Memory-Keepers of the Past, or Sisters , Sisters

My friend lost her sister last week.  It was sudden and totally unexpected, from a brain aneurysm.  I haven't talked with my friend yet, because I am afraid I will cry when I do.  So far we've exchanged several emails and a sympathy card, and I will have to try again to reach her by phone.  I know I will cry.

I wrote to her today that I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to lose my sister.  My own sister is older by almost five years than I, but she takes far better care of her health than I have in recent years, and she hasn't had to tend classes of children who try to subdue her spirit.  I believe she will far outlive me on this planet. That is my expectation, anyway.  I'd bet that was the expectation of my friend who buried her younger sister last week, also.

I remember one time telling my three children, as they argued and exchanged swats with each other in the back seat, to "Stop right this minute, and take a good look at your brothers and sister!  This very minute, LOOK WELL!"

I remember telling them that some day I would be gone, their dad would be gone, and there would be only themselves to be "family" for each other. They were going to NEED each other to save the memories of our family and their childhoods.

They became very silent, stared at each other with new eyes, then turned back to me as if I might be leaving them soon.     (?)

Nobody else will remember you at the swim club in the summer, I went on.  Nobody will remember Kelly, Daisy, or Sunny.  Nobody will remember your being a real live angel in the Christmas pageant, or hooking up fifteen electric cords to get that TV to work inside the tent.  No one will remember the day you broke your chin open on the pool table, the broken femur and the month in traction, the magical Underoos that might have let you fly, the nutso neighbor kid who stole Mr. Weaver's Playboy Magazines, the day we let the water monkeys "go free" in Yellow Creek, or that miserable teacher two of you had in elementary school. (Or the fact that your mother spared the third of you from a year of torture.)

Now that their brother is gone, I think they hold each other more dearly because the two left only have each other.  They have lost their brother, and he will not be there to call them "Sissy" and "Stubbo."

The spat subsided, but I knew I had hit a nerve.  I had actually read an article about this subject not long before this event, and it drove home this reality:  The friends we make throughout our lives truly do not know all of the nitty gritty "stuff "that went into making us into who we are.  Even our spouses only get the finished product after we've matured from our growing-up years.

My sister and I are four plus years apart.  We are very very different people.  We did not go to the same schools, and we were raised by two entirely different sets of parents, even though those parents had the same names and faces.  My parents were far more liberal than hers.  They had already had practice with raising HER.  Now that our parents are both gone, we are the keepers of the past.

There is not a person on this earth, except for me,  who can envision my sister climbing down from the rafters of an unfinished addition or swinging from a grapevine over a rocky ravine. No one else remembers her walking around on the top of the roof. She is the only one who recalls the night my toe got cut and I thought I would bleed to death. She alone remembers the slinky pink nighties and the jammies with feet and bottom drops.  She has our dog somewhere in her heart, along with a stream of goldfish and a bird named Percy.

Who but she remembers riding dusty roads on bicycles named Buttermilk and Trigger,  getting stuck in "quicksand" which was really deep mud, cowgirl suits, plastic snap guns, Sky King and Penny with Cheerios, the longest camping trip in the world, sewing buttons onto our toes, crinoline petticoats, mismatched clothes that didn't fit, coats with sleeves to our knees, our grandmama's fall off the back steps, or the neighbor's great dane attacking our little mutt, Copper?  No one.

My friend must be wondering why I have not called her back since her machine answered once and I left a brief message. How do I say how sad I am for her?  I hope she knows that I know she has lost someone who held her in her mind as she was when she was a child, and I know that not only is her sister lost to her, but somehow there is a very part of her that is lost also.......... a keeper of her past is gone.

I love my friend.  I love my sister, also.  They are so different, yet both are so very dear to me in many ways.  I cry for my friend's loss, and for my children who have lost their brother.  It is not easy getting older, is it?  It's a sure thing we will bury our parents, fifty-fifty with our spouses. Siblings are a toss-up.........or a toss-down.

If my sister reads this:    I love you.     I love your screaming, "I will always wear crinoline petticoats!"  I love your being the maid in the school play, making sure I got on the right bus when I was in the first grade, roasting  marshmallows and hot dogs on the gas stove top (no parent in sight), trying to memorize "Friends, Romans, countrymen........." and letting me do it better than you did, for not deserting me in the "quicksand" but leaving my ugly yellow boots behind in it, and for being my big sister all these years.  I want to be sure that you know that I love you............. just in case.

For my friend:  I cannot tell you how deeply sorry I am about the death of your wonderful sister.  But I am going to try to pick up the phone sometime today, and try to tell you.




copyright:  K P Gillenwater

How It Was, or, I'll Be Home for Christmas

The box with our Christmas tree in it was waiting for me when I arrived home today.  Taped up, the size of a football player, it is my assignment for tomorrow to do what "Only God"  can do, which is to "make a tree."

I remember when I was little and we would go into the woods and find one that looked as if nobody wanted it, cut it down, and drag it back down the hill.  We'd let it sit outside a day or so because Pop always said it "needed to settle," or some such thing.  I never could understand that. It looked the same to me when it finally got stuck into the metal tree holder, had one of our white sheets wrapped around the holder, bubble lights in place, and we stood and threw tinsel at it.

We had one little plastic angel we called "Angie the Christmas Tree Angel," from a song back then. The angel was about four inches tall and we poked a hole in the bottom of it so it would stay on the top branch.  I had a small plastic snowman ornament that had come with two suckers sticking out of a hole in its side. Suckers long-gone, it hung on the tree with just its hole.  I also had a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ornament the year that song came out.  I still have these three precious ornaments, and they hang every year on my Christmas tree, right along with the blue paper bird with net and sequined wings that I made in the second grade.  I thought that bird was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and even though it's a bit tattered and worn, each time I hang it on the tree I remember how it felt to be seven and proud of my creation.

One year my mother decided to "go modern," and she went out into the woods and dragged home a dead tree that was not even an evergreen. She spray-painted it white, stuck it into a pot, and hung only blue balls all over it.  All four of us sat and looked at it for a couple of weeks, and then right before December 25th, we went back up into the woods, and brought home a little pine tree to hang Rudolph, Angie, and my blue bird on,  so we could be "normal." 

We had other ornaments and decorations back then.  Every year Pop and I would go outside together and hang up Santa's Face somewhere in the front of the house.  This is a large brilliantly RED face of Santa that I thought was magnificent.  It's in its box in my basement right now.  I haven't hung it up since my own kids were little, but I could never part with it.

It's odd to see the evolution of Christmas, now that I am old enough to look back over lots of them.  Of course I cannot ever see it again as I did when I was little, but I did try to make my own childrens' Christmases as exciting as I remembered. I loved the whole idea of gifts, both giving and getting.

One year Mom got the idea that we would make marzipan candy gifts for everyone.  She set up the ping pong table in the basement, bought a ton of marzipan (almond paste) and food coloring. Then she got cute little leaves that we could use as stems for the marzipan strawberries, apples, pears, and other fruits that we rolled in our hands, and dyed with the food colorings.  We must have rolled apples and berries through  hundreds of pounds of marzipan before we realized that there was NO WAY we were going to be able to use up all the almond paste that Mom had bought.  The house smelled like nuts, and we could hardly stand to lick our fingers, we were so sick of the taste of it.

Then Mom got "creative," with  aluminum TV dinner plates! We had a life-time supply of those three-sectioned tins. Instead of strawberries, we produced marzipan Salisbury steaks, marzipan mashed potatoes (with marzipan yellow pats of butter on top), and bright green marzipan peas.  A complete meal of marzipan!  God only knows to whom we presented these gifts, and today I laugh at the memory, but back then I thought we were giving away priceless pieces of artwork. (You can imagine the discussions of the recipients, I presume.)

