Last Monday, the temperature got into the fifties--a balmy spring day, it seemed, in comparison to the temperatures we’d been having. It was a jolly good day to start cleaning the garage, which was what I’d planned to do, no matter what the temperature was. Soon the Suburban was full to the brim…and so were the garbage cans out back. I took the load of things in the Suburban to the nearest used-clothes dropbox.
Victoria came home from school with a Styrofoam bird glider from her teacher--but before she ever got into the house to show it to me, she landed it in the gutter of the house. First Caleb, and then Hester, tried getting it out with my long-handled duster, but the bird preferred to roost in the gutter. So that evening Larry brought his big ladder home and got it out for her.
While I worked in the garage, Caleb played outside with the neighbor boy. He hadn’t played with him for a long time, because it’s been so freezing cold. I’m always glad when he can go out and play, and get away from the dust I stir up when I am cleaning and packing.
Since Larry had his big ladder here, he set it up in the garage, poked up into the attic’s trapdoor. He shinnied up it, crawled into the attic, and tossed down a million bags of clothes we’d once stored up there when planning for a summertime garage sale that turned into a major nonevent. That was many summers ago. The reason the sale didn’t materialize was because the garage never cleaned itself up properly. Garages can be recalcitrant things.
In addition to the bags of clothes in the attic, there was also the big birdcage, the hamster cage, and the guinea pig cage, along with four wooden chairs. We don’t seem to have all the original chairs that we’d planned to fix. Evidently, we took some of them to the Goodwill--the ones in the worst shape, I suppose. These aren’t in too bad of shape.
I sho’ ’nuff wish we wouldn’t have done that, because they could have been repaired, and they are worth $100 a chair--or more. So I will soon be looking high and low for wooden chairs, I guess. I want need a china hutch, too. A corner hutch would be nice for the corner behind the stairs door; and I think we will remove that door entirely. Maybe the one at the washroom entrance, too. ’Course, it would be nice to be able to pull the door shut when the washer, dryer, and dishwasher are all going at once. Hmmm…I hope they’ve wired the house properly so that breakers won’t blow when all those things are on at the same time. That would be disgusting, if the breaker blew every time more than two appliances were on at once.
I carried everything from the attic (except the chairs) to the Suburban, which was soon filled to the ceiling from directly behind the front seat, all the way to the back doors (the third seat was laid down). I went into the kitchen to put the garage door down--and it stopped, about two feet from the ground.
“Go flip the breaker switch,” Larry instructed Caleb, “it must have blown.”
Caleb came galloping in the back door, heading for the basement fast enough to warrant grave concern over which end of him would reach the bottom first.
“The breaker blew up!” he yelled. He took a fast breath and corrected himself. “I mean the breaker is blown!” his words wafted up to us from his position halfway down the stairs.
Victoria and I headed out to deposit everything into the dropboxes.
First we stopped at St. Isadore's, where I unloaded the entire back, including all those cages. I kept looking at the neighboring houses to see if anyone was looking out their windows, wondering what in the world I was putting in there, and why it was taking so long, and was I a terrorist setting up a bomb, and should they call the police.
When it was so full I couldn’t hoist another of those heavy bags up and over the bags that were already in the little building, and I didn’t want to put anything in the other door because there was a mud lolly directly in front of it, we headed to the dropbox by AceIsThePlace Hardware Store. Oh, gag, did that place ever reek of cigarette smoke! I tell you, it was awwwwwwful. GaaaaaaaAAAAAAAACKCKCK. On the outside of that box, there is a sign that says, WE NEED CLOTHES AND SHOES. Inside the box was an old TV, circa perhaps 1955. I think some of that horrible malodor was coming from it. WE NEED CLOTHES AND SHOES. How, I ask you, is someone going to wear a TV?? And will they like smelling of antique cigarette smoke?
It took quite a while to get the Suburban completely emptied, and when I was done, my shoulders were tired. So I came home and played the piano, which isn’t necessarily less tiring, not the way I like to go at it, anyway.
