Month: November 2013

  • Aunt Iva and the Mobile Store (edited)

    (Edit at the end of the post.)

    On our way home from Texas last week, we had the opportunity to stop and visit with my husband’s Great Aunt Iva. Iva celebrated her 97th birthday a couple of weeks ago. She is frail and slow to get around, but still does get around and is mentally sharp.


    Aunt Iva and Brett

    Iva told us about being a young wife during the Great Depression. Her husband George was a hard-working, frugal young man who had managed to put $50,000 in the bank before the stock market crashed in 1929. After the crash and subsequent bank failures, he lost his grocery store and most of his savings. The bank eventually returned about $3,000 of his original $50,000.

    George and Iva used the $3,000 to buy a large truck, hire a carpenter to customize the back and purchase small quantities of soft goods, household supplies and sandwich makings. Iva went into great detail about the shelves, counters and ingenious customized nooks and crannies George designed that allowed them to fit everything from socks to garden rakes, fabric to bologna, kerosene to candy in the back of the truck.

    Back then, farmers hired itinerate workers to chop cotton. The workers were housed on the farm, and the farm owners chose large families with lots of boys to hire and house. The larger the family, the more workers. Once a week, the farmer would drive the men into town in the back of his truck. The men would purchase food and other necessities for their families. There was no room for women or children or frivolous purchases in the truck.

    Iva and George knew if they could take the store to the farms, the women would buy pretty fabrics, mop buckets, cotton stockings for themselves and socks and candy for their children. So they drove the dirt farm roads around Texarkana, tootling their customized horn and parking outside farm entrances. They would open the back of the truck, pull down the steps George designed, and Iva would cut fabric, bag penny candy and collect the money while George dispensed lamp kerosene from the large tanks behind the wheels into one or two gallon cans, or made bologna and cheese sandwiches at the tiny lunch counter in the corner.

    One day a preacher asked if he could ride on the back bumper as far as his church. They allowed it as long as he didn’t mind waiting through all their stops. He used each stop as an opportunity to invite shoppers to his church on Sunday and built up a good sized congregation. George and Iva parked their truck outside the church on Sundays and did good business when the service was over. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

    Both George and Iva were photographers and George developed their photos himself. One day George snapped a picture of a boy who came to their truck to buy candy. This is a picture of that picture; a glimpse of another era.


    Second generation, dark room, no flash, bad angle,
    and the greatness of the picture still shines through.

    For nine months of the year, driving those dusty back roads was George and Iva’s life. In the summer, they drove to Yellowstone National Park and worked in a place that couldn’t be more different from Texarkana’s hot, dusty poverty. They loved Yellowstone. George took this picture of Iva enjoying a moment of serenity.

    This is also a picture of a picture.

    Listening to Iva talk about those long ago days was fascinating. She and George lost almost everything, but found a creative way to rebuild their lives. They eventually were able to open a real store in Texarkana, raise four children and put them all through college thanks to hard work and ingenuity.

    Iva’s favorite part of the story, though, was telling us about the day a handsome, well-dressed young man walked into their store and introduced himself as the boy George had photographed. He had never forgotten the excitement of buying candy at the store that came to the people. Iva’s face lit up as she told this part.

    George died in 1982. He and Iva had been planning a trip to Europe when he fell ill. He made her promise she would travel and continue to enjoy life. She kept her promise. It’s interesting, though, that her trips to Europe and China and exotic places around the world are not the stories she tells, but the stories about lean times, hard work and daily challenges. Those are the times that made her. Those are the times that make us all. May we all end up as resilient, creative and optimistic as Aunt Iva.

    This was originally posted in February, 2011. Aunt Iva passed away peacefully Tuesday night, about an hour after going into hospice care. She was only a couple of months shy of her 100th birthday. She lived a long and full life and was the last of her generation in Brett's family. Today I am thankful that I knew Aunt Iva when she was young and active, in her 60s, 70s and 80s. I'm thankful for her daughters who lovingly cared for her the past ten years or so. And I am so very thankful that Brett and I were able to stop and see her that last time in February, 2011 and hear this wonderful story from her own lips.

  • The Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

    It’s that time of year when we all pause to think about gratitude. This has been a weird year for me. There were times that I couldn’t wait for 2014 to roll around, but overall I suppose it could have been worse. Actually, I know it could have been worse because no year to date has come even close to the suckiness of 2007. That is something to be thankful for right there. This year has had its own challenges, but we’ve made it through all of them so far and that’s something else for which to be thankful. (Proper grammar for all of you who cringed at the last sentence.)

