One day recently, Caleb was complaining about all his aches and pains. Victoria, on the other side of the table coloring, didn’t even look up.
“Well, that’s toooo bad,” she crooned, “that’s toooo bad.”
I gave her a small reprimand for being sassy to her brother--but I stayed around the corner while I did so, because I was grinning from ear to ear. And I next informed Caleb that it was nothing more than he deserved, because he really was whining excessively.
In an effort to teach my kids the follies of whining and grumbling about physical ailments, I asked them just how often they are glad to listen to another’s maladies. “Think of it: are you ever glad when someone singles you out to whom to bewail their infirmities? And even if you ask someone how they are, how long do you want to be told?”
Hannah, who happened to be visiting, laughed. “No longer than two seconds,” she acknowledged.
“That’s because my owie is always worse than your owie,” I said.
“Yeah,” agreed Caleb, “because I can feel my owie!”
We all renewed our resolutions to be more like my mother, who is ever so frail but is rarely heard to make mention of any of her indispositions.
One afternoon we found a couple dozen oranges, a bag of potatoes, and a big red juicy tomato in a box on our front porch, courtesy of Jim C., our neighbor, the man who sold us our lot. Mmmmm…just what we were needing. We promptly sliced the tomato and shared it.
A little later, Larry came home from work. Jim C. was nearby, putting up fence and new gates, having quite a struggle with a large, heavy gate.
“Sometime when you’re not busy,” he called to Larry, “maybe you could help me hang this gate!”
Larry trotted up the lane. “I can help you right now,” he said, and soon the gate was in place.
I wonder if we can do them enough favors to stay even? I wondered. {Later I would wonder, I wonder if they'll do us enough favors to stay even?}
Richard A., the neighbor on the other side of us, told Larry that he hears him leave in his diesel pickup every morning. I think that meant he was disturbed from his sleep…but he was nice enough not to actually come right out and say so, knowing as he does that poor Larry does have to start his pickup and drive it in order to get to work, as a matter of fact.
Tuesday, after taking the children to school and doing an hour’s worth of errands, I went back to the old house and loaded the Suburban with things. I brought along lunch, and at noon the children ate at Mama’s house. We’ve done that every day; it saves a lot of time and gas, and Mama, I think, enjoys having us there. Or if she doesn’t, she certainly puts on a good front. The lady who stays with her in the mornings has her lunch ready at 12:00 p.m. on the dot, and it always looks and smells scrumptious. Sometimes she makes a little extra and doles it out to the children.
Every time I went into town last week, I filled the Suburban with things from the old house. By Friday, finally, with a little help from the rest of the family, the house was empty. Today after Larry gets off work, he will get one more load from the garage, and that will be it; all done. Fiñiş. Complét. We will be able to concentrate solely on this house. And it still needs lots of concentration, believe me.
Since we live out of town, we can burn our garbage, and we no longer have a bill for a sanitation service. We have a well and septic tank, too; so no more water and sanitation bill. Reckon that will make up for the extra gas and diesel we burn? Thursday evening, Larry made a raging fire in the burn barrel at the south end of our property, and we burned all sorts of things, to the delight of the local pyromaniacs. I’ve been emptying out box after box--but it doesn’t even look like I’ve made a dent. How did we ever collect so much stuff??
We went to town Thursday night to get all the clothes hanging in the basement shelf room. The kids thought the basement was humongous, because nearly all the walls had been taken out.
After approximately the zillionth trip up the stairs, Larry complained, “I don’t see why anyone needs all these clothes; I think we could take most of them to the Goodwill!”
I gave his arm a shake. “If you complain again, I’ll throw out all your socks!” I announced.
He shrugged. “That’s okay; I’ll just wear the same ones all the time.”
“Well, then,” I retorted, “I’ll throw out all your--” I thought fast “--screwdriver bits!” I clinched it triumphantly.
“Hey!” he protested, “Them’s fightin’ words!”
