Clean Up in Aisle 1

The thing about my traveling is the effect it has on the girls. It's stressful for them, no matter what I do to make it calm. For a big trip, like the wedding, I haul the suitcase up a week in advance and leave it out, tossing in things a bit every day. I read that this provides visual cues that change is coming, that I'm going to be going some place and won't be home. For overnight or a couple of days away stay, I pack the night before. It's probably as much stress when it's an overnight as it is when it's a week as cats really don't have a concept of time. "I'll be back on Sunday," means I'm gone as long as "I'll be back next Tuesday". Add to this the need to have someone look in on them. Although they love Pam, now that they know her, she couldn't stop in on the last trip and I had to hire a service. Rob is great and I have no worries, but the girls don't know him yet and are scared. He never sees them when he stops by to fill dishes.

So there were back-to-back trips last month. And there were day trips for work which necessitated my leaving the house by 6:45 and not returning before 6:45 p.m. Even if I was home, I wasn't "home". I was tired and not able to relate to them as I usually did.

I came home from my mother's birthday celebration and unpacked the car. I started to look through the mail on the table in the living room and Mija went to jump up onto that table to command my attention. Also on the table is my sewing box. She hit the box and both her and the box tumbled to the floor.

She was terrified and took off. It was a good 2 hours before she came out from under the cedar chest in the office to see if I was furious with her. I was worried it had fallen on her but she was okay.

It's a mess. And you know what, it's still on the floor. I look at it and think, "When I clean this up, I need to really clean it. I probably have stuff that I don't need anymore (like 3 pair of sewing scissors)." Plus, I don't know if the box top just popped off or if it broke at the hinges. If it broke, then the box is no good. I'm pretty sure my parents gave me this some 45 years ago, back when I was sewing up a storm at home. I did scrape the stuff that rolled under the recliner over to the pile.

I don't have the desire to clean it up. This weekend, I tackled the papers in my home office. How could I underpay the Internet bill by 4 cents? Seriously. I did wash. I stripped the bed. All the dishes are done. I read another chapter in, of all things, the book I'm reading about tidying. When I go out the front door, I have to step over the mess, but clean it up? I just don't feel like it.

I'm chalking it up the the general tiredness I'm working through. Pieces of life are getting sorted out and I just haven't, mentally, reached this point in the journey. The girls aren't chasing spools of thread under the recliner so there's not a reason to clear the pile. Check back next weekend. Maybe I'll have done it then.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Things I See-November Edition

Here's another collection of things I saw worthy enough for a photograph.

I visited Carole at the end of October. On the way back, I needed a restroom and some tea. Dunkin' Donuts is my go-to place for tea, except, maybe, in western Pennsylvania.

I couldn't toss this even after I'd finished the tea because I can recycle the cup in my recycling. So, a Penn State item made its way into my Iowa Hawkeye house. The tea is always good, even if it came in the wrong color cup.

I've always wanted to make a braided rug. I used to have one that my great-great aunt made. She used wool scraps from a variety of sources. It wore really well for awhile and then disintegrated one day as I was, I thought, gently shaking out crumbs and dirt. I have a booklet that tells me how to make these kinds of rugs and it seems easy enough. It's a great way to use up fabric and is a craft that ties us to our ancestors.

What so great about these rugs, seen in a building I was inspecting, is that they are made from plastic bags. I'm not kidding. I saw these and knew, right away, what they were. I've known, for a long time, about places doing this. It's a great fund raiser for groups and a number of homeless shelters will have residents make rugs. If you accumulate a lot of bags and have no place to recycle them, it might be something you'd like to try. Here's a tutorial on the process.

I loved the colors in the stack. I didn't find out if they sold any of these or, because there were a lot of them, and bags, shoved onto this shelf unit, had the bottom dropped out of sale of plastic bag braided rugs.

This is coal.

Seriously. That's coal on the ground. Some of the people I were with had never seen real coal. Who knows how long it's been here. It's not something that's going to decompose quickly.