I loved to wrap presents when I was a child.  One year I bought Mom a very large "crystal" salad bowl and wrapped the bowl, added a helium-filled balloon with four strands of yarn to the top, and presented my gift in the form of a hot-air balloon. The bowl itself was anticlimactic once unwrapped.

Prior to this creative wrapping era, I just WRAPPED everything. We had lots and lots of cheap wrapping paper, and some that I had even made by myself by doing potato printing on shelf paper.  I got the notion, very young, that things that were wrapped up were better than things that weren't.  So I wrapped anything and everything I could. 

Mom's scissors disappeared one year.  We heard about it every day for several months. Since she needed them to cut out the fabric to make our clothes, it was a huge loss and inconvenience. On Christmas morning she opened all her "presents" under the tree, and lo' and behold, there were her missing scissors!  By then I had forgotten I'd wrapped them.

Our gifts were wonderful.  Apparently I had not inherited my love of wrapping from my parents, since NOTHING from Santa was wrapped. When we got up on Christmas morning and ran to the tree, we saw it ALL at once!  A display of gifts! Dolls were my favorite, and I would get one every year.  Most of them have fallen apart or disappeared, but Poor Pitiful Pearl is still in her original box right under my guest bed, and occasionally I open the box and become a little girl again for a few minutes. In the attic is the metal doll buggy in case I want to take her for a walk.  We didn't have a zillion toys like kids do today.

My Aunt Angie, in South Dakota, was a librarian.  Every year she would send us a book with an inscription inside.  We'd open her book on Christmas Eve and read it.  Those books were some of my favorite presents. Why The Chimes Rang will be on my coffee table for readers to enjoy one more time in a day or two.  I thank Aunt Angie for the gift of the love of reading that came hidden, unseen, inside those little volumes.

My mother gave me a child-sized fork and spoon that she remembered were her sole Christmas gifts one year when she was a very little girl in Colorado.  The spoon has tooth marks all over it, and the fork is worn.  She told about her dad putting a piece of paper over his face. It had holes cut out for his eyes, and he chortled, "Ho Ho Ho!" as he presented her with Santa's gifts.  Of course she knew it was her daddy, and she was happy with her gift, although a bit unnerved.

Christmases of my past have tender places in my heart:  My daughter with a big red bow atop her head.......... my son dressed as a shepherd for a church play..........  admitting under cover of a bed tent one Christmas night to my tearful oldest child that yes, indeed, he was correct about Santa........  "Silent Night" in the snow at midnight with our entire church family.............. an Advent calendar with little chocolates behind each date's window........ cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer........ candy canes and Festivus for the Restofus ice cream. Love.

Draped over one antique clock will be my son's faded red crepe paper hat from his kindergarten elf performance, a glittery halo of my youngest angel, once worn over his impish face, and a paper crown with a gold star from my daughter's angel debut:  Tender memories of Christmas with my children.

Tomorrow I will make a tree and hang up Rudolph, my snowman, Angie the angel, and my paper blue bird. I might even hang up the beaming Santa face. Randy has already lit the yard and lamp post.  I hope there's still enough little girl left in me to wrap like a crazy person,  load the tree with gifts, and feel the joy of Christmas.  I will pass on the marzipan.



copyright: K P Gillenwater

Pop's Hankies, or , Whole Lotta Love

I have a drawer full of mens' handkerchiefs that belonged to my father, whom I lovingly called "Pop."  He died when I was twenty-four, and I was not ready for him to leave my life.  I had only discovered, really, how wonderfully marvelous he was, with his quiet yet humorous demeanor, so unlike that of my mother.  He had made an art-form of peaceful resistance, and I had just realized the power that he held. I lost him to heart failure on a cold February day, a sunny day, the first snowfall of the season.  That was the day I began to learn about loss.

When I was little, my "chore," was ironing.  For some unknown reason, I was good at it. I imagine I got this job because nobody else wanted it. I had burns on my hands and wrists, but I didn't mind. The ironing board, which Pop installed in our family room wall was close to the TV, so I was not bored.

 I got paid to do this work: ten cents for a shirt or blouse, twenty cents for a bed sheet, and a whopping nickel for every two of Pop's handkerchiefs ironed.  That's two-and-a-half-cents per handkerchief, for those of us non-math majors.

I loved to iron the handkerchiefs.  They were smaller than a bed sheet, by a long shot, and the fabric was thin enough that a steam iron could whip those little hankies into flat squares in no time.  I'd iron the whole thing, then fold them over once, iron, then fold once more, and VOILA!  Ready to use, done! And I was half a nickel richer with each hot little square that topped the pile.

 I'd stack them up and "see my work, " which is a really good thing to be able to do when you are working and want to see what you've done. Then I'd count how many I had ironed, write it down on my "bill," and carry the load of cleanly washed, ironed, and lovingly folded hankies to Pop's bedroom.

I was being a "contributing member of the household."  I also had enough money to go to Woolworth's for a bagful of sugar-babies.

On that very cold February morning, when I was twenty-four and Pop left this earth, I held on to his silver and turquoise bolo tie. He had worn it almost daily.  I wrapped the leather strands of his tie around my fingers, held on to it, as I wanted to hold on to him, and realized that I could not.

The things I have today that were my father's are this bolo tie, which I wear as a pendant, his ring, which I hope will someday be a treasure for my son, a cereal bowl that is broken past use, his feet, his laugh, his facial structure, and that drawer full of handkerchiefs which I refused to allow to be donated or given to "needy folks."

 Pop has been with me every day of my life, whispering in my ear the right things to do.  I cannot count the number of times I've turned to my right shoulder and said, aloud and clearly, "I hear you, Pop," when he counseled me, led me, or especially when I have heard his very words come out of my own mouth. I hear his phraseology, his Iowa verbiage or quips:"Purd n'ear," or, "Tend to your own knittin'!"   (And when I know I have done a wrong thing, I've heard him whisper,"I am ashamed of you, Kimmy.") "I hear you, Pop,"  I say to him, no matter what I've heard him say.

 I also know he is near when he comforts me.  He left me his handkerchiefs, just for that purpose, after all.

Most of the hankies are white, some stained, some plaid, some have the letter P or N embroidered in a corner, and some are just thinly worn-out.  The pile probably counts to twenty, and during sieges of flu or colds, that pile has shown up in its entirety in my laundry room.

I have a special drawer for Pop's hankies, and when the wash comes up all clean and shiny, those hankies are placed, "rotating stock," back into that drawer.  They have to last me for a lifetime, you see.

Yesterday  Randy and I took a hike in our Metro Parks.  As we were a fourth of the way into our one-mile walk, I reached into my coat pocket for Pop's hankie, and it was missing.  Without skipping a beat, I did an about-face and walked at break-neck speed, retracing our steps, back to the car where the missing hankie turned up.  All the while I was saying "I cannot lose Pop's hankie."  I continued my breathless trot with poor Randy following along, redoing his hiking challenge steps to appease his idiosyncratic wife. 

The value of the handkerchief, sentimentally, became obvious to my husband, and also worth mentioning, and here you are, now, knowing this!

How alone I would have felt, without Pop's handkerchiefs!  As I raised my children and worried over them, the hankies wiped fevers and tied back my hair on truly overwrought days. Soaked in cold water and tied to my wrists on summer days in a home with no air conditioning, they cooled my blood and let me keep on with housework.  They dried my nose for a thousand cold and allergy attacks. Stuffed under my pillow or in my bathrobe pocket,  they were the most dependable comfort, and the best dryer-of- tears I had.

Over the past four and a half years since my much-loved son, only thirty, died, those handkerchiefs have been well-used, well-washed, reused, returned to the drawer, "rotated stock," recycled, rewashed, reused, and re-rotated-stock many times over.  I have felt them to represent the caring, very present, comforting "hands" of my much-loved father, wiping my tears and guiding me through this hideous path of grief. 

