As I type, Socks is beside my desk chair, attacking my shoe, falling over it, somersaulting, hanging onto it with all four paws and all twenty talons, killing it before it kills him.
Monday, as heard over our trusty scanner, the lady dogcatcher got into a big row with someone at the Animal Shelter. It sounded like she was getting thoroughly thrashed when she called for help, and like she got her radio jerked from her hand before she was done talking. Police officers from all sides of Columbus roared to the scene, and it wasn’t any time at all before one of them was hauling in a prisoner.
Poor lady! I met her when she came to get the two stray cats behind our house, and I like her. It’s easy to tell she likes animals. Somebody must have been angry because their pet was picked up and they had to pay to retrieve it, or something. Law enforcement--and dog catching--is a dangerous business!--all sorts of things bite.
That evening, we took Larry his supper; he was working at our house. I stopped at Cubby’s convenience store for gas; it was a cold, cold night, not a night where one would like to walk several miles with a gas can in hand. I’d just put the cap back on (yes; I remember to do that) (now) when Teddy pulled up, asking what we were doing, and if anyone was out at our house.
“I’m going home to eat,” he told me, “and then I’ll come out in about an hour.”
When we got there, the littles helped me carry in five heavy boxes of tile that we will put in the washroom -- and they even match the pretty curtains that were already there --, some boxes of stuff for the bathroom, and the smaller of the rugs we’d just bought at Wal-Mart.
I started gathering up all the curtains to take home and wash. Hester had taken the upstairs curtains down Saturday when she was there; I took the ones down on the middle floor. I crammed three big garbage bags clear full with all those curtains.
Teddy arrived, an ‘eraser wheel’ in hand. This is a rubber doodad that attaches to a drill, a doojigger that Teddy uses at Precision Uni-Body to remove adhesive from cars. He’d brought it to try on the living room floor--and guess what! It worked. Slowly, it did, but it worked! And it left the floor clean and nice, not dull and damp like the malodorous adhesive solvent Larry had been using. He worked away at that floor for quite a while after all of us but Larry had gone home.
Larry, meanwhile, was working on walls, filling in cracks. As the house warms up, more cracks materialize. But finally, finally, more cracks had been patched than were still waiting to be patched. Larry and I carried in the big rugs, too, with the black neighbor dog traipsing along at our side, wiggling and waggling happily.
“You’re moving in, aren’t you aren’t you aren’t you??!” he panted, grinning at us.
As usual, he got right up in Victoria’s face, which brings her to a stop and makes her start backing up. She’s a little leery of him, and he knows it, and takes advantage of it. That makes my blood boil. It makes me shout like a fishwife, which in turn makes the black dog jump like a startled rabbit. Unless it’s a startled fish.
He generally comes tiptoeing carefully over to apologize, so I pet him and try to act like I’m not mad at him anymore. If a dog comes to you after you’ve yelled at him, that’s good; and you sho’ ’nuff don’t want to teach him to run from you, instead, by still acting angry. But I’d really rather clonk him on the ol’ bean, ker-bonk, I would.
Teddy said that one day when he was out there, the two black lap puppies from down the hill came to see him. The black dog was playing with them…but when Teddy started petting the puppies, the black dog got jealous and nipped the puppies. Teddy lost his cool and smacked him.
“Yipe!” said Black Bandit, and the puppies did not get nipped again.
Sooo…it seems that he is capable of learning. Reckon he’ll learn that he mustn’t eat Cat Stew for dinner? Anyway, we won’t have to worry about the big white dog eating our cats, because Jim Cumming found him on his property and shot him. His cows are calving, and he was afraid the dog would attack the newborn calves. And he did warn Mr. Adkisson to keep the dog penned because of that.
Nevertheless, we felt sorry for Mr. Adkisson; he told Larry that they’d had that dog for fourteen years, ever since it was a tiny orphaned pup. His wife had bottle-fed it until it could drink milk and eat puppy food. Such troubles… The Adkissons and the Cummings need to be about 500 miles apart, I’d say.
Tuesday, it was so cold and windy, it was hard to catch a breath while walking outside. Victoria went with me to the store.
