Last Monday afternoon, Dorcas sent over some dessert bars she’d made. They were full of chocolate and butterscotch chips… Mmmmmm, good. I think one could gain ten pounds on a 2” x 2” piece. Five pounds, just smelling it.
We went to Wal-Mart that evening, and--wouldn’t you know it--Joseph got himself a fish tank, three fish, and a scavenger, exactly what I’d wanted to get him for Christmas. Humbug, rats.
“This was supposed to be your Christmas present!” I told him, then decided it just would be his present. “I’ll pay for it,” I offered, “and don’t expect anything more than another goldfish when Christmas really gets here.”
He laughed. So I bought him a tank…fish food…two comet gold fish, a charcoal and silver fan-tail, and a small scavenger.
We returned home and he started setting up his tank, discovering in short order that he hadn’t gotten nearly enough colored rocks. So Victoria and I went back to Wal-Mart for more rocks; I’d forgotten lunch meat and juice anyway.
As we walked past the pharmacy, Victoria spotted the machine for taking blood pressure.
“Look!” she exclaimed, “I could take my air pressure!”
I collected the reprints of the picture of Mama with Teddy and Amy on their wedding day, and then, home again, made labels and stuck them on the pictures. Then, after stamping about 90 cards with Mama’s signature stamp, I inserted pictures into envelopes and wrote names and addresses on envelopes. Soon Hester was trotting over to Mama’s house for address labels to put on the envelopes, and Mama was exclaiming because the job was already done, and I think she is very pleased. I stamped the envelopes and promised to mail them the first part of December, and then spent a while trying to convince her that she didn’t need to pay me for the pictures or cards or stamps.
“It’s part of your Christmas present from us,” I told her, “and you can’t pay for your Christmas present!”
She laughed and gave up.
Tuesday, I finished washing all those coats from the garage. I happened to scan through last week’s letter the other day, and it occurred to me that you might wonder i) what in the world all our coats were doing out in the garage, ii) just exactly how many coats we have, and iii) why they all needed to be washed. (if you wonder in lowercase Roman numerals)
Well, the answers are: i) you see, the front hall closet here in the house is jam-packed with all our good coats and jackets; it isn’t nearly big enough; ii) too many; and iii) because they were dirty. They were dirty because the ones in the garage were mostly the men’s work coats, jackets, and hooded sweatshirts, and had been piled out there last spring, unbeknownst to me, without being washed first.
So now you know.
My sister Lura Kay gave Caleb a giant by-wing plane kite for his birthday. Tuesday after school, for once, it wasn’t snowing or raining or freezing cold, so the kids went outside to fly it (the kite, not the school). Trouble was, not only was it not snowing or raining or freezing cold, it also was not the slightest bit windy--and they simply could not get that kite into the air. Lydia held the kite, Caleb held the skein of twine, and down the street they ran at the most helter-skelter, breakneck pace imaginable. Up the block, turn around, back down the block. Up the block, turn around, back down the block. Up the block, turn around, back down the block. But the kite plane (or plane kite, as the case may be) stayed right in Lydia’s hands, flapping vigorously while she ran, then settling down gently when she slowed, not seeming to have an ounce of loft.
For half an hour they tried to sail that flyer (fly that sailor?), and then their mother noticed that the temperature was sky-diving (along with the kite), and the off-springs’ noses and cheeks were turning a brilliant red; so she ordered them back into the house.
They came in all deflated and discouraged, thinking that the kite must be faulty or flawed or defective or damaged or something.
“No, it’s fine,” I explained, “it’s just because there isn’t a breath of a breeze. Try again when the wind is blowing a bit.”
So in they came, and the kite is now putting on airs and pretending it’s a room ornamentation.
When Joseph came home from work, he told us about Gehrings’ loader catching on fire. Whoever had changed the oil didn’t get the filter tight, and oil leaked all over, got hot, and started burning. Joseph yelled to the man driving it that it was on fire, but for a few moments the man seemed half paralyzed as he sat and looked at Joseph, wondering what he’d said. Suddenly, then, everyone realized what was happening. One man ran for a nearby bucket of water while Joseph ran for a fire extinguisher. The fire was out by the time he returned with it; they’d put it out before any harm was done.
