Woman in the Middle

A friend said yesterday that she can’t believe September is almost here and this year has gone by fast. Wow, she is sure right! I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by. I said something to my girls the other  day about Christmas being only four months away. I thought Youngest was going to faint.

Labor Day is early this year, falling on September 1st. We have been so busy getting things done around our place and at Mom in laws that we haven’t had a chance to really contemplate the three-day weekend. It is also complicated by the fact that Youngest has finals for her summer school classes next week. It is hard to plan fun family activities when one member of the family will be chained to books and computer all weekend. Hubby and I think it would be mean to announce, “Hey, we are going to the beach, be back about 6″ to the poor kid.

So far the plan is to see one of our friends over the weekend, and maybe some others if it all works out in our last-minute plans, but we aren’t planning anything big. What are all of you going to do for Labor Day weekend? Anyone going away someplace? Will you have a barbecue? Let me live vicariously through your holiday weekend plans!

Blackie is on three medicines now twice a day and I am happy to report that they are taking care of his various problems. Instead of squirting them in his mouth, which he HATES, we just mix them in a little bit of food and it is all good. Well, except for the fact that Honey likes to sneak in afterwards and clean up an scraps that Blackie leaves behind. We figure that Honey doesn’t need even a little bit of the cat’s medicine, but this has become an ongoing problem. Blackie takes forever to eat so we usually aren’t in the room the precise moment he finishes and Honey swoops in to clean up the bowl. (In case you are wondering, I will be getting to the nature part of this blog post in just a sec.)

The obvious solution to all of this is to feed Blackie somewhere elevated that Honey and her arthritic elbows can’t reach. That is not as easy as it seems since Blackie isn’t a spring chicken himself and can’t get up on anything too high. We do have a window seat where Blackie loves to sleep. Yesterday I decided to feed him his late morning medicine/food there to see how it went. It worked out fine. Blackie ate with relish as usual and Honey didn’t get into the bowl afterwards. Yesterday evening Blackie was expressing a desire for a snack and since I was going to feed him food without the medicine I decided to grab the bowl off the window seat and feed him in his normal spot on the kitchen floor. I picked up the bowl and, yech, it was full of those tiny black grease ants!

Seriously, we do not normally have pet bowls with greasy residue siting in the window seat. While I admit the bowl was there for several hours, in that time those ants, who were living outside I presume since we hadn’t seen them before in that room, somehow figured out that a deliciously greasy bowl was in the house, on that window seat, and came in in droves and took over that bowl. Nature is amazing isn’t it? (Told you it was coming!)

We live in earthquake country here in California, so it was with more than casual interest that I read the news about the earthquake that shook the Napa area over the weekend. After having lived all of my 52 years here I kind of have that ingrained working knowledge of our most likely to happen natural disaster, the same as I am sure folks in areas prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, or such have about their likely natural disasters.

This is how my first view of the news coverage went:

“Oh my, it must have been a good one to cause so much damage.”

“Wait, it was only a 6.0. That shouldn’t have been so bad!!!”

“It must have been a shallow quake. That is the only way a 6.0 could have cause such  chaos.”

(Reading further down the article) “Yep. It was shallow.”

As we like to joke, in a dark way, here in California we don’t even worry if a quake is below a 6.0. But it is true. Below a 6.0 is usually, at the most, cans off the shelves, and that is about it. Obviously, once it gets to a 6.0, things start depending on other factors, such as where it happened, how deep the quake is, and what type of soil your hoiuse is sitting on.

I think I better remind Hubby to attach that clock that is almost eight feet tall to the wall. I think that would be a good thing.

Our local animal control office has suddenly decided we have two dogs, not one. They are both female. They are both named Honey. They are both red. They are both Queensland Heelers. But that is where my “two” dogs stop being the same. You see, one is already licensed and spayed while the other is unlicensed and is unspayed. Wy do these things always happen to me?

What do you mean there is another dog in this house?!? This is a one dog house and I am the one and only top dog!!!