“Could you get some Bunny Hunches?” requested Caleb as we were walking out the door.
Victoria giggled. “He always says that instead of ‘Honey Bunches’ cereal,” she told me.
As we were going down 17th Street, I spotted a small stuffed animal in the street. Stopping, I turned around, went back, hopped out, and picked it up. It was a little brown stuffed cocker spaniel , and Victoria loved it. She was holding it…petting it…crooning over it…
My olfactory nerve suddenly gave a lurch of repugnance.
“Let me smell that,” I demanded, snatching it from her hand.
“Uuuggghhh!!!” I howled, grimacing, “This thing smells like dog breath!”
“Eww, yuck!” yowled Victoria, making the same face I had just done. She took the thing gingerly between thumb and index finger, set it down in the middle seat, and scooted far away from it.
After we got home, I washed it and set it on a shelf to dry. It smells much better…but still has the faint aroma of dog breath. Reckon it’s just the odor of the stuffing, or the fur, or something?
I washed several loads of curtains that day and took the dry-clean-only tawny-buff raw satin living room curtains to the laundromat. The curtains in our house are new and pretty; I plan to use them all.
That night for supper we had mini breakfast pizzas, which have eggs and bacon on them. We really like them, any time of the day. We also had big, fat pretzels filled with cream cheese. Fresh out of the oven and slathered with butter, those things are scrumptious.
The next order of business was to get all the knickknacks out of Dorcas’ room, wash them, pack them… That’s why it’s taking so long: I’m cleaning everything before I box it. I filled a couple of boxes of curtains, and more boxes with Lydia’s purple quilted pillows, knickknacks, pictures, decorative shelves, wreaths, school supplies, books, and Christmas decorations… we filled two or three bags for the Goodwill, and oodles for the garbage.
One day, I picked up an outdated 8th-grade math book that Hester once bought at one of our school book sales for Victoria. I looked it over and threw it into the trash.
Five minutes later, remembering how Victoria likes to copy numbers out of that book and pretend to work math problems, I got the book back out of the trash.
Half an hour later, I happened upon it again. I opened the cover, glanced at the publication date, and threw it into the trash. Ten minutes later, I found a rumpled paper of Victoria’s on which she had painstakingly copied the title of that very math book: Eighth-Grade Arithmetic. Under that, she had written, Chapter One Victoria. Below that heading, she’d penciled, 3+3=6 4+4=8 72+89=Victoria. Beneath this, she wrote, Dear Hester: I love you. Love, Victoria Maurine Jackson, age 5 ½ birthday Fbyoory 24 Monday age 6 Happy.
I retrieved the math book from the garbage, and it has stayed retrieved, ever since.
That very afternoon, Victoria came home from school, spotted the book, picked it up, gathered up her notebook and pencil, and sat down on the loveseat, where she diligently copied problem after problem for the better part of an hour.
Yes, we can make room for an outdated 8th-grade math book.
Larry came home for a few minutes to eat, then went on his way to AceIsThePlace for kerosene or SomethingOrOther. Teddy was out at the house working on the floor. Larry had been working on the plumbing all day, having all sorts of twubbles and twials. Things simply refused to seal; all the new pipes kept leaking. Small leaks, but leaks, nonetheless. Teddy told him that a plumber we know, the man who bought Larry’s old shop, dips joints in goop before he screws them together. Larry tried it, and it worked.
He replaced nearly all the pipe, because they were old and filled with rust and gunk, and after the house sat for so long, it got really bad, and the toilet wouldn’t even flush. That is, it flushes all right; but water wouldn’t go down. At least, it wasn’t going where it was supposed to go, which is Not Good, if you know what I mean.
Wednesday, amidst all the packing, I actually finished washing the curtains. I folded them…put them into boxes… Now, when I’m ready to hang them again, they will be rumpled beyond imagination, I suppose. The ‘dry-clean-recommended’ curtains turned out fine after I washed them in cold water and hung them to dry. They are still as crisp and nice as ever; they need only to be ironed.
That afternoon, Larry helped a friend of ours who was pouring cement for a garage drive. The man has helped Larry several times at our house, so Larry was returning the favor.