    I tend to grab onto the small moments of gratitude. A sunny day, dinner out with my husband, geocaching with friends, laughing with my daughter, dancing in the living room to Paul Simon, Joe Cocker, Van Morrison, Billy Joel, and The Band… These are the kinds of things I jot down in my journal at night when I think back over the day and stop to recognize each small joy. It’s how I cope with an ill mother, a dying uncle, long road trips, aching joints and lake effect snow.

    Somehow, though, little slices of gratitude don’t feel like enough this time of year. I feel like I should have something big and wonderful to be thankful for (sorry grammar police). (Ha! Adding a parenthetical kept me from ending on a preposition. Take that!) Anyway, in the spirit of big and wonderful, I am thankful for my boobs. Not that they’re all that big, nor, after 54 years, particularly wonderful. Specifically, I am thankful for my right breast and for the soreness in it today. You see, after my mammogram a few weeks ago, the radiologist saw something hinky on one of the films so today I had another mammogram. Let me tell you, when they are trying to find something hinky, they are much more aggressive and creative in stretching, rolling and squishing. Even my right armpit is sore from the way I had to stretch my arm over the corner of the machine. But I am thankful for the soreness because my breast is still there to hurt. Most of all, I am thankful that all of today’s shots were clear; the hinkiness was just a quirk of compression and angle.

    This has been a year of health concerns that ended up being nothing. My eyes are just getting old, my foot was just a minor injury, I just need to stop clenching my teeth, the extended bout of laryngitis was just a virus, and my breast just needed to be stretched, rolled and squished a little more. I am thankful for all of those “justs.”

     

  • My Dad & the Kennedy Assassination

    In honor of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, here is an excerpt from a blog I wrote about my Dad in 2007, a few weeks before he passed away.

    A combination of his love of learning, his story-telling and his seven-year-old son got Dad in the biggest trouble of his life. He used to bring bags of pennies home from Woolco and let us go through them looking for additions to our penny books. I suspect this is how he got started talking about the Lincoln Monument and his trip to Washington D.C. several years earlier. He told us about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the search for John Wilkes Booth and how the barn where he was hiding was set ablaze and Booth shot. Unfortunately, he neglected to mention that this had happened 100 years previously.

    Dad in DC.jpg

     This conversation occurred on Wednesday, November 20, 1963. The next morning, my brother went to school and announced during show and tell, "The President is dead. He was shot in the head and they shot the man who did it. My daddy has been to Washington D.C. and he knows all about it." The following day, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and on Sunday, November 24, the entire nation witnessed Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. On Monday morning, a very frightened teacher went to the school principal who called the police, and on Tuesday morning an agent of the United States Secret Service showed up at both the elementary school and the Woolco store. My brother was pulled out of his second grade classroom, taken to the school library which had been emptied of all staff and students, and in return for a bag of hard candy he told Agent William Strahan anything he wanted to hear. Dad had a lot of explaining to do and it took him awhile to figure out what the heck was going on. My brother, throughout both his military and government careers, has had a continual struggle obtaining security clearances.

    Lincoln Memorial.jpg

    Sometime after the dust had settled from that misunderstanding, Daddy read a magazine article about the USS Thresher which had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean in April, 1963. At breakfast one morning, Dad told us all about how the submarine was built and what had gone wrong and why it had sunk. Thoroughly awed by his impressive knowledge, one of us asked, "How do you know so much about it?" to which he gleefully and unthinkingly replied, "Who do you think sunk it?" My poor, exasperated mother threw her plate at his head. "Tom, will you NEVER learn?"

    Dad never did learn, thank heavens. He always had that love of learning, that enthusiasm for story-telling, and that cheeky attitude that I'm sure would have landed him in more hot water if he'd lived long enough to embrace social networking.

  • Where I bore you with minutiae

    Time for another catching-you-up-on-my-life post! It’s been kinda crazy around here lately. Not the normal craziness of running around to all my regular activities and trying to learn the harmonies and choreography to my barbershop chorus’ Christmas repertoire (at which I am failing abysmally). No, the craziness lately has been caused by Mother Nature.

    That same storm system that caused so much damage and suffering in Illinois also moved through my area of southwest Michigan on Sunday afternoon. At our house, the storm knocked a few small branches out of the trees and tipped over our garbage can a couple of times. The ‘Duh is about five miles from Lake Michigan which, during the Veteran’s Day lake effect snowstorm meant we got a foot-and-a-half of snow dumped on us.  Sometimes, however, being five miles inland means that storm systems coming across the lake lose steam before they get to us or, as in this case, are pushed around us by air currents over the lake.

