It also gave me some ideas for blog entries.

I have some very fond memories of lists from my childhood. My grandmother always made a shopping list before she went to the store on Friday afternoon. My grandparents did their grocery shopping on either Thursday or Friday. The day they -picked to go shopping usually depended on what they planned for the weekend. If they were going to go to Lake Blackwell for the weekend then Grandma Newland wrote her shopping list on Wednesday and went to the store on Thursday.

I don't remember Grandma ever going to the store without a list in her hand. She took a pencil with her and marked the items off as she or Grandpa put them in the shopping cart. Grandma and Grandpa always went to the grocery store together; Grandpa would push the cart and Grandma put the items in the cart. If the item was too heavy for Grandma to lift then Grandpa put it in the cart.

Writing about dream fragments

I've had some rather odd dreams in the past week or so. Actually ever since Tuesday when I begin my two-mile five day a week walk. I remember fragments from the dreams, short sketches of dreamscape with my grandparents in them. Some of the dreams are about reviewing on writing.com, while others have different themes. My grandparents are the threads holding the fragments together.

In one dream, pasta was scattered along the wall inside the house. Then someone set the pasta on fire. The idea of setting the pasta on fire was to drive the roaches out of the walls. My grandfather put the fire out that climbed up the walls and nothing except the pasta burned.

I haven't been sleeping very well lately, but the dreams come in those rare moments of sleep. I have the dream, roll over in bed and the pain in my knee wakes me up. The only parts of the dreams I remember contain my grandparents. I'm not sure what any of the dreams mean, all though the one with the pasta in it sounds like a good beginning to a short story or flash fiction piece.