Larry collected two pairs of rubber boots from our new basement, one pair for himself, and one pair for his friend. He handed his friend the boots, and started to put on his own. He peered inside, a habit acquired years ago, probably the aftereffects of living where there was an abundance of snakes, poisonous and otherwise.
Inside one boot was a soft little mouse nest--with the mouse still inside!!! The mouse escaped before Larry could catch it. Just what we wanted: more mice. As if we haven’t had our fill of them, here.
I wonder, are there mice in Alaska?
We had stuffed Sole Monterey and broccoli for supper, followed by yogurt. Tabby loves fish, and invariably perches himself on a chair beside somebody and goes to begging with all his might and main. We had French Vanilla Cappuccino ice cream and Raspberry Rumble ice cream for dessert.
After church that night, many mothers were helping their young preschool-aged children pass out Valentines. Victoria wore a red dress printed with white hearts that Norma had sewn for her. It was trimmed with white piping and eyelet lace. Most all the little girls, ages ten and under, and even several older girls, too, were dressed in bright reds, whites, pinks, and burgundies, many of which were liberally printed or appliqued with hearts. Indeed, it positively looked like a Valentine party.
We didn’t have to buy any Valentines this year, because as I was packing I happened upon several boxes of Winnie-the-Pooh Valentine cards. Many were the days when we had to purchase enough Valentines for the friends of all five of our older children, and there was one busy Valentine's Day when we had to get enough for all six of the older children. By the next year, however, Keith, at the advanced age of ten, considered himself well beyond The Age of Valentines. Little did he know! It was only six years later that he jumped back into Valentine’s Day purchases with a vengeance--and he’s been a regular at the Valentine's Day card rack, ever since.
Oh, no. I just learned that there are mice in Alaska: the northern red-backed mouse. Aauugghh. Botheration.
At noon Thursday, Caleb’s throat and ears hurt. A cough drop helped, and off he went to school for the afternoon session.
It was about 3:20 p.m. when he came back in, having a hard time breathing, and feeling so ill that he was about to cry. His head hurt, his stomach hurt, and he was gasping for breath. I sent him quickly to take a puff and an Advil while I got his nebulizer ready. He took a treatment, but it didn’t help a whole lot, and his face turned red and flushed. He was dizzy and getting sicker by the minute.
By then the girls were home. Leaving Victoria with Hester and Lydia, I took Caleb and headed for David City.
Caleb, it seemed, was coming down with something that might have turned into strep throat if we hadn’t have caught it quickly. His oxygen level was too low, and he had a temperature of 100.4°. He got a steroid shot and a prescription for some sort of antibiotic substitute. By bedtime, Caleb was feeling a lot better, thank goodness.
After we got home, Lydia, Victoria, and I went to Walgreens with the prescription, to the library, to a drop box to get rid of bags of unwanted this-and-that, and then to Wal-Mart for Items of Immense Importance. Lydia picked out a birthday present for her cousin Rachel, to whose party she had been invited, and an anniversary present for Loren and Janice. She is their Secret Pal. I also intended to get a pile of boxes.
Lydia, as is ever her way, deliberated diligently, long, and hard over those presents, with me helpfully admonishing her to hurry.
“We must get back to Walgreens for Caleb’s medicine before they close!” I repeated at intervals of no more than thirty seconds.
At long last she made up her mind: for Rachel, a bright pink resin high-heeled pump with jewels on it, inside of which sat a pair of teddy bears in adorable resin clothes; and for Loren and Janice, a couple of soft white stuffed teddy bears holding a little mylar balloon that said Happy Valentine's Day. We raced for the checkout stands.
And forgot the boxes.
Friday, Victoria dressed in a bright red knit dress with white puffed-rubber lacy hearts around the bottom. There are three big heart-shaped buttons down the front, white with red zigzags on them. I curled her bangs, put her hair in pigtails, used the topsytail on them to make little twists above each one, and then adorned one with a big red ribbon bow and the other with a big white ribbon bow. She wore tights with red lacy hearts printed on them, and short red socks with white lace on top of the tights.