    Communities along the lake shore were not so lucky. There were widespread power outages caused by the storm. In Michigan, in November, power outages mean many, many people without heat. Because even if you have a gas furnace, your thermostat most likely needs electricity to turn the furnace on. The local Red Cross chapter has been very busy this week. Monday afternoon is when I usually volunteer to cover the reception desk at the chapter. It was pretty crazy that day. A shelter was opened at the chapter, but most of the people in the outage areas didn’t want to drive the ten miles to have a warm place to sleep and a hot meal. I think they wanted us to open shelters in their neighborhoods, but their neighborhoods had no electricity so… yeah… that wasn’t going to work. But just try explaining that to an upset person on the phone who wants the Red Cross to pay for motel rooms for their family and replace all the food in their refrigerator. Sigh. That’s okay, I can take it.

    I came home after that busy afternoon and had just enough time to make supper and eat before leaving for barbershop rehearsal, at which I sucked. Hopefully the next rehearsal will go better. Our first Christmas gig is coming up soon. I think we have eight gigs in December, mostly at area nursing homes and retirement communities. I’ll probably finally get all the songs figured out by the eighth performance. I’m making no promises about the choreography, though.

    So that was a pretty normal Monday for me, although busier than usual during my volunteer time. Tuesday was a beautiful, sunny day. I went to the tai chi class at the library up the road in The ‘Ville and when someone commented on the beautiful weather, I said, “Yes, I have no excuse not to rake today. It’s not snowing, it’s not raining, it’s not windy and it’s not even cold!” I was determined to get at least the backyard raked that afternoon, but first I had a couple of errands to run. While I was out, I got a message from the Red Cross office that they needed volunteers to come out and help move the shelter from the chapter to a church up the road. So off I went to load my van with cots and blankets, bottles of water and totes filled with toys and coloring books. And then unload all that stuff and carry it up the world’s longest ramp, and set up a few tables, and make another trip to get the snacks that didn’t get put in the van on the first trip… By the time I got home, I was too tired and it was too late to rake.

    Wednesday morning, I was committed to raking the backyard. I got up, threw on some clothes, put on my hiking boots, grabbed an old pair of gloves, and spent a couple of hours working up a good, honest sweat. There were seven large piles of leaves in the backyard when I went in to take my shower and change clothes before meeting some friends for a long overdue lunch and catch-up on each other’s lives. When Brett got home that evening, he and I raked each pile of leaves onto a tarp and hauled it to the front yard, dumping the seven piles into one humongous pile at the edge of the street. We then raked the front yard and finished just before the leaf truck came down the street and sucked up our mountain of leaves. And then I went to the pool for water aerobics.

    Let me just recap: Tai chi, loading the van, unloading the van, setting up tables, raking leaves, hauling leaves, water aerobics… Can you say, “Owwww?” I am so sore.

    Today the Red Cross closed their shelters, but there was still one mobile home park down the lakeshore that didn’t have their power restored yet. I was asked to drive about 50 miles away and pick up an ERV (Emergency Response Vehicle) so we could deliver hot meals to that neighborhood this evening.

    ERV

    Volunteers had already taken breakfast to the park residents and arrangements had been made for lunch. I was about 20 miles up the road when I got a phone call to turn around and come back; power had been restored and we wouldn’t need the ERV.

    So I came home and made cookies. That’s a pretty good way to end a crazy week and a long story.

    cookies

    Oatmeal cookies, with butterscotch chips. Because I know you were going to ask.

     

  • Nostalgia

    Earlier this week I scanned some photos from a vacation my family took to California in 1968. There are some dear faces in the photos; family members who have passed away, or whom I haven't seen in many years. There are some cool places in the photos; the Great Salt Lake, a ghost town, a towering church. But what evoked an overwhelming sense of nostalgia was not the people or the places, but things in the background - sometimes very small things - that were such an everyday part of my childhood. How many of you remember these things?

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34732 PM

    Curlers. Hey, I didn't say all nostalgia was feel-good nostalgia! We used to wash our hair on Saturday night under the tap at the kitchen sink and Mom would roll it up in bristly curlers and stab plastic pins into the middle of each curler (and our scalps) so we would look presentable on Sunday morning, whether we went to church or not. Sleeping on those things was pure torture.