Friday morning, I was throwing stuff from the garage into a huge dumpster that the sanitation service had placed on the back drive. The day before, Victoria and I had watched as a man with a big truck came and hauled away a dumpster full of Sheetrock, lumber, and paneling. This morning, the dumpster was completely empty. I threw in an ancient computer.
Thump!!! Bam Bam Bam Bam
Victoria, standing on an edge peering in, cackled. “Hahahahahahaha!!!”
I threw in a non-working lap organ.
Wham!!! Tink Tink Tink Tink
Victoria chortled with glee. “Heeheeheeheeheeheeheee!!!”
I wonder what’s so funny about that?
I threw in a box of what I thought was nothing but rejects and discards.
“Oh! Mama!!” Victoria gasped. “Look! There’s a stamp book!”
I looked. It seemed I had thrown in a box of things that must have come from Mama’s house when someone was sorting things a while back. I hadn’t even gone through the stuff; it all looked like junk to me. But sure enough, there was an animal stamp/sticker book that used to be mine, one of which I’d been particularly fond because of the animal stories that went with each sticker.
I climbed up on the dumpster and stretched as far down as I could, but I was at least two feet from reaching that book. And if I climbed in, I seriously doubted I’d be able to get back out on my own.
There was only one thing left to do. I threw in Victoria.
She gather up the book, and also a card I spotted, and then I had to drag her back out by the arms, which wasn’t easy, because she was laughing so hard she was a limp noodle. The card was from my first-grade teacher, thanking me for the soap I’d given her at the end of the school year. I hadn’t seen that since the day she gave it to me!
Next, I dug up enough flowers to fill five boxes, putting them into the middle seat of the Suburban because the back was full of clothes. (Yes, Larry; I put newspaper down first.) (Last time I hauled flowers, he said that it looked like I’d been using the Suburban for a dump truck.) At 10:30, I went home to plant them, which took until 11:30. Yes, it really is a whole lot easier to plant them out here than it is to dig them up.
I dug up more flowers that afternoon, and planted them. Wouldn’t you know, I wore a white skirt because I’d planned to paint the white trim in Victoria’s room.
Even though the temperature must have been in the high 70s or low 80s, there was snow here and there around town where it had been shoveled into a pile. That seemed funny.
Next, I painted the trim in Victoria’s room, while Larry put up her light/fan. After the sun went down, I used a trouble-light to paint by. I finished, put the lid on the paint can, and took it downstairs. Larry got the light fixture done and turned it on--and that’s when I noticed all the spots where I hadn’t quite done a good enough job of painting. Bother! I also found the vent cover that I could put on--if I’d have remembered to paint it. Botheration!
I didn’t get a speck--not one solitary speck--of paint on my skirt; but boy, oh, boy, was I covered with dirt. My skirt should have been dirt-colored, not white.
The dirt in town is nice black soil, good for planting. But the dirt out here is a lot lighter brown, and it’s mostly clay. The flowers seem to be doing well, though. I may have to use fertilizer to keep them healthy.
Jim Cumming told Larry, “I don’t know what you’ll do about a lawn; grass doesn’t grow well in that clay!”
Now he tells us. Well, truthfully, we already knew what kind of soil it was. Larry isn’t concerned; he learned how to grow grass in anything when he worked at the golf course.
Larry wanted to do all sorts of things Friday night, but he was too tired, because he’d worked 12½ hours. Then along came Amy, driving Teddy’s pickup full of stuff, telling us more people would be coming; they were getting lots of our things out of our garage.
Keith and Esther arrived with a load, and we showed them the rooms that we’d been working on. We went into Victoria’s room, where there is still a pile of dresses stacked in one corner because we haven’t cleaned out her cubbyhole, and the cubbyhole is behind the closet rod, and if I hung dresses there, they’d all be in the way.
Keith poked a toe at the bottom dress on the pile. “What happens if you want to wear that one?” he asked his little sister.
Victoria giggled, and then she laughed the more when Keith went through some frenzied gestures of tugging the dress out with all vim and vigor, and then running madly from the pile as if it was all tipping over.
