Last week, Bobby and Hannah were thinking about tax refunds and drooling over a van they’d looked at…but Monday afternoon when the post lady arrived, their dreams were rudely shattered. They won’t be getting a van any time soon, after all. The rest of their hospital and doctor bills arrived--and, all together, the total is approaching $8,000. Good grief.
They’d thought the total was not even half that. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Well, at least we got something that will increase in value,” said Hannah, cuddling baby Joanna. “Maybe next year!” she ended cheerfully.
Monday evening, it started snowing again. It seemed like the perfect day for homemade bread, so I made two loaves, one white and the other whole wheat. Minutes before the bread was done baking, Dorcas called and asked one of the girls to come get a pan of freshly-made sun buns. Mmmm… We gobbled them down, making sure to save one for Larry. Hester put it into a sandwich bag.
“Where did you put it?” I asked, looking around the kitchen.
“Right on the counter over--” Hester stopped, puzzled. “Oh, I must have put it on the tabl--” She came to a halt and looked around.
“All right, everyone fall out,” I ordered, “Daddy’s sun bun has gone AWOL.”
Caleb got up, tripped, and sat suddenly back down quite without meaning to, landing on the very edge of his chair. He made a number of sweeping arm circles in midair before regaining his balance.
Lydia giggled. “That’s a figure of speech, Caleb. You don’t really have to fall out of your chair.”
“I didn’t, actually,” explained Caleb, “I fell into it.”
He got back up and initiated a search for the absent sun bun.
We looked in the cupboards, which are just about bare. We looked in the drawers; they’re relatively empty, too. We looked on counters, under the table, on the chairs. We looked in the living room, in the bedrooms, and in the refrigerator.
No sun bun.
“Check the freezer,” I directed Hester.
She rolled her eyes, laughing. “I wouldn’t have put it in there,” she exclaimed, nonetheless pulling open the door, “and here it is,” she finished, pulling the bag out and standing there holding it with a wondering look.
“Now shut the freezer door,” I instructed her. “Then step back two paces, reach to the side, and lay that bag on the counter by the toaster.” I waited a few seconds, then “There you are then, that’s perfect. That’s excellent. Way to go! Bravo!”
She made faces, then laughed and spoiled the effect.
Soon the bread was done. I cut a slice for everyone. I am especially fond of the heel when it is piping hot, with the inside so soft and the crust so crunchy. I slather it with butter, then drizzle honey over it… Mmmmmmm. Fodder fit for a king. Or a queen.
A while later I went back out to the kitchen to put the bread into a plastic bag.
There was only a part of one loaf left! The urchins had gobbled down all the rest. And they’d already eaten those big fat sun buns! So much for having enough bread to last two days.
That evening, Kenny, Larry’s brother, helped Larry carry Sheetrock into our house and put it on the ceiling in Victoria’s room where part of the plaster fell when the chimney came down.
Like their mother had done a few days earlier, Kenny thought Larry should have built the steps differently. “They’re too steep,” said Kenny, “and the treads are too narrow.”
“They’re not as steep and narrow as they look now,” explained Larry, picking up a tread to show his brother, “but you’re seeing only the risers. See? Each tread is a normal width.” He held it up.
Kenny shook his head direfully. “Someone is going to catch their heel on the lip of those treads and fall. You should leave the bottom part of the steps the way they are, but they shouldn’t turn halfway up; they should continue straight, and you ought to make another upper landing where they wind up.” He looked around the corner into the kitchen. “Then you could use the original landing for part of the kitchen!” he concluded triumphantly.
Larry looked at him. “Kenny,” he said, sounding patient and feeling otherwise, “Take your tape measure and see what it measures from the curve to the top.”
Kenny did so. “Six feet,” he announced.
“Okay,” continued Larry, “Now measure six feet from the curve and straight out, the way you think it ought to go.
Kenny measured. “Ooops,” said Kenny. He laughed. “Guess that wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it?”
The top of the steps would wind up well-nigh at the west wall of the house, so that there would be no room for any landing at all. When one tried to walk from the dining room into the washroom, one would risk tumbling headlong into the stairwell. Furthermore, halfway up the staircase, one would be obliged to get down on hands and knees and crawl for a few feet, until one cleared the overhanging ceiling, which is the floor of the washroom. If the stairwell was enclosed, one would then have to go out the front door and come back in a new, second side door in order to go down those steps. The washroom would be accessible only from the outdoor, second-floor deck. Sorry, Kenny.