That evening, supper didn’t seem to fill us up enough to suit us, and everyone was dying for some sort of dessert, so Larry went and bought us some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. He then went out to work at the house.
After Victoria went to bed at 11:30 p.m., I went to help Larry, stopping on the way at Cubby’s to get some coffee. Everyone always stares at me when I walk in with our big green Thermos.
Can she drink all that??! they’re doubtless wondering.
And the answer is: You betcha I can.
(Well, really, I was going to share it with Larry. Of course, if I giggled nervously and said, "Oh, uh, I'm going to, going to, I'm going to share this with my, um, my husband," they would immediately think, She is going to drink all that!!)
I finished painting the black trim and started touching up the wallpaper.
Actually, I’d rather the trim was its natural wood color, or stained to match the floor; but it was already black, and it doesn’t look half bad with the Dalmatian wall border, the black blinds, and the black check curtains with the wide eyelet lace. The drawers and the door that are built into the sides of the dormer are painted black, too. Sooo… rather than pull the trim off, and then be obliged to redo all the rest of the wood in the room, I will simply touch it up--while crabbing at Larry, poor man, for getting so much white paint on it: “You could have put masking tape on that trim, you know! Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap…”
Larry pulled up the carpet in the little room upstairs that will be my sewing and computer room. We’d discovered some time back that that was the only room in the entire house in which they hadn’t used glue--and a whole lot of it, at that--to fasten the carpet down. They used a grand plenty of nails, too, along with the glue. Anyway, we were looking forward to not having to scrape glue off the floor in there--but every silver lining has a cloud, it seems: the floor had been totally ruined by cats. Or cat, as it were. And not just in one or two places, either. Nosiree; nearly the entire floor was stained and demolished. That’s when we realized that the glue under all the other carpets had actually protected the floor from the stupid cat/cats. So it seems that every cloud has a silver lining.
Larry poured onto the floor some of the citrus-scented paint stripper he’d bought for me to use on the old-fashioned hinges and doorknobs. After letting it work for a little bit, he scrubbed it. The stuff had done its job; it cleaned the floor nicely. However, the wood is hopelessly stained; it will have to be bleached and revarnished. Ugh… Whoever came up with the idea to let animals stay in abodes belonging to Homo sapiens, anyway??! And, better yet, if they were going to lock the cat(s) in, they why in the world, pray tell, didn't they put a litter box in that room??!!!
By the time we headed for home, it was cold and windy out, and it was starting to sleet. The loose siding under one of the dormer eaves was setting up quite a racket. A piece of eave trim is missing; as soon as it is replaced, the loose siding will be fastened down properly. The siding is fairly new, and in good condition; we are glad for that.
We awoke Tuesday morning to sleet and snow. The wind was blowing hard, and it was cold. After the kids went back to school that afternoon, I called Larry at the house.
“I’ll be coming soon,” I told him.
“Bring me a sandwich?” he requested. “I’m hungry!”
On the outskirts of town, thinking the vehicle had warmed up enough, I made the error of turning on my defroster. Full blast, of course; I never was known for moderation. If that didn’t create trouble! The entire inside of the Suburban fogged up--and it weren’t no ordinary fog, neither. It was frozen fog. I had to drive with one hand while, with the other, I reached over the steering wheel and swept my hand back and forth, back and forth, continuously clearing an area through which to see.
Have you ever noticed that, when everything fogs up and you can’t see a thing, it creates a sense of insulation against everything out in the big, wide, world, and you feel like there is nothing you would ever run into, and nothing that would ever run into you. You’re flying! Soaring! You can do anything you want, and nothing bad will happen!
I think that’s what’s called ‘A False Sense of Security’.
I walked into the house carrying my coffee mug, the thermos, and my purse. Larry looked at me, and his face took on a woebegone expression. He thought I’d forgotten his sandwich. But he sure enough brightened right up when I extracted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from my purse.
