The 2021 Scallion: One for my baby and one more for the road

One more Scallion for you, my loyal readers:

2021 Scallion

(If you can't access it from the link above, just ping me in the comments, and I'll send you a PDF!)

Normally I include captions with the pictures in The Scallion, but honestly, that was just too much work for me this year, and some pictures needed a bit more than a caption anyway, so here is additional information about these pictures:

• Page 1, left: Vic loved fishing. He bought a fishing license every year, even though he long ago kinda gave it up (he started thinking the fish had feelings). But during the height of his love for fishing, virtually every gift he received had a fish on it, as evidenced by this picture. Vic is wearing a fish hat, a fish mug is affixed to his mouth, he is sporting a three-dimensional fish sweatshirt, he is holding a fish pitcher, and he is wearing fish socks. And then, over there on the left, is Murphy the cat, as if those fish are real!
• Page 1, center: Waggy loved squeaky toys from the pet store. She usually carried them around the house in her mouth, but she left this one on the couch, and Vic promptly put it on his head. I can't even count the number of “Vic put something on his head” pictures I had to wade through before I picked this one as my favorite.
• Page 1, right: For more than a year, Vic was told not to drive by his heart doctor. He hated it, but he hated the thought passing out and killing someone even more (he had a dark mind), so he stopped driving. This picture is from the first trip to Nebraska after he regained his driving privileges, so naturally, he had to ham it up.
• Page 2, Vic in the cone of shame: Here again, there were so many pictures of Vic wearing the cone of shame that it was tough to pick one. I chose the one for The Scallion because you can see his pouty face, but you can see my second favorite at the end of this post.
• Page 2, Vic with the horse: When we were members of the St. Vrain Photographic Society, we could often be seen taking pictures for a scavenger hunt. One year, one of the subjects was “horse,” and Vic saw this horse.We pulled over and he got his camera out, but that horse just came right over and gave him a big ol' peck on the cheek. He got so flustered he never even took a single shot! But I did.
  
• Page 2, Vic in the trunk: On our first trip to Hawaii, we left at the butt-crack of dawn. I was bringing the luggage out for Vic to put in the trunk, and this is what greeted me. The guy was just a class A goofball.
• Page 2, Vic with Wags: Let me say this one more time—the number of pictures I have of Vic with his sweatshirt pulled over his face would fill up a regular-sized photo album. But any picture with Wags in it is always going to rise to the top.

And then here are a couple of notes about the “obituary”:

• “I want people in tears, dammit!” Vic actually used this sentence on a number of occasions—whenever we would talk about his memorial service, whenever we wrote something for The Scallion about his health travails, every post on The Cancer Blog. It seemed totally fitting to include it in the last Scallion.
  
• Fletch was the first movie we ever saw, and we loved it. There was a scene with M. Emmet Walsh as a proctologist from whom Chevy Chase as Fletch was trying to get information. As he bluffs his way through the conversation, he gets caught in a lie about a man who died—the husband of a woman Fletch claimed was his aunt. That conversation went something like this:
• Doctor: It's a shame about Ed.
• Fletch: It was really a shame. To go so suddenly.
• Doctor: He was dying for years.
• Fletch: Sure, but the end was very, very sudden.
• Doctor: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.
• Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died, that was extremely sudden.
  
• So as I was thinking about The Scallion one day, this headline just came to me: “Beloved Scallion photo editor dies suddenly after years of declining health,” and that scene from Fletch came to mind right after. That's how I knew it was the right headline. 🙂
• The Underhills are also a big part of that movie. Here, Fletch goes to a tennis club to talk to the wife of the man who hired Fletch to kill him. He strolls right into the club and immediately overhears a man berating a member of the staff for trying to clear his plate too soon, and we learn that this man's last name is Underhill. He's a real a--hole to the staff member, so when another staff member notices Fletch loitering around and asks if he is a member, Fletch says, “No, I'm with the Underhills.” The waiter asks him if he wants anything to eat or drink and tells Fletch he will charge it to the Underhills. Fletch orders two portions of caviar, Lobster Thermidor and two bottles of Dom Perignon (a.k.a. Dom DeLuise in Sleepless in Seattle). When Mom was in hospice, Vic and I often shared meals with my sister, Laura, and her husband, Bill. I had Mom's credit card, so I would always say, “Let's charge this to the Underhills!” Then we just kept saying it, and it became one of those inside jokes married couples have that drive their friends mad.
  