Like I’ve said, Larry is blessed with logic, which includes the ability to see things as they will be, and to foretell potential problems with plans before the plans are actually carried out. It’s a gift of his.
Actually, Kenny has the same gift; he’s artistic and imaginative. It’s just that he’s interrupted periodically with moments of Kenny Being Kenny, that’s all. Not long later, he came up with an idea for Victoria’s closet that really will work wonderfully, and solved a problem for us.
Her original closet is under the eave, and therefore a bit low. Furthermore, it is long and narrow, with a walk-in door at one end. At either end of the closet, there are short, flimsy rods, perhaps eighteen inches long, and on the end walls are shelves. On the long wall are several hooks. This setup wouldn’t do at all for a little girl who needs a place to hang 3,603,346 dresses, give or take a couple. Even if a long, sturdy rod was installed the length of the closet, it would have been impossible to get to the clothes from that walk-in door, because the closet is narrow. Larry had thought that he would have to build another closet on the outside of the closet wall; we would use the original closet for storage for her toys, shoes, hats, sweaters, and such like. I didn’t really like the idea, because I didn’t want to make her room any smaller; but what choices were there?
“Why don’t you take out the closet wall, from one end to the other, and put in a wide bi-fold door?” asked Kenny.
Larry looked at him. He looked at the wall. He opened the walk-in door and peered in.
“That’ll work!” he exclaimed. He whipped his tape from his belt and measured. “It will!” he repeated, “We’ll do it!” He grinned at Kenny.
Kenny drew himself up importantly. (He’s already a good three inches taller than Larry.) “When in doubt, just ask your little brother,” and he looked down his nose with smug superiority.
“Right,” agreed Larry. “And crawl up the stairs,” he added.
Kenny elbowed him, and, with that, Laurel and Hardy got on with the Sheetrocking.
Tuesday, I emptied out two big pan cupboards and the drawer under the stove, leaving nothing but the pans we absolutely had to have. I filled five big boxes. How in the world did all that stuff fit in there?! When I carried them out to the trailer, I discovered that I had to scoop snow before I could get there. I cleaned a few more kitchen drawers, filling a small bin completely full of colors, pens, and pencils. We have enough writing utensils to keep Columbus’ entire school system in ink, lead, and crayon for another century, easily.
Lydia needed to write a report about a nuclear control room, and we couldn’t find much about it in any of our books or in my Encarta Encyclopedia on my computer, so after school I took her to the library. That wasn’t much better; we could hardly find a thing about it. We got five fat books about nuclear energy, but do you really think the information from a book such as Atoms At Your Service, written in 1957, is going to do us much good? Here, listen to this:
Many successful experiments have been conducted in the irradiation of potatoes to delay sprouting and rotting. Tests are still of an experimental nature, although it is expected that irradiated potatoes will be utilized at least as animal feed within a short period of time. Of greatest importance to industry, to agriculture, and particularly to the housewife have been the experiments and developments in food preservation through gamma radiation sterilization.
Hmmm. That’s not quite what we need. Okay, here’s another one: Atoms For The World, 1957:
In Europe the putting-on of the roof of any building calls for celebration. Mr. Conway and Mr. Morgan entertained the construction and reactor teams at a large dinner party where much wine flowed and five Swiss francs reached the pocket of each Swiss worker, in the best of European traditions.
Huh? Atoms For The World, aye?
Okay, how about Atomic Science, Bombs, and Power, publication date 1955:
The largest betatron built so far is at the General Electric Company. It employs an electromagnet weighing 135 tons. The electrons circle the doughnut {I’m hungry; are you?} 250,000 times traveling a distance of 900 miles and attaining a velocity which is 99.99 percent that of light. They increase 200 times in mass as a result of the Einstein effect.
In addition to new knowledge of the structure and composition of the physical universe, elementary particle physics may yield new methods of releasing atomic energy. These, perhaps, will make possible a bomb so powerful that the hydrogen bomb will be only a wet firecracker by comparison.
My, my. But, um, that didn’t do us any good, either.