I touched up some of the black trim that needed a little more paint, and I colored in all the places on the wall border that had gotten damaged from the tape Larry put on it to protect it when he textured and painted. The blue wasn’t quite the same; but it looks better than it did. I wasn’t yet done when my black marker ran out of ink--and I had no little paintbrush. Sooo…I dipped the marker into the paint, using it like a paintbrush. And it woiked! Jolly well, it woiked.
Larry scooted the window panes up, and then down, so that I could paint the frames, first bottom, then top, that had never been done. I barely got all that done before it was time to go home, as the children would be getting out of school.
Home again, I got all the washables from Hester and Lydia’s room done, and then I began washing jackets and coats of Larry’s that he’d left in the garage, usually because they reeked of form oil. Once washer and dryer were happily (or otherwise) chugging away, I cleaned out the tub, using ScrubFreeThatIsn’t. That’s always a long and hard task, because we don’t have soft water, and that soap scum is scummy, let me tell you. Victoria happily helped by scrubbing the top of the toilet and all around it, without even being asked.
I sprayed ScrubFreeForMildew in the little bathroom; at least that kind of Scrub Free works. I hate to have it all over my hands; it stinks terribly. But the wall and ceiling are spotlessly white now. We’d better move out fast before the mold comes back again. (And before we dirty up the tub.) Let the next people think they did it!
Larry brought us tacos and potato olés from Taco John's that night for supper. He fixed his all up together with cottage cheese and cilantro sauce, and it almost looked sorta kinda good, maybe perhaps. But I put cilantro sauce on my taco and decided not to risk ruining it with anything else.
After supper, I went to Wal-Mart for some small paintbrushes to touch up the white in Caleb’s room. What I’m done with that, I suppose I’ll have to touch up the black. Then I’ll have to touch up the white, and then the black, then the white, the black, the white, black, white, black, white, black… and on and on, ad infinitum, ad vitum.
We have considered putting the kitchen and dining room in the walkout basement, taking up the entire front half of the downstairs, with the eating area near the patio door, and the kitchen at the other end, sink in front of the big window. We would then make the present dining room and kitchen area on the middle floor into the family room. We won’t worry about that till after we are moved in, though.
Larry finished putting the treads on the steps. Two of the tapered steps, and especially one, are too narrow, really. But what can be done? Larry said he might be able to make more overhang on that particular step; I think that would help. Too much overhang, though, and a person is going to catch their toes on it on the way up, and their heels on it on the way down. It had to drop down quickly like that on account of the ceiling overhead--and it’s a weightbearing wall, so it can’t be sawed into. Perhaps someday we can revamp, somehow… But right now, we are trying to finish quickly and get moved in without spending a fortune on things that are not absolutely necessary.
At Hy-Vee, we got a magazine about kitchens and bathrooms. I want to put the freezer into the kitchen, too; and I want everything to look neat and well organized, and be handy and roomy, too. We can’t have a jetty (?) jutty? Uh, what are those things called? breakwaters? bulkheads? appendages? addendums? appendixes? arms? Anyway, one of those cabinet or appliance additions that jut out from the wall. We can’t have it stick out too far, or we will create a bottleneck between it and the stairs. I think the dishwasher will probably be in the … uh … OH! A PENINSULA! THAT’S what it is. The sink will be under the big window… Perhaps the freezer will be back around the corner behind the steps… The area for the kitchen is shaped a little bit like an ‘L’, on account of the stairs.
Thursday, thinking Larry would soon arrive, I went out to the house to paint and to scrape the floor in Caleb’s room. But…I couldn’t get the lid off the five-gallon paint bucket, so that canceled the painting idea. I scraped the floor for a while--but then the scraper broke. Of course, I was going at it tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, when it broke, of course, so of course I gouged the floor. I swept the floor…scraped carefully with the broken scraper…and finally went home, because it was almost time for the children to get out of school. Larry never came; he was doing some work for Teddy’s boss.
