Father's Day Fun

Okay, I wonder how y'all celebrated Father's Day! After church I asked Neil what he'd like to do to celebrate or for something special. He got this little twinkle in his eye and said, "Well, I was thinking how much fun it would be to see how much wood we could get put into our new woodshed!" (Neil just built us a nifty little woodshed across our driveway to keep our wood dry so it will burn in the furnace instead of just sizzle and sputter.) Oh brother. My heart sank. The temperature was in the mid 80's (or higher), the humidity in the 90's (or higher) and besides, it was the holy Sunday day!! Who ever heard of running a tractor at Fairwood on Sunday?? How very improper!

I expressed some of my concerns along that line and then went about my selected project of cleaning out our hall game /pantry/storage closet. A little while later I heard the distant but distinctive rumble of a tractor motor! What? One of the kids stated that they thought Daddy was trying to beat the system by driving the tractor up to our house the back way through wood roads, etc. etc. so he wouldn't be seen driving on Sunday. Maybe he wouldn't be seen but he certainly would be heard! I wasn't a bit concerned about Fairwood people because they all know we keep the holy Saturday day, but I was thinking about neighbors. However in the process, Neil got the tractor royally mired in the mud out behind our house, and there it sat all the rest of Father's Day! At that point I offered to help him unload the trailer load of wood and carry it to the woodshed, but he said twasn't worth it.

For our "fun" activity together, we played Bocce on the back lawn after dinner and had a grand time.

This morning, Neil brought another tractor up to pull the mired one out of the mud. After he attached a chain to the stuck one, he came in and told me he needed me to help him by driving one of the tractors! Me??? I've never driven a tractor in my life. "It's simple," he said. "All you do is let out the clutch!" Yeah right. Where's the gas, where's the brake, where are the gears? All things I thought I might need to know to drive that thing. I begged him to call Dan and see if he could help him, but Dan was down at Fairwood! No salvation there. So I climbed on the lead tractor and tried my best. No luck. Next I climbed on the stuck tractor and tried steering that thing while Neil pulled it out. With much yelling and screaming and hollering that I was going tip over, he pulled me and the tractor out of the mire onto terra firma. Whew! I guess I'm just not a tractor girl!

Quotable Quotes from Mama

I'll preface this post by saying that the past two weeks when I've gone in to give Mama a shower, shampoo, set etc. she is convinced that I am there to prepare her for burial.

"Well, it's nice you came to see me on the day of my burial. I don't believe I've seen you since I moved here. It's nice that you came to see me today of all days."

"To think that my own dear little Lainie is getting me ready to lie in state in my coffin!" To this I expostulated, "Mama, I'm not getting you ready to lie in your coffin, I'm fixing your hair so you can be beautiful for another week!"

The following quotes were yesterday while I was sitting with Mama at lunch time.

"I don't want to eat because I'll last longer after they put me underground."

"I don't want to lie there in my casket half awake."

"It seems almost cruel to give a person a lot to eat before they die because they'll stay alive longer in the coffin."

"I hope they don't put me under to smother til I die. I hope you wouldn't let them." To which I remonstrated with proper vigor that of course I wouldn't--no such thing would ever happen!

And after she was bothered that I was playing yahtzee on my Palm Pilot while I was eating my own lunch and visiting with her she began to cry and said, "I hope my face doesn't look like it's crying when I lie in the casket."

Then she asked if Neil was coming to the funeral? "What funeral?" I replied. "His funeral!" she said. At that point I explained that Neil wouldn't be attending his own funeral and she quickly got the point and laughed at the joke. (On the other hand I guess we all do attend our own funerals do we not? at least bodily if we aren't cremated. . .)

Such is my life and on I go most joyfully, along with feeling a bit crazy or a lot crazy now and then.

My mother was the best mother in the world though. She always loved me to death, made my clothes from hand me downs and whatever she could lay her hands on, read to me, encouraged me, helped me when our babies were born, literally ran circles around me helping me can and freeze produce in FL til she was well over 70. She even went on Space Mountain at Disney World when she was 75 or so. She could type more words/minute on a manual typewriter no less than any person I've ever known, and balance 101 things all at the same time without giving indication of any stress. Just wanted to mention a very few of the special things about my Mom along with these funny quotes in her declining years. . .

Spiders and Bumps!

I hate big fat juicy spiders and bumping myself in the head!

