Larry worked for Walkers every day last week. Most days, he went out to the house to work when he was through at Walkers, but he’s not been feeling well; the flu has been going around, and today Victoria and I have it.
Tuesday, it was over 60°, and it’s been nice every day since. That evening, Larry was trying to finish the cubbyhole under the eaves in Caleb’s room. He needed masking paper, or even freezer paper, to tack up and hold the insulation in place. So Victoria, Caleb, and I went to Menards. Unfortunately, they only had 12-inch-wide paper, and Larry needed either 16- or 18-inch-wide paper. He spotted his box of painters’ plastic and tried that, using his staple gun to nail it in place--and it worked fine and dandy.
After a few minutes, he came with us to Taco John's. It was ‘Taco Tuesday’, when tacos are only 50¢ apiece. As we were going through the drive-through, Hannah called, telling us that she had a big pot of soup to share with us. Sooo…having already ordered, we took some tacos to Bobby and Hannah and traded with them, so that we both had tacos and soup for supper. We took the food home to Hester and Lydia, ate, and then, with Victoria, headed back out to the house to work for a while. The older three stayed home to shower and get ready for bed.
Lawrence and Norma came out to see our house. Those steps to the basement worry me; there are a couple of tricky ones at the curve. After they left, we got back to work, cleaning Caleb’s floor and putting plastic in the cubbyhole. We came home at 12:30 a.m.--and Larry had to be at work at 6:30 in the morning.
After the children went back to school Wednesday afternoon, I went out to the house. I put more varnish stripper on Caleb’s floor. It’s just about ready to be revarnished, I think. We were hoping to remove only the glue and leave the varnish intact…but I don’t think it was possible, when the glue is as gluey as that glue is gluey.
I then cleaned out the cubbyhole in my sewing room, and wasn’t that a mess and a half. Talk about skeletons in the closet!--and I will let your imagination carry you from there.
There were empty bag after empty bag of cat food or cat litter…bottles of pop (with pop still in them) with the ends chewed open by mice (and I didn’t know it until I picked it up, yuck)…a full, unopened can of beer…a full, unopened can of some kind of energy drink…an empty pack of Marlboros…a jointed plastic Fisher Price cow…an undershirt…three avocado-colored shades…a pair of lace curtains still on the rods…a penny…and a large, new, fan that works perfectly. I vacuumed…swept…vacuumed some more…picked up chunks of cement or chinking or whatever it is…swept…vacuumed… and then tore out all the ugly old vinyl flooring in there. It was filthy, and stunk horribly of cats. I carried it downstairs in pieces (with difficulty, I might add) and put it on the front porch with the discarded carpets. I saved only the cow, the penny, and the fan.
After coming home at a quarter till four, feeling grimy from head to toe, I filled the tub with hot water, three scoops of my favorite bath salts, and sank down into it for a looong soak while I paged through a magazine on kitchens and bathrooms. (A ‘looong’ soak--that’s about ten minutes, tops. Beyond that, I begin to feel as though I’m wasting valuable time.) I washed my hair, recurled it…and finally felt human again.
After giving Victoria a bath and washing her hair, I sent everyone to bed for a nap before church that evening. After church, we had peanut butter/chocolate chunk cookies. Mmmmm… those are good cookies! Then, while everyone else moseyed off to bed, I made a quick trip to the store for a few vital necessities, including clothes detergent.
Thursday morning, I got up at 7:30 and started washing clothes. By 10:00 p.m., I happily thought, There is only one more load of clothes to wash! And then, shortly on the heels of that, Ooops, strike that. There are probably at least two loads of clothes to do, now that the children have had showers and baths and thrown their dirty clothes down the clothes chute.
After everyone went to school that afternoon, I went to Wal-Mart for a gift for a child whose birthday party Lydia had been invited to after school. Then I went out to the house, first stopping at Cubby’s for gas so I didn’t get stranded halfway there.
The first order of business was to mop out the cubbyhole in the sewing room with some yummy-smelling Lysol disinfectant. Next, I put citrus paint-and-varnish stripper on the entire floor. Then, leaving it to do its job, I trotted back downstairs, opened the doors of the trailer, and started hauling boxes into the house. By 3:10 p.m., I had brought 24 boxes in. I had ten minutes to use the scrub brush on the floor before I must head back into town.