Feeling as though I’d wasted the day away, and decidedly the worse for wear for doing practically nothing, I came to the conclusion that the best way to get something accomplished was just to start doing it. So, while Hester fixed scalloped potatoes and broiled little sizzlers to put in the potatoes, I took out a tall stack of garbage in the kitchen, and then, just as I knew would happen, that got me started again. I found a few things in the garage to haul out to the trash…and then more…and more…and more…and before I knew it, I’d cleaned up an entire corner. I only hoped that the 30-mile-per-hour winds we were having around here didn’t escalate into the 60-mile-per-hour winds they were having elsewhere in the state and send that garbage to the far ends of the county. But most things that one finds in garages--at least, in Larry’s garage--that one throws away (when he is not looking) are not the sorts of things that could waft away on the wind: diesel engines, jet motors, Sherman tanks, --that sort of thing.
I found several more boxes of toys--and a tin full of Dorcas’ yarn, and, lo and behold, there were the other mates to the little shoes I once bought her for Christmas for her Molly doll! And several of those hand-knitted pairs of socks and tights for it, too. I got them from the American Girls’ Collection, and they cost a pretty penny, they did. A London Fog bag full of yarn--and some half-done blankets--materialized, and we sent it over to Dorcas, who was glad to get it back again. I discovered the big stuffed horse of ribless brown corduroy that Janice sewed for Hannah when she was little. Hannah just recently told me she wanted it, if I ever found it. And then I found her gold-plated teddy bear Christmas ornament that says Baby’s First Christmas and, underneath the bear, Hannah Lynn.
I started to take it into the house…looked up into the kitchen through the open garage door…and there was Hannah standing in the kitchen, holding baby Joanna! So I gladly quit mucking through the garage and went to see my little grandchildren. Bobby was practicing his horn at church; Hannah had come with him, and then walked over to see us.
Hannah let the girls hold baby Joanna, and I took pictures. Lydia was delighted that, while she was holding Joanna, the baby smiled and smiled at her--shortly before she opened her mouth wide and squalled. Hunger pangs always seem to hit hard immediately after big smiles, have you ever noticed that? Smiles use up oodles of calories, I guess!
Meanwhile, Hester had gone to Mama’s at 7:00 so that the girl who usually stays with her could go to practice, and Dorcas went, too. They are practicing for Easter. Easter Sunday lands on the first anniversary of David’s death. That will be rather hard for Christine and her children, my sister and brother-in-law, and the rest of the family, I’m afraid.
Bobby and Hannah drove out to see our house, and Larry, Victoria, and I followed. After Bobby, Hannah, and the children left, Larry and I got busy in Caleb’s room. First, I vacuumed out one of the under-the-eave cubbyholes, the one across from the built-in drawers. I found a little old-fashioned heavy metal Allis-Chalmers tractor that some poor little boy had evidently lost when it was still brand-new, as it looks brand-new now. Caleb loves it. It’s probably a priceless old antique. We’ll display it on a shelf in his room.
Larry put that citrus-scented stripper on the last little bit of the floor that still had glue on it, and then scraped it off. I finished touching up the white around the black trim. It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than it was.
Victoria crawled into the new recliner in the washroom, covered herself with my coat, and was soon fast asleep.
A cute little gray and white kitten with a short, stubby tail from a house at the end of the avenue has turned into a cat. And a tomcat, at that. He was twice in our garage Thursday--once, at 1:30 a.m., howling his fool head off. I flung open the door and scared him away. At 4:30 a.m. he was right outside my window, yeooowwwwling like a banshee.
I opened the window and hissed “Stop it!”
He jumped out of his hide and stopped it.
Aarrgghh…why do the cats always pick on us???
After the children went to school Friday afternoon, I sat down and had a muffin--with no milk. The children had drunk it all. Muffins aren’t quite right with no milk.
Just before the last bite, the phone rang. It was Dorcas, making cinnamon rolls (or something), and she’d run out of sugar. So I took her some--in exchange for half a glass of milk. Ahhhh, perfect.