All right, here we go: The Atomic Energy Deskbook, written in 1963. Ooooo! 1963. It’s a really modern one. Let’s see…
Experimental devices built as part of the Stabilized Linear Pinch Program of research on controlled fusion are devices used for research on techniques for achieving stabilized pinch-confinement of an ionized gas or plasma in a straight-tube configuration.
Oh. Well. Think of that.
One more book to try: Atoms To Electricity, published in 1982. Why, this one is essentially brand new!
Nuclear power plants are designed and built to operate for 30 to 40 years. The nuclear plant operators, working round-the-clock shifts, are responsible for the safe operation of the plant. {Ooooo…think how tired they must get, after working 40 years round-the-clock, nonstop.} To qualify as a nuclear plant operator, a person must go through extensive training and pass a detailed written examination. The qualification process is much like the rigorous training one would undergo to become an airline pilot.
All right! We’ll simply write about the cockpit in a commercial jetliner; nobody will ever be the wiser! For pity’s sake. The Columbus Public Library keeps their fiction section more updated than their science division.
Larry worked at the house every day last week. He came home at noon Tuesday and used the snowblower on the front sidewalk, where snow had drifted to about 16 inches. He’s been patching walls and ceiling; he is nearly done with the middle and upper floors now, and almost ready to paint whatever needs to be painted. I went out after the kids went to bed, removed the rest of the foam from Caleb’s floor, and scraped up a bit of the glue. Larry showed me how: Scrape! Scrape! Scrape! —and there was a wide swath, glue-free.
I took the scraper from his hand. Scratch, scrunch, scriggle. Nothing happened; the glue adhered resolutely on. ’Twasn’t as easy as it looked, nosiree. I finally found a corner where evidently the glue wasn’t stuck to the wood so adamantly, and, with a good deal of effort and elbow grease and exertion, I cleared off an expanse of about three feet by three feet.
I think packing makes better use of my limited skills.
Wednesday, Larry and I went to our CPA’s office to sign the papers for our refund. We are beginning to think that we may not be able to start on the addition to our house--garage and upper bedroom--until next year. No matter; it will still be nice.
At church Wednesday night, Robert read about when Paul and his companions were at Ephesus, and Demetrius the silversmith called everyone together, riling them up because Paul was turning people to Christianity, which meant their sales of shrines of the goddess Diana would plummet. People thronged to the theatre, all in a confusion: Acts 19:32: “Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused: and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together.”
(I always thought that was an apt description of the Jr. High in this town.)
They then “all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians.’” What an upheaval! And to think that unbelievers accused the believers of turning the world ‘upside down’.
I once read that story to my children many years ago. Hannah, who was about four, said in astonishment, “I would have a sore throat, if I yelled that long!”
When I came home from church, I found Caleb and Larry both asleep, Caleb in the recliner, Larry in bed. (Caleb didn’t go to school or church all week last week, because of troubles with asthma. He’s better now.) Before going to church, I’d asked Larry to give Kitty a bath.
“She evidently sat in gas in the garage or somewhere, and I’m afraid she’ll groom herself and make herself sick,” I explained.
As I walked in, however, Kitty came purring to greet me--as dry and fluffy as ever--except for the patch of gas or Whatever-It-Was on her rump.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, rousing Larry from a sound slumber, “You didn’t give Kitty a bath!”
He slowly came to, looking around as if to orient himself. Then, “No, I didn’t need to; I picked her up and held her, and I didn’t smell a thing.” He yawned.
“Aaacccccchhhh!” I said succinctly, “You must have been purposely only breathing out, because you could smell that, even if your nose was completely clogged up.” I scowled at him. “Now you stink, too.”
He smiled politely, closed his eyes, and fell back asleep.
So I gave the cat a bath. She wasn’t as nice about it as Tabby had been, and a couple of times I was obliged to get a grip of the nape of her neck in order to convince her that climbing my arm was not a good plan; otherwise, things went swimmingly.
We had pizza pie for supper, and, upon getting it from the oven, I remembered that the last time we had had it, we’d burnt it, too. It was even worse, last time. An hour at 425° is too hot, too long, for pizza pie. And as soon as we began eating it, we remembered that we didn’t even like it. What a revoltin’ development.
Larry must have gotten enough sleep Wednesday night; he was up before six Thursday.