I like the drive through the country back to town. Sometimes we take Shady Lake Road, which winds around near the Loup River. We often see deer in the pastures and woods, and sometimes we have spotted fox, raccoon, skunk, opossum, or coyote. Once we even saw a bobcat. Many times big barn owls fly up from the sides of the road, giving an eerie screech as they go, startling us if our windows are down. In the summertime, there are frogs all over the road, jumping at the bugs that swarm up before our headlights. That habit of theirs is not always good for their general state of health and well being.
We took Lydia to her friend’s house, and the rest of us returned to the house. Hester, Caleb, and Victoria played outside while I scraped varnish from the sewing room floor. I scrubbed it again with the brush, scraped a bit more, and scrubbed it again. I tell you, it’s a jolly good thing I know how to ice skate!--paint and varnish stripper is slippery.
Then, giving up on the floor and wishing Larry was there to tell me what to do next with the gooey, gunky mess, I went to carry more boxes in. Other than two I took to the basement and five I took to Caleb’s room, the rest went into the dining room. The children helped with a few of the lightweight ones. We toted in 106 boxes--and the trailer was not even half empty yet.
“Daddy will doubtless have a conniption when he finds this huge stack in the dining room, right where he needs to finish walls, pull up carpeting, and finish floors,” I remarked to the children. “But we need to empty the trailer, and maybe the man who was interested in it will buy it. In any case, we need to take it home, fill it again, and bring it back out here.”
Oodles of Canada geese and snow geese were flying over low, landing in a field just over the hill to our northwest. They are so pretty, especially the snow geese, which seem to sparkle and glitter when the sunlight shines on their wings. I love to hear their wild cries. Ducks were flying over, too, their fast, furious flapping looking rather funny in comparison to the geese’s elegant flight. Wait for me, wait for me; I’m coming too! they seem to be crying.
I brought home several pieces of denim from the bins of fabric we unearthed, in order to patch jeans Friday morning. Poor Larry and Caleb were getting in a bad way, what with all the running around on their knees they’ve been having to do. (Well, I guess that’s what they’ve been doing; that’s what it looks like, anyway.)
Yes, yes; I do remember that I said absolutely no sewing until we are moved into our new house…but…well…there were just too many kneecaps showing, that’s all.
Friday morning, I started washing clothes at 7:30 a.m. again. I did the mending and got all the jeans patched; there are only two more dresses and two more skirts to fix, unless more materialize.
Caleb was sick that day. Victoria didn’t feel well, either; but she said she wouldn’t stay home from school unless she was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY (!!!) sick. So I let her go, hoping like everything that I wouldn’t regret it.
Caleb came with me to the house just as soon as the kids went to school, about ten till one. Some of the time he laid in the recliner and read a book, but he also played with his big Tonka loader/backhoe that had recently emerged in the garage. As the afternoon wore on, he felt better, and even pulled up a few strips of carpet tacks.
First, I put more stripper on the gooey spots on the floors in Caleb’s room and my sewing room. Then, leaving it to soak awhile, I put masking tape on all the woodwork in the music room and the middle-floor bedroom. At least, as high as I could reach, I did. That done, I launched back into the unloading of the trailer--and I got it done, too. We counted the boxes: there were 250 altogether, which means that, Friday, I carried in 144 boxes. And I felt like I had, too. They are mostly all stacked in the dining room, with two large piles of bins of Hester and Lydia’s things downstairs and a few upstairs in Caleb’s closet. Did I mention that those curved steps are tricky? Four or five times, I ran a box into the ceiling as I was heading downstairs with it, which threw me back against the banister. After bouncing around like a ping-pong ball for a few seconds, I regained my equilibrium and proceeded on.
It was a jolly good thing Caleb was there, because I couldn’t have gotten the last enormous box into the house without his help. We slid it out of the trailer, across the porch, and, with difficulty, over the threshold and into the living room, and that was that. It was a wonderful day for the task--72°, with a pleasant breeze wafting across the fragrant hay fields nearby.
