So many of the days on the National Days Calendar amuse me, and today, 24 January 2020, is no different. I was scrolling through Facebook this morning and was about to post some pictures of my grandmother, who would have been 104 years old today. She is spending her first birthday in heaven, but I have been conditioned to remember this day every year for nearly fifty years. Little did I know that today is also National Peanut Butter Day and National Compliment Day! My husband and I love peanut butter, especially when it is mixed with chocolate. For his fiftieth birthday party, I baked 18 dozen cookies – all with some form of peanut butter in the mix, including peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies, chocolate peanut butter buckeyes, and peanut marshmallow bars! The bars put fluffer-nutters to shame, and those recipes are as close to perfection as one can get! When my siblings and I were in elementary school, my mom made chocolate peanut butter Easter eggs for every child in our classes and gave a tiny basket of eggs to our teachers to share with their families. It was the highlight of our school day! She has passed her love of baking and all her finest peanut butter recipes onto me – to the delight of my husband! Jay and I like to cook but love going out to eat as well. Cheeburger Cheeburger is near our home in Collegeville, PA, and we go there every so often because we can create our own hamburgers. The list of toppings is endless. Jay loves his burger with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pineapple, pickles and peanut butter! Since I love hot and spicy, I order my burger sans peanut butter. I prefer sweeter peanut butter treats. Sonic has the best peanut butter fudge milkshakes and Dairy Queen makes a mean Reese’s outrageous and peanut butter blizzard. DQ is a short walk from our house, so we can get a peanut butter fix whenever we choose.

Tonight we are meeting a friend at the Texas Roadhouse, which tops my list of favorite restaurants because of the buckets of shelled peanuts on every table. Cracking open the shells reminds my husband of his late yellow lab, Packer, who was able to eat the peanuts out of every shell without eating any part of the shell. It was a marvel to watch her perform this feat! I am always reminded of the Planters stores that sold fresh roasted peanuts in my beloved hometown of Wilkes-Barre, PA, and the excitement we experienced as children when we shook hands with Mr. Peanut at the stores. This week, my friends on social media from Northeastern, PA were devastated to discover that Planters has chosen to kill Mr. Peanut in a Planters commercial and air his funeral during the Super Bowl commercials. The local ABC affiliate posted said commercial on Facebook, so I have seen the death of Mr. Peanut. He is driving his peanut mobile and Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh are present in his car. They are forced off the road and end up dangling from a tree branch as the peanut mobile burns on the ground below. Mr. Peanut sacrifices himself since the branch cannot hold all three of them. He falls to the ground and the peanut mobile explodes. Mr. Peanut was 104 years old. He was born the same year as my grandmother and was an icon in the city of Wilkes-Barre for decades, since the Planters stores originated there. We would greet him on the boardwalk in Atlantic City when we were vacationing, too, and we bought Mr. Peanut-shaped plastic cups and straws. The aroma of peanuts roasting permeated every nook of those stores. It was heaven!

I have been keeping up with the banter about the death of Mr. Peanut and a Wilkes-Barre businessman’s efforts to resurrect this cultural icon and perhaps cash in on a bit of nostalgia. How nuts are we?? Perhaps we are nuttier than fruitcakes??!! As I type this blog, I am listening to CD’s of live concerts I gave in the early 1990’s – performing experiences that rank amongst the best in my lifetime. I am steeped in the past and have been for a while. I was living the dream, especially in 1996. That concert is firmly planted in my memory because I performed a Kuhlau trio with my teacher and mentor David Cramer and premiered a version of the Poulenc flute sonata that was edited by my professor at the University of the Arts. He surprised me by driving up from Maryland to attend this concert. Pictures of those days adorn my music room and the recordings warm my heart every time I hear them. Listening transports me back to that stage and all the feelings that were going through my mind and heart as I nailed the repertoire. In those days, I wanted to emulate the technical excellence and musical elegance of my treasured mentor. Since I love French flute music so much, and selected the French Flute School as the topic for my graduate project and oral exams, I filled the entire second half of each recital with French concours pieces. It was a magnificent adrenaline rush, and my whole family was there to witness it. My mom baked dozens of cookies to thank the guests for attending and leave them with some lingering sweetness in the form of a sugar high! My grandmother was very proud, and the picture I have of the two of us at that moment in time is one of my favorites. I posted it on Facebook this morning to honor her on her birthday. She attended every major event in my life and saved the programs from everything – high school band concerts, college concerts, professional concerts…everything! My mom gave me a treasure trove of her papers to remind me of the importance of these events in my grandmother’s life. She thrived on accomplishments – hers and ours! The memories are amazing, but I often wonder if it is plain nuts to get caught up in so much from the past. I don’t want to keep myself from moving forward, or worse yet, recreate past mistakes. As a Libra, it is up to me to find the perfect balance – a balance that allows me to learn the lesson and have that lesson propel me to the next level and my next project. I love creative projects. In the past, I have received some of my finest compliments on my creative work. I pay those compliments forward whenever I see something that impresses me. I am especially aware of the importance of compliments on National Compliment Day and plan on giving some compliments to people in my orbit for the rest of the day! To my grandmother, I hope you are celebrating your birthday by sitting on the saddle at the great Texas Roadhouse in the sky. I wish you the biggest Texas “Hee-Haw” and hope you can taste a peanut butter fudge milkshake and greet the 104-year-old Mr. Peanut. Keep watching out for us!