We have had quite a week in these here parts. Our rainy season usually is in the winter time. But you wouldn’t know that if you had seen the rain storms we had earlier this week. Lots of thunder and lightning and three rounds of rain in one afternoon. When it rained it rained HARD, so hard it left its imprint on every square inch of dirt that wasn’t covered with plant material. I took advantage and turned off the sprinklers for a few days. Yay!

I am happy to report  that Hubby and I have almost cleaned out the large under house storage areas at Mom in-laws. Most of the stuff we found has either been moved into the house in preparation for the estate sale, has been thrown away, or is in that category of “What the heck do we do with THAT?”   Among the many finds we made today include the cake topper from Hubby’s parents wedding, a dozen beer glasses, yet another copy of one of Mom in law’s bother’s senior photos (this is number three), ten strands of Crate and Barrel cranberry Christmas garland (still in the packages), and a lot of things that fall in the category of “household hazardous waste.”  It was not as hot today as it way last weekend so it was a much more comfortable experience.

I also spent a couple of hours with the girls and one of their friends going through the Christmas stuff. We sorted it into estate sale and eBay piles as well as putting aside the things we wanted to keep. Once again, I found it very entertaining to see what each girl wanted to keep. Some of the stuff had never made it onto the Christmas tree so when we looked at that it was just a matter of what we liked. But other stuff was the decorations the girls remember from every Christmas Eve at Grandmama’s house. In particular, they both wanted to save out the Christmas Goose. Yes, it is a goose statue dressed up in a Christmas outfit. Both wanted it but they agreed that Youngest would take it. All the pretty and expensive ornaments meant little, but the Christmas Goose was the sentimental favorite.

Tonight I have decided to take it easy for the most part. Tomorrow I am attacking the house, particularly the kitchen, which has gotten away from me this week. I hope you are having a good weekend, what ever you are doing!!!

Yesterday morning I was deep asleep when the alarm went off. I really don’t like that disoriented feeling I have when that happens. When the music started playing and I was yanked from dreamland it was so hard to figure out where I was and what had awakened me. Even more weird, I was flat on my back with my hands neatly folded on my stomach, my fingers carefully intertwined. What?!? How did that happen? How did my hands find each other in sleep and come together like that??

Hubby and I ran a quick errand when he got home from work last night and I was telling him about my exciting  (not!) day. Since about the most exciting thing that happened to me was waking up with my body all neatly arranged like a dead person, I told him about it. He wasn’t surprised. He said nine times out of ten that is how I look when my snoring wakes him up at about four in the morning. Apparently that is my snoring position – if I am in that position I snore.

I asked if I have been doing this a while or if it was a more recent thing. He said I have been doing it awhile but it has gotten much more frequent in the last year. I commented that it must be weird to wake up and see the person sleeping next to you looking like that. “Uh, yeah…” he said dryly.

Now I wonder what else I am doing while I am sleeping. I expect to wake up soon with my hair neatly braided or my fingernails trimmed or something. Maybe I should leave some tweezers on my nightstand so I can pluck my eyebrows in my sleep. Sheesh!

As we sort and sift though Mom-in-law and Brother Dear’s stuff,  we are at a point that I think of as “integration.” We are now deciding what of theirs to integrate into our lives. We have done this twice before, once with my mother and once with my grandmother. I learned those two times that integration is a long drawn out process. Sigh.

I save the obvious stuff like photos and letters and baby books. But then it gets more complicated. Do I like that print that used to hang on their wall? Where do I store stuff that I think I might want to keep but am not sure yet? Were do we store paperwork such as tax returns that we probably won’t ever need but should be kept for a while?

After the family mementoes (photos, china, grandma’s cedar chest) I tend to keep things that are practical and useful, or at least has an obvious place where they can go. For example, when I was growing up we had two sets of stainless flatware. One we had until I was seven or so and the other we had until I was a teenager. My mom kept serving spoons from each, probably because she felt like she never had enough. I saved those serving spoons and I use them almost every day. Each time I grab one I am reminded of my mom, her kitchen, and the wonderful meals she made. Good memories, but practical, too. From my Dad, I have a book on how to pick winners at the horse track. My Dad enjoyed going to the race track on occasion and I remember him really studying the horses that were going to race the day he was going, trying to find the winners. I saved a biscuit cutter and a pretty blue plate  of my grandmother’s. Of course, I have much more, but these were the little everyday items I saved.