I spent all day cleaning the garage, throwing out piles and piles of stuff, and putting a lot into the Suburban to take to the Goodwill. When the children came home, I set them to washing the toys I’d found in five big boxes. We discovered all sorts of toys we’ve been needing in order to complete sets of this and that.
That night, we called in an order for a medium pizza, along with the littles’ three free BookIt pizzas. I threw a few more bags into the garbage, several more into the Suburban, and off we went to the store to get pop, nutty bars, grapes, sliced peaches, and milk. Then to Pizza Hut, and then out to the house.
After everyone finished eating, Hester vacuumed the cubbyhole in Caleb’s closet while I finished touching up with white paint all the edges around the black trim. Larry did some sanding on the middle floor.
Soon it was 9:00, and I stopped with the painting to take Lydia home. She had to be up early in the morning, because she was going to the college for the county spelling bee.
We stopped at the dropbox by AceIsThePlace to get rid of all the jetsam and flotsam in the back. I opened the door of the box--and discovered it was jam-packed, all the way to the rafters--and a good deal of it was from our house. We tried the door on the back, and discovered that we could fit our stuff in there--all but the folding bed/chair/what-everitis that Larry used to sleep on when he was hauling cargo trailers. That, I put on the ground beside the box, after first looking one way and then another to ascertain that not a soul was looking. Why don't they ever retrieve that stuff?!
While at home, I collected a bag of toys for Caleb and Victoria, a large pile of towels to put in the shelves at the house, dusting spray and cloth, and Murphy’s Oil Soap.
Back at the house, I took the upper stair railings off the walls. Someone had made an atrocious mess with them when they put them up; plaster all over the hardware, brackets buried in the wall, or perhaps the wall coming out in a huge, sloppy lump of plaster to meet the bracket. Meanwhile, Larry and the children took the carpet out of the middle-floor bedroom. That floor was not so badly covered with glue as in the other rooms of the house.
Saturday morning, Lydia went to the spelling bee. She missed too many on the written test, and therefore did not get to progress on to the oral. James, Bobby’s youngest brother, won. Here is the news article from the Columbus Telegram:
Family tradition continues at spelling bee
Columbus — He sat on one of the stage’s 28 folding chairs. Hands clasped in his lap, his ankles crossed, James Wright of Columbus listened to the other spellers.
When they were given a difficult word--one that James didn’t know how to spell--he would think the gig was up.
“Each round, I expected to go out, so needless to say, I was pretty nervous,” said James, a seventh-grader from Bible Baptist Christian School.
But he did prevail Saturday, and for the second year in a row, James won first place in the annual Platte County Spelling Bee.
In the end it came down to two boys and two words. After 26 other contestants had been eliminated during preceding rounds, James and St. Bonaventure six-grader Nathan Hotovy were the only ones on stage with announcer Barb Averett.
Nathan misspelled “unanimous”, James spelled the word correctly and then spelled one additional word--buoyant--to win the title.
James’ family, including parents John and Bethany Wright, were in the audience, sitting in the front row. They have watched similar competitions for years. They saw their son, Matthew, win first place from 1993-96. In 1997 and 1999, their son, Stephen, won first place. (He couldn’t attend in 1998 because he had appendicitis.)
In 2000-01, daughter Esther won the spelling bee. And last year was James’ first win.
James is the youngest in the family.
“Next year is his last year and then the Wrights are out (and that is good),” Bethany Wright said. “Your heart gets to pounding on those last rounds.”
About 20 Platte County schools, which included 66 fifth-eighth graders, participated at the event at the Central Community College-Columbus Fine Arts Theatre.
Columbus Bank donated a dictionary for the winner.
* * * *
By the way…several of those years when Matthew won the spelling bees, Bobby came in second.
I spent the day cleaning out the garage. It was only 7° that morning before sunrise. I was cold. I’d been cold almost all day. I left the kitchen door open and took every last heater we have out into the garage in order to stay somewhat warm--and even then, I sometimes had to wear my coat. I plugged the heaters in, trying to pick different outlets here and there around the garage, knowing that too many of them are on the same circuit.