He changed his mind. “No, I’ll tell you what you should do: just get down on all fours and crawl in through the hem.” He put in a few energetic crawling motions. “Then, after you go a little ways, stand up--” he raised both arms high over his head “--and there you’ll be, then, all dressed!”
Victoria guffawed.
Keith noticed a crocheted dress. “Ooooo, you’d better not try that with this dress,” he advised, “Or, by the time you get up, it’ll be stretched out as long as a wedding train!”
Victoria screeched with laughter.
{That reminds me of the beautiful white blanket Dorcas knitted for Joanna. It’s extraordinarily soft, and done with a delicate stitch--and it stretches. Bobby calls it a ‘thneed’, after something stretchy in a Dr. Seuss book.
Bobby explained, “I get the baby out of her crib; I get the blanket from the closet shelf; I wrap it around the baby; I walk out to the kitchen--and then, WHUMP!--the rest of the blanket finally falls off the shelf. It’s a ‘thneed’”, he finished.}
We all headed downstairs. Keith stepped on a small Lego horse.
CRUNCH
“Oh, what was that?” he exclaimed, looking back. Then, “Oh, good, it still looks okay.”
Esther picked it up and examined it. “You broke its leg,” she told him.
He sighed in relief. “Well, at least I didn’t kill it.”
We didn’t get to bed until 2:00 a.m.--and Larry had to get up early in the morning--5:30 a.m., and be to work by six. Or at least, he was supposed to. He was half an hour late; he overslept. By the time he arrived, the boom truck was champing at the bit. One of the men had taken the opportunity to rush off to a nearby fast food joint and purchase breakfast for everyone, including Larry.
“What?!!” I cried, upon hearing this. “You were rewarded for being late?!!”
Larry laughed. “They all must feel sorry for me!” He made a chagrined face. “’Course, they won’t pay me for being late.”
That morning, Sandra, Jim C.’s wife, brought me two long boxes of Shasta daisies that she’d removed from her too-thick garden. I planted them near the peonies I’d planted the day before. I need to plant the seeds I harvested last fall…but I’m swamped with things that need to be done. Will they save till next year, I wonder?
It was a busy day. Lydia swept the floor, first with the broom and then with the duster. Hester vacuumed out the window sills and then scrubbed them with soap and water. Caleb and Victoria did the dishes. I put books into bookcases, set up two more shoe racks, and filled them with shoes. I cleaned out my closet (again); it is now a walk-in closet once more. The bed would not be slept upon, however. [Not without cleaning it off first, it wouldn’t.]
At one end of the closet, there are shelves from ceiling to floor; that’s where I put all my hats. {I like hats.} The bottom shelf had come off during moving. I put it back in place--with some difficulty. I got the screw through the wooden bracket okay, but it simply would not go into the wall--and then I figured out why: I was trying to screw it into the chimney. But I finally got the screw in far enough to hold the bracket.
Having all sorts of fun with Larry’s cordless drill, using it for a screwdriver, I then put a screw through my metal over-the-door shoe rack, fastening the bottom half to the top half, so that it wouldn’t fall apart as it was oft wont to do. I should have done it long ago. But it weren’t easy, huh-uh, nosiree. I nearly screwed my hand to the thing time and again.
Hey! I just found some stale chocolate-covered pretzels and a stale cookie made of Ritz crackers with peanut butter in the middle, and dipped in chocolate, lurking surreptitiously in my desk drawer! I ate all but one of the pretzels, because they looked good, and I know they were good…once. Rats. Whose were they, who put them into that drawer, and why didn’t I eat them before now???
Larry came home from work with his pickup full of jetsam and flotsam; he’d been to the house in town and gotten a load. He took a nap, then emptied his pickup. I walked out to the burn barrel, stuck in a box--and Larry, from his position over by the garage, bellowed in alarm, “STAY AWAY FROM THAT BARREL!”
I backed off, staring at him wonderingly.
It seems he’d thrown a can of ether into it, and was half expecting it to blow up. But it didn’t, and I didn’t, and everything was fine.