Seeing it brought back memories of the manual furnace that heated the farm house I grew up in. We used wood and coal. Coal gave off a smell, but burned for a long time and gave off a lot of heat, once you got it lit. Dad would start the fire in the fall with wood and then toss in the coal. We sometimes had to endure a warm house because he didn't want the fire to go out and have to start the process all over again if the warm spell was going to be just a few days. In the morning, the house was often chilly as the fire wound down, and we got dressed for school in the kitchen with the oven door open to remove the chill from the air.

The chimney had to be cleaned periodically because the layers of soot deposited on the inside could catch fire. We had that happen once. I remember sitting on the steps in the unheated back entry because the soot in the chimney caught fire. We were wrapped in blankets to keep warm. Mom and dad were dousing the red hot coal fire with water in an attempt to create enough steam to put out the chimney fire. Oh the smell and the smoke! Windows and doors were open to create drafts to get the smoke out of the house. I remember having to clean everything for weeks afterward because there was a thin layer of soot everywhere.

It's hard to see, but there is a spider the size of a half-dollar in the upper right corner of this door. Two of my co-workers are very scared of spiders. I would not have a tarantula in my house nor would I stroke one or pick one up or have one crawl across my hand. I'm not, however, terrified of spiders. I usually try to herd them onto the fly swatter or a piece of paper and toss them outside. They do more good out there anyway.

I don't think this gal spun a web in a food-rich environment. This was a courtyard, surrounded by 10 foot tall brick walls and covered with a mesh grating. I'm seeing very tiny spiders in the house now, spiders who were hatched at the middle of fall and who are looking for food before dying off in the winter. They just sort of show up, in the dish drainer, in the corner of windows, in front of books in the bookcase. I just look at them and wonder why they thought where they are was going to yield any sort of meal. Then I squash them.

Speaking of doors,

This was the main entry to a warehouse. The building was built in the 1930's and was reused in the 1980's as a warehouse. Security doors aren't made like this anymore.

A bunch of blocks. I was in a basement and these blocks date from the 1930's. What's so special about these blocks? Well, I don't know much about building construction, particularly older construction. They are interesting on their own and make me curious. What struck me was the Reg. US. Pat. Off. mark. Reguspatoff. I know it stands for "Registered, US Patent Office", meaning the bricks have a patent. It was also the name of a computer in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Someone told me it was in Rocky and Bullwinkle but that was the WAYBACK machine, which was an homage to the UNIVAC from the early age of computing. That age coincided with the germination in Jay Ward's mind, of a subversive cartoon which has just as much relevance to today as it did back in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Find and watch "The Boxtop Robbery" or "Wossamotta U". (The Wossamotta U fight song is directly purloined from the fight song for the Minnesota Golden Gophers. I can't hear their fight song without singing, "Wossamotta, hats off to you. To your colors, ocher and Alice Blue. We shall e're be faithful and true. Hail Wossamotta hail. Better we should be in jail. Hail Wossamotta U.")

Back to Reguspatoff. I'm almost certain it was in Underdog, but I can't find independent confirmation. Since I don't get cable, I can't watch Cartoon Network which might have Underdog on the schedule. Seeing this on these bricks made me snicker. I didn't point this out to my companions as I was pretty sure none of them had the same frame of reference I did.

Finally, I saw this in the basement of a building.

Did you ride face first or feet first? I could never get up the courage to ride face first. My brothers and sister did, but not me. I didn't mind being in the front, but I could never expose my face to a wipe out.

I would go again. Grab the great nieces and nephews, find a hill with a soft landing, put on layers and layers and go sledding. We would start up by the garage and, if lucky, you'd make it all the way down the hill past the barn and to the bridge over the creek. Sometimes, if conditions were right, you could get across the bridge, onto the flat beyond and up the other side of the hill a bit. Ice was the worst. Hit a patch and you lost control. We'd spend hours outside. It took a good 10 minutes to drag the sled back up to the garage to ride it down again, always hoping for just the right mix of speed and dexterity to go even farther up the other side than you had before.

