Monday, after exchanging a few gallons of water in the fish tank, which was practically impossible to see through--and I just cleaned it Thursday! Humbug!--I discovered that the tube that draws water for the filter does come apart in the middle. You can clean it. So I merrily (?) decontaminated it, and finally it draws water again.
I finished washing the clothes, and then did the living room curtains. Now we are on display for all the neighbors to see. Larry doesn’t mind--unless he can see them. He figures, if he can’t see them, they can’t see us. (peek-a-boo)
Larry worked at the house all day, sanding floors and pulling up the carpeting at the top of the stairs. No wonder my nose protested, remonstrated, and expostulated every time I got it close to the carpet when I was pulling tacks from the steps--the cats had ruined the wood at the top of the steps, too. What did those people do--lock them upstairs so they couldn’t get out??? There was a bag of kitty litter in the cubbyhole in my sewing room, so the felines must have had a litterbox--somewhere. Maybe they were just extremely ill-mannered cats who didn’t know a litterbox from a duck blind.
Boy, oh, boy, have we ever done battle with those floors. We’ve used thick stripper… thin stripper… windshield scrapers… putty trowels… hand-held scrub brushes … electric scrub brushes… hand-held electric sanders… big power sanders… beavers… and yelling. In the end, it turns out that it’s a tossup between beavers and yelling, which gets the glue off best.
Early Tuesday, Hester and I sliced more than a dozen apples for Lydia to take to school along with a carton of caramel dip as a treat for her ‘birthday’, which she celebrates any time she pleases, since her birthday falls in the summer months. We put the slices into a bowl of cold water with a healthy dose of lemon juice in order to keep them from turning brown.
Lydia and Caleb had dinner--pizza--at 11:00 a.m. at school, and then at noon they went to the Telegram for a field trip, after which the students all snacked on Lydia’s apples and dip. Caleb was all tickled that he got to see the front page news before I did. Last Thursday, they went to the new hospital. The hospital tour is always one of the most fascinating field trips for the children, and even more so this year, because the hospital has only recently been finished and put into use. They were given a funny little hooked-together purple thing that comes apart at all the ‘hinges’, and each piece looks like a piece of macaroni. I’ve already washed Caleb’s, because it was in his jeans pocket. Good thing it’s plastic.
My brother-in-law and sister, John and Lura Kay, brought Victoria her present that evening--apologizing profusely for having forgotten it, although Victoria thought it was novel and fine, since it prolonged her birthday and gave her something to play with at this crucial, deprived time when so many of her favorite belongings are packed up tighter’n a jug, lock, stock, and barrel. They gave her a little ‘February’ china doll dressed in red and white--with an amethyst necklace around its neck, Victoria’s birthstone. She also got several books, a coloring book, and a big art set.
John and Lura Kay told us they were on their way to the school to put talc on the library books.
Whuzzat? You don’t powder your books, and you wonder why anyone would powder theirs? Well, silly. Off course you should powder your books; keeps them from getting rash, don’t you know.
Oh, all right; I’ll tell you: Lura Kay got some of that clingy plastic stuff free from the Telegram or somewhere, and she covered a whole raft of new books with them. Trouble was, it not only clung to the book onto which it had been affixed, it also clung to the books on either side of it. And that totally prevented people from getting a book off the shelf, and I’m not exaggerating. If indeed a person did get a book off the shelves, he didn’t get just one book; he got the entire row of books on the entire shelf.
Lura Kay told this vexatious set of circumstances to John, whereupon he said in his calm, sensible way, “We used to put cornstarch on truck tires to keep them from sticking together.”
And Lura Kay promptly thought, “Talc! That’ll do the trick!”
And the trick it did do. So they were powdering the books.
That night I started packing Larry’s shirts, throwing out any with holes or grease stains. I tell you, Larry is as hard on his shirts as Caleb is on the knees of his britches. At least Larry’s wind up that way from hard work rather than roaring calamities.
Wednesday I called the phone company to see about transferring our phone line out to our house.
The phone rang 3,623,062 times, give or take a ring or two. Finally, a recorded voice answered cheerily: “Hello! ♫ If you would like your call in Spanish, press 1. In Jivaroan, press 2. In Yoruba, press 3. In Swahili, press 4. In Miao-Yao, press 5. In Hmong-Mien, press 6. In English, stand on your head and whistle ‘Yankee Doodle’ three times backwards.”
I followed directions.
Another cheery recorded voice came on the line: “Hello! ♫♭ ♪♯ If you are calling about a home line, press 1. If about a business line, press 2. Monkey business, press 3. Mind your own business, press 4. All other nonsense, press 9263451.”