And since I mentioned how many pictures I didn't include, here are a bunch that didn't make the cut. Normally I would create a new blog post for extra pictures, but again, that's just too much work for me this year 😉:

Fish socks close up!

Thank you again for your readership these last 15 years! Scallion out!

The 2020 Scallion: A Bright Spot in an Otherwise Dismal Year

At least we hope it puts a smile on your face—it certainly gave us a chuckle or two.

Ladies, gentlemen and four-legged friends, we present to you The Scallion!



(See that icon on the right side underneath the frame? If you hover over it, it says Full Screen. That will open up The Scallion full size.)

As always, thank you for your loyal readership, Scallioneers!

Your holidays may look different this year, but we hope they find you safe and warm and that your 2021 is healthy and peaceful.

With love,

Vic, Patty and Bella

A Few Words About My Mom

Blanche Schenkel

February 6, 1939–March 20, 2020

It has been almost a year since my mom passed away. That's 40 Saturdays that I didn't see her. One Mother's Day. One birthday. One Thanksgiving. And yet the hardest day for me was the day I drove by the new Runza in Longmont. I know what most of you are thinking: Runza what? I say "most of you" because if you are from Nebraska, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Runzas. Dough wrapped around hamburger, cabbage and onions. If you know me, you know I despise them. But my mother loved them, and she couldn't wait for the new Runza to open. She'd been reading about it for a year and had cut out the first article she'd seen. She showed it to me on one of our Saturdays, saying, "I know you don't care, but I'm saving it for your sister." Yes, I was the odd man out in our family where runzas were concerned.

At any rate, I saw that the Runza had opened and just burst into tears.

Grief is funny that way. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. At least, that's how it works for me. I haven't had a big emotional breakdown, but I'll see something that reminds me of Mom and smile a little smile while my eyes brim with tears.

Fortunately, I have all my memories of her, and these fill me with comfort. One of my favorite memories was when she surprised me with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions for my birthday. They were at Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln, and every time we drove by Pershing, Mom was afraid I would see the sign and the jig would be up. She took Laura and me to see Elvis Presley at Pershing, and the Osmond Brothers at the State Fair. (Well, she may have just dropped us off for that one.) I remember when Dad was making wine and something happened and the huge glass bottle of fermenting wine blew up in our dining room. Grape skin and purple liquid all over the white walls and the hardwood floor. Mom just stepped over the shards of glass and ignored the spreading stain and said, "This better be clean when I get home, Larry." She took us to work with her and to the bowling alley on bowling night. When we visited her in Nebraska, she would drive Vic and me around Lincoln so he could see her favorite places, and when she moved here, Vic drove her to the mountains so she could see his. We must have gone to Red Lobster a million times. She loved Red Lobster.

And I loved her.

To read more about her life, you can visit her obituary here:

Mom's Obituary

When she passed away, I wrote a blog post about her last days that included a bunch of pictures of her. You can find that here:

Mom — Her Life In Pictures

I recommend just skipping down to the pictures, because they really tell the story of her life far better than I could.

Oh, and here's one more picture that isn't in that set of pictures. I mentioned that Mom would take us to the bowling alley—Mom loved bowling. She was on a league until she was in her 60s. She had a funny hop just before she threw the ball, and it was adorable. Every year, she and her team went to a bowling tournament. They always got patches and pictures from the tournament. She was also a very good bowler, often bowling games over 200 and series over 600. After she passed away, Laura and I found a container full of her pins and another container of patches and a huge stack of pictures. Vic thought it would be nice to make a mosaic, so one day I just took all the pictures and patches and pins and made this little tribute.

She was a wonderful mother, and I will miss her all the rest of my days.

Just Because It Was a Crap Year Doesn't Mean I Don't Have More Pictures!

Let's start at the end: The family Christmas pictures that didn't make it into The Scallion.

First, we get together under the tree and try to coax Bella
to come over. She is having none of it, as you can see.

