Quarry Garden Stained Glass

I Was Right (for once!) It's Back

2012-02-10T18:53:00.002-06:00

Winter that is.

The view out the back door this morning. Brrrrrrr....

On Thursday we were enjoying temps in the upper 30's. There was snow in patches, here and there, mostly in shaded areas. There was plenty of ice, though, sneaky, lurking ice, trying to lure me into stepping on it unawares, especially after dark. Nothing like walking along at a decent pace on what you think is dry ground, only to suddenly step on a teensy patch of ice and find yourself flailing your arms around, trying to keep your balance. I saved it, though, I remained upright.

The path I take out to the chicken coop had melted down to a slickly polished surface, made more dangerous by the pits and dips of older footprints still embedded in the surface. This is the same path I take to reach my washlines, too, and on Wednesday I hung the laundry outside. I should have made a video of me mincing out to washlines on the glare ice, toting steaming baskets of wet clothes. It was around 33 degrees on Wednesday with a brisk westerly breeze as I hung the wash out and my hands were smarting from the cold. Luckily, some of the wet articles of clothing were still a bit warm from the rinse water, so I could bury my hands in them to warm them up a little. I started to hang a bedsheet over the washline but before I was done making the ends straight I had to unkink it. The poor sheet had frozen before I had a chance to put the clothespins on it. I stood back and watched my wash day's effort clunking in the breeze. Towels, sweatshirts and blue jeans make rather wooden sounds when they are frozen. Everything dried beautifully on Thursday when the temps rose to 36. And oh, the smell of fresh laundry! Love it.

Nice, fresh snow.

After I took the laundry down just before sunset last night, Carl asked me if I wanted to take the two dogs for a walk out in the Back Eight. I have to say here that this is not a usual occurrence for Carl. He doesn't like to walk for 'no reason'. There has to be purpose for a walk, like going to and from some work to do, or hauling rocks home from our distant rockpile. In other words, he likes to feel he's accomplishing something for his effort. I'm not against his philosophy, but I do enjoy walking just for walking's sake, too. I've been plodding around on this farm for over 50 years, the same land, the same sights, same old, same old, but it never bores me. But you all know I'm odd. And I love this piece of dirt.

So, Carl and I went for a walk with the dogs and ended up in the White Forest again. There was no snow on the ground under the pine trees to speak of, it had almost all melted. We use the white pine needles that fall every year for mulch in the garden but it's hard to get through the trees to rake and pick up the fallen needles because of the dead limbs on the bottom of them. (The trees all need thinning too, and we're going to start doing that very soon.)

There was no snow in the White Forest last night. Just needles. What a difference a little snow makes.

And that's when we got the itch to do some work. Back to the house we went and after raiding the garage and our little barn and finally finding our hand saws, we went back out to our little woods and started thinning branches. We could have started up the chainsaws, but it was getting onto dusk and we just felt like doing a little thinning. By the time we got done it was almost two hours later and pitch black out. We had to go and get the Oldsmobile and the car trailer to haul all the brush out. We both felt really good about the workout, though. It feels great to stretch the muscles outside in the pursuit of actually doing work instead of just exercising for the sake of exercising. Like I said, it would be so much more fun to 'work out' at the gym if there was a task to accomplish, something to show for all that sweat.

Pachyberm (yes, I was too lazy to take the screen off, lol.)

When I went to bed last night the stars were shining so brightly. When I woke up this morning, well, looky here, Winter is back.

Love that Red Rooster grass, sure does stand up to the weather, even in an urn.

Our hard-working township had the road under control right away.

If there's snow on the road, of course, there's snow in our yard. Carl's not too big on snow removal, his philosophy is it will melt. Yes, it will, and it may be sooner than I think or not until April, so my philosophy is to get the snow blower out.

Walk, walk, walk, walk.....this time behind the snowblower! Hey, it's all exercise.