We finished just before 4:30, which was when I told the girls I’d be home. Larry and I were supposed to go to the bank at a quarter till five, and it takes seven or eight minutes to drive back into town. We came skidding into the drive, leaped out, and ran into the house. I washed hands and feet, stuck the poor sore things (speaking of feet, not hands) into sandals, and was ready to go.
But where was Larry?
Hester called him. He was still in North Bend, and wouldn’t be able to make it.
“Go ahead and go to the bank, and sign the papers,” he told me, “and I’ll do it in the morning or Monday.”
So that’s what I did. And just that easy, we were allotted the amount we’d asked for in the first place, thanks to appraisers who determined that the place was worth more than they’d expected.
I returned home, did a bit more mending, and put the last load of clothes into the washer. I got the jeans out of the dryer--and discovered three more that needed to be patched. Aarrgghh!
We had fish and broccoli for supper, and it was mighty good, I tell you, because I was absolutely half starved half to death.
Hannah stopped in; she was taking the children for a walk. Baby Joanna was in the stroller, and Aaron was riding his little foot-powered firetruck. Since Aaron was getting tired, and Hannah couldn’t go very fast with him along, she called Bobby to see if he could come get Aaron.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“On the roof,” he replied nonchalantly.
“Where?” exclaimed Hannah, and we heard Bobby laugh.
He really was on the roof; he was removing the Christmas lights. No; that’s not unique around these parts; it’s been either so cold, or so icy, or so windy, that a good many people still have lights on their houses. But be sure they’ve been coming down lately, what with all the nice weather we’ve been having!
We went out to the house that evening, all of us in the pickup, so that we could bring the trailer back with us. As we pulled in our driveway, Kelvin and Rachel and three of their children were coming down the lane behind us. They all--all but Jodie, that is--came in and looked at our house. Jason helped Caleb pull up a few tack strips, Jamie helped Victoria count steps, and Sharon helped Hester and Lydia admire the frames of their new rooms. We shall have to invite the children out to see us often; they will be missing each other a lot. Those cousins play together nearly every day, if at all possible.
They left, and we got busy at our respective jobs here and there--and then more friends arrived. We gladly invited them in and showed them around, enjoying the visit in spite of the fact that there was hardly any room for anybody in the dining room, on account of all the boxes; and there was nary a chair to be found. They didn’t stay long.
“Every Friday night when we were trying to build our house,” Dwight told us, “dozens of people arrived to look at it.”
“And we had a dreadful time getting any work done,” added Mary. She grabbed the hands of a couple of small children. “We need to leave quickly,” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” agreed Rebecca, “the same thing happened to us.”
Tom nodded. “Let’s go!” he called his children.
So, with many good-byes, they traipsed out to their vehicles. We shut our door--and stood still and listened. Only Victoria was upstairs, but we could hear the footsteps of not one, but two small children.
“Victoria?” I called, and around the corner and down the stairs came Victoria and her little friend Anna Beth.
“Everybody’s leaving!” I told Anna Beth, smiling at her, “we’d better hurry!”
She hurried.
Larry opened the door--and there was Tom, coming back for his lost little girl.
And then they were gone.
We got back to work. Larry finished Caleb’s cubbyhole, and I vacuumed and mopped it. He then went to scrubbing on the floor in the sewing room. He can get it clean so much better than I can; I guess I just plain don’t have enough oooomph.
Caleb went to sleep in the recliner. We’d brought out all our lawn chairs in the back of the pickup; I set up the biggest one in the middle-floor bedroom. Victoria sat down on it to read a book--and the back dropped out from under her, which of course put all the children into spasms of mirth. We finally figured out how it worked and got it in place. Lydia sat in it, too, and read Victoria a story. But soon they were falling asleep. Lydia covered up with one of the quilts I’d brought in. I laid a sleeping bag down on the floor for Victoria, and covered Caleb up with a blanket. It wasn’t long before Hester was about to fall asleep where she was sitting on a big bucket upstairs; she’d helped do all sorts of things. I sent her to get a sleeping bag and lay down by her sisters.