Speaking of fires and burning things…
I will now tell you a sure-fire way to get rid of unwanted odors in your houses, and it doesn’t involve noxious ‘lavender’ room fresheners (bleah!) or ‘lilac’ carpet fresh (peeeeeuuuuw!), or ‘roses, roses’ potpourri (ugh!) either. Here’s how: simply put a slice of bread in the toaster, set it on ‘5’, and go outside and play catch with your brother with his new football.
It won’t be very long at all before--Voilá! No Lingering Aroma of Elderly Fish, no Essence of Over-Cooked Broccoli, no Eau de Wet Dog, no Parfum par Gas Fumes (compliments of one of the menfolk, who have once again started a small [or large] engine in the garage), no Bouquet de la Diaper Pail (courtesy of the youngest member of the family) (although we haven’t smelt that odor for nigh unto 4 ½ years now), and no Incense of Post-Bike-Race Kids. Nothing but Redolence of Burnt Toast! Guaranteed to cover all other smells, or your money back. If the scent fades out too quickly, just burn another slice. What could possibly be easier?!
By evening, the scavenger in Joseph’s new aquarium had already curled up his toes and bitten the dust. Or the colored rocks, as it were. Ugh. Also the water had turned all cloudy. Did the scavenger starve to death, there being nothing as yet for him to scavenge? I didn’t think fish starved that fast.
Since we hadn’t bought any decorative items for the tank, Joseph remedied the situation by putting his bright red Volkswagen Bug in it, and opening all the doors so the fish could swim through. They, however, circled it suspiciously, peering inside and wondering if an Italian Mafia hitman had affixed a bomb under the front seat, and did it have motion sensors that would make it go off when they floated past.
Hannah and Aaron came visiting. Aaron immediately wanted me to turn on the children’s firetruck video.
“Hoooottt!” he whispers with all his might and main, bending forward to say it with more gusto, looking at the monitor, and then at me.
I turned it on.
Larry and Joseph both got off work early that day on account of the weather. Larry went to the credit union; they sound encouraging regarding Larry's request for a construction loan. We will find out either today or tomorrow if the loan went through. So we are still hoping… and hoping… and hoping… as hard as we can, we are hoping.
Wednesday, Joseph came home from work before noon, done for the day, because it was snowing and sleeting. Larry came home for dinner; he, too, was done at Walkers, but he and Bobby were going to help Bobby’s brother pour footings for his new house.
Joseph and I then went to Wal-Mart, along with the extinct fish. People act funny when you hand them a dead fish; have you noticed that? (yes, yes; we had it in a plastic bag)
The lady marked our receipt and told us to come back and get another scavenger in a few days, when the fish in the tank had had enough time to generate something for the poor scavenger to chaw on. We got a book on goldfish (if all else fails, read the instructions)… fish net… thermometer… bubbler (what are those things called?)… drops to clear the tank… plants… fancy, colorful rock formation… silk plants. ‘New Tank Syndrome’, according to the book (ATTB), was causing the murkiness of the water in our tank; it would recover itself shortly. (It did--right after we changed half of the water.)
Once the fish were fed and amused and otherwise diverted from their consternating inclination to recline indolently upon the colored rocks at the bottom and then give up the ghost entirely, I headed for the basement. There, I went through one rack of clothes in the shelf room, filling seven bags with clothes to take to the Goodwill. That made just enough room to put the extracted clothes from my closet on the rod down there--and in spite of all this extricating and removing, both rods, mine and the one in the basement, are still crammed full. I put some size 12 shirts in Caleb’s closet--and now his nice closet that had just about the right amount of shirts in it …is chock-full-to-bursting on one side.
I had about half an hour to start on another rack of clothes before we needed to get ready for church--there are eleventy-three racks in that ‘shelf room’, I think--but I felt like I’d been riding wild broncs from carrying clothes up and down the stairs, reaching up to that high rod, pulling down armloads of things and lifting heavy piles of clothing back up to it. So I found something more sedentary to do.