Sometimes, it was too dangerous to go down the hill by the barn, so we'd try to see if we could make it around the windmill and over the hump by the house. Hairpin curves are not a sled's forte. You made wide, sweeping curves. If you had to swerve quickly, the best course of action was to simply fall off the sled, which resulted in faces full of snow and lots and lots of laughter. Yeah, I'd do it again.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Leave The Driving To Us

I remember when taking the bus wasn't viewed with disdain. Bus companies were everywhere and, if you couldn't or didn't want to drive, you could get from here to there by bus. When I was in college, I took the bus to visit my grandmother. It was a 5 hour trip, what with stops in scores of small towns, but it didn't cost much. When I was dating my ex, I would take the bus from college to visit him because the bus stopped in his hometown.

I don't think the bus stopped in my hometown, at least I don't remember it stopping there. But given the fact that bus travel in the past was a vital connection between cities and towns, it probably did. In small towns, the "bus stop" was usually a restaurant or gas station. You couldn't buy tickets there. Those would be sold by the driver. Sometimes the bus was full. Sometimes it wasn't. For getting around on a budget, it was a college student's preferred mode of travel.

Greyhound was the cream of the crop when it came to bus travel. They were always more expensive than regional carriers, but you got bigger, nicer and, dare we say it, cleaner buses. I remember the station in downtown LaCrosse was not very big but it was neat, with those plastic chairs with the scoop bottom. They had blue, silver and black ones and the interior of the station was tiled in white, blue and cream-colored tile, with stainless steel trim. I never traveled on Greyhound. They were outside my budget, but you could use their terminal to travel by the regional carriers which served the small towns Greyhound deemed too expensive to service.

 My sister came for Christmas one year and it was the first, and only, time I was in the old main bus terminal in Chicago. It was on Randolph Street. Our parents came to Wheaton and we took the train into the city and then, because it was snowing and cold, took a cab to the bus station. I remember you walked down into the bowels of an old building. It was a far cry from what the terminal looks like today.

I remember the dark and dank arrival and departure area. There was a creaky escalator, wooden, if I remember correctly, that took you from the street level down to the actual terminal. It wasn't clean. Perhaps it has always been a part of places open to the public that they would attract some of the less fortunate of humanity. It was my first contact with homelessness. Before organized shelters, bus stations and airports were the places the homeless went because it was warm and there was a bathroom. The old bus station, in operation since a bus terminal was needed in Chicago, was not inviting and fully fit the stereotype of a dirty, smelly, scary place.

This one, built in the mid-2000's, is open and airy with a small deli, lots of open space and clean restrooms. It's set off of downtown which means there's a bit of a hike to get into the city.

There weren't a lot of taxis waiting for people, either. It's almost like Chicago is not a bus destination city. Buses are not seen as the way to go to visit a place.

We have bought into the view from the past of a bus station as a less than secure place, situated in a part of town you shouldn't go to with the exception of the hours of 11 am -2:30 pm. The homeless "live" there. Don't use the bathrooms because they are never cleaned. And only people really poor, who can't afford air travel, take the bus.

But, in searching fares as a "what if", I can go from Chicago to Washington, DC, let Greyhound do the driving, and it would cost me from $155 to $305, depending upon the amenities I chose. I can't take a competitor to Washington. Greyhound seems to be my only option, but I took a look at the cost to, say, go back to Iowa for Thanksgiving. $80 round trip. If I drive for work, I would get reimbursed for the mileage to the tune of around $240. There would be the cost of a cab from the train station to the bus station because that is a hike, but I would be money ahead, plus the cost of wear and tear on my body. I would just need someone to be at the airport to pick me up and drop me off.

The thought of flying chills me. It's just not a friendly way to go anymore. For my sister and I, getting from point A to point B involved a bus, with fares that fit our budget. We could not have gone where we wanted to go without a bus.

We give bus travel such a negative image now. As I age, I'm thinking leaving the driving to someone else might not be such a bad idea.

Beverage:  English Teatime Tea

Deb

Stuck in Time

I've had this clock for years, decades even. This was handmade by a guy who lived in my hometown. It was a Christmas present years ago to us from my parents.

I have it in the living room and, when the power goes out, I always know the time because it runs on a single AA battery. Two weeks ago, I came home from work and it was 2:25. Well, that wasn't right so I replaced the battery and fixed the time. Monday I came home and it was stopped at 1:55. I replaced the battery again, although I thought I'd put in a fresh battery, but you know how that goes, and fixed the time to what you see above. Nothing happened. The second hand didn't move. Now this battery I know is fresh because I got it at Christmas. So, I have to think something has broken within the clock mechanism itself.