I pressed 1.
“Hello! ♪♯” said recorded Miss Cheeriness Personified. “If you would like to pay your bill by credit card, press 42634. If you wish to give one of our representatives some long-winded baloney about why your payment is late, press 56804. If you want your phone line transferred to Iraq, press 4308386034. If you want another phone line in your house, do it yourself and we’ll bill you later. Service to your line, press 85708476.”
I pressed 85708476.
Miss Cheeriness’s recorded twin came on the line. “Your business is more important to us than you could ever, ever imagine; ♫♪♮ that’s why we have taken the liberty of adding every service known to man onto your phone line while you wait. Aren’t you glad??!! Now quit sniveling, and wait your turn. Patience is a virtue. Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope. Someone will be with you in a day or two, because your business is important to us!!!”
Johann Sebastian Bach came on, serenading me with a delicate version of “Eight Short Preludes & Fugues” in D major, with periodic forays into B minor, and with basso continuo (continuous bass harmony; string bass, and harpsichord in this instance) eloquently combined, alternated, and contrasted with one another.
Mr. Bach had not yet reached the eighth toccata when he was very rudely interrupted by a growly voice: “’Lo! Can I ’elp ya?”
“Uh,” I said. “Er, Johann?” although one should always answer such inquiries, “I don’t know; can you?”
I collected my wits. “I want a phone line out to our new house,” I informed him, “but it doesn’t yet have—“
“Wutcher phone number?” he inquired imperviously.
“It’s 402-563-1902,” I told him, “but our house doesn’t—“
“Will ya still be in the county?” he queried.
“Yes, I answered, “but there isn’t any—“
“Do ya want the same number?” he relentlessly persevered.
I could hear him furiously clickety-clacking away on his keyboard, and I fleetingly wondered how many keyboards he went through in a year. “Yes,” I replied, “but we don’t yet have a—“
“Whuttsa address out there?” he demanded.
“WE DON’T HAVE ONE!” I cried in exasperation.
The clacking stopped.
“You don’t have one?!” he said in shocked amazement, as if I’d told him I didn’t have a head or a nose or something.
“No,” I affirmed, “but I can give you the legal description and the directions to the house.”
He sighed in irritated aggravation at my stupidity. “You hafta have an address first; we can’t put in a phone line without an address.” He rustled some papers. “You’ll have to call the post office.” He hung up without further ado.
I called the post office.
As always, the line was busy. Every five minutes, I tried again. Finally, three and a half years later, the harried postmistress answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” I responded, glad to have a real, live human on the line rather than a recording. “We are moving, and we need an address—“
She interrupted me. “You have to come in and sign the papers for the transfer; can’t do it over the phone.”
“No,” I attempted further explanation, “The house has been moved onto a new basement, and we don’t yet have an address.”
“Oh!” she said, sounding distracted, “You’ll have to talk to the manager about that; just a minute.”
After an interminable wait, which is somewhat longer than a minute, she came back on the line. “I’m sorry; the manager is out. Can I take a message?”
I repeated, “We’ve moved a house onto a new foundation, and we need to be assigned an address.”
Pause. Then, “You mean, this location has never had an address before?”
“No.”
“Oh!” Another pause. Then, “You will have to call 911. Let me give you the number for that.”
I felt like snickering. Hadn’t she just said the number was ‘911’?
Pages turned, and then she said, “It’s 564-2345.”
I thanked her insincerely and called the police station.
Thankfully, the dispatcher answered on the first ring.
“We’ll send you a paper to fill out,” she explained, after listening to my story, “and after you send it back to us, we’ll fax it to Minnesota, and in about 72 hours they will fax us with the address.”
Good grief! What a rigmarole. And how does some bozo up in Minnesota know what kind of a house number I need?? Why can’t a local bozo pick the number out of his hat? What if we wind up with an address for a house beside the Rainy River, which flows into Lake of the Woods, which flows into Lake Winnepeg, which flows into Nelson River, which flows into Hudson Bay?
I went to pick the paper up, rather than having it mailed to me, in order to save a day. It’s all full of questions concerning measurements at our house:
1) How far is it, in millimeters, between your driveway and the nearest neighbor’s fifth fencepost?
2) What is the distance, in tenths of a league, to the closest turnpike?
3) How many centimeters is it between the third step of your front porch and the most imminent drawbridge?
4) What is the original name, both in Latin and in Greek, of the oldest road near your house?
5) If you stand on your left foot and point your nose at the most adjacent river, over which shoulder does Ursa Minor appear?