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34806 PM

    Cereal that was almost pure sugar. And it wasn't just for breakfast, either. Need a quick party snack? Just dump that box of Super Sugar Crisp in a bowl and let the kids eat it like popcorn!

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34815 PM

    Games that didn't need batteries. Or TVs. Or phones. We only played Hands Down at friends' houses, probably because there were five of us and only four could play that particular game. My hand isn't looking very promising, is it? At our house, we had games like Life and Clue and Monopoly that five kids could play.

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34820 PM

    Litter barrels. The interstate system was still in its infancy in 1968. Our road trips took place mostly on two-lane state highways. There were no rest areas; we pulled over to eat at roadside picnic tables, used gas station bathrooms, and tossed our apple cores and banana peels in the litter barrels that could be found at little pullouts in the middle of nowhere.

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34704 PM

    Ford's Country Squire station wagon. Riding in the back of the station wagon. Folding down the backseat, putting a mattress in the back and sleeping in the station wagon. Hiding two kids under the folded down jump seats and sneaking them into the drive-in theater in the station wagon. Hooking up a pop-up trailer and hitting the road in the station wagon.

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34649 PM

    Jewel colored aluminum tumblers. They made every drink taste metallic, but they were so pretty and stylish, nobody cared that the kool-ade tasted funny. Well, maybe Mom cared because we didn't have aluminum tumblers at our house. But we loved drinking from them at Grandma's house in Arizona and Aunt Vivian's house in California.

    Fullscreen capture 11132013 34605 PM

    The peace sign. Even Great-Grandma Hargrove threw the peace sign. Mom, however, apparently wanted nothing to do with all that hippie peace nonsense.

    Are you old enough to remember these things? What are some things that make you nostalgic?

  • 37 Years Ago

    Where did the years go?

    July 1976 Padre Island

  • I Couldn't Have Done It Without You

    I’ve been noticing all the “30 Days of Thanksgiving” posts on Facebook again this year. I have once again recognized at least one thing for which to be thankful every day of the past year. Don’t worry, I won’t list them all this time. Instead, I will just share with you my thank you list for the past two days.

    THANK YOU TO…

    … Meteorologists for warning us over and over and over again to expect several inches of lake effect snow. You were finally right!

    … The PWROG Training Task Team for scheduling the first day of your first meeting to coincide with the first big lake effect snowstorm of the year.

    … The snowplow driver who left a bonus strip of sod approximately four blocks long in the usual mountain of snow at the bottom of the driveway.

    … The village snowmobile brigade for driving across the edge of the yard and the bottom of the driveway and making sure that mountain of snow and sod got packed down into a tightly compressed, two-foot high mound.

    … Hulu and MeTV for showing reruns of Emergency! which allowed me to immediately recognize (and have the experience of shouting aloud), “I need a pry bar!”

    … Snow shovel manufacturers for making snow shovels versatile enough to shovel snow, scrape ice, and cut and pry frozen strips of sod.

    … The late but very much remembered Verna Floyd from Charleston, Arkansas for knitting me that cap in 1976. It is a miracle of durability, warmth and non-itchiness.

    snow gear

    … My old gloves for keeping my hands slightly warm and somewhat dry.

    … Bog boots for keeping my feet warm and dry.

    … My daughter for leaving her boot jack behind when she moved out so I can get the damn Bogs off my feet.

    … The Amish for creating friendship bread for those times when I am too exhausted to make toast.

    … The makers of lactose-free milk for making it possible to dunk stale friendship bread without dire consequences.

    … All manufacturers of extra-strength Acetaminophen.

    … Culvers, for making butter burgers to replace all those calories I lost, and for offering caffeine-free soft drinks to go with the butter burgers (because too much caffeine is bad for you).

  • Not According to Plan

    The plan for today went like this:

    • Murisopsis was going to drive up from Indiana in time to go to my Tuesday morning tai chi class with me.
    • Bookmark61 was going to drop Boo off at the doggie daycare before leaving for Indiana to catch his flight to Chicago.
    • Val and I were going to spend the day hiking and geocaching at Fernwood Botanical Garden.
    • Brett would land in Chicago and catch his flight to North Carolina.
    • Val and I would find a nice place to eat, chat and warm up after a day spent in the woods.
    • I would pick up Boo from daycare and we'd have a nice, quiet evening at home watching movies.

    The reality of the day thus far:

    • We woke to this:

    11.12.13 snow 1

    According to the bird feeder pole, 15" of snow. Brett says the pole has sunk over the years, so 14" of snow.