"Thanks, Pop," I 've said, too many times to count, as the hankies have been  dropped down the laundry chute or stuffed back into a pocket.

Love never dies, I've learned.  Neither, really, do the loved ones. Sometimes the love comes as a thought in my head, or a fragrance in the air.  Sometimes it's in the patient listening of a friend. Sometimes love shows up in the form of an old worn handkerchief.




copyright: KP Gillenwater

Houseplants are Family, or, Only the Strong Survive

My first plant was a rubber tree that was five feet tall. My mother threw it out of her house not long after I had also left home. I took it to my single-girl apartment, wiped the leaves with milk, watered it, and named it Goodrich.

I was also plant-hooked. The thought that a plant could give me oxygen, keep me healthy, and remove pollutants from the air I was breathing amazed me. Besides, I needed something to cheaply fill the vacant spaces in that apartment.

Plant stores seemed to dominate street corners during the seventies, (probably because none of us could afford to fill the empty spaces in our first apartments,) and I was ripe for supporting them. Since then, plants have "come to me," as gifts, party favors, garage sale finds, rescue efforts (meaning that someone was going to dump one!) or by my walking through the aisles at places like Lowe's and having love at first sight experiences.

 Several hundred plants have tried to cohabitate with me. (This sounds far more exciting than it truly was. ) Some actually survived the cohabitation.  I've moved plants to and from the nine homes of my life since that first.  I don't remember what happened to Goodrich, but I think he got left outside too long, one autumn. Thankfully, I do not recall the details.

On a walk one night, in my next life, I rescued a very nice plant that a frustrated homeowner had put on the curb. I lugged that sucker home,  named it Annie (as in Orphan,) and it has been with me for twenty-five years.  Not all good years.  It is a schefflera plant, and it grew to a huge height and breadth.  Two summers ago I failed to move it from underneath a gutter that over-ran, and  flooded it.  She died. I literally wept, and moved Annie to the far corner of the back yard to await her total demise and burial.

 I went out and bought another one, (a replacement puppy)  feeling  hideous guilt.  I named the new shefflera "Mrs. Grenville," (after a Dominick Dunne book which had two women by that name, this being the second one...) Then, after several months of looking at poor dead Annie's dried-up stems rotting in her pot, I moved her into some sunshine, gave her a small drink, (instead of the flood she had already had,) and lo' and behold, greenery reappeared!  We changed her name to Lazarus, (apparently she had a sex-change operation, of sorts, also,) and little by little Annie Lazarus is coming back to beauty!

I tell you about this to explain that my plants, being living beings, are family members with names, in our home. Old Faithful is a large philodendron who has been with me for nearly twenty years, and spreads itself all across the living room coffee table, where there is no room for coffee, much less the comfort that the table should offer to guests. If you visit, you had better be prepared to hold your cup and saucer.  Old Faithful emerges from his round pot like a volcanic eruption, and then spreads over and down from the tabletop.

Pedro is a very tall prickly cactus who bites if I get too close. We do not get along well, but I did invite Pedro into my home, and I have taken care of him for a number of years,  so I feel the need to be hospitable. I think he reminds me of a former relative, not my favorite, so when I water Pedro, I whisper closely into his spiky skin, "You only get a little bit of water, you see?"

Shylock is my Wandering Jew who does well outside in the summertime, and then gets nasty during the winter.  I do not talk back to Shylock, knowing that he KNOWS when he is happy and when he is not, and I can't do anything for his mood but pick up his lost brown leaves. His summer purple is much more lush than his winter dull.

A spider plant named Charlotte takes over a little stool by our picture window, and refuses to reproduce those "babies" that my friends' spider plants have.  I think Charlotte needs to see a reproductive specialist, as I seem to have the only barren spider plant in town. Hope springs eternal.

 Spot is a huge variegated thing near the fireplace, obviously named for its spots. I do not know his/her gender, and I do not ask. I just water, smile, love, and hope for the best.

What fun to give names to living things!  I talk to them when I water them, and tell them I knew they thought they weren't going to get any water, but LOOK, here I am, pitcher in hand !

In my plant-kingdom, there are also some which are too simple, such as Fern (duh), a fern, or Noel, my mother's Christmas cactus.  There is also Paddy, the Shamrock, and Gustav, the Norwegian Pine tree. On the mantle sits Yoko Ono, an oriental orchid, who has lost her bloom.

The Lounge Lizard is a giant aloe plant who has leaned so far over that he drapes himself across the window sill as if he is relaxing there.  If only I could be so content and relaxed!  I cannot move this plant for fear of his falling off his perch and breaking. He will have to eventually be sold with the house.

A pot with several mixed plants is called The Witness, a gift sent to the funeral home where it stood as sentinel by my loved one during the hardest hours of my life. It will always be with me.

Tom, Dick, and Harry are a threesome, all different, and they share a three-pot holder, which makes them a "set." They do everything together. If one were to die, I would then have an empty pot, and would have to go find them another buddy.

My neighbor, Jean With the Green Hands, has presented me, recently, with two huge pots of aloes.  They are spiky and sort of threatening-looking just now.  We've decided to call them The Medusa Twins. I am awaiting a relationship to bloom. (So far I cover my face for fear of turning to stone, but I feel positive enough to think that we might be able to work this out during the winter.) Randy objected to my taking Medusa in, actually. But I told him if he needed aloe for a cut, we could now cover his entire body with it. I am sure that was the convincing argument. It was either that or the tears.

Randy says I have too many plants.  I remind him of the oxygen.  He says he'd rather be without it.  I show him magazine homes that have NO plants, and tell him how sad I am for "those people" without greenery in their lives. He actually wanted me to get a bunch of FAKE PLANTS once, when we were first married.  He said they'd be easier to care for, and I said I wouldn't let them in the house, because a fake plant LOOKS fake! (If you're a fake plant lover, just hide them when I visit.) I won. (Except for the fake plant you read about in the previous post, of course, which pretends to exist on our screened porch, and does not count.) I suppose this is called plant-prejudice of some kind.

My mother had a plant that died, once.  It died nameless.  I do remember the event, however, as I was there when the presumed declaration of death was pronounced.  Mom said that the plant was dead, she thought. Then she said that perhaps she should take it out into the woods, "like a Greek baby," and leave it there until she was sure that it was "not only merely dead, but most sincerely dead."  Which we did. It was.

Annie, the Orphan, now Lazarus, is the Poster Child for the Greek Baby!  Pedro stands, breathing oxygen into unnourished air, and Charlotte tries to send spidery vines to show life moving into areas where none existed before.  Old Faithful IS faithful, when others may not have been,  the Lounge Lizard will forever relaxingly rest along the window sill (asking for a martini, someday, I suppose,)  and The Witness will always be with me, as will the Loved One it guarded. If Charlotte ever does reproduce, can you imagine the fun I will have, naming all those little spider-babies?



copyright: K P Gillenwater

Sleepin' on the Porch, or, Strangers in the Night

Randy and I have been sleeping outside for months, now.  We are not homeless.

 It's not as scary as it sounds, as we sleep on a futon on our screened-in porch which sits on the upper level of our raised ranch home. The futon was one of our first purchases when we moved here, and it was with the intent of becoming "outside sleepers," right off the bat.

You need to know that our home butts up against a metropolitan park which is all woods. While in our upper level, we live among the treetops.  At this time of the year, the daytime fall colors of the gloriously-colored leaves give way at night to the rustling of those leaves in the dark wind, and the sounds of the parades of woodsy animals who pass through our yard from dusk to dawn.

There's a bit of a wuss in both of us that requires an electric blanket on this futon, lest you think we are ruggedly withstanding the forces of nature out there. (Randy wants me to interject that HIS side of the futon, if there is such a place, is NOT warmed by said blanket.  He is of Hungarian descent, and takes pride that he is already "hot.") (I, however, have reminded HIM that his side has been warmed by a type of osmosis.)  Some years we have the foresight and good sense to put the electric blanket on a timer, so it warms up automatically by bedtime.  This year we've been too lazy to plug it in, so far. 