There are some things you'll fix forever and this is one of them. I looked at the mechanism and I know I can get these at JoAnn or Michaels craft stores. I wonder how simple it would be to replace the mechanism. I need to go to JoAnn anyway if I'm going to make valentines for the valentine exchange. I can look at clock mechanisms at the same time. Has anyone ever replaced a mechanism? Is it easy to do? It seems kind of silly but I sort of feel lost without this clock keeping time in the living room.

Beverage:  Rooibos tea

Deb

Day 13- Favorite childhood book

I am a day behind. I spent yesterday getting caught up on a few things and starting the ornament project. I checked the list but decided I didn't want to post yesterday. I read this morning's topic and I've got to find the book to take a photo of it. It might be tomorrow before today's book gets posted.

Ev'ry Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not. 
The Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season. Now please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason. 
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be his shoes were a little too tight. 
But I think the most likely reason of all, may have been that his heart was two sizes too small. 
Whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, he stood there on Christmas eve hating the Whos. 
Staring down from above with a sour grinchy frown at the warm lighted windows below in their town. 
"They're hanging their stockings," he said with a sneer. "Tomorrow is Christmas. It's practically here." 

If you read the book, this isn't the book text. It's from the animated TV special, and yes, I have this much memorized. I remember when it and A Charlie Brown Christmas came on TV. Both came early in the month and signified, for me, the 'official' start of the holidays. Indeed, when we could get the Grinch on video tape, we'd watch it the day after Thanksgiving, and then the tree and the decorations could go up. As Carole and my birthdays fall close to Thanksgiving, watching the Grinch on your birthday wasn't uncommon. I still, on the day after Thanksgiving, pull out the Grinch DvD and watch.

My parents purchased or brought home from the library as many Dr. Seuss books as they could. The timeless themes he covered, the easy to learn and understand language used and the colorful childlike illustrations made the books guaranteed to be a kid's favorite. Who wouldn't want a magical cat that, with a snap of his fingers, did all your shoveling and the chores mom left for you to do?

I remember wanting to go to Whoville. It seemed like such a magical place.

For reference, no, I have not seen the Jim Carey live action version of this book and, frankly, I'm not interested. This is definitely the case of the book being better than the movie.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

32 years

It wasn't until I was paying bills after work that I realized exactly what today is. It would have been my 32nd wedding anniversary.

When I got married, I was certain it was a forever event. I had helped my parents with their 25th wedding anniversary and had participated in 50th anniversaries including that of my former in-laws. I was certain we would celebrate 25 years. Carole would be in college and we could plan a cruise or a trip somewhere. Sometimes, the thought of being with the same person for the rest of my life irked me, especially where there were the inevitable tussles over silly things, but I always thought we'd fix whatever was broken and move on.

Well, life has a way of dousing expectations. As 20 years approached and it was clear we weren't going to celebrate that happily, I mentioned how sad I was to my therapist. I mentioned how I couldn't believe how things had changed. She have me a rather funny look and asked if I was the same person at age 41 as I was when I was 15. I laughed at the slightly ridiculous question. Why did I think that, just because I got married, life wasn't going to change and, therefore, me along with it? Oooh good question.

32 years ago, I was starry-eyed, hanging up my wedding dress on the door of the upstairs room in my parent's house and preparing to leave for a driving trip around Lake Superior. We didn't have a late dance. We had a buffet dinner and sat around with family and friends on my parent's front porch until it was time to leave. The aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, siblings, long-time friends and short time met-in-college friends filled my parent's house with joy and happiness. The whole world was open to us and I think, had we totaled up the years of marriage then, it would have been over 1,000. You kept going through thick and thin, bitter and sweet.

Sometimes the walk together doesn't work out as you planned. It was not easy to say it was over, but I did and I've moved on. It hasn't always been the happiest of solo walks but I've done it and it is what it is. Still, 32 years. What would we have done to celebrate? Probably what we did for 18 of those years we were together, gone out to eat.

Beverage: Tropic 50 orange drink

Deb