The snowblower used to have a plastic cab, and we really should look into fixing or replacing it. I inhale more snow than the machine throws sometimes. Breathing becomes difficult and then I can't see because the snow piles up between my face and my glasses. I told Carl it would be great to just put a dry-cleaning bag over my head and let the snow fall where it may, but I guess that practice is kinda frowned on, too. Might result in a shortage of oxygen. Joel suggested I get a snowmobile helmet. We have one around here somewhere....I'm going to look for it.

Help! I can't see. Or catch my breath.

Today was one of those days where no matter which direction I aimed the snowblower chute, the airborne snow came back and got me in the face. I guarantee you, it will put roses in your cheeks. (After your face defrosts.)

Once the driveway was done, it was off to make my walking trails.

With winter back again, we're less torn. Now we have more time to work on the stained glass and Carl and I won't be tempted to do outside work for awhile. Maybe 'tempted' isn't the right word, I should say we won't feel compelled to do something outside, because when the weather is so unseasonably warm it almost feels criminal to stay in the house.

Last night as we were walking back to the house, we both stood and stared at ol' Castle Aaargh all tucked in under the tarps and simultaneously sighed. Warm enough to limb up some trees, but not warm enough to mortar stone.

Doesn't look much like a castle, does it?

Ah, well, Castle Aaargh will be there in the Spring. For now we have lamps to build.


Second repeat of the Laburnum lamp. We're getting there.

Thanks for coming back, Winter. We missed you.

First Week in February

2012-02-08T01:35:00.002-06:00

The snow is melting a little more, day by day. If I didn't know any better, I'd think it was late March. I have some daffodils coming up next to the house foundation. About the only place the snow hasn't receded is in the deep shade of the conifers. Our driveway is an ice-skating rink which makes going out for the mail an experience. The hens were in front of the garage the other day and I tossed them some lettuce leaves. In their haste to get to the treat they came running, but when they put their brakes on, they skidded right into each other, bowling all of them over into a feathery pile. No one was hurt in the incident, but it was rather comical to watch. I think I need to run around with a feather pillow strapped to my behinder just in case. We all know how graceful I am. Not.

The sunsets have been gorgeous this month.

I'm enjoying this weather as much as everyone else, but it still makes me feel uneasy. I don't believe we are done with winter. Ok, I'm not a ground hog (or a meteorologist) so this is not an Official Opinion, but I predict we will see winter return in a big way before too long. I was driving home from the grocery store the other day and saw a teenage boy walking down the sidewalk wearing a tank top and shorts. Ah, the Optimism of Youth. It was 45 degrees out. Of course, for Wisconsinites, that is really warm for February. We're weird like that up here. And I can't forget last spring when we were hit with a 17" snowfall in April. Our weather is weird like that up here, too.

I wish I could buy stained glass in those colors. Every few minutes the colors change.

Speaking of stained glass, here's the pattern for the Tiffany reproduction Laburnum shade:

Paper holding pattern

This pattern is 662 pieces per repeat. We have the first repeat done! It's sort of like building a big, glass jigsaw puzzle.

662 down, 1324 to go.

Now all we have to do is make two more repeats. I tried to get a picture of the way it looks lit from behind, but didn't have a lot of luck. Here's a quick look:


This picture was taken before I had all the glass on the holding pattern, that's why there's 'holes' in the design.

On this first repeat, I used rather light yellow glass with slightly darker yellow for the flower shading. The second repeat has much darker flowers and the third repeat will be a slightly different variation of yellow and near-oranges yet again. The idea is to mix the shading up a little to avoid monotony in the shade as you go around it. I have looked at laburnum flowers online but have never been privileged to see an actual laburnum flowering, so I have to admit I'm not completely sure this is the way they should be portrayed. I'm just hoping for a reasonable facsimile.

Every year we send in pictures of our completed lamps to the stained glass lamp art group we belong to for hopeful inclusion in their annual calendar. We've been lucky four years running and have had small pictures of our shades included. It is an honor to have our work in the calendar.

Speaking of photos, photographing stained glass lamps is a long-drawn-out exercise in patience and sometimes, futility. We drag the dining room table up to the wall, set