Our porch has the ambiance of a trailer-trash-pirate's den,  as well as being the nightly abode of two fresh air fiends.  Hanging glass "witches' balls," a flying fake pelican, and strings of lighted colored balls and chili peppers surround the ceiling of this haven. (It recalls to us a pirate-themed place in the Outer Banks called "Goombas,"  the most glorious Christmas trees of our childhoods, and a trailer  park where we enjoyed a fun weekend with Randy's family members some years ago.) The porch has a personality of its own, though, with wicker chairs, a bistro table, a three-foot-tall standing stuffed flamingo (named "Flo"), and the only fake plant in our home, a large fern in a huge ceramic pot.

One year we managed to sleep out there until December 4th.  My nose had frostbite when we finally undid the bed and covered it for the winter that had already begun in earnest. Snow had been blowing onto my frozen face for several nights by then.

The NEXT year, we stayed out there until December the FIFTH.............as a sort of challenge, and just to be able to SAY that we had added a day that year.. (You are hearing it now.)  That time my cheeks were also frozen, along with my nose, toes, and fingers, but we stuck it out just for the fun of it.  The electric blanket was not keeping up with the bitter cold and the billowing winds. (Not to mention the layer of snow we had to brush off, just to get out of futon....)

We've lived in this house for eight years, and when the realtor revealed this porch, that was when, "We'll take it," escaped both of our mouths.  The former owners had left two large Victorian wicker chairs out there, until the deal was sealed.  We envisioned, as they had planned, peace and tranquility as we overlooked the forested valley.  SOLD!

The back of our home has two large picture windows that take up most of the wall space, allowing us to see the forest most of the time.  Our bedroom has the same view, so the porch is not the only location from which to enjoy the scenery: our home decor IS the forest.

But the porch is where "it's happening," especially during the autumn months.

Now, fall leaves carpet the ground, so everything that moves out there is HEARD, even though it may not be SEEN.

After the sun goes down, and we get snuggled down under the warmed-up layers of heavy quilts and blankets, the rustling begins beneath "down under."  Below the porch, on a patio, where we served summertime picnic dinners, a raccoon comes and sniffs for any leftovers, and apparently, from the sounds, jumps onto the chairs and table to be sure there's nothing missed.

Deer parade through the yard, or run.  Sometimes we sit up and catch a look at antlers in the moonlight. Mostly, they amble through, brushing up against things, shouldering past bushes, pawing the ground, snorting.  They SOUND big.

It took awhile to get used to the animal sounds in the leaves, but now I can read a book under the covers, listening to my forest friends making their way across our shared land.  There's really nothing to fear, but we have caught a daytime glimpse of a bobcat, and one night a coyote left a very large paw print frozen into the ice on our deck.

The first year outside, we thought that someone had been killed in our back yard, from the hideous screaming we heard.  Too afraid to move, we listened until the murderous yells abated.  In the light of day we went to the top of the ridge and looked over, searching for "the body," only to see WOODS.  This went on for several nights (a serial killer?) until we were informed by another forest-dweller that those screams were made by a fox, to make his prey scurry from its hiding place, to be caught. I suppose some of the screams WERE the prey.........

The other night I awoke at about three A.M. to listen to the sounds of coyotes howling across the valley behind our house.  They continued until a neighborhood dog chimed in, destroying the acapella concert which told of hunger, loneliness, and garbage cans shut tightly.  Shortly, however, a hoot owl continued the song, from another direction.. a virtual light, night opera.

I always jab Randy in the ribs when there's a new sound out there.  Usually he replies with, "I hear it."  It makes me wonder if we are really SLEEPING out there, or just enjoying the outdoors with our eyes closed.

A rainy night is THE BEST.  I can hardly wait for nightfall to get under the dampish blankets and listen to the leaves and the raindrops!  A good storm in the middle of the night can be downright THRILLING.

When I was a little girl, our parents took us to Bridgton, Maine, where we rented a small pine cabin from Foster's Cabins, right on a long lake.  We went there for several years, and those were probably the most peaceful times of my childhood. My sleeping spot was a screened-in porch at the side of the cabin, beneath huge pine trees. I would spend quiet afternoons lying on my bed there, coloring, or playing solitaire on a rainy afternoon, smelling the bed of pine needles that covered the entire ground. Listening to the lake noises, smelling an occasional skunk, I was in childhood Heaven.

Small wonder that I sleep on a lumpy futon in the cold night air, listening to the wind and creatures who share this time and space with me now, savoring every moment of it.  The good news is that I have a husband who goes along with this crazy nocturnal adventure of sorts, loves the fresh air and sounds, and "gets it."




copyright: KP Gillenwater

Signs, Signs, or : Who's Stopping?

The sign says, "STOP."  It does NOT say, "PAUSE," or "BLINK AND GO," or "GUN IT!"  But I am beginning to think that the STOP sign ought to be changed to read, "GOOD LUCK!"  The disregard of stop signs is a daily nightmare in my neighborhood, and I recently realized that it is a fear for the entire city, and more than likely is a nationwide threat.

I teach reading. One of the first words that children learn to read is STOP. Unfortunately, they must have all forgotten what it means!  Websters says that its definition is, "to cease to go on."  That means coming to a complete halt. No more moving. Dead still.

Every day I leave my home and drive in peril, fearing that each red octogonal sign is being obeyed by only one driver: ME.  I have had to come to screeching halts, dodge to the left or right, or come to a complete stop WITHOUT A STOP SIGN, as some idiot darts out in front of me,  disobeying the sign that told HIM/HER to "cease to go on." 

I look at these people as they put themselves ahead of my life's safety, and for the most part they look like normal individuals.  Their tongues are not hanging out at the sides of their mouths, their eyeballs are not rolling around in circles, yet they put their one-second-ahead-of-when-they-get-there ahead of the safety of every other living being around them.  (Specifically, ME.)

Between the ages of sixteen and twenty, I personally paid for three stop signs. By that I mean I was arrested, had to go to traffic courts, and paid fines.  Three times.  Two of those were at a neighborhood STOP sign that I coasted through, driving a stick-shift Falcon, trying to save the motion of having to downshift.  At that time, the traffic cost was "only" forty dollars a shot.  I might add that this was the SAME stop sign, two times, where a vigilant policeman had sat in his patrol car waiting for me.

The third offense was in a university city where I was racing to get to my class on time, cup of coffee lodged between my knees, music blaring on the car radio, and BINGO............this time it was sixty dollars. That policeman was loud and offended that I could break a law in HIS city, and he didn't hesitate to tell me so.

Guess what? For the rest of my life (no kidding), I have STOPPED at any sign that says STOP.  I have mentally counted to three until it has become second nature to do so. And I have never paid for another STOP sign, either. (Knock on wood.)

I have been late to work, late to events, rolled in at the last possible moment for meetings, but I have never put anybody else's LIFE ahead of my need for speed because of a red sign that asked me to STOP. (I also don't crash red lights, but that's another post.)

I have, however, mentally ripped the heads off of STOP sign crashers. I have bashed them over their brainless heads, in my mind, with the very STOP sign that they so cavalierly disregarded as they put my life in jeopardy.  I have called them every conceivable viscious name that they deserve as I continue on my way, knees knocking, (coffee spilling.)  I have prayed for their safety and forgiveness, even, and hoped that they are not responsible for small children whose welfare depends upon them.  And I have feared them enough to slow down whenever I see a car approach a STOP sign that is perpendicular to the road I am travelling.