Caleb decided he wanted bulgar wheat with grits for breakfast about the time I was helping Victoria dress for school. Luckily, he’s good at following directions and keeping the stove set so he doesn’t burn things. I helped him put in the appropriate amounts of sugar, salt, and milk; that was all. I decided to eat some, myself. I’ve always liked bulgar wheat.
And then there was a frantic hunt for Victoria’s white school shoes. She’d had them in a plastic bag the previous day, because she’d worn snowboots to and from school. Hester and Lydia looked for them; they couldn’t find them. I, fixing Victoria’s hair, gave suggestions of where to look…finally, it was time to go, so I told them to get her slip-on shoes that she sometimes wears to church. I helped her put them on; she insisted they weren’t too tight atop her thick fuschia socks. I zipped her coat, held her gloves while she pushed her hands into them, tied her hood, and sent her out the door. An icy arctic wind blew in, and I called her back in to collect her scarf. I wrapped it around her--twice--and sent her out again, warning her that those shoes would be a lot more slippery than tennis shoes. She gingerly crept down the steps, skipped once or twice, warily rounded the corner to the drive, galloped a short ways, carefully stepped over a patch of ice, walked for ten feet, -- and then, throwing all caution to the wind, she gathered herself together, and ran pell-mell all the way to kindergarten.
I shut the door, walked back down the hall--and found her tennis shoes, still in their bag, sitting on a chair in the hall, precisely where Victoria had put them.
I went back into the kitchen to finish my bulgar wheat.
Caleb was sitting there eating his, and playing with a handful of little metal fighter jets. He had a small tank, too, and the jets were taking turns bombing the tank.
He asked me, “Which would you rather be in, the plane, or the tank?”
“The plane,” I answered promptly. “You can get away better in a plane, and you can stay up high enough while you’re dropping bombs that they might not be able to hit you. So the plane is safer,” I concluded.
I’d no sooner ended that spiel than Caleb lost his grip on his F-16 and dropped it splat into his bowl of bulgar wheat.
“The tank,” I quickly amended my discourse. “You can stay on solid ground, and you won’t land in the Bulgar and Grits Swamp when the Paw Of The Sky lets loose of you. So the tank is safer,” I finished.
Caleb went into peals of laughter.
That day, I cleaned out the drawers and cupboard in the bathroom. Would you believe, it took three boxes to hold it all?! Do we really need all that stuff?!
I then prepared to spray-paint my brown filing cabinet white to match my newly-painted pattern file; I would do it in the basement. I sent Caleb into my room and opened both windows--in spite of the fact that it was barely 10° outside. I turned on my small space heater, and told Caleb to stay put.
“Call me if you need anything,” I told him.
He proceeded to make himself a teepee with all the pillows and blankets. Notebooks and pencils he piled at one side, schoolbooks at the other. On the nightstand he placed a tall glass of milk. “I have everything I need,” he assured me, grinning. “This is my office.”
I grinned back. “Spill the milk and you’re fired,” I said. I went out and closed the door.
The door opened behind me. “I forgot my glasses,” said Caleb. haha
I decided I might as well wash the clothes since I was downstairs anyway. They were getting to be a mountain.
While I was painting, Hester and Lydia fixed Van de Camp’s batter-dipped fish and steamed broccoli for supper. Try that combination of perfumes, wouldja. We had pineapple and Fuji apples to go with it. Lydia took Caleb his plate, and Victoria, who had been in his teepee playing ‘school’ with him, came out and inhaled her food so that she could rush back to ‘school’ “before it gets too late, and I flunk,” she said.
Minutes later, the door popped back open. “My glasses fell apart,” announced Caleb, holding them out to me.
So Hester, Victoria, and I took them to the Vision Center at Wal-Mart to have them fixed while Lydia entered the teepee to assist Caleb with his homework. First, we stopped at the Goodwill to drop off the old blue recliner, the musical railroad that used to be mine, and the baby swing. Remember that baby swing, to which we thought we’d lost the legs? And Larry made wooden legs for it, which looked fine and dandy until Caleb tripped over it and broke two legs in one fell swoop? {Er, uh, that is, two of the swing’s legs; not two of his own legs.} Well, about the time Aaron had definitely grown out of it, we found the legs, along with the accompanying braces, in the garage. I suppose we could have kept the swing for baby Joanna and any grandbabies that come after her; but we can’t; we simply can’t.
