Not THAT Super Granny

So I thought that since my publisher and I finally agreed on the title for my book to be published early in 2009 (SUPER GRANNY: COOL PROJECTS, ACTIVITIES, AND OTHER GREAT STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS), I should rename the URL for my blog to Super Granny. Couldn't figure out how to do that. Okay, I thought, I'll create a new blog by that name. Couldn't do that either because SuperGranny.blogspot.com is already taken. And then came my adventures in cyberspace.

SuperGranny.blogspot.com had one post and one comment, both in a language totally unfamiliar to me. Nothing was posted after August 2005.

Super-granny.blogspot.com and SuperGrannysays.blogspot.com both led me to a site advertising a "home business opportunity." Both sites are now inactive.

(N)SuperGranny.com led me to the site of a granny in Sweden who has a "cattery," from which she sells Himalayan cats.

TheSuperGranny.com is a site that sells an energy drink.

And then there are loads of Super Granny video games, which sound like lots of fun.

And so I conclude my latest trekking in cyberspace by deciding to keep omasally.blogspot.com, and hope my friends will continue to find me here.

And speaking of cyberspace, those of us with tech-savvy children and grandchildren are truly lucky. My grandson found me what might be a good notebook computer on eBay, my granddaughter showed me how to set up a PowerPoint presentation, and my daughter the web designer (www.dorriolds.com) fixed the photo on this page so that my face is back to its normal proportions instead of being widened as if I were looking in a funhouse mirror!

Granny's Cinnamon Buns

Granny's cinnamon buns

When I took Nina for lunch at the American Girl Cafe in New York, she especially enjoyed the cinnamon buns they served with the meal. So I promised her that the next time she visited me we would make our own. Which we did, following my mother’s (Nina’s great-grandmother’s) recipe, which my daughter, Dorri Olds (Nina's aunt), wrote up for the delightful book AT GRANDMOTHER'S TABLE: WOMEN WRITE ABOUT FOOD, LIFE, AND THE ENDURING BOND BETWEEN GRANDMOTHERS AND GRANDDAUGHTERS. Edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley, the book is published by Fairview Press and is now out in paperback.

Here's the recipe for Granny's Cinnamon Buns:

GRANNY’S CINNAMON BUNS

3 cups flour
scant ½ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 envelope (1 Tblsp) dry active yeast, dissolved in 2 Tblsps warm (not hot) water with ½ tsp sugar. Yeast should bubble up in 5 mins, showing that it is active.
¼ pound + 4 Tblsp (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup milk, scalded
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup mashed potatoes (fresh or instant)
3 Tblsp brown sugar and/or maple syrup
24 walnut or pecan halves
2 tsp cinnamon
½ cup raisins

1)Combine flour, ½ cup sugar & salt. Mix in yeast water and set aside.
2)Melt ¼ lb. butter in the scalded milk. Add to the flour, then add eggs & mashed potatoes.
3)Mix well, stirring, until mixture comes away from the bowl. Refrigerate overnight (or up to 3 days).
4)Butter muffin pans generously. Pour a little brown sugar or maple syrup (Granny used both) into the bottom of each muffin cup. Then put in an upside-down walnut half.
5)Roll out half the dough on a lightly floured board. Spread 2 Tblsp soft butter over the dough. Then spread 1 Tblsp sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, & ¼ cup raisins over the dough.
6)Roll the dough up tight & slice it into one-inch thick pieces. Repeat this process for the other half of the dough.
7)Place the one-inch thick pieces in the muffin cups, set them on top of the stove (with the oven turned on the lowest temperature you can make it), and cover them with a towel. Let the dough rise until doubled, about 45 minutes.
8)Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
9)Bake buns for 25 to 30 minutes. Take the pans out of the oven & let them stand for 1 to 2 minutes before turning them out onto brown paper.
10)This recipe makes 24 delicious cinnamon buns.
11)Enjoy!

New title, same Oma Sally!

I have just changed the title of my blog, to reflect the title of my book, SUPER GRANNY: COOL PROJECTS, ACTIVITIES, AND OTHER GREAT STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS, which will be published by Sterling Publishing Company early in 2009. It will still be a communication from me about grandmothers and grandchildren, and I still eagerly welcome any and all messages from other modern grannies and grandkids.

This reminds me of a sign I saw a few years ago in a grocery store that had just computerized its operations. The sign read: PLEASE BE PATIENT. NEW COMPUTERS, SAME OLD LADIES.

Looking forward to hearing from young, old, and inbetween,

Oma Sally

grandmother names

As I have been interviewing grandmothers for my book, SUPER GRANNY, I have loved hearing all the different names that their grandchildren call them by. There’s Granny, of course, and Grandma, and Nana. And then a host of others.

