Category Archives: Family

There’s been three weeks of silence here at Veronica’s Cornucopia, which isn’t unprecedented, but I haven’t done that since I was new to blogging with only 1.2 followers, of which 1.02 really didn’t care if I posted or not-lol.  To cut to the chase and explain my absence, my Grandpa passed away soon after my last post and I just  haven’t felt like blogging since.  I still don’t.  I had actually wanted to make a Thankful Thursday about Grandpa ever since he passed away, and just haven’t been able to yet, despite having lots to say, and lots of pictures, and actually really wanting to share his life with you. Just can’t do it yet.

I’m not the broken wreck you may be imagining, for the most part I’m still my happy self, but still, the loss of a loved one takes a toll.  I still can’t believe he’s gone, just one week before he had planned to come visit us.  I’m thankful I got to see him last spring, but still can’t help but wish I’d gotten another “one last time” before he passed.

So anyway, that’s part of why I’ve been gone, the other part being that I just got tired of being tired and decided to start sleeping at night instead of blogging. And it’s made a world of difference–I’m doing much better at work now…though that doesn’t seem to matter as much now that I’m losing my job. Oh joy is my life! haha!  But at least I’m well rested. :)

Anyway, thanks to being in the Secret Recipe Club, I will be posting a recipe on Monday.  I just didn’t want to show up out of the blue on Monday with a recipe and act like nothing had happened, you know?  I had to at least give you something to explain my absence before it was happy happy joy joy recipe time-lol.

I hope you all have been doing well and keeping busy.  I wish I could promise you something as far as writing and reading blogs, but I just don’t know.  I can only promise to do my best to get back to it!  And at least I’ve got the Secret Recipe Club to keep me returning, even when I don’t want to, so thank goodness for the SRC. :)

See you Monday!

Hugs, V

I was just writing a post and after saying, “grizzle, please,” in it and thinking once again I would have to rephrase my words in order to be understood by the masses, I changed my mind and decided instead to just create a glossary for my blog.  You can check it out here, if you care to.  Right now it’s not very long, but will likely grow over time.

No longer will I hold back saying things like, “the Perch blood struck,” and calling you guys my “slicers”  when I’m feeling particularly fun-loving and affectionate.  Though, actually, I’d much rather call you my Cornicopi-cats.  Would that bug you?  I kind of love it.  Anyway, now you can just refer to my handy glossary every time my words leave you scratching your head, and soon enough, you will become Davis-lingual.  (FYI, I was born a Davis, and this is where my odd language stems.)

Happy Tuesday, my little slicer McSlicingtons!

When my sister, Lacey (middle), saw this photo on Facebook, she said “Well lookey there. Three little perches sleeping in the same bed. I like to imagine that we are all laughing at completely separate things. ;)”  Knowing us, we probably were.  It’s the Perch blood.

What strange words do you have or strange ways do you use words in your family?

CW is my Mom (yes, that totally hot babe above), whose real name is Shelley Ann, though everyone calls her Ann because she hates her first name.  How she came to be called CW is a long story that starts in a land far, far away.

OK, not really.  It’s a short story.  I guess if you’re still reading, you’d maybe like to hear it.

So my Dad used to call his Mom “Crazed.”  He seems to like dubbing the women he loves with these questionable terms of endearment because when Crazed passed away, his own wife inherited the title.  Over time, she became Crazed Woman and eventually, CW for short.

Mom calls him Crazy Man in return.  Despite these signs of marital dysfunction, they really do love each other, even if you do find threats on Crazy Man’s life from CW in the refrigerator from time to time…

Love how she signed it.  Since there are so many people that would write a note like this, especially considering they live alone.

Anyway, I don’t have much to tell you about CW except that she’s my crazy Mom and I love her warts and all, but I needed to introduce you to her because I’m going to be sharing a recipe with “CW” in the title soon, and it was better to make a whole separate post with her introduction and explanation of her nickname rather than bog down the recipe with it.

I guess I don’t talk about Mom a lot on my blog because, honestly, she causes me a lot of grief, and I don’t want to use my blog as an outlet to complain or bash any one I love.  She was and is a great Mom despite her issues and I thank God for her.  Because of her, I studied hard and got good grades in school because she cared.  She taught me right from wrong and introduced me to God, starting me on my path to becoming a Christian, and that is the most biggest, best, and important gift any one can give someone.  I’m so thankful for my mother.

Mom has battled mental illness since she was a teen.  I never realized she was different, I just thought she was mean and that she had what Dad called “nervous breakdowns” in the summer.  She could not handle it when I left home and as my sisters left home in the years after me, she had the worst period of her life when she was living in a complete nightmare fantasy that she had created in her head that involved a past she never lived.  To give you a small idea of what she was like during that time, she used to try to peel off my mask (i.e. my face) when I would visit, to see if I was her daughter or an imposter.

It took a long, long time, but Mom finally came back to reality.  Now she is different from when she was raising us, her hard edges have softened, at least where we’re concerned, and she is positive and supportive and in general, a lot more light-hearted.  She still lives up to her nickname, but in a way that makes it OK to make light of it because it’s not very serious.

Mom has only been treated for mental illness once in her life and likely will never be treated again unless she becomes dangerous to herself or others.  She was institutionalized for three months as a teen and was raped while under heavy drug therapy and she refuses to return to a mental health practitioner.  When Dad was in the hospital after his stroke, I could barely get her to come to see him, she was so scared to enter the hospital, and I had to hold her hand the whole way. But just like she pulled through for me when I was hospitalized, she pulled through for her Crazy Man too.

I don’t push the matter of her seeking help since Dad is also against it, and especially now that she seems to finally found a moderate amount of equilibrium.  Sometimes it gets pretty rocky, but for the most part, Mom does fairly well and we have learned to live with her the way she is.  She’s actually quite normal on the surface, and you’d never guess she had a problem if you met her.  It takes a while before you start to suspect there might be a little more crazy to her than the evil ring in her laughter. LOL!

So this is my Mom, CW.  I shared a lot more than I planned to but the words kind of tumbled out of my fingertips. Now you finally know my Mom and soon, I’ll be sharing a recipe from her.  Don’t worry, it’s not poisonous! lol  In the mean time, here are some more pictures I dug up while searching for them for this blog.  I really didn’t think I would find very many and was glad I’d collected more than I thought.

FYI, all the photos on this post will have titles pop up if you hover your mouse over them.

And I just couldn’t resist ending with this photo of my Mom with her parents…

When they came to visit that summer, Grandpa (the one who gave me the bike) totally confiscated my hot pink sun hat that I had just bought for the beach, claiming to love how the wide brim kept the sun off of him.  I hadn’t even had the chance to wear it yet, but he managed to talk me into letting him keep it and he took it back to Joplin with him.  I’m telling you, he wore that hat all over Wichita while he was here, flitting in and out of health food stores, and the man runs everywhere so he was quite the spectacle. Maybe craziness runs in the family?  You be the judge. ;)