It was Valentine's Day, and there was going to be a party! Victoria rushed out the door in a giant flurry of excitement.
Half a minute later, she came dashing back in the door, breathless, crying, “I forgot my Valentines!”
She found the bag, whirled around, and flew out the door again.
At a quarter after one, I went to the school, cameras in hand, to watch a play Lydia’s class was putting on, Anne of Green Gables. Lydia has been busy all week rehearsing, having landed the plum roll of Anne Shirley. Much to her chagrin, a boy to whom she was not related (there are only two boys in the class) was chosen as Gilbert Blythe, Anne’s arch enemy at the outset, but eventually her husband-to-be.
“The only good thing,” moaned Lydia, “is that I get to hit him over the head with my slate.”
The one other boy in the class is her cousin James; she would have preferred that ‘Gilbert’ be him. But the thing is, Taylor memorizes well and was a good actor for the part, while James was perfect for the roll of Matthew Cuthbert, one of Anne’s adoptive ‘parents’.
Hannah, Aaron, and Joanna came to see the play, too. I helped him off with his coat and lifted him onto his chair, nearly falling on my nose in the process. He’s heavy--35 pounds already! Every now and then, I reached over and spun the wheels of the firetruck he had in his hand, and he tipped his head and grinned. Several of the mothers came. Victoria’s class came, too, and every last little girl--all six of ’em--was dressed in red, most of them with hearts printed on the fabric.
It was misting heavily, and getting windy. Hannah came visiting for a little while after the play. Aaron, as usual, wanted to see the firetruck video, and I, as usual, obliged him. {No, that is not how you spoil children; that is how you convince them that you love them, so there so there. And loving a child never, ever spoils him. Letting him act bratty is what spoils him, so there so there again.}
All of a sudden, at five minutes till four, Lydia said, “When shall we go to Rachel’s birthday party?”
!
I forgot!
“You should have reminded me a long time ago!” I exclaimed, “It takes fifteen minutes to get there, they live clear across town!”
Lydia looked surprised, and grabbed coat and present. I flung on my coat, grabbed my purse, and we ran out the door. We arrived in only four minutes; she wasn’t late. And I didn’t even get a speeding ticket! I finally got back to the packing at 4:30 p.m.
By Friday, Larry was totally done with the plumbing. Everything works, and there are no leaks. He looked again at the living room and the middle-floor bedroom, and decided it would be too, too much work to patch all the cracks. So he got enough ¼-inch Sheetrock from Menards to cover all those walls; that will save a considerable amount of time. He expects to be done with it this evening.
It is horribly muddy around the house. Soon, the excavation company will bring a load of white rock for us; that will help.
Later that evening, the mist turned to snow. It was over 40° outside, but it was snowing and blowing like anything, and there were car wrecks all over the place.
“Will you come with me to Wal-Mart?” I asked Larry. “I need more boxes, more than I can carry by myself.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “It’s snowing outside!”
I gave him an equally unbelieving gaze. “Since when has that ever stopped you from doing something you really want to do?!” I demanded.
“But the wind is blowing hard!” he countered.
“And you are afraid that, when you are holding a lot of boxes, you’ll get blown away?” I rolled my eyes.
“Well, it’s a really wet snow; the boxes will get soaked!” he defended himself.
“Oh, pooh. It’s not snowing that hard, and it’s not that wet. They’ll be fine,” I argued. “I really need them! And besides, we have to get presents for Loren and Janice’s 35th anniversary, and for your mother and Lawrence’s 12th,” I added.
I finally convinced him to come with me. We walked down the Valentine aisle--and found a long-legged, soft, stuffed lion and a long-legged, soft, stuffed tiger. Each animal held a lace-trimmed heart with the embroidered words, I Love You.
“Here we are, just the thing!” I exclaimed, and put them into the cart.
Victoria promptly retrieved them both and carried them lovingly around the store, the entire rest of the time we were there.
For Loren and Janice we got several food items--cereal bars, crackers, jello-and-fruit ‘individuals’--and a full-blown rose in a vase full of chocolate hearts.