I must hurry…hurry…hurry with all the things that need to be done. If we get the loan and move that house, we will want to move into it as soon as possible so as to not be paying rent on this house during the winter when Larry won’t have much work. And we have waaaay too much stuff to put into that house before the addition is on it. We’ll have to rent a storage unit, I suppose.
(I haven’t gotten much typed in the last 15 minutes, because Caleb is playing with his Hangman game, and asking me to guess letters. Lydia is asking questions about her science assignment…and I haven’t the faintest idea of the answers, because I haven’t read the chapter.)
It snowed a little Thursday afternoon, but nothing stuck to the ground. Discovering more things in rooms in which they no longer belonged, I hauled all of Victoria’s hats and blankets and boxes of shoes and duffel bags from the shelf in Joseph’s closet down to the closet in Victoria’s room, which then necessitated my carting jeans from that closet into Caleb’s room, where Teddy had cleared most of his stuff from the closet shelf. After myriad trips with heavy armloads of jeans, I finally got that shelf stock full of jeans, from one end to the other, from closet shelf to ceiling. Not another pair will fit. Caleb should not run short of jeans until he is 21 years old.
Next, I put all the Christmas presents I’d wrapped onto Joseph’s closet, which cleared up some space in my room and made things look immensely better. And then finally I got the mending done.
When the children came home from school, we went to Tooley Drug Store, probably Columbus’ nicest gift store, where we hunted around for 30-45 minutes for presents for Mama. It was her 85th birthday.
We chose a big calendar with beautiful bird paintings; faux sheepskin armrest covers for her wheelchair; a box of cards with a Bible verse and birdhouses on the outside, small birdhouse on the inside and a wreath of ivy and flowers around the edges; and a book of paintings by Thomas Kinkade, along with poems and verses on the opposite page. We picked out cards for Mother and for Grandmother, and then the girl who was checking us out asked me if I wanted our things gift-wrapped.
“Okay, thank you,” I said, and then we waited…and waited…and waited…
Twenty minutes later, the girl sauntered out of the back room and asked another lady if she knew where the tape was. Ten minutes later, she finally exited with the wrapped presents. Aarrgghh! If I’d have known it would take that long, I would have done it myself.
After Larry came home from work and we all ate supper, we went to Mama’s house. I helped her open her gifts while Larry tightened the brakes on her wheelchair while at the same time making them easier for her to lock and unlock.
“These sheepskin covers,” I explained, “are so that when Dorcas is pushing you around the house flank speed emergency and runs into potholes, you won’t get your elbows all banged and bruised.”
Of course she laughed.
Dorcas gave us some of the candy she’d bought for the Trick-or-Treaters; and we ate some of our own, too… Then we went out to Lawrence and Norma’s, taking them the 8x10 of our family at Teddy and Amy’s wedding.
Lawrence and Norma gave us an entire bag of candy in exchange, and a humongous piece of cake with pudding and whipped cream on top. Whew! Hoink! (a la Hester, age 2)
On the way home, we saw the LifeFlight circling above where the old hospital used to be. Round…and round…and round…and round, spotlight shining down.
“Are they lost?” I asked Larry.
We dropped the littles off at home to take baths and showers, then Joseph, Larry, and I went on to Hy-Vee. The LifeFlight circled overhead three more times, and nearly blinded us with its spotlight. We began to wonder if it wasn’t the LifeFlight after all, but a police copter on the lookout for criminals on the lam, and did the felons look like us, hmm?
Just as we went into the store, the helicopter abruptly turned and headed out northwest, then dropped down quickly. Somebody must have radioed the pilot with directions to the new hospital. We purchased our groceries and drove out there. Sure enough, there was the LifeFlight, right on the landing pad. The pilot must not have known about the new hospital.
Friday morning when I took Joseph to work it was only 18°. Brrrrrrrrr!
That morning I started putting um??? er??? caulking? mortar? what is it called? oh, yes! joint compound! on the holes in the walls of Caleb’s and Victoria’s room.
Holes?
Yes, holes.