While cleaning our front porch yesterday, I used the broom to de-cobweb the ceiling and noticed several fat spiders prowling about! Ugh. I hate fat spiders and especially if I have to squash them myself. I retrieved the wasp spray from the attic and liberally sprayed the spiders I could see plus other cracks and crevices where others might hide and watched to see them drop to the porch floor where I could squish them! Eventually two of them fell prey to the drenching of the wasp spray and lay on the porch waiting their final demise. Ugh, ugh, ugh! They had big black spots or maybe they were eyes on their heads. I looked around til I found an appropriate rock with which to perform my tasteless task. A rock is much better that stepping on them. I forcefully finished the job and cleaned up the mess with a paper towel. The result? A spiderless porch for an hour!

Why would you bump yourself in the head? you might ask. I didn't do it on purpose! I was washing a couple of particularly bulky unbalanced items in the washing machine and as it was spinning in the "spin" cycle it was bouncing all over the place and making a horrific noise. I went quickly to fix the problem, threw open the cover of the machine to redistribute the load, only the top wasn't really all the way up and as I leaned over to reach into the machine, it came down and whammed and I mean whammed me in the head! It hurt soooo bad that I just stood there for awhile as I absorbed the shock. C (my son!) came to check on me to see if I was alright. I'm okay but it still hurts even now nearly a week later and is a rather ugly yellowish color. Fortunately, it's covered by my hair so no one is the wiser, except me when I wash my face!

Insider's Peek

It's that time of year again--time to prepare the dorms and surrounding areas for occupancy at family week! Only this year it isn't "family week" it's "family four days."

I optimistically began the task, thinking I could whisk through it in no time since all dorms were supposedly already prepared. Things like outside trash cans missing, inside trash cans missing, no bathroom wastebasket, here a sheet, there a sheet missing. . .quickly bogged me down. Then there was the curtain in one room totally missing from the window but conveniently propped up in the closet! Um, how did it get from the window to the closet?? And now one of the curtain fixtures is missing. . .

On to the men's dorm. Here I find in the lower guest hall a nearly full 5 gallon pail of acorns! accompanied by sling shots! Three guesses where those came from. I picked up the bucket, trucked upstairs and deposited it in DH's room. In addition to the acorns there was an antique fan (clearly a huge fire hazard) and a bucket of dry wall stuff (whatever they call that) and an accompanying tool. Maybe there was more work to be done on the drywall project somewhere but sometimes at Fairwood it seems like things get mysteriously "left" where the "other person" last used them and there they stay until some unsuspecting person comes along and either moves them or rattles the cage of the person responsible.

On down the hall. Here things look pretty good except for one rumpled up bed. Apparently some transient popped in, grabbed a couple of blankets for warmth and bunked down for the night! In the morning, they crawled out, left the blankets exactly as they crawled out of them and moved on. I just love cleaning up other people's messes, don't you? (Sarcasm drips, doesn't it?)

Back out to the fire escape porch addition. Here is the real fun. Two Bible School young men whose names shall remain unmentioned here, assisted in that major attic cleaning that I blogged about earlier this year! Unbeknownst to me, they "salvaged" some of the treasures! So on the lovely little fire escape deck, we have a box of 1970's stoneware green and gold dishes which have been pawed through and perhaps "choice" items removed, but the remainder sits in newspaper-wrapped glory, and a bit soggy for its exposure to the elements. There are also 2 trashy chairs, several large, heavy castors which no doubt could be used to make some sort of a lovely wheel about cart, and a smashed plate glass table top! Yep! There it was for all 10 of the little boys at Fairwood to play with. Apparently it had started leaned up against the dorm, but somewhere along the way it had blown over, been knocked over, pushed over or who knows what over and there it sat. I wonder how many people had seen it propped against the dorm and walked by with a "look the other way" attitude because they didn't put it there and it wasn't their worry. Clearly an accident waiting to happen!! I'd wring the necks of those young men if I could and maybe I will when I see them!

"If you see something that needs doing, it's your responsibility to do it" is a pretty difficult addage to follow, especially around here where there are a million and one things like this. Fortunately, in this case I had T to help me pick up the glass, sweep up the shards, etc. etc and haul all the other junk to the trash house or dumpster. She also fixed the curtain in Rm 4 in the Lodge Annex. Hooray for T!