So then we get treats. She is very interested in the treats,
but she still won't get in the middle.

How about some random pictures of me and Vic in masks?

Mr. and Mrs. Lion King!

Matchy matchy! (Masks courtesy of my cousin Kim)

We don't have to be the same.

Here are a couple of pictures of a poncho I made, which I'm really only including so you can see how long my quarantine hair has become.

Vic makes stuff too.

Yes, that is a lampshade on his head.
No, he is not drunk.

Ta-da!
I was so grateful he put my new lamp together.

In The Scallion, I mentioned the fire that devastated our state. These are some sunset pictures Vic took during the fire.

And here are a few landscapes that aren't fire-related.

 

There's never enough room in The Scallion for all the critter pix I want, so here are a few more of those.

A bee on our flowering prickly pear

A praying mantis on our front porch

I really love these bumblebees.

Plus more hummingbirds. Because they are fascinating.

I also mentioned in The Scallion our love for all things extraterrestrial. This year we had a comet blazing brightly in the sky, and Jupiter put on a brilliant display all year long.

This is Comet NEOWISE.
It was super cool to see it in the night sky.

This is Jupiter and three of its moons. Jupiter is very cool.
(For those wondering, this was taken with a
Sony NEX-7 mounted to a little Orion telescope.)

I'll close out my night sky section with a bunch of pictures of the moon. I feel you can never have too many pictures of the moon. First, a cool picture of the moon in the clouds. This is a picture Vic chose for The Scallion that didn't show well in the smallness of that format.

And here are two pictures that augment two pictures in The Scallion.

Here is a series of pictures from high in the sky through moonset.

And another, smaller set. What I love about this set—which occurred the very next day—is the translucence of the moon. It looks like it has holes in it and the sky is shining through it.

And, now for something completely different: a series of pictures of the moon. This one consists of close-ups of the moon at its different phases during the month.

There! Now, no more moon!

Although we were on lockdown most of the year (much of it self-imposed), I did manage to make two trips. The first one was to Nebraska, where we had my dad's inurnment.

Laura and I did our own "matchy matchy." These masks were also made by our cousin Kim, and they are significant because the fabric is roses, and Dad's mom's name was Rose.

The day after the service, my (step)mom and I went to the Sunken Gardens in Lincoln, a place where we went many times with Dad. It was beautiful, and we had a wonderful time together.

Can you see the butterfly in the middle?

Then in October, I went to the Denver Zoo to surprise my sister for her 60th birthday. I wore my Votes for Women sash (this year is the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote) and pretended to be a pollster. Because I was wearing a hat and a mask and a costume (it was close to Halloween, after all), she did not know who I was right away. I asked if she was registered to vote, and she proudly proclaimed that she was. So I asked her who she was voting for, and she emphatically proclaimed that it was none of my business. I started talking about one of the candidates, and she eventually found me out. It was the highlight of my year.

Here's me at the zoo with my newest great niece, Rosalyn, and then me with my less-new great nieces and great nephew. Hanging out with them and my niece Margeaux and nephew(-in-law) Xan was another highlight of my year.

And here's Laura with Bill and their grands:

Because I believe no zoo visit is complete without seeing a camel, here is a camel.

Being on lockdown and having my mother pass away made me buy a lot of yarn. And being me, I have to sort and organize and store that yarn. So one day, I pulled out every skein of yarn I have, checked the pattern I have planned for it, sort it by project (scarves, shawls, hats, etc.), and then put it in the order in which I want to do it. This is just my scarf yarn.

And what would a Scallion blog be without a bunch of pictures of Bella?

Bella and her cousin Chloe

Just Chloe

Bella loves this new rug we got from Bill's mom, Ginger.
(We love it, too.)

Bella loves to sleep with her head on a pillow.

Bella does not love the cone of shame.

This is what we call "tummy tickle position."

I want to leave you with one more picture. I saw this outside of our house one day and just started snapping with my phone. I feel like it perfectly encapsulates my attitude for 2021, courtesy of Jim Croce: Nobody every had a rainbow baby / Until he had the rain. / And tomorrow's gonna be a brighter day.

We hope your 2021 is filled with brighter days.