I have learned not to trust the drivers on these roads, even though they (supposedly) passed the same driver's test that I did. (Did they have No Driver Left Behind testing?  Did EVERYONE get the license, even though the basic requirements.........like READING AND COMPREHENSION.........were supposed to be in force?) Did they CHEAT on their driving tests?  Know someone "in the business?" Buy a fake driver's license at some corner gas station, from a guy who mass-produces them in his basement? Makes ya wonder, doesn't it?

If I am preachy today, it's because my very life was threatened twice this morning alone.  I might not BE here to warn you,  had I not swerved to avoid Leadfoot, and stopped to let Fast Eddie go ahead of me.  ( Those are NOT the names I called them in real life............but this is a public blog.)  No, I did not wave hands or fingers at them, either. I figure that anybody stupid enough to crash STOP signs probably has an automatic weapon in his car and also isn't afraid to use IT either.  He just tried to kill me with his car, after all.

We have daily "threat level" readings for our country's worry over terrorist activity. I guarantee you that the "terrorists" are already here, and they're driving on our roads and city streets, posing as average "citizens," with driver's licenses (real or not) in their wallets.  We have to counteract their terrorist threats by watching out for THEM, because they apparently cannot READ, and do NOT care about the rest of us.

Many years ago I paid money I could not afford to pay fines for my STOP sign violations.  I wonder, frequently, where is that "cop" who waited for me in the early morning hours, and the "university patroller" who gave me the tongue-lashing as my coffee cup shivered between my knees?  Why are THEY not lingering in the dark, arresting "Leadfoot" and "Fast Eddie" when THEY crash through those STOP signs, and DON'T? 

I promise you that if it were not for that "cop" and that "patroller,"  I might not be here and driving, safely, stopping at STOP signs, as I am today.  "Thank you!"  to those law officers, who I may have referred to in a nonflattering way back then, wherever they are today.   They may have saved my entire life. I wish they'd save some more.

copyright: KP Gillenwater

Time Passages: or, How Many Watches Do I Really Need?

     I never do anything half-way.  If I set a table for guests,  I go overboard to the point that there is little space left for the actual food. Visitors have to move extra candles, gold-sprayed acorns, pine cones, or statuary, or starve.  I want to make a "presentation" out of a "company meal."

    Same with my purses...........they hang on a hall tree type thing, and are changed seasonally. The "out of season" bags are in storage, and the "in season" ones stand, somewhat resembling a bulk the size of Smokey the Bear, in a corner of my spare guest room, like a giant purse-tree, with limbs of multiple bags peeking out from underneath each other, waiting their turn to go out. If they get to go out. (But this is another post.......)

      My watch collection, which has sort of evolved over the past few years, is the one that actually PUZZLES me.  Sure, I have to wear a watch to work. I would never hang a working clock on a classroom wall!  My students would be perched on  their seats, knowing the time, EXPECTING a ringing bell.  I like to keep them guessing.  MY watch is the only one in the room that is set perfectly, right to the second for dismissal. Last week I accidentally wore a watch that had a dead battery to work, and ALL of us, students AND teacher, were on edge.

     WHICH watch to wear is the puzzle.  I have sixteen that I actually use.  That's alottawatches.  They are displayed in a square box on my dresser, sorted by color and size and type.  I have two reds, three browns, two blacks, one that has brightly colored beads for the bracelet, two pinks, a denim, a multi-colored one, two golds, and four silvers. (If that didn't add up to sixteen, oh well......) I have Braggers rights.

      Every morning I choose one of these time-pieces to accompany me on my thrilling experiences of the day.  I do have my favorite watches, and those are the ones that just snap right onto my wrist instead of having to be buckled.  I like to move fast.  But I keep those others, anyway.  Ticking.

      Ever since I discovered that I can buy twelve watch batteries for a dollar  (A DOLLAR!) at a certain bargain store, the watch collecting has escalated.  No longer is a watch a liability, when for a mere eight cents, I can refresh the battery for almost a full year for any of these beauties.  Such a deal!

     Why do I enjoy hearing them tick away my time, even those that rarely get worn out of the house,  I ask myself.  Can it be a psychological disorder? Watchomyalgia?

     Let me blame this on my mother. Yeah.  That's a good excuse!  It's a defective gene or an inherited weakness.  Mom was a collector of antique clocks, and at the time of her death, her house bulged with twenty-six clocks (not to mention several million other items.)  I inherited thirteen, and my sister has the other thirteen.  At one time, at the height of the glory of her collecting spree, Mom had all twenty-six clocks ticking at once.  My poor father nearly lost his mind, as they all had chimes and gongs and bings and bangs that would simulataneously "go off" to announce the hour, the half-hour, or the quarter-hour.  Sometimes the hourly celebration went on for a full minute, or more, with one or two REALLY elaborate clocks. (Thank God the cuckoo clock had given up its whacko voice by this time.)

     Pop finally negotiated that the clocks had to be set so that he could at least snooze through a short nap before the next "clock event,"  and Mom then set each of them five minutes apart, all around the house.  Picture this, if you will:  Now, every five minutes, there was a ding, bong, or chime, somewhere, announcing that yet another five miniscule minutes had passed!  Oh joy!   No peace for the wicked or unwicked. 

     Keep in mind that each of these pieces of antiquity had to be wound on a fairly regular basis, using chains and weights and keys: A virtual round-the-clock winding!

     The good news is that the novelty eventually wore off for Mom, and some of the less favorite gongers wore down, and were forgotten long enough to move into obscurity and then into blessed silence.  As the years went by, a few choice clocks continued their dinging, but most of them sat or hung, muted.  In my home today, thirteen antique clocks remain stifled, albeit lovely in their ageless beauty.  (Except for one which I never really liked. It, hidden behind a sofa,  has a pillow over it, muffling its cries for help.)

    But back to the watch collection!  Remember that song about the "grandfather clock that stopped, short, never to ring again when the old man died?"  Could it be that I have all of these ticking items to remind me that I AM ALIVE?  (And would they all stop, never to tick again, if this semi-old chick died?) Or could it be that I just like to see a decoration on my left arm, as jewelry ? 

    How much time do I have, anyway?  My students all hear the speech about "Each of us has the same twenty-four hours every day, and how you choose to spend YOURS is your decision, but never forget that the kid with the A used the SAME twenty-four hours that YOU did, he just used it WISELY," (and that's why YOU have an F.)

    I don't have any more time than the person with only ONE watch. Or NO watch.  Twenty-four hours to make a good day or a bad day, love or hate, eat or diet, exercise or vegetate,  read, laugh, or cry.  My hours are all ticking on my wrist, or in that box on the dresser, while I try to do the best things with what each tick represents.

    In the summertime, I don't wear a watch.  It interferes, reminding me that time flies for other people, but NOT FOR ME !  There is such freedom in being watch-less.  Who CARES what time it is?  I just say to myself, "I am doing THIS now," and go on with the day, and whatever time it might be doesn't matter.  Pure joy. Ah, summer.........

     I plan to retire sometime in the next few years.  I will have at least ten watches that I will no longer want to wear around reminding me of my time-watching-obsession-at-work.  I wonder if I will have them muffled in that box, or let them run down and not replace their batteries, like that unloved, ugly clock behind the sofa.  Or maybe I will just let them join the thirteen silenced antique clocks, sitting silently, never to ring again, while the old lady LIVES!






copyright KP Gillenwater



 

Hit That Mute Button; or, TV is Making Us Sick

Dinner was in the bowl one night, when a TV ad asked me, "Are you prepared for heavy bleeding?"  I had to put my tomato bisque back into the frig.

The one that threatens "Sudden Death," is the killer.  I actually watched it once just in case I might be the next to go, suddenly, of course.  I am not sure what was being advertised, because I was overwhelmed with a need to take my blood pressure and listen to my heart with a stethoscope, just in case I might be the next candidate for not a long-lingering death of pain and anguish, accompanied by brittle bones and flu-like symptoms, but SUDDEN death.  Like in the next minute or so.