So far, I have picked out three lamps from Mom in law’s house. Brother Dear didn’t have as much stuff that would bring back memories for me as he really just set up normal housekeeping about ten years before he passed away, when he got sober. But he loved Louis L’amour books. I am going to pick out one or two to save on my bookshelf.

What kinds of things have you saved when your family members passed away?

I am a Johnny-come-lately to the Pinterest world but, with a push from Eldest Daughter, have started some boards. Of all the things I have pinned, I think the sign below is the thing I love the most.

I have read all of these books and have spent many an hour in these fantasy lands. I so want this sign in my yard! One of these days, when I have time, I am going to make one.  That is my Scarlett O’Hara vow!

You can find it here on one of my pinterest boards:http://www.pinterest.com/pin/346073552588755448/

It seems impossible but it has been almost nine months since we unexpectedly lost Mom in law. Gosh, time flies whether or not you are having fun. We have gotten quite a bit done at her house but there it quite a bit more to do. It is hard enough for the girls and I and is really hard for hubby, as his mom still lived in the house he grew up in.  We consulted with the lawyer a couple of weeks ago and he lit a fire under our tail so, with renewed motivation tinged with sadness, we are pressing on.

Digging through her kitchen cupboards is a bit of a time warp, as I am sure it will be when my girls have to go through my cupboards some day. Do you remember back in the day when coffee would come in special edition cans with “decorator prints?” You were supposed to buy enough coffee to have a whole matching set! I found one in a kitchen cupboard. She kept her sugar in it. It is straight out of the 70s with orange, avocado, and harvest gold.

The girls and I went through Grandmama’s costume jewelry. Eldest Daughter picked out a necklace to keep and I asked to look at it. It didn’t look like something Eldest would usually wear so I asked her why she wanted it. It was because she remembered her grandmother wearing that particular necklace a lot. Wow. I didn’t realize that but Eldest did. It was a very sweet moment.

Just when you think you have found all of the family mementoes and such something else pops up. Today I found a box of letters that Hubby’s Dad wrote to his family  when he was in the Navy int he 1950s. So cool! I called Hubby right away and he was pretty excited, too. I am looking forward to getting a chance to sit down and read them.

Some of Brother Dear’s stuff is over there, too, so I need to go through that as well. Someone at our church has started a shoe charity. He takes new or gently used shoes and gives them to people who need them. He particularly needs mens shoes as men tend to wear their shoes until they are worn out. The organization is called Steppin’ On Up and it will be getting Brother Dear’s impressive tennis shoe collection. I think I am ready for it to go on to help other people. I will take a photo first, though. (Web site for Steppin’ On Up: http://steppinonup.org/)

So, on til dawn, as they say. Hopefully we will soon be ready for an estate sale. You can think of me this weekend hefting and toting and sorting and tossing. Oh, and sweating. Definitely sweating.

There is something wrong in my world. It is Shark Week and I am not on vacation.

Let me explain. When Hubby and I moved into our previous home a year and a half after we married, cable was not even available. We had to get our TV signal though an antenna. When cable came to our street a few years later we had begun our family and were very low on money. When offered the choice of free TV or paid TV, we went with free. We watched plenty of TV on our lovely free signal and could not justify in any way paying for cable just so we could sit and watch even more TV.

Most hotel and motel rooms have at least some limited amount of cable TV available, which aways seems to include the Discovery Channel. When we went on vacation, usually during the summer, the girls got the treat of watching cable TV in the hotel room. And, it seemed like, every year we went on vacation during the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Such disappointment every vacation as we discovered that is was all sharks all the time on the channel that every hotel room provided! No shows about cute doggies or kitties, or about beautiful  giraffes or interesting kangaroos. Just lots of teeth and blood.

This year the publicity for Shark Week seems to be particularly widespread. Even the funny pages are getting into the act with several comic strips mentioning shark week in their story lines. And every time we see any of that, Hubby and I wonder why we aren’t on vacation!