Larry headed back to town for more stuff, taking Caleb with him. Hester helped me get most of the dresses out of the Suburban and hang them on the newly-installed rod Larry had put up in the storage space under the front porch. We also filled, all the way to the ceiling, the shelves Larry and Keith had built. That storage room looks nice and neat now--and full.
The children set up the newly-discovered volleyball net and played ball. They are enjoying riding their bikes on the old Rte. 81 and all the way around Richard A.’s house and back down the lane to our place.
Socks had a small calamity with his litter box. We’d run out of litter the last time we changed the box, you see, and there wasn’t much in there. So it wasn’t as heavy as usual. Anyway, as he was departing the vicinity, he evidently stepped on the edge of the box, and, since he weighs more than the box, it suddenly flipped up, neatly ejecting him and litter alike. We’d wondered why he came shooting through the kitchen all in a lather, ears peeled back and tail bushed and streaming in the wind. I figured it out when I found the box upended and a big mess all around it. And there was no more litter.
I cleaned it up, put the small amount of good litter back in the box, and then Dorcas went to town for litter and Victoria went with her. Why did anyone ever think cats belonged in a house??? That cat had the entire out-of-doors in which to do his business.
Caleb didn’t feel well when he got home from the other house; he was having troubles with asthma. Larry told us it’s most likely because of prairie fires in Kansas; Nebraska has issued bad-air advisories for those with allergies or asthma. Hannah’s asthma has been bothering her, too.
Larry hooked up the VCR and we looked at the video I’d taken of the moving days and the snowstorm. It was funny, watching the little calves romping through our snowy yard the day they escaped.
Saturday night Larry and I went to Hy-Vee for VIG--Very Important Groceries--including doughnuts. I would have rather had the sliced roast beef and mozzarella cheese, but it cost more.
When we came out of the store, we heard sirens and soon saw a car barreling along with three police cruisers hot on his tail. They went tearing north, then turned and disappeared. We put some gas into the Suburban, and then found the car stopped by a filling station not far away--both driver’s side tires blown out, probably from spike strips. The driver was nowhere to be seen, but there were sure a lot of cops around. ‘♫ Trucks, Tanks, and Armored Vehicles ♪ of every size… ♪♯ ’
As we drove past Gerard Park, we saw a red fox trotting across the road from the houses to the south--and in his mouth was a small animal. He had a big bushy tail and a slim little head; foxes are such beautiful animals. Its white tail tip shined in our headlights.
Speaking of foxes, did you know that the temperature must drop to ‑94° F before the arctic fox starts shivering? I just knew you'd be glad to know that.
Later, Larry put some lightbulbs into light fixtures. It’s a job I cannot easily do, because the ceilings are so high. I like them that way; it makes everything seem so airy. I’m pleased with my little sewing room/office; everything fits in it perfectly, even my sweater dresser, the one with the doors that open on the front. All the filing cabinets fit, too, except for my pattern file, which is better off in the washroom anyway, since it’s closer to where I’ll be using the patterns when I cut out material on the table.
Sunday morning, our little band played a couple of songs before the song service: One was Praise Him, Praise Him, one of my favorites. I love to hear them play. I like music that whooshes your hair back in the breeze, music that you can feel, right up through your shoes and toenails. Music, I said. That means good music. Old-fashioned gospel music.
We all regrouped at Mama’s house before heading for home after church. There, we found Loren industriously ricing potatoes while Janice stirred gravy on the stove. The house smelt delicious with roast beef and vegetables in the oven, and our stomachs were rubbing our backbones.
“I’m making biscuits!” Loren informed Victoria and Lydia, which of course made them laugh. He comes up with all sorts of ridiculous things to tell the littles, just as he used to do me when I was small. I thought he was hilarious and wonderful, and I loved him with all my heart. Still do.