I regretted getting rid of that musical railroad, too. It was mine when I was little. It has a battery-run engine, and there is a mallet on the back of it that goes up and down all the way around the track. One puts little metal inserts onto the track, and each metal piece plays a different note when the mallet strikes it, so that it sounds like a xylophone. The inserts can be put in however one chooses, so as to make various tunes. Oh, how I loved that train! But…we can’t keep everything.
On the sign at Village Inn restaurant, I read, Skillets Are Back. I commented, “Well, but I don’t want to eat a skillet.”
“Oh,” said Hester quickly, “perhaps they aren’t talking about something you eat; I think what they mean to say is that Mr. and Mrs. Skillet are back in the kitchen.” hee hee
I loaded several more boxes into the trailer that night, and then the trailer was clear full, completely full, absolutely full to the brim. Larry said he would haul it out to the house the next morning. It is so heavy, he was anxious to get it out there now, while the ground is frozen. It would be as good as impossible for him to back it up to the house if it was muddy. I jammed big quilts and sleeping bags anywhere there seemed to be a gap at the rear of the trailer, the better to keep those last three topsy-turvy stacks from falling over.
There, I thought, backing up and looking at it before I closed the doors, everything should be fine, I hope I hope I hope.
I went and took a bath, using up a pile of half-crumbled bath cubes and a sample packet of bubble bath I’d found buried in the drawers. Boy, oh boy, did I ever smell good. (I was a little slippery, though.)
And then it was bedtime. (Actually, it had been bedtime for a loooong time.) I alllllllmost fell asleep--and then the cats started having a free-for-all. I yelled at them to behave.
Silence reigned--until I was nearly asleep again. And then there was another horrible yeoowwwl, and an answering growwwwl, and I leaped out of bed and dashed down the hallway, ready to throw anything and throttle anybody. There is always the question of who the guilty party is, and sometimes I can’t be sure. But I was in a foul enough humor that I didn’t really care if somebody got corrected unjustly, so long as at least one of the beasts got correctly justly. Socks ran past me twice, looking amazed when he got himself whopped both times. He fled for the basement. Now, I did not want him in the basement, because I knew the stupid felines would either carry on their feud down there, or he would come back up and they would pick up where they left off.
I went after him.
He stopped directly inside Caleb’s door, arched his back, and squinted his eyes, wholly as if he expected me to mollycoddle him and praise him for being such a wonderful kitty.
I grabbed him by the nape of the neck and hauled him up the stairs. Moving a large bag of garbage out of the way, I opened the garage door and gave him enough of a fling down the steps that his feet had to go mighty fast to stay up with the top part of him. He came to a quick stop at the bottom, turned around, and evidently prepared to come straight back in. Remember, it was cold outside; and, even though there is a heater in the garage, it can’t get the temperature up much above 39° when it is in the single digits outside.
I slid the pet door blocker into place and went to bed.
It wasn’t long before Socks commenced a mournful howling at the door, wanting back in, please let me back in, I’ll be good, I promise, let me back in, I’ll be good, I promise, let me back in, I’ll be good, I promise, let me back in, I’ll be good, I promise.
I resolutely ignored him, covered my ears with my pillow, and tried to sleep. Cats do not keep promises.
Forty-five minutes later, my alarm went off. Aaarrrggghhh.
On our drive was a pile of boxes from my brother-in-law, John Walker. He’s a helpful, get-it-done sort of a person. He brought more the next morning, too.
The trailer was gone; Larry, I assumed, had hauled it to the house.
At a quarter till one that day, we saw our blind teacher, Penny Golden, trotting to school. It was cold and windy, and she was bundled all up and going at a good clip, sometimes breaking into a brief run. Her white cane continuously checked out the edge of the sidewalk, and the instant it detected the walk to the door, she made a quick turn and dashed up it. Without the slightest hesitation, she made the next 90° turn, then reached out for the handle and pulled the door open fully as if she could see exactly what she was doing. She scurried in, and that was that.
Penny is quite a person. Sometimes I’ve told her, “Penny, I’m more handicapped than you are. Turn out all the lights, and you’ll see what I mean.”