6) Why don’t you go fly a kite?
7) After filling this paper out in absolute, accurate precision, return it, along with your firstborn son for a deposit, to the police station. We will keep your name on file.
After reading these opprobrious instructions, I informed Larry that it was definitely his job, whereupon he promptly informed me that it was mine.
The job is not done yet.
Whether or not we ever get an address out there, and then, by succession, a telephone line, remains to be seen. We refuse to worry about it. Mañana.
Larry worked for Walkers every day but Monday last week, in spite of the fact that it was rainy a couple of days. Wednesday, as he was working, he noticed a pile of four-foot forms that someone had leaned against one of the cradles. The wind was picking up, and he was concerned that the forms might fall and hurt someone, so he started laying them down. They are quite heavy, so he was doing one at a time…
“…but I should have laid the last two down at the same time,” he said, “because when there was only one standing, the wind caught it and blew it over before I could straighten back up and catch it.”
It landed right on his head, and nearly knocked him out. Everything got all black, and he almost fell. He regained his balance, then everything went dark again, and he came close to falling again. There were several small cuts and puncture wounds on top of his head. His head and neck hurt, and he ran a fever for a couple of days. Then, Friday night, as he was lying down and adjusting his pillows, he turned his head, and suddenly, ka-pop! His neck popped loudly.
“I’m fixed, I’m fixed!” he exclaimed, holding very still and wondering which end was up.
And the funny thing is, his neck doesn’t hurt anymore. Guess he really did fix himself.
Thursday, I packed up more of Larry’s shirts and put them into the trailer, hoping the washing machine wouldn’t suddenly go on the blink, thwarting me from getting the clothes washed for a week or more. If it did, and if I didn’t, he would have to rewear his dirty shirts, that’s all. It was rainy that day, so I didn’t carry any boxes out to the trailer until 11:00 p.m., when the rain finally stopped. The trailer was allllmost full…
That afternoon, I did the last bit of mending; I’m all done now. Until Caleb walks on his knees tomorrow, that is. I looked longingly at the cut-out material in my sewing desk…but if there is any packing to do, I must do it. Now, if I get that trailer loaded, and if there doesn’t seem to be anything else I can pack until the last minute, and if there doesn’t seem to be anything I can very well do out at the house, well, then, who could blame me if I accidentally started putting together that cute little red dress for Victoria??
Teddy helped Larry sand floors that night, while Hannah, Aaron, and baby Joanna helped me by coming visiting. I was downstairs packing dresses, so everyone joined me there. Aaron and his small uncle and aunts played in Caleb’s room. They must have been having fun, for the most uproarious laughter kept issuing forth…
By late Friday afternoon, the trailer was all full, right up to the branchia (also known as gills). Hester and Lydia helped me get some things off the racks downstairs; one box of things too small for Lydia, and one box of things that are mostly for winter. But most of the clothes hanging, because I’ve already gone through them at least twice, maybe thrice, are clothes that are just the right size for the girls. Not that they actually wear them, the picky things. But I won’t get rid of them unless I, too, think they are ugly. (The dresses; not the girls.) There is always the chance that Victoria might agree with me and want to wear them. So I left the clothes and packed birdhouses and feeders, several boxes of ice skates and roller blades, and the life jackets.
Dorcas and Amy’s sister Suzanne went to the Chinese Buffet for supper that evening.
Larry got home about 5:30. We had lasagna, corndogs, orange juice, and Twice-the-Blueberries muffins for supper. Actually, they were Twice-the-Blueberries blue muffins. You see, Hester made them, and she followed directions scrupulously: she rinsed the blueberries carefully…gently folded them into the mix… And then, when she turned her back to search in the cupboard for the muffin tin, couldn’t find it on account of the fact that I’d already packed it, pulled out a cake pan, and reached for the Crisco — Caleb stirred the batter.
With vim, vigor, and vitality did Caleb stir the batter.
And then it was blue.
Larry went out to the house, taking the full trailer with him. He called when he saw that several floors would be ready to varnish. Also, he needed a gallon can of mineral spirits. So we packed ourselves up and went first to Wal-Mart and then to the house.
I returned one of the pink dresses Dorcas had bought for Victoria; it had too low of a neckline. Why do they do that on a little girl’s dress?! We got a blue chiffon and satin embroidered dress, instead; it’s prettier anyway.
Teddy was at the house when we got there, working on the dining-room-will-someday-be-living-room floor. He told his little brother and sisters that they could have one of the cookies Amy had made. Victoria, stepping high to avoid the goop Teddy had put on the floor, managed to step squarely in the middle of it, whereupon she skidded and slipped and nearly sat in it. But she caught her balance and proceeded on, giggling all the way.