Some were from too-big toggle bolts Keith put in to hold a ship’s lantern; he thought he was doing exactly the right thing, of course. One was from a picture falling off of Joseph’s wall (all by itself, don’t you know) and the corner conking into the wall, making a deep triangular hole. Another was where a ceramic bald eagle tried to peck his way to freedom. He did end up out of the house--but not exactly free: he found himself, to his great dismay, in the garbage can out back (the Jackson Outback being not in the same category as the real Outback, which is generally thought of as being on the left side of Australia, which is either the west side or the east side, depending on whether you look at it from outer space, or straight through the earth). Er, what was I talking about?
Oh, yes; it was caulkingmortarjointcompound. Victoria calls it ‘silly putty’. I was done by noon, then let it dry a while. I wanted to get it all sanded before Caleb got home from school, because I knew that all that dust would make him sick. And indeed, I had no sooner gotten started than the room was thick with it. I cleaned the windows--and there was Socks on the other side, meowing and wanting in. I helped him in, put the screen back--and then along came Tabby, wanting in, too. I let him in.
By two o’clock I was done sanding and putting another layer of compound on a few of the largest gaping wounds, so I went upstairs and mended. I got it all done, too--partly because, instead of mending a couple things, I wadded them into a bag to haul to the Goodwill.
Hannah and Aaron came visiting, Aaron as usual immediately asking me to turn on the firetruck video by loudly whispering, “Hooooooooootttt!” So of course I went and plugged it in and turned it on. It is not hard to stay in the good graces of a grandson who enjoys your firetruck video--and thinks you are the only one who can turn it on!
Hannah was crocheting the prettiest, most delicate soap wraps with fine crocheting thread. They have a little ‘window’ for the decorative soap to show through, and the top is gathered up in a fluff of ruffles like a little bag. She was making them for Mama. Mama is particularly fond of such things, more because she is sentimental about things her grandchildren make for her than because of the item itself.
At 5:00, I got on with the painting. Joseph came home about 6:00 and went to AceIsThePlace to get me some masking tape. He didn’t come home for a long time, and I was getting worried--but he’d just gone to i) Sherwin Williams for some spray-on stripper that they said would take paint off the woodwork; and ii) Taco John’s for a hearty supper menu for all of us: soft-shelled tacos, chicken fajitas, and potato olés.
While Joseph was gone to Ace, Hester called in an order to Pizza Hut for Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria’s free personal pizzas from the BookIt program. What I didn’t know was that she only ordered the three little pizzas; no more for the rest of us.
In half an hour, it was time to go get the pizzas--but there was no way to get there. Larry wasn’t home from work yet; Dorcas was who-knows-where, and Joseph had the Suburban. By the time Joseph came in with the tacos, we were totally starved half to death. We fell upon the tacos like hungry vultures, because, after all, one can warm pizza up just fine in the microwave; but tacos with their cold lettuce and tomatoes do not do well at all in the microwave.
Then Dorcas came in, and she took the littles to Pizza Hut for their by-now-cold pizzas.
After supper, Joseph helped me put masking tape around door frames and then paint around the edges. Larry came downstairs and helped, too.
By 11:00, we were done with both rooms. We are not pros, and there are a few boo-boos on the woodwork; but the paint jobs are done, and the rooms look much better. I rehung the freshly washed curtains, then put all the wall decorations into big boxes, and I will not rehang them unless we learn that our loan for that new house was not approved. That way there will be no new nail holes in the walls I just repaired.
Victoria’s Pink Ribbon paint is rather amazing; it’s so bright, it strikes a person dumb when they walk into the room--or even when they glance down the stairs, and her door is open. But Caleb’s blue is pretty, although the room would be brighter if the paint was lighter. It’s the blue Teddy wanted a couple of years ago when I got him the lightest blue on the cards and he was entirely disappointed.
Trouble was, the paint made Caleb sick (the smell, not the color) (he kept saying it wasn’t bothering him in the slightest, and coming to see how I was doing) (I finally ordered him to stay away), and he had to take a treatment on his nebulizer. He slept on the recliner Friday night.