    • All local schools are closed.
    • Tai chi was canceled.
    • I called Val and canceled our day of hiking and geocaching. She was surprised because 30 miles south of us they got nothing.
    • I called the doggie daycare and canceled Boo's reservation. They said I probably couldn't have gotten into their parking lot anyway since the plow hasn't made it there yet.
    • I spent the morning digging out the vehicles.

    11.12.13 snow 2

    My van. I shoved most of the snow off, but spent more time on Brett's truck since he had to leave.

    • Brett spent the morning shoveling the driveway.

    11.12.13 snow 3

    Brett is 6' 1" tall. There is more than a foot of snow on top of his truck.

    • I got to try out my new Bogs boots for the first time. My feet remained warm and dry.
    • Brett got to try out the 4WD on his truck for the first time. He managed to get out of the driveway.

    We were happy to hear from Val that her area is clear since that's where Brett is catching his first flight. I'm guessing that the lake effect snow band probably stops about five miles south of The 'Duh. But for those five miles, Brett will probably be very glad to have 4WD.

    Today has not gone at all according to plan. I'm trying to decide how to spend my day now that the plan has gone out the window. Maybe I'll do some baking.

     

     

  • A Story About A Veteran and His Stories

    This is not my usual Veteran’s Day post. It is a post in honor of my Dad and his service in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, but it’s also a cautionary tale, AND it fulfills the promise I made to tell the story behind a photo I posted on Facebook. So you are getting a 3 for the price of 1 Veteran’s Day post here; what a bargain!

    My dad joined the Navy in the summer of 1949, almost immediately upon turning seventeen.

    Dad Navy 2
    He was a callow boy when he entered the military, and  a responsible man when he got out four years later.

    Dad Navy 5

    Over the course of those four years, Dad was assigned to three ships, stationed on both U.S. coasts, sailed most of the way around the world, and saw action off the coast of Korea.

    Going through the Panama Canal

    Going through the Panama Canal

    He had hundreds of sea stories and I heard most of them from my earliest years. Some of them were not exactly appropriate for a child to hear. Dad probably assumed we kids didn’t understand the… what’s the word I want… earthier details, but after hearing the stories 20 or 30 times we kind of figured out what was going on.

    At the time of this story, Dad was a tall (6’4”) robust man who was not easily intimidated or embarrassed.

    Now, as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I was a painfully shy child and am still very shy and reserved around people I don’t know. But at some point in my life, I learned that whenever I put on a costume, I could take on a whole new personality and the shyness would temporarily evaporate. When I was about 19 years old, I bought a sailor-style blouse. (Don’t judge me, it was the 70s.) When I added white slacks, a sailor scarf and my dad’s old dress blue uniform hat, I had myself a dandy costume.

    c. 1978 USS French Toast scooter

    One Sunday evening around 1978, Dad decided to take the entire family out to a buffet restaurant for dinner. We’re talking his wife and kids, a son-in-law, at least one grandchild, his brother and sister-in-law, a couple of nephews, a niece… I have no idea how many of us were in that restaurant, but several tables had to be pushed together to accommodate us. I showed up in my Navy costume, complete with hat, went through the buffet, sat down with my family, hooked my left arm over the top of my plate and held onto it with my left hand while I ate. In a very loud voice, I explained that this is how sailors held their plates at sea, to keep them from sliding. From there I started telling Dad’s sea stories as if they were my own experiences.

    At first Dad laughed. Then, as the stories began to get more… earthy… he began to squirm while the rest of the family roared with laughter. I think the only reason we weren’t asked to leave the restaurant is because we outnumbered all the other customers put together. Dad gamely smiled as I told the Burning Newspaper in the Head story, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. And then I said six innocent little words,

    “I had shore patrol in Jamaica…”

    Poor Daddy turned beat red, got up, walked to an empty table on the other side of the restaurant and sat down. The family, of course, howled and wept with laughter, but I didn’t have the heart to continue. I went over and sat down with Dad, took off the hat and promised to stop telling sea stories if he would come back and sit with the family.

    This is actually one of my fondest memories of my dad. It took 25 years and hearing his stories coming out of his daughter’s mouth to realize that maybe some of those stories should never have been told. Especially the Jamaica ones.

    2013 Vet Day

  • I'm Still Around

    vi

    Two of my friends have reached out to me in the past few days, wondering if I'm okay... if I'm still around... why I've been so quiet. There are a lot of reasons I haven't been posting much online, other than a few quick check-ins and status updates on Facebook. I'll try to cover most of them. Some are frankly nobody's business. I do like to keep a few things private, something that gets harder and harder as technology takes over the world.