And then I was off to fill big boxes with stuffed toys, and to gather up all the toys downstairs that had to go to the Goodwill. I got many boxes filled, and many bags taken to the Goodwill, but there is still a lot to do. I will be sad about some of those toys…perhaps I’ll save a few for Aaron and Joanna to play with when they come to visit. But I can’t save many; I really don’t have a place to keep them. I can’t! I mustn’t! I shouldn’t! I won’t! I oughtn’t! Well…maybe a couple more…
When Larry came home that night, he told me that I had been right; the trailer was heavy. He’d taken the trailer at 10:30 a.m. He didn’t even get to Westbrook Lanes, on the western edge of town about two miles from here, when the trailer broke smack in two.
At least, that was what Larry said it did.
Actually, what happened was that the tongue broke at the welded places somebody had placed there. They’d used an arc welder rather than a wire welder, as they should have. Arc welders don’t get hot enough for something that must support that much weight. Larry first thought that the welds he had done had broken; but not so. His welds were solid as could be. He said the other welds were done very poorly; the person must not have really known what he was doing. He’d noticed that the trailer was jerking hard; but the road is extremely bumpy (even though it’s a new road), and he thought everything was okay…
“How fast were you going?” I asked.
“Only about fifty,” he replied.
“Fifty!!!” I screeched. “I could have told you right then that trouble was looming! I told you you’d have to tiptoe all the way to the house.”
“Fifty is tiptoeing, for me,” he said.
Anyway, he was looking in his rearview mirror when there was a very hard jerk, and then the front of the trailer descended; he watched it go down, down, down, till it was resting slap on the pavement. He scraped his way into Cubby’s gas and convenience store.
“It didn’t go down hard,” he reassured me, “Everything should be okay inside.”
“Sherrrrrrr,” I retorted (in a respectful tone, of course).
Larry always thinks everything will be fine, even when black smoke is beginning to roll. Even when the fuse on a stick of dynamite is lit, and there is no way of extinguishing it. Even when the ground is beginning to shake. Even when a tidal wave has appeared on the horizon, and there is no higher ground to which to escape. Even when a half-mile-wide tornado is coming directly at us. Even when we’re in the middle of a raging typhoon and the engine has quit and we are equipped with only one oar. You get the picture.
Well, he’d no soon gotten stopped than a man in a pickup pulled in behind him to see if he needed assistance. Our Good-Samaritan-stopping-to-help-people-in-trouble ways pay off now and then!--we reap what we sow. The man had a wire welder on his pickup, with all the tools he needed to fix things, and plenty of time, he told Larry, to do exactly that. Larry had to go out to the house to get his jacks, and then he returned and helped the man weld the trailer tongue back together again. One side was not completely broken all the way through; had it broken, there would have been nothing connecting trailer to pickup except the wiring. !
When it was done, Larry went into Cubby’s to get some cash to pay the man; it was 11:30 a.m. The man had told him that his company charged $48 an hour, but he wasn’t going to charge that much; he thought…hmmmm…maybe $30. So Larry got $30 in cash. When he got back out to his pickup, the man had changed his mind, and said he wanted no more than $20. But Larry insisted on giving him $30.
“It’s worth that much and more, to me,” Larry told him, and the man accepted it.
Then he took the trailer on up to the house, backing it in at the front, so that it is reasonably level with the porch. It will be easier to unload than it was to load. Now new boxes of stuff have taken the place of all the boxes I once had in the living room and hallways, and we are again side-winding our way through the house.
Larry tried using the water Friday; it was supposedly all hooked up and ready for service. He turned on a faucet.
Nothing happened.
He thought maybe the pressure pump wasn’t working; perhaps he’d wired it up wrong. He called the water and sewage guys (wonder what they’re really called?); they came to help. They checked the pump; it was working. They spotted an error with the plumbing by the toilet, and told Larry what to do to remedy the trouble.
Deciding that the problem must be in the pipes outside the house, they turned on the water at the outside pump and stood there staring at the ground, waiting for water to come bubbling to the surface where there was a break in the line.
Larry watched them for a moment, then said, “Ahem, the water will stay underground, because the frost layer is twelve inches deep.”
“Oh,” said the man, and turned the water off.
Charles (my niece Susan’s husband who is now at the helm of Walker Construction), who had come to see how Things of The Household Disposition were progressing, offered Larry the use of their new ‘mini’--a small skidloader. He brought it out and helped dig up the turf to see what was the matter. Turns out, Marley’s Ghost had trenched into the water pipe when he was running his underground electrical wire.