I’m afraid we all leave home a bit lopsided nowadays, because in our bathroom there is a three-bulb light fixture on the left side of the mirror, which is on the same side as the big window, through which a lot of light shines. The ceiling fixture has a couple of bulbs in it, but, as I mentioned, the ceilings in this house are high, and the old-fashioned fixtures darken the light a little. Anyway, we all fix the left sides of our respective heads nicely, and the right side looks like who-knows-what, since we can’t at all see it. And off we go, blissfully imagining we’re fine and dandy.
Larry put a light fixture in my sewing room/office. It’s the one we gave Keith when he turned twelve; it has three glass shades with pictures of different kinds of ducks all around each shade. It’s really pretty. Right after we gave it to Keith, Larry put it up in his room. Late that night, long after Keith had gone to bed, I noticed that his light was on. Larry went down to see why in the world he was still up. He opened the door--and awoke Keith, who was in bed, sound asleep.
“Why did you go to bed with your light on?” asked Larry.
Keith looked around sleepily. “Oh!” he said, a mite befuddled, “Because I couldn’t see the ducks with the light off!”
Larry also brought up a couple of the drawer sets David once made to go under the two cribs we had, and put them in Caleb’s room under the dormer window. I’m not particularly pleased to have them there, but they do fit, and they are out of the way. I think I’ll fill them with some of my everyday clothes, since I seem to have a grave shortage of places to put them. Who would have thought they would have expanded so, once I got them out of that seemingly-small closet at the other house?! Right now, only my good clothes are hanging in our walk-in closet, and the rod and all the hooks are full. If I put anything else on those wall hooks, hookboard, hooks, clothes, and all will come crashing down. They are already behaving mighty gimpily, which isn’t a word but would be if Noah Q. Webster had’ve ever seen the way those hooks are behaving. There was only room for Larry’s suits and a very few shirts. We did bring the rods they took down in the other basement, so that will help. I am of the opinion that the people who lived in this house before us owned two pairs of overalls apiece, tops.
A couple of Rubbermaid bins holding my sweaters went in the cubbyhole in the bathroom--and there is still a lot of space to spare. But I don’t want it so full that I can’t get to the things I put in first… Shelves would be nice. Someday, someday. In the meanwhile, I painted the entire inside of the cubbyhole with white Kiltz, and now it is bright and clean and fresh. I painted the toe of my suede shoe, too; but it doesn’t look as nice as the cubbyhole.
Larry stayed home with Caleb Sunday morning; I stayed with him that night. Larry and the girls headed off at the early hour of 7:00 p.m. (church is at 7:30). Hester had been standing impatiently at the door for a good ten minutes. She absolutely hates to be late for anything, especially church, where she sits up front. (Have to raise one strange kid in the bunch, I guess.) {“Everybody stares at me if I walk in last!” she fusses.} (Actually, I hate to be late, too…but it’s always everyone else’s fault when I am, don’t you know.) (But I rarely am.) Anyway, off they went, with Larry protesting about the earliness all the way. We collectively shoved or pulled him out the door, depending on which side of him we happened to be.
Five minutes later, there was the Suburban pulling up in front of the house again, blowing its aahROOOga horn imperatively.
“What’s the matter?” I asked as Larry came in the door.
“Forgot the money for the offering,” he said.
I retrieved my Bible, in which I’d stuck the money, and paged through it a hundred and one times, with Larry periodically telling me he knew I’d lose it, in a helpful sort of tone, before it finally turned up. I handed it to him.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked, looking at it as if it were nothing more than a limestone disk from Yap Island.
“I put it in the morning offering,” I told him, “Thought that’s what you told me to do!”
“You put the wrong money in at the wrong time,” he informed me. “Your mother’s offering is in the morning; Robert’s is in the evening.”
Ooops.
At 7:09 p.m., they were once again on their way, and they did not return. Not until church was over, that is. And that time, they brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts from Hy-Vee. Lydia no sooner laid the box on the table than Caleb, all agog, dashed headlong at it, knocked it off the table, and spilt all the doughnuts out on the floor. We picked fuzz and dirt off our doughnuts and ate them.
Ugh. That’s too many doughnuts in the last two days.
And now…I have oodles of things to do! On to unpacking the next box.
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