Too many of them, my foot. I guess all of them are on the same circuit.
I tried this outlet…then that outlet…and the breaker blew, every time. Finally I got a couple of extension cords and snaked them to outlets inside the house. That worked, and the garage slowly got more bearable.
I think--although I’m not sure--but I think that I actually emptied out one entire box. Well, maybe two. (Or was it three?) Anyway, it seems that I progress awfully slowly. I sort things…give the children handfuls of stuff and nonsense--er, I mean, stuff and things--to put away…and then I come into the house after a couple of hours and discover it all—on the table. And a whole lot of it was in the sink, Caleb’s little plastic soldiers floating around amongst the bubbles of dish detergent… And they hadn’t even been dirty!! Aarrgghh. The dirty things, however, were still sitting on the floor in the corner, right where I put them when I told the kids they would need to wash them.
Well, I did get two very large boxes emptied out, and that’s what I’d been needing: large boxes. Hester wiped them down, and then I labeled one, ‘Caleb’s vehicles’, and the other, ‘Wreaths’.
There I was, throwing stuff out right and left, and one fairly large box seemed to have nothing but garbage in it. I poked through it, not really wanting to stick my hands down into it, as it seemed to have been a mouse playground at some point in time.
Out it goes, I thought, and picked it up.
This is heavy! I thought, and set it back down.
I pawed through it again, shoving papers and fluff out of the way (yes, I had gloves on) (Larry’s gloves, mind you) (yes, they’re too big by far) (but I didn’t want to soil mine, of course, you know). There at the bottom of the box was a sander! An electric belt sander. Jolly good thing I looked again, eh? I might throw out a box of nuts and bolts and washers (and regret it later), but I do have enough sense to never throw out such a thing as a sander.
Caleb is tickled pink because we’ve come up with his big firetruck with all the sirens and voices, a big heavy white fighter jet with movable wings, dozens of little cars and trucks, and many middle-sized ones. Victoria is delighted because we’ve found nearly all the expressions dolls (and what expressions!), Polly Pockets galore--even the teensy weensy baby Polly!--, and enough dominoes to fill the domino bag nearly full.
I washed several loads of clothes, too. As I type, it is 1:45 a.m., and there is a load of wet clothes in the washing machine, but I am stiff and sore and tired, and I really don’t give a hoot what happens to those wet clothes. I’ll care mañana, but I don’t care a fig tonight.
Larry’s hands are all dry and cracked. His thumbs have deep, infected cracks that bleed. They look terrible. He’s having a hard time working, with his hands like that. It’s from the drywalling and the sanding, and probably the weather, too. He worked on Caleb’s floor Saturday. He poured on the citrus stripper, and used a scrub brush with a long handle. The handle wasn’t quite long enough, really, so he had to lean over a bit to use it, and now his hip is hurting him. We went to the pharmacy and got him some medicated hand crème. It certainly smells like it ought to help.
Larry brought home more than two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, including one over-full box which cost nothing, because the lady was getting ready to close the store, and she told him they always throw away all the leftover doughnuts. Sooo…we all ate too many doughnuts.
Larry recently learned that the Adkissons have cats. {!} So that means, perhaps, that our cats will be safe with the dog. Okay, now we are wondering: Will they be safe with the cats???
Friday was Keith and Esther’s fourth anniversary, and today is Norma’s birthday. We got her an oversized umbrella with a subtle ivory and ecru plaid covered with tiny blue flowers and vines, and an ever-so-soft mauve-rose chenille afghan.
After church tonight, after I came home from Mama’s, we went to Lawrence and Norma’s. Keith and Esther, and Kenny and Annette and family, along with Travis, Lawrence’s grandson, were there.
We had generous servings of cake and ice cream and, unbeknownst to me, some favored souls even had one of Norma’s scrumptious cinnamon rolls. [Unfair! Unfair!] In spite of that, we had an entirely enjoyable time, especially Victoria and Amanda, who whiled the night away heckling and entertaining their big brother/cousin, Keith.
Bedtime!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.