Mind you, that water pipe was five feet below ground, while Marley’s Ghost was supposed to stay at three feet under ground, no deeper. Somebody asked him at the time if he shouldn’t be using his ‘guide’, something that prevents him from going too deep and keeps him at the proper depth.
“No,” he said, “It’s not a problem at all when it’s at three feet.”
No problem, eh. Well, we have the problem. No water.
The water company people were supposed to come fix that pipe Saturday; they finally came today. And yes!--we have water! We have leaks, too. Nothing serious; a couple of joints need to be soldered tighter. Larry is doing that right now, as I type.
Saturday, I packed games, Lydia’s knickknacks, boxes of albums and books, and my two big blue flowered hurricane lamps. I got those lamps not long after we were married. They were closeouts from J. C. Penney's for $30 each, regular price $90 apiece. I’ll betcha those things would be $150 now; they were J. C. Penney's biggest hurricane lamps. Sure and you know I don’t want them broken to bits!
I washed clothes…partially cleaned out the fish tank…totally cleaned out the cats’ litter box…and gladly ate one of the grilled cheese sandwiches Lydia fixed at noon. (I think I should have divided the previous sentence; the latter would have sounded tastier.) Mmmmm…that girl knows how to grill cheese. Then Caleb decided to make eggs, sunny side up; his grilled cheese sandwiches aren’t delectable, according to him, unless he has an egg or two to go with it. He made some for Victoria, too. Those two kiddos invariably make their left-over eggs inedible for anyone else by pouring a gob of syrup on them. Ugh. Where did they get that notion?! I suppose it came about because now and then we have pancakes and eggs--and Larry puts the egg on top of the stack of buttered pancakes, then pours syrup over the whole works.
Caleb and Victoria were racketing around so much, I decided Caleb was well enough to help. So he put small cars and Lego in their proper places, while Victoria picked up things here and there. She leaves a trail of disaster everywhere she goes. Her best dolls somehow wind up on the floor on their faces; papers of all shapes and sizes are strewn about; colors and pens litter the floor; here are her shoes and socks; there are her mittens and scarf; she’s a total slopbucket, that she is. But when I ask her to put things away, she cheerfully does so. She willingly helps me with all sorts of things without me even asking, and she has such a sweet attitude that she’s a marvelous little person to have around underfoot, in spite of the messes.
Larry came home at 1:30 p.m. He ate and went back to the house, taking Hester with him to clean up behind him as he works. They got the wall taken out where he will hang doors for Victoria’s closet.
At suppertime, Larry told me, “We got Victoria’s wall torn out, and--”
Victoria’s head popped up, her face underwent a sudden metamorphosis, and she cried, “You did what to my poor wall?!”
Nobody had told her about the latest closet plans. We hurriedly explained.
If only we can find enough closet space, I will relax. That’s what we seem to be short on: closet space.
Lydia fixed tuna helper--noodles and broccoli--for supper Saturday night, and afterwards Caleb made almond poppyseed muffins. Then Dorcas went to the grocery store for S’mores ingredients for us, and a carton of malted milk balls. We all set about making S’mores, with the littles exclaiming excitedly over the growth spurts their marshmallows were undergoing in the microwave.
Soon everyone was heading for showers and bathtubs, curling hair, and getting ready for bed. After a while, I heard the shower start for what I thought was the last time--and then I noticed that Caleb had not yet had a bath. He was curled up in an inconspicuous lump in the big overstuffed chair, trying hard to make himself invisible, so that he might finish reading his book, which had doubtless reached a Pinnacle of Suspense, which is what all good books do at the end of every chapter.
“Caleb!” I exclaimed, making the poor boy start so badly he nearly tumbled out of his snug little nook. “It’s late! You must take a bath; you were supposed to, half an hour ago! Now, run fast as you can into the bathroom and start filling the tub with nothing but hot water, until there is enough, and then, if you need to, cool it down. Otherwise you will not have enough hot water. Now GO!”
Caleb went.
But promptly thereafter, what upon my wondering ear should fall but the sound of the shower, not the tub, and the rushing noise of water swirling down the drain. Eh!