We left Wal-Mart and took three more bags to a used-clothes drop box. By then, we thought it was too late to go to Lawrence and Norma’s. But Larry called to wish them a Happy Anniversary, and they invited us out, saying that Bobby and Hannah and the children were there, and there was hot coffee, chocolate bundt cake, and cherry cheese cake awaiting us. So we went visiting in the wet, blowing snow. (No, Larry did not complain about going out in that weather--not when cherry cheese cake awaited his arrival.)
They were looking at an undersea video when we arrived.
“Have a seat,” said Lawrence, “this is really interesting!”
“Icky,” Aaron informed us, pointing at the screen, on which lurked a giant squid…or a flying gurnard… or an Octopodidae…or a Mosaic Moray eel, or something. He wrinkled his nose. “Ewwwww,” said he.
Later, as we drove home, Victoria remarked, “Wow, it’s snowing so hard, you can’t even see the blue sky!” -- and then wondered why everyone laughed.
We worked in Dorcas’ room nearly all day Saturday. It still looks dreadful, but we did make a noticeable dent in it.
Larry took the Suburban in the morning to have new tires put on it and a leak in the exhaust system repaired. It now has much better traction. It still needs to be aligned and have whatever is wrong with the front end fixed. Larry put new tires on his pickup, too; it’s really been needing them.
I washed clothes all day long, just as I’d done each day that week. Every time I thought I was done, I found another armload of dirty clothes in Somebody’s bedroom or a bathroom. Aarrgghh!
I stayed with Mama last night, and told her a story about Valentine's Day when I was ten years old and in the fifth grade: I’d come home at noon, eaten lunch, and was ready to return to school. I walked into the living room, picked up my coat--and something fell onto the floor. I picked it up.
It was a little heart-shaped tac pin, partly red velvet, partly navy and white cloisonné. It was beautiful. I loved it. But from where, I wondered, had it come???
The only thing I could come up with was that one of the boys in my class must have tucked it into the pocket of my coat, and when I picked up my coat, it had fallen out. I could think of no other explanation.
Imagining that my mother would very likely not want me to keep jewelry from a boy, and wanting very badly to keep it, I quietly deposited it back into my pocket and didn’t breathe a word about it.
When I got to school, I pulled the pin from my pocket, admired it again, and carefully pinned it to my collar, wondering if anyone would say something and give himself away.
Nobody did.
I wondered about it all day…all evening…
It was almost bedtime when my mother asked, “Did you ever find anything on your coat today?”
Uh-oh, I thought. She probably knows who it was from, and is going to make me give it back.
So I frowned thoughtfully and said, “When?”
“At noon,” she replied.
Well, there was no hope for it, I thought.
“Yes, I found a heart pin,” I reluctantly admitted.
She looked at me for a moment, and later I would realize that she was only wondering if I liked it, or if I did not. “I found it at the store and thought you might like it,” she said.
Boy, oh, boy, talk about being surprised. I’d never dreamed that that pin came from my mother. And to this day, I cannot remember if I had enough manners--or wits about me--to tell her thank you. Anyway, if she never knew then, at least she knows now that I was terribly pleased with that pretty little pin. She laughed over the story, especially when I told her how afraid I’d been that she would make me give it back if it had come from some boy.
We had pizza for supper tonight, and then watched a video telling how to properly refinish furniture. I hope to refinish Dorcas’ bedroom set. It’s by far the most beautiful of all our bedroom furniture, but it has been scratched and nicked terribly. (No, girls are not necessarily easier on the household furnishings than boys.)
When we are watching a film and Larry has the remote, the volume can escalate beyond all bounds, and Larry doesn’t notice until our ears are ringing. It can get so quiet we can’t hear it, and Larry does not turn it up until the people have gone from whispering to shouting.
“Your trigger is not happy,” I informed him, and took the controls from him.
Of course, I, then, wouldn’t you know, accidentally hit the MUTE instead of raising the volume, so that we next totally missed something we badly wanted to hear, whereupon I was obliged to rewind and play it again.
“A little less bliss, please,” said Larry disrespectfully.
I threw a couch pillow at him.
I’ll write again when World War III terminates.
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