After bragging about how neat and unsullied I stayed while painting, I discovered that I had blue paint on the back of my skirt--and on the front were a couple drops of pink. Oops. Rats! It was a nice skirt! Wonder if I can get the paint out? Let’s see…I think you pour hot coffee on paint stains, right? You don’t think so? Battery acid, maybe?
Joseph didn’t have to work Saturday, so we slept in. Later that morning, we were looking at his two remaining fish…they seemed a bit the worse for wear. I wondered if we should change the water in the tank. It was discolored…didn’t smell very good… And if we did, ATTB, we should let it sit for a couple of days before getting any new fish… (ATTB? I forgot what that stands for. After The Tank Burps?)
I don’t recall having this many twubbles and twials with our fan-tailed guppies! They did well; they multiplied like crazy. Finally, when we had about sixty, including some babies so small you could hardly see anything but the black specks that were their eyes, we traded all sixty of ’em to a man who gave us a canary in return. Think how the cats would like a canary in the house!
Larry turned 42 yesterday, the 3rd. Dorcas, as usual, gave him part of his birthday present two days early: a gift card to Wal-Mart clasped in a silver money clip with his name engraved on one side, and on the back, the date and the words, ‘with love from Dorcas Anne’.
Saturday, with Joseph’s help, I put the furniture back in its place in Caleb and Victoria’s bedrooms. A couple of years ago when Teddy painted his room, in his usual fit of impatience, he neglected to mask off the woodwork. Of course, he wound up slopping it all up good and proper. He made a horrendous mess, believe me. Sooo…Joseph tried getting the paint off the woodwork, using the stripper he’d bought at Sherwin Williams. Trouble is, the stuff not only removes paint, but also varnish and stain, too. And it took off some of the paint on the walls beside the doors. Bah! Humbug! These kids of ours! What do you do with Helpful Hatties who aren’t?!?
Next, I was going to paint the one wall in Hester and Lydia’s room that doesn’t have paneling on it, but after the wall decorations were removed and the wall wiped down, it didn’t look so bad as all that, so it was left as it was.
I trotted back to my sewing machine. Soon Aaron’s shirt was finished and Caleb’s was halfway done. They are blue and brown plaid with bright blue piping.
I ran out of piping and blue thread, so off I went to Wal-Mart. As I was bustling down an aisle in the home furnishings section, a couple of fancy switchplates jumped right off the shelves and landed in my cart and refused to get out. So I had to take them home with me: a lighthouse for Caleb, and butterflies for Victoria.
And…I got 20 goldfish, 2 fantails (a calico and a black), and a scavenger for Joseph.
Upon arriving home, we exchanged half the water while the new fish floated in it in their bags, then we dumped them in--entirely too soon, ATTB. (After The Tyrannosaurus Belches?) Patience has never been one of my virtues. I hope they survive. The one the clerk had netted that had looked ill really was ill. He swam slower…and slower…and slower… Joseph flushed it down the loo.
“There!” he remarked, “I’ll bet that fish never swam so fast in his life!”
Socks came and looked into the tank with great intrigue, snapped at a fish he thought was going to come right through the glass, and tried to snag one through the open lid with his little white paw. Tabby stood up tall on his hind legs and drank from the little water-fountain pump even though his head could hardly fit in there, the goofy cat.
When Teddy finished practicing with some young men’s singing groups that evening at church, he and Amy came over so Larry could cut his hair. They brought their wedding pictures to show us.
As usual, I stayed with Mama last night during church. She seemed more tired than usual; but otherwise about the same. She was pleased when Victoria came to see her after church. She offered Victoria one of Halloween’s leftover popcorn balls, which Victoria gladly accepted; and then Mama laughed when Victoria opened her mouth as wide as her head to take a bite from it. Whose idea was it, I wonder, to make popcorn balls? Didn’t they ever try to eat one, themselves? And didn’t they ever notice that those things are terribly unwieldy and cumbrous, and practically impossible to glom one’s mouth onto and take a dainty bite? Think how much more sensible it would be to have popcorn rectangles.
And with that bit of sage advice, I’m off to bake a pumpkin!
P.S.: Ahhh! ATTB = According To The Book.
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