When did television stop advertising Nestles Chocolate and Mr. Clean, and start selling us DISEASE?  I would bet that most of us couldn't even name the drug that is being pushed by these commercials, but we can certainly diagnose our friends and relatives from the symptoms that we learn about from the constant barrage of the illnesses that are being "sold" to us.  Frankly, that little green cartoon guy who I believe is supposed to represent a blob of mucus disgusts me.  He is about as amusing as having my air passages swollen shut, coughing uncontrollably, and downing an expectorant at the same time. Please~!

I believe that some "diseases" are actually CREATED by these drug companies for the sole purpose of selling us the drug that will "cure" it.  While I believe there is great medical research going on, I also think there is a lot of salesmanship being done by prescription drug companies, to sell us something that we probably do not need, if indeed it does not harm us by taking it.

I took the Fosomax.  Now they tell me it may have actually HURT my bones more than helped them!  Do I even dare to believe that I NEED something for my aging bones again?  I threw my last Boniva tablet away on the day the Fosomax scandal broke.  Now they are advertising on TV to find those of us who took it, for the class-action lawsuit that is following it.   Count me IN! (I got $1.79 once, after a Synthroid case............in other words, don't plan to pay off your loan from the Fosomax scandal, either!)

And the side-effects!  I would rather have some of the DISEASES than the side-effects of the drugs...........the incontinence, blurred vision, drowsiness, constipation, interrupted sleep,  diarrhea,  stomach pains, aches, swollen tongues and throats, problems passing urine,  liver damage and even, in some cases DEATH, from taking these drugs!!!  Not to mention the dry mouth................ All because I had a headache or a sore joint??????  (Hello???!!!)

Here's my plan:   Since we keep the TV controller right on our tummies while we watch anything on the tube anyway, Randy and I have made a conscious decision to MUTE any and all drug ads and any commercials that want us to develop certain symptoms so we need said drugs.   We've been doing this for about three weeks now.  As soon as they mention the illness, we slam our finger down on that button, and shut those suckers up.  We look at each other and TALK about other things. We won't even LOOK at them!  Sometimes the TV people seem to know what we're doing, and they show the very same commercial just a few minutes later to try to catch us after we de-mute.  HA!  We're ready for them!

Guess what? I believe that we are feeling better already!  My pre-osteoporosis has all but disappeared from my list of things to worry about. I will see Sally Field on her Sunday night show, but I am done worrying about HER bones, AND mine.  No stomach pains, no skin rashes, ingrown toenails, or sudden death have eaten away at our bodies since we shut the sound off for these commercials of doom. That is exactly what they are: scare tactics.  It's sort of like the letter from the water and gas companies that fill my mailbox, telling me how much I need to insure the water pipes and gas lines into my home (virtual "home intestines" that I cannot see, but ought to insure!!!)   I have no problem tossing THOSE into the trash, and I am getting really good at muting the drug pusher on my TV before he even finishes the name of the disease!!!

I suppose we could hold our fingers in front of the screen, cross-like, and perhaps we might even take up hissssssing at the ads, just for fun.  We haven't gone that route yet, but it might make for an entertaining evening, unless they ran the full gamut of sickness ads, and all we did was cross and hiss every few minutes. (What if we had company?)

It could be the rush of adrenaline and the positive enzymes from laughing each time we hit MUTE (and I am sure that one of you wants to tell me so........) but that is a moot point. (Note moot and mute........I teach reading.............) I FEEL BETTER just knowing that I am not filling my brain with symptoms and sickness. ENOUGH ALREADY, YET! Out, out, damned ad!

I know that we are not alone in our feelings about today's TV ads. I've heard the kvetching from friends.  We want to see Tony the Tiger do his gig, that guy named Juan pick coffee beans, have Betty Crocker sell us a cake mix, and hear some merry jingles about fast foods and automobiles. Remember the fun of "Let's ask Mikey!"  and "We're having Shake n' Bake, and I helped?"  Healthy Campbell's kids with round faces made us smile and FEEL GOOD back in the day.  No more.  Today all we hear is, "Ask your doctor!"

There's plenty of sickness and symptoms without having to have it sold to us. Just for one week, TRY IT.  Don't listen to those ads! Hit MUTE.  Spend those minutes talking to the person who's watching TV with you instead, then when the miserable  warnings of death and doom are over, turn back on the sound and enjoy the murder and mayhem on Law and Order. 



Copyright: KP Gillenwater

Lotsa Water Over the Dam: or, At This Age, You'd Think a High School Reunion is No Big Deal, Right?

My husband, Randy,  and I were in the same graduating class of high school.  We didn't date then, but must have had some kind of "crush" on each other, because years later, VOILA!, we are married to each other, cut from the same cloth, dyed in the same wool vat, etc.

So it must have seemed natural that we both got the idiotic idea that a class reunion should be planned, and soon, before we all died off.

Our class had 352 members, and over 30 of them have passed on in the years since we saw each other dressed in caps and gowns and looking forward to changing the world with our optimistic attitudes.  A few reunions have occurred during those years, and some have been well-attended.  Or not.

Still carrying that bright-eyed optimism from way long ago, Randy and I began, a year ago, to try to set a date for this wonderful reuniting.  The very first person we told said that the date we'd selected didn't fit into her social life.

We went ahead anyway, and when it became apparent that we did not have any HELP with this project, we called the entire thing off.

Then, out of the blue, came a fellow classmate, Susan,  who had computer skills, was willing to HELP, could find email addresses, and wasn't discouraged by someone who couldn't rearrange her calendar to see people she hadn't seen in a coon's age. (You will note that I am not telling you dates or years. ) We changed the date just so we'd have time to plan it.

Since early May of this year, Randy, Susan (the classmate), and I have spent countless hours on computers, telephones, and standing in line at the post office to try to get this event off the ground.  I will not go into the horrific costs of some party establishments or the contracts they wanted us to sign to ensure a "location" for the event.  Suffice it to say that we finally decided it was NOT a wedding reception, and went for the lower cost location, albeit a very nice place.   Thank God.

On Facebook and our high school "social network," we posted all the information necessary.  We updated it, added old photos of our class from the second grade, and previous reunions where the women wore floral prints. We had about 41 people who "joined" the school website group, and a whopping 17 people responded on Facebook that they would attend.  Another 40 people verbally committed to coming to this thing.

 The contract was signed, a few local folks volunteered to help, and we were doing it.

We mailed out and emailed the "reservation form," and so far we have heard back from about 50 people.  A message went out the other day to those who 'said' they would come and then didn't commit financially, that we had reserved a room based on their say-so, and hello, where's your check?

Today Randy and I walked our neighborhood, and knowing there was a classmate who we had not personally seen or heard from in lo these many many many years, we walked by Buzz's house, and there he was, digging in his garden.  We approached, told him who we were (I am certain he DID recognize us, and only pretended not to .....) and had a wonderful catch-up chat with him and his wife.  It felt really good to see him, since I'd first met Buzz in kindergarten, and here he was, right under our noses, living just walking distance from home.

He might not come to the reunion, but there's hope. 

I remember the reunion we had some years ago, actually. I still have the journaling that I wrote about it then. I had gone home and put it all down on paper, so that the vivid details of that night would not be lost.  I wrote that the evening was "like a group of souls coming together and brushing up against each other just for a few hours, as if to say hello, and then goodbye."

There were 352 of us on that June day, years ago, so optimistic about our futures.  Over thirty of them can NOT physically attend this reunion on October 1-2 (although I know that they all CAN be there in spirit-form), but there are another 320 or so who might be able to go out on a limb to attend. You would think.

Some won't come because their best friends won't be there.  Some are truly ill, or burying their parents, celebrating their really-lots-of-years-wedding-anniversaries, or are too far away to consider the trip. Some think that they're the only ones who ever gained twenty pounds.  Some have given up on the optimism, and perhaps cannot afford the travel costs of the dinner fees. Some live right around the corner from our high school, but it's too far to go.  Whatever.