By then, Caleb’s cubbyhole had dried from its mopping, so I carried a bunch of boxes of too-big shirts and pants up to Caleb’s cubbyhole. About midnight, Larry decided we’d better go, for he had to be at work at 6:00 in the morning. He hitched up to the trailer, and we brought it back home.
Saturday, I set about hauling things out to the trailer, about 100 boxes, I think. I even lugged out some boxes I’d packed way back in October that I’d said were too heavy for me to lift. Either I lied, or I’ve gotten tougher, one or d’tuther. Larry came home about 4:00 or so, unhitched his pickup from the trailer, loaded the back with lawnmowers, rototillers, etc. (he picks those things up like they’re feathers), and went to the house.
Hannah stopped by for a few minutes; she was pushing Joanna in the stroller, and Aaron was walking along beside, holding the side of the stroller.
Aaron watched me hauling boxes out to the trailer, putting them in, then pointed at it and explained to Lydia, “Maw-maw’s (Grandma’s) bus.” hee hee
Little Joanna awoke. I started talking to her, and she actually smiled, and then cooed at me. I tell you, it’s a fact: being a grandma is a marvelously agreeable thing to be.
I called Larry, who was at Menards, to tell him supper was ready--Philly steak and cheese pockets--, and we who had already eaten were all still hungry. So he stopped by Phast Phil (or is it ‘Fast Fil’?) for Krispy Kreme doughnuts--and, once again, even though it was two hours till closing time, the lady told him to do her a favor and take all of them--and there were 24 doughnuts in there! I ate way too many. Three, I think. Well, maybe only two and a half. Ugh.
Larry has finished putting insulation up and covering it with painters’ plastic in the sewing room cubbyhole. Now I can put away those fourteen bins of material and two bins of lace.
Our living room here is much easier to live in now, what with the wooden rocking horse, the wooden table and chairs, the Li’l Tykes house, and the multitudes of boxes out of here and into the trailer. Er, bus. hee hee
Before we knew it, it was time for baths and showers…but only one girl had a shower, and then we were out of hot water! We had to wait another half hour before it was warm enough to fill the tub again. We’ll be mighty glad to get into our new house with the big eighty-gallon water heater, that’s for sure. That evening, I cut a little bit off Hester’s hair; it has a habit of growing longer on the left than on the right, and it breaks easily. I curled the girls’ hair…and then it was bedtime.
Sunday morning I made coffee and went off to shampoo my hair. Ten minutes later, I went into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, and discovered that Larry had already poured it.
“Which cup is mine?” I asked.
“The smaller one, of course,” said Larry, “and besides, mine has my name on it.”
I picked up the smaller one, which sported a Norman Rockwell painting of a girl playing marbles with several boys--and she was whupping the pants off them, winning all their marbles.
“Well,” I retorted, “this one has my name on it.”
Larry looked at it. “It sure enough has you on it!” he agreed.
Sunday night, everyone was getting ready to go to church, and I was getting ready to go stay with Mama, when Caleb came upstairs and said he didn’t feel well. Earlier, he hadn’t felt well enough to eat dinner, but had gone straight to bed. So Larry stopped getting ready for church and prepared to stay home with him.
Victoria, too, was unwell; but she had retrieved a ruffly white and black polka dot dress from her closet and was making plans to wear it to church, saying she felt fine. I helped her get dressed, and then fixed her hair. I put a big black bow in it, and she went happily off to look at herself in my cheval mirror--and then back she came, sadly telling me that she was sick; her stomach was hurting. Sooo…I took the bow from her hair, unbuttoned her, and sent her downstairs to change.
Later that night, I returned home from Mama’s house to find everyone starving to death. So Larry and I went to Hy-Vee for rye bread…Italian bread…lettuce…smoked, sliced white turkey…sliced mozzarella cheese…grapes…bananas…granola bars…milk…juice…cereal…chips …pop…peanut butter cups…almond M&Ms…shampoo…
We gave everyone something to eat, sent them to bed…and followed suit.
P.S.: Here’s something you might like to know, a bit of information that might someday stand you in good stead: It does not work well to vigorously shake a jug of orange juice with the lid off.
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