After a bit, Amy and her sister Suzanne arrived, bringing more cookies and a bag of tacos from Taco Bell. Larry had one and proclaimed them better than tacos from Taco John’s. Indeed they looked better, but I was full, more’s the pity.
While Larry sanded here and there, I vacuumed dust off the floors. Then I put varnish on Caleb’s floor, the sewing room floor, and the hallway. And no, I didn’t paint myself into a corner.
Along came Teddy.
“Look, Teddy,” I bragged happily, “Doesn’t that look pretty?”
He looked. “Um, you’re applying that stuff too thick,” he said with emphatic positivity.
Fearing that he had designs to march straight across that varnished floor’s smooth shine with my applicator and try to rake the varnish down thinner, I hastily issued orders not to, and we called Larry in and appealed for his opinion.
He took a quick scrutinization, which isn’t a word but would be if Noah Q. Webster would have ever seen Larry scrutinize something.
Then, “That’s just fine, it’s exactly how I want it done,” he decided.
“Nya-nya,” I said disrespectfully to Teddy, which is exactly what mothers should say to their adult sons when the mother wins the argument and not the son.
He grinned at me. Then, in a sudden flurry of concern, he decided that I really must wear a respirator mask, one of those little half-mask thingamablinkers that makes one look a bit like an other-worldling.
“I won’t,” I informed him, and went on spreading polyurethane. “I’ll suffocate.”
“This is a really good one,” he coaxed. “You can breathe just fine through it, and it really helps. It’ll keep you from getting a headache,” he added, holding it out to me.
“I don’t have a headache, and I’m not going to get one, either,” I declared firmly. “Those things give me gangrene.”
“It’ll protect your lungs from all the fumes,” cajoled Teddy. “You want to just try it on?” and he went on trying to hand it to me.
“I hate them,” I explained logically, “they spread bubonic plague and cause frostbite.”
He stepped toward me as if he was going to put it on me himself, then thought better of it and tossed another little sales pitch. “You can breathe through it better than you think you can. Here, try it!”
I took it from his outstretched hand and stuck it on my face, working the straps over my head, which totally disarranged my hair. I didn’t get it completely in place before I jerked it back off, quick, before I expired, and gave it back to Teddy.
“I hate those things!” I exclaimed, “I’d rather smell varnish, thank ye very kindly, me good man.”
He laughed, shrugged, and gave up.
“Told you so,” remarked his father.
Anyway, the floors look really pretty under that shiny glaze. Varnish. Lacquer. Shellac. Semi-Gloss Low-Odor Fast-Drying Obtained-From-The-Sap-Of-The-Varnish-Tree, Rhus Verniciflua, A-Japanese-Sumac-Containing-The-Phenolic-Resin-Urushiol Polyurethane.
Maybe, just maybe, it will be worth all this hard work.
I tell you, if any urchins drop anything on those floors, I’m going to put them up for adoption!
When Larry pulled up the carpet in the kitchen/dining room, he discovered that the area by the kitchen cupboards had vinyl under the carpet, atop the wood. The vinyl flooring was put on with some awful black glue, which is even worse than the yellow glue we’ve been struggling with for, lo, these many moons. Further, there is evidence of a wall that used to divide the room, and the erstwhile doorway is the only place that has a continuation of the wooden flooring. The place where the wall used to be now has a 2”x6” board laid in there; it looks mighty funny. Sooo…just until we move cupboards and appliances downstairs and build the kitchen down there, we will cover that ugly--and I do mean ugly--vinyl flooring with a carpet remnant of some sort. The floor will have to be redone anyway, when we take out the cupboards.
Soon Teddy went home, and the children went downstairs and played games with their balls, which effectively kept them from noticing how tired they were getting.
When we decided to quit for the night, Larry backed the trailer up to the porch, miraculously staying out of ditches on either side of the lane (well, Larry thinks it’s easy; I’m the one who thinks it’s miraculous), and then we went home. It was about a quarter after midnight, I think, when we left the house. Wouldn’t he be surprised if I went out there early in the morning, while he’s working for Walkers, and unloaded the trailer straight into the dining room, right where he needs to sand and varnish! (evil snicker)
No, I won’t do that; no sense in cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Larry got off work Saturday about 1:30 p.m. We headed for the house, first stopping at Ace for the sander--but it had been rented and was not to be had. We tried Menards--and, bingo!--they’d just purchased two sanders, and Larry was only the second person to rent one. Further, it was only $35 instead of $45; it was a brand-new kind of sander, and included a vacuum cleaner to sweep up the dust as it sanded; and somehow it managed to sand ooey gluey gooey goop without having the gunky, mucky, gooky gumbo ball up all over the sanding sheet and render the sander ineffective.