By this time, anyone who thinks they didn't "make it" in the world needs to come to the reunion, and get over it.  And those who DID "make it," come show us, already, so WE can get over it!

We've really worked our tushes off to get this thing off the ground.  We have a "committee" making name tags, collecting the checks, and finding hotel deals.  Randy and I have both sworn that if there's another reunion in five years, we will do some menial task to help with it, but we WILL NOT chair this event again. (Beat me dead if I raise my hand.)

In another five years, perhaps another 30 of us will leave this physical realm, probably more than that, however.  We know the probabilities and the statistics.   I hope Randy and I are here to show up.

I am SO excited about seeing my classmates who plan to come!  They're coming from California, New York, Texas, Florida, and from right across the neighborhood! 

I don't CARE who got rich, who got poor, who's dressed to the nines or who's dressed to the ones;  I just want to be there, see them (you, perhaps) and for a few hours, have our souls brush up against each other to say hello, I know you, I knew you, I know where you came from, not where you're going or where-all you've been, but tell me what you remember and I'll tell you what I remember, and gee, it's good to see you!!

Copyright: KP Gillenwater

Sharks Swimming Around My Feet................... or, School is Soon to Start

I used to have a cartoon that I'd cut from a late August newspaper years ago, stuck to my refrigerator door. It showed a little boy frantically treading water while several vicious sharks swam in circles around his feet.  The kid looked terrified, and the sharks had the word "school" written on their backs as they nipped at his heels.

That is precisely how I am feeling these days.  I am a middle school teacher, and I have avoided even finding out what day I am supposed to appear at my place of employment, preferring instead to just think, "later!"   Later is good!

Later is just about here.  An email arrived notifying me of an opening program for all teachers on August 30th, and I wrote that dreaded date into my full-of-fun-up-until-now calendar, then smiled gleefully when I realized there was a full week or so before then.  A REPRIEVE !

Not to belabor a point, but would you believe that I also received a phone call with a deep, doom-ridden voice,  a recorded message, to tell me about that same event????  An email was not enough?  I had to LISTEN to the memo, too? 

When my kids were growing up, Oh, how I loved summer vacation!  I was so happy to have them home with me to play with, to take to the swim club, to sleep in and let them sleep in, too!  JOY !  I served PBJs on a picnic table, and poured Kool-Aid with happiness in my heart, loving almost every moment of having them home and in my daily life.  The only "schedule" we kept was to be at the pool when it opened at 12:30.  We went to bed when we were sleepy, woke up when we were not, and my childrens' hair turned white from sunshine, while they got farmer tans and had contests over whose feet were the dirtiest at bath time.

On the last day of summer vacation, there would be some excitement over the new year.  All except for ONE of my darlings,  Stephen.  The sharks began swimming around his feet on August first, and he had the look of a condemned man for the rest of the month.  The elementary principal once told me that Stephen "didn't really come back to school until about October, and he let himself out somewhere about mid-April."  (Not that he got bad grades, he just wasn't really "there!")  Stephen was mentally barefoot, and swimming, running, riding a bike, making sand castles, hanging out with a pack of other kids in the neighborhood, and generally being a KID.

The night before school restarted each year, he and I would walk down to the Dairy Queen, order one last summer treat, and sit, without talking, at a table.  Then Stephen would cry.  Then I would cry.  We'd say things to each other like, "It went too fast, " or  "I don't want summer to end."  We'd wipe our tears with little Dairy Queen napkins, and sniffle a lot.  It was misery at what we considered to be its worst, at that time.

Stephen is now a young man with a job and an apartment. He doesn't get a "starting point" and a "stopping point," anymore.  He just works like the rest of the world, pretty much nonstop, except for an occasional short vacation or a day off. 

I, on the other hand, teach at a middle school, and I have had the past nearly three months off to travel, read, sleep, cook, clean my house, visit with friends I don't usually have time to see,  gain a few pounds, lose the stressed-out look on my face, and generally enjoy each day to the fullest. I got the privilege to be gloriously bored!

I believe that being bored is a necessity, so that we learn how to entertain ourselves.  Without enough "down time" we don't fully appreciate "up time," for one thing.  For another, I think brains work better when there's a little bit of boredom delightfully endured.  It is vital to life. 

The sharks have already gotten and kept Stephen, and in another ten days, they are gonna get ME, too.

I need to figure out how to keep some time for myself, have some boredom to savor, keep reading, and keep getting enough sleep. Otherwise, I will truly feel that I have been eaten up, alive, by my job.

On August 29th, I wonder if Stephen would let me take him to Dairy Queen and allow me to cry.  And would HE cry, with me, and FOR me,  and for himself,  too?

Notes From a Garage Sale Guru

I am the original "Second Hand Rose."  I should have that put on my gravestone (if I decide to have one) since I have been garage saling since 1969.  I know, I know...........that's a long time.  I would hate to tell you the percentage of things in my home that are second-hand. When people compliment me on things, I have learned to just say, "Thank you!"  So even if you did visit me, you would not find out!!!

The first garage sale I ever went to, (August of 1969, and I could even show you where it was!), I had NO CLUE as to what it even WAS!  There was the "Garage Sale" sign, and people coming and going. I was young, single, and stupid.  I had ten dollars to my name.  When I left that garage sale, I was the proud owner of a pair of mahogany candlesticks, a mirror for my apartment, a huge smile on my face, and two dollars left over !  I had found Nirvana!  (I would hate to tell people that something this simple was a "life-altering moment," but it WAS!!!)  I had discovered "used is still good!"

I will not give you the glorious details of having dressed my children in designer outfits, or decorating my home with valuable pieces of artwork, but I will tell you my "take" on what makes a GOOD garage sale as opposed to a "LOUSY" garage sale.  (Just in case you are planning on having one......and we ALL do, sooner or later, so listen up.)

First of all, let me assure you, IF YOU HAVE IT, THEY WILL COME. But it doesn't hurt to have a little savoir faire when you put on a garage sale. 

First of all, SIGNAGE IS IMPORTANT.  Even if there is not room for much on your signs,  be SURE that the STREET NAME is visible.  Don't worry about the house number:  A good garage saler will sniff you out. Put signs on major corners and if you plan ahead ARROWS pointing in the direction to go are so helpful!  It's hard to slow down in traffic to read your sign!! POINT AND SHOOT!  And put LOTS of signs out there!  If you add balloons or bright colors, that will get our attention, also! (And for Pete's sake, don't put them up a day ahead, unless you want us THERE a day ahead!!!)

And this is important:  WHEN YOUR SALE IS OVER, PLEASE REMOVE YOUR SIGNS.  There is an unspoken rule of good garage saling that it is only "right" to do so.  Call it anti-littering, or whatever, but for our sake, PLEASE take your signs down so we don't see them the next week, (and the next, and the next) and either get irate at your lack of consideration for others, or worse: Some other garage saler follows those signs to NOTHINGNESS.  That's just plainly rude.  Clean up after yourself, please!

Next, PUT PRICES ON YOUR STUFF!  Don't think that we're going to stand there and ask you for every single little price on every little doo-dad that you have dragged out of your home.  Time is of importance to a garage saler: It's tacky to expect US to come there, then BEG you to tell us what you want for something~ Tell us up front!!!

Now, if we disagree about the value of something, there are certain "rules" to go along with that, too.  Garage salers should have learned to say, "Will you take  xxx number of dollars for this instead?"  Nine times out of ten, you might lower the price.  If someone says, "I'll give you......" nobody will blame you for saying, "Not on your life."  Courtesy should rule.  (You can now deduce that I have both been a seller AND a buyer.)