I leaped to my feet and sprinted to the bathroom, yelling as I went, “Caleb!!! What on earth are you doing! You’re wasting hot water, and you’re going to wind up with nothing but cold water!!!”
So saying, and without pause in my mad dash, I leaned over and snapped down the gizmo that switches the shower nozzle to the tub nozzle, put in the plug, then turned the knob all the way to ‘hot’. There was none too much of that commodity; it was getting cooler by the second. But there would be enough, no thanks to Caleb.
Caleb wasn’t even in there. He’d gone wandering slowly off to find his pajamas, by all appearances somewhat bumfizzled, probably wondering whether Sherlock Hardy nabbed the criminal, or if he got nabbed himself.
I squawked at him, “What are you doing! I told you to turn on the tub! Do you like cold showers? Don’t you understand, when the hot water is close to gone, you must put it in the tub, not run it down the drain?!”
He looked a little shellshocked, and allowed as how he hadn’t thought of that.
“Well, you didn’t need to think of it; I thought of it for you! All you had to do was what I told you to do.” I put my hand into the water, added a small bit of cold water, and turned off the faucet. “Now hurry,” I admonished, “before the water in the tub gets cold.”
I looked at his downcast face and felt a glimmer of compunction about my tirade. “Did you know,” I asked in a gentler tone, “that God made this” I put my hand on his head “for more than merely holding up a hat?”
Victoria happened to be passing by about then, and when I looked up, she must have supposed I was talking to her. “Yes,” she affirmed seriously, nodding. “It’s for barrettes, too.”
And that effectively ended that lecture.
Sunday morning Robert preached about Eutychus falling asleep and tumbling out of the window when Paul was ‘long time preaching’. He spoke about people who, it seems, have a switch turned off as soon as the sermon begins--“I don’t even have time to bore you!” said Robert--and they immediately start nodding off. And guess what? A person who often sits in front of us, distracting us with his eyelids slowly descending and his head bobbing up and down throughout the service, stayed awake and looked marginally interested, till close to the end of the service.
We all managed to go to church, and Caleb didn’t even cough. I didn’t smell any cologne or perfume, either. That’s got to be part of his problem in church--perfumes, colognes, and hairsprays.
I stayed with Mama that evening, as I usually do. I put together a couple of scrapbooks, filling them with piles of letters and old cards I’d found downstairs. I no sooner finished the first and closed it than it popped apart at the snaps. Bah, humbug! Why do they think wimpy little snaps with no shank whatsoever can hold a whole lot of fat pages?!
“It looks like a job for Larry, to me,” observed Mama, watching my fruitless efforts at putting it back together again.
“I think you’re right,” I agreed, and tucked the recalcitrant thing back into my bag. “But he’d better not act smug!”
She laughed. “Oh, he never does that!” She grinned at me. “Does he?”
After I went home, and after the older kids went to bed, Victoria went with Larry and me to Wal-Mart for a few necessities of life, including copper wiring with which to fasten my scrapbook back together.
“Come look at the rugs,” I requested.
Lo and behold, they were on sale! We gleefully got all the ones I’d wanted and a few more besides, carrying them to the layaway department, where we intended to leave them until Friday, when our income tax refund will arrive. The clerk pulled my name up in his computer, got everything ready--
--and then informed us that we couldn’t put clearance items on layaway.
Sooo…we put them back. {“What difference does it make!!” grumbled Larry under his breath.}
But!!! Today we got a refund in the mail from Walgreens! Medicaid has reinstated us, and Walgreens will be reimbursed from them--and they were refunding us for all the prescriptions we had purchased during the month of January, and let me tell you, it was a sizable sum. Two of the children are allergic to Amoxicillin, you see, and must have an expensive substitute. Caleb’s medicine for his nebulizer is not cheap, either.
Well, when I found that check in the mail, I signed my name on it so fast that I practically embossed it. I crammed my feet into my shoes, snatched my purse, called the children to come get their coats, put my own on, and out the door we flew. First to the bank--and then to Wal-Mart to get those rugs before someone else did.
All those beautiful Oriental rugs are now residing out at our house, hoping they will not have to wait too long before they can get out of their dusty plastic wrappers and stretch out comfortably on one of the various brand-new floors.
Someday, several hundred years from now, we’re going to sit down one evening and relax.
Unless we think of something else to do.
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