    I went to Arkansas. If you read my blog at all, you already knew that. I drove there from Michigan by myself. I've done it many times; I love to drive and sometimes I love to do long drives alone. I like having the time to think, to make up stories in my head, to blast my favorite songs on the stereo and sing at the top of my lungs, to stop and take a quick nap in a rest area, to grab a random geocache in the middle of nowhere, to do tai chi with a friend in Arkansas and meet a friend for lunch in Oklahoma... But as I get older it gets harder and harder to recover from that long, lonely, boring, frustrating drive. And then there's the emotional toll. It's been nearly a month since I drove down to see my mom, three weeks since I've been home, and I'm still recovering physically. I haven't even begun to recover emotionally.

    I haven't been feeling well. I'm having issues with my arthritis medication. Every now and then I struggle with very painful bouts of heartburn and just general stomach cramps and upsets. When that happens, I cut back on the arthritis meds and my stomach issues improve pretty quickly. This time, it took a little longer for the stomach to feel better and while I was waiting for that to improve, my joints reached a point that I could barely manage to walk. And then I started running a fever, so maybe it wasn't all arthritis making me ache every time I moved. I'm better now. The fever is gone, and I'm able to handle a dose of the arthritis drug every other day. I'm slow and I groan sometimes when I stand up, but I can move and my stomach hasn't bothered me in two or three days so I'm pretty sure I'm on the mend.

    I've been writing. I got this crazy urge to try to do my own personal NaNoWriMo this month. I've never attempted to write anything longer than my usual too long blogs and I didn't want to share my first effort with anyone so I didn't join any of the official NaNoWriMo support groups. By 3000 words I'd learned an important lesson about myself. I am not a writer; at least not a novel writer. I suck at writing dialogue and I tend to skip the descriptive parts because you guys should be able to see how I'm visualizing the scene in my head without me spelling out every tiny detail. Apparently I lack the patience required to write a novel. That quirky story I made up on the long drive from Michigan to Arkansas and back will just have to remain in my head.

    I've been busy. I made it home from Arkansas just in time for my annual mammogram which, with TheTheologiansCafe not posting, I didn't feel as compelled to blog about. I have pictures; maybe I'll save them for next year. I've also had to catch up on grocery shopping and laundry and stuff. I had to buy a new pair of winter boots. I spent more and got a pair of Bogs. Hopefully they will last longer than every other pair of boots I've ever bought. I missed two barbershop rehearsals while I was gone. They are practicing Christmas music and I'm woefully behind. Barbershop harmonies are different from regular harmonies and I don't have it all completely figured out yet. Plus some songs have so freaking many words to learn! We have a lot of gigs in December. I'll probably finally get all the songs memorized about the time we have our last Sing Out.

    Halloween. I also made it home just in time for Boo's grooming appointment and the hordes of trick-or-treaters descending on The 'Duh. I wasn't thinking clearly and had Boo groomed on the 30th. I didn't want to put him in overnight care where he'd get sweaty and drooly and stinky the day after I paid 40 bucks to have him trimmed and bathed and combed and perfumed. I thought he'd be okay in the kitchen while we were in the front yard handing out candy. I was so wrong. He barked hysterically the entire time, he pooped in the kitchen, he bit Krysten on the arse, and when Nelson came over for chili and Young Frankenstein he couldn't leave his chair for fear of losing his ankles. It was quite a night.

    I've been trying to enjoy my favorite season. Unfortunately, between my stupid stomach and joints, and the buckets of rain, it's been a challenge. I helped out at the geocaching event at a botanical garden, but I wasn't up to hiking, so I stayed inside and manned the registration table. Brett and I managed a drive to Buchanan and a little hiking last weekend. Murisopsis and I are going to get together next week and maybe go back to the botanical garden. I hope there's still some color in the woods by then.

    So there you have it. Today I'm busy in the kitchen most of the day. I've got chicken soup in the crockpot, a blackberry pie almost ready to go in the oven, and I'll bake some cornbread about the time I add the noodles to the soup. I made an emergency run to the grocery store, I've done a couple of loads of laundry, washed dishes, and typed this blog. In a little over an hour I need to drive to the next village east of The 'Duh for a haircut. I know it all sounds so boring, but days like this are my favorite kind of day. I feel like I'm accomplishing something, and I have a reason to get out of The 'Duh for a bit. At the end of the day, we'll have a good meal and clean laundry and my hair will look fabulous. What more could anyone want from life?