Put out only clean, unbroken, usable merchandise!  I bought a crock pot that didn't have a "warm cycle," and a garlic peeler that the seller swore worked, but it didn't. DON'T DO THIS !  If it's broken, throw it out !  We will REMEMBER WHERE YOU LIVE.  Not that we're going to do anything TO you, mind you, but it's just BAD KARMA!   Every time I drive by the home of the crock-pot-rip-off-artist, I REMEMBER!..........just think of the negative vibes over the next many years that I pass by her house!  (..........She gets to the Pearly Gates, St. Pete reminds her about the "warm cycle," and she is doomed to REAL warming....! All that bad Karma catches up. Get it?)

Some clothes will sell, but anything with missing buttons or has been worn by a bull moose on the run through a field of dirt needs to be pitched ahead of the sale. CLEAN is the key word.  Things sell better on hangers, too.

No offense to anybody, but if you (God forbid) smoke, DON'T SMOKE !  Your stuff stinks.  We don't want to be smoked on while we're in your garage, even if it IS your garage and not ours.  And most of us who are non-smokers will politely stay for about two seconds before we do a turn-around, say "Thanks," and head for the car.   The truth hurts.  Sorry.

If you have kiddies at your house when we show up, please find something for them to do out of our way.  I had a vicious child rip a stuffed bear out of my hands one time, at a sale.  It had belonged to him, and he wanted to play with it!  Better yet, if the kids are not good at selling lemonade and cookies, farm those kids out to Grandma for the day!

STREET SALES are fun for the people who do them, and it cuts down on gas for those of us who shop, so they're fun.  We buyers KNOW that you all have already traded or sold among yourselves, though, and the really "good stuff" is gone when we hit a street sale.  Nuff said. 

The very coolest street sale I ever attended was in Columbus, Ohio, some years ago:  It was an entire neighborhood,( too many folks to have pre-shopped at each others' homes,) and they had a PORTA-POTTY on several corners in the neighborhood!!!!   Street sales are a mixed bag.  I wouldn't drive BY one, though.

Please drag your stuff out of the garage and display it in the driveway as well as in the garage.  Just this morning I got claustrophobic in a garage at a lovely home.  It was dark and crowded in that garage, with too many people pawing over small items in the dark.  It was a sunny day outside, and there was no reason on this planet why some of those tables of "stuff" couldn't have been pulled out along the sides of the driveway. No dark cloud was hovering overhead threatening rain.  I had to leave the garage, wondering what I'd missed, but at least I got over the shut-in feeling.

A couple of other things that will make your sale successful:

a) DON'T leave your cash box where it can be taken away. It has happened.

b) Keep those kiddies' bikes out of the driveway so we don't trip over them.

c)Don't expect your "stuff" to be worth too much. Be realistic, and remember: IT IS USED whether you actually used it or not.  You are going to have to get over it.  As soon as you bought it, it became "used," and lost value.  If we want "new," we can buy it at the store for the same price.

d) Books need to be displayed spine-up so that we don't have to paw through tables full of books, just for the next shopper to have to do the same thing. If I can't read the title without touching the book, I am walking away, even if you have the best book of the year at the bottom of that mess!

e) Watch us.  Most of us are not thieves, but there are SOME.  But please don't follow us around as if you think we're serial garage-sale-thieves planning the next jewelry heist, either.  Don't hover, just  
watch.

f)  And finally, PLEASE don't give a sales pitch.  If we like it, we will buy it. Period.

WHY DID I WRITE THIS POST???  Because today I went garage saling, my favorite thing to do.  I always think it would be soooooooooooo wonderful if all the sellers KNEW THIS STUFF !!!  Now you do.

My favorite purchase??? I know you are wondering that !  It's a piece of artwork that a woman had received from a much-hated relative. There was a $500 price tag on this item when the much-hated relative gave it to her (one of THOSE people....) and all she wanted was to GET RID OF IT. I offered her three dollars, and she took it. (I am sure that the seller envisioned that I was also taking away this much-hated relative with me, or HOPED that I was doing that........HA!  Nope!  I left the much-hated-mother-in-law at the end of the driveway, and carried home my prize.)

If you visit my home, will I tell you which item it is?  NOT A CHANCE!  If you were to admire it, (and you would, ) I would merely say, "Thank you!!!"(....and smile.)

"Hello, and Welcome to Taiwan Radio!"  That is what my normally silent computer screamed at me this morning when I turned it on. So, I am typing my very first post of this blog from my laptop, as my "home" computer has picked up some kind of bizarre virus.  Bear with me. That machine in the lower level of my house has been a mystery and a misery to me since the day I bought it.

I am not a computer whiz.  I am a teacher and a writer and a lover of fine things and fine men.  (See that, dear hubby?)  I have spent years "making do" and getting along .............and that is what this blog is going to be about: How to Get Along on the Proverbial Shoestring, and/or Get By, By the Seat of Your Pants............because I have had so many friends who have learned something from me about this, I have decided to share the wealth and broadcast the how-to knowledge with whomever chooses to "learn."  That's you, apparently!

Let me tell you that I raised three kids, and they never went naked or hungry.  I've been married twice, owned four houses, four dogs, several cars, and have lots of wonderful friends, and the world's best husband: (all my friends would kill to have him............) I have taught language arts for the past eleven years, sold jewelry at in-home parties, worked at the mall, substituted, taught 4th grade, and done it all with a smile on my face.  And if you bought that last phrase, then I need to put some ads on this blog.

I am a fairly "normal" person.  No, I take that back. I know I am not "normal," never have been, never will be.  I think too much, do too much, talk too much, and according to my husband, (whom I shall call R, to save him from embarrassment,) I ask wayyyyyyy too many questions:  sometimes as many as three in a row without an answer for the first one.  No, I am NOT normal, which is why I am writing this blog. Who wants to read something written by "Normal?"  (I have read plenty written by "Abnormal," and I am not in love with most of that, either........I am sort of somewhere leaning towards normal, I guess. (In my dreams.)

I am exceptional.  (smile)  I am feeling my abundance, and I want to share it with the world.  I do things right. (smile)  I do my best, try my best, and even when it all doesn't turn out the way I want it to, I have given it my all.  It's called GUSTO. R calls it "passion." (God, I love that word when HE says it.)

So here's "post one".........and I promise that I will be writing about issues, ideas, fun, food, work, play, people, shopping, relationships, and all things that concern us at one time or another........(it may not concern YOU, but it concerns ME, and for that reason I feel the need to write about it.)  I will share what I know about EVERYTHING.  And I know a little bit about "everything," so get ready!

A friend told me that my writing reminds her of Owen Meany, a character in John Irving's fabulous book, A Prayer for Owen Meany, (which just happens to be one of my most favorite books,) because I write with LOTS of capital letters AND lots of parentheses.  I want my writing to READ the way I WROTE it..........so if it's in capitals, scream it in your head when you read it. If it's in parentheses,  say it softly, as an "aside," (that theatrical thing you learned about when you were forced to read Shakespeare back in high school...."aside,"........to the side.)  That way there is NO doubt (however small) about the meaning of what I am writing. (Incidentally, I love seeing a good Shakespearean play: Just so we understand each other.)

I suppose that the first readers of this new blog will be people to whom I am close enough to admit that I actually thought I have things worth telling the world.  Then I might branch out to the "public."  If you are "the public," HI!  (and if you're an old friend, just smile and think to yourself, "There she goes again," and try to keep on loving me, if you do. (and if you just tolerate me, just tolerate me some more, please.)

I am going on a two-day trip with my 31 year old daughter, M, tomorrow. (Consider it a fact-finding mission.) I will tell you about it when I get back........or not, depending on how it goes. 

Until then:  Today's calendar page from my Louise Hay tear-off-a-page-a-day calendar told me that "I am a powerful person because I choose to live in the present moment."   She's right.  I am living in the present moment.  The "powerful" part I am still working on!