I am Oma to all my grandchildren. This started because Jennifer, the mother of Stefan, my first grandchild, was married to a German man, and Oma is the German name for Grandma. There’s also Grossmutter – but that’s a bit more formal. When Stefan and his sisters visit us here in the U.S., I am just Oma. But when we visit them in Germany, I am Oma Sally, to distinguish me from Oma Mitzi, their other grandmother. When our two U.S.-based grandchildren came along, it seemed easier for all of them to call me by the same name. I don’t know how my mother remembered who she was to all her grandchildren! My children called her Granny, my brother Buddy’s children (who had lived in Italy) called her Nonna, and my brother Carl’s children called her Bubby, the Yiddish word for grandmother. They called my grandmother, who was their great-grandmother, Bubby-Bubby. She had always been Grandmom to me.

Some grandmother names reflect a child’s first learning to talk – like Bam and Gamma and GamGam. Pally reflects one grandmother’s habitual greeting, “Hey, Pal!” There’s Ammamma (Indian), Savta (Israeli), Meema (I think this means Mom in Hebrew), and Babu (Nepali). Some grandmothers go by their first names, easy for little ones to say and special to the grandchildren, not the grown children, who still say “Mom.”

I’d love to hear more grandmother names!

Say it in email

For those of us who have not studied a foreign language in lo these many years, there's a really easy one to learn: Emoticon! "Emoticons" are little pictures that your email program may come with, allowing you to express an emotion without words. Or, as my 11-year-old granddaughter, Lisa, taught me, you can make some yourself just by striking the right keys on your computer.

Here are some emoticons that Lisa sent to me:

:-) Smile
:-( Frown
;-) Wink
:-P Tongue-out (Lisa’s favorite)
:-D Laughing
:-[ Embarrassed
:-\ Undecided
=-O Surprise
:-* Kiss
>:o Yell
8-) Cool (Lisa’s other favorite)
:-! Foot-in-Mouth
O:-) Innocent
:'( Cry
:-X Lips-are-Sealed


So -- enjoy! :-)

Hot Granny!

My wonderful Hollywood-writer niece, Gina Wendkos, sent me Mel Walsh's great little book, "Hot Granny: Fabulous at 50, 60, and Beyond!" It's full of telling-it-like-it-is and how-to-make-it-better for those of us who have reached a certain age, and it's very funny, as in : "You can look like a horse, walk like a chicken, have wrinkles like the side fissures of the Grand Canyon, and still be a Hot Granny." And speaking of grannies, she says "any older woman who helps the youngest generation turn out right is a very Hot Granny indeed" even if you don't have any grandchildren yourself.

I like her advice when you have a "bone to pick": deliver an "insult sandwich," which is a compliment followed by a layer of criticism and finished off with a top layer of compliment. I once suggested that editors could make their authors fall in love with them forever if they offered their criticism like that. Works with most others also.

And I like her rules for visiting and hosting grandchildren. The list for the first starts out "This is not your house, and these are not your rules." And when they visit you: "Deal with any stale smells. Kids remember how the houses of grandparents smell."

Gina's present to me turned out to be a present for her too, since I pointed out that Hot Granny's movie recommendations to watch with grandkids include both Gina's "Princess Diary" flicks.

Walking the High Beam

When we made plans to visit the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey with our daughter, Nancy, and her two daughters, I never expected to be walking along a steel girder 18 feet in the air as part of the "Skyscraper!" exhibit. Nina, age 7, didn't quite make the height guidelines' minimum of four feet tall. (Maximum height is 6'8" and maximum weight 300 pounds -- not a problem for any of us.) But the rest of us did, and with the encouragement and inspiration of Anna, 15, Opa (i.e., Grandpa) and I lined up along with her, got strapped into our safety harnesses (just like the kind real construction workers wear), and walked the narrow beam. Even though I knew we couldn't fall because of the harness and the rope we were holding, it was a little scary looking down and realizing we were walking along a very narrow walkway, very high up.

When I expressed some hesitation to Anna, she said, "Well, you went bungy jumping!" And so we did, a year ago in Queenstown, New Zealand, the bungy capital of the world. But that moment of terror just lasted a couple of seconds at the jumping-off moment, until I was caught by the bungy cord. This time it lasted for the several minutes it took to walk the beam, get the rope unstuck from the corners, and finally find solid ground again. Anna scooted right along on the beam -- I was glad she went first, so even though I was slower, with a more measured walk, I knew I could do it -- and knew I had to, for my granddaughters' sake!

It was an educational experience, too, since much about the exhibit gave some fascinating facts -- like the fact that Mohawk Indians still are among the largest ethnic group of workers who labor high above New York and other big, skyscraper-rich cities. It was educational for the museum workers too. One of the young men who helped us harness up said, "I like to see older couples like you do this -- gives me hope for my future!"