I stopped at Hy-Vee to get our supper: chef salads, Ritz crackers, Chick’n a Biscuit crackers, strawberry/cream cheese twists, strawberries, applesauce, orange jello with mandarin oranges in it, raw baby carrots, cranberry/Georgia peach juice, Tropical V-8 Splash juice, sliced Mozzarella cheese, smoked sliced turkey, lettuce, and sour milk. Well, I didn’t intend to buy sour milk, but I did.
They ought to invent a milk jug with some sort of a baffle through which one can sniff the milk, but through which no milk can spill. Wouldn’t that be a keen innovation? After all!--one can sniff one’s cantaloupe before one buys it, can’t one?
We stopped at Cubby’s on the way to fill a couple of Thermoses with coffee. There had only been enough coffee to make two cups that morning, and I’d been existing on Lipton’s tea ever since, and was suffering severe side effects--such as speaking English in a haughty timbre, hankering for scones spread with homemade gorseberry preserves, and looking for someone with whom to play rugby. {I am part English, you know.} {Although the Irish definitely holds sway.} {Funny that I don’t cotton to bagpipes, hmmm?}
Teddy and Amy were there when we arrived. Amy was reading and crocheting, and Teddy was putting the first coat of varnish on our closet floor. They went home after a bit, and I put the first layer of polyurethane on our bedroom floor. Larry, meanwhile, worked on Victoria’s floor, which is being particularly recalcitrant, because under all the yellow glue is a bunch of black glue--and somebody varnished right over the top of it. Evidently, someone glued some kind of vinyl flooring onto the wood first; then they peeled off the vinyl as well as they could, which wasn’t very well, and varnished the wood. Later, they glued carpeting onto the wood--and they weren’t stingy with that there glue, neither. In addition to that, they used a grand plenty of carpet tacks. Let me tell you, that carpet was put down to stay down. Anyway, Larry has sanded…and sanded…and sanded…and there are still streaks of black glue.
I started by ‘scuffing’ (lightly sanding) both the rooms I’d varnished Friday night--Caleb’s room and my sewing room/office. Then I painted the edges in Caleb’s room, and Larry did the main part of the floor. I went on to the sewing room and part of the upstairs hall, while Larry went back to sanding Victoria’s floor. I could have done the entire hallway, but I didn’t think Larry wanted to spend the next four or five hours (depending on how thickly I laid on the polyurethane) stuck in Victoria’s room.
The children played outside most of the day, in spite of the cold. Yes, it was cold. And windy, too, blowing up to 45 mph.
Sunday, Robert preached about Paul traveling by ship from The Fair Havens to Miletus, up to the verses where the sailors, ‘under colour’, were trying to lower a lifeboat to escape after Paul had told them all to stay in the ship. They were pretending to simply be casting anchor. Paul told the captain, “Except these remain in the ship, they cannot be saved.”
The ropes to the lifeboat were cut…and the sailors stayed with the boat. Just as Paul had told them, the boat was destroyed, but not a life was lost.
That’s been one of my favorite stories ever since I was little.
After church, Rebecca, one of Esther’s sisters, gave me a thick envelope.
“Pictures?” I queried.
“No,” replied Rebecca, grinning, “You’ll see!”
It was $50 worth of gift certificates for Pizza Hut, along with a note saying that it was for supper on moving day. Goodness! That’ll be enough for us, and for everyone who is helping us, too!
Wednesday afternoon, Larry and I talked with a couple of probation officers. They had all kinds of questions to ask us, about all sorts of things that may or may not have had anything to do with Joseph. Why, they even asked questions about things that happened when I was a baby!--things about our church, about my father, who was the minister here for about 40 years, my brother, what we believe… Three guesses who’s been telling them stories, and the first two don’t count. (Hint: it was not Joseph.) Next Monday there will be a hearing, during which I suppose it will be decided what Joseph’s punishment will be.
I’ll tell you more--as soon as Larry isn’t waiting for me to come varnish another floor.
I stayed with Mama Sunday night, spending the time sorting through fat envelopes full of negatives. I’m nearly done sorting them. My red bag full of hanging folders is so heavy I can hardly lift it.
Larry slept for a while, then went out to the house at about 2:30 a.m. to work on the floors. He hopes to start moving--tomorrow!!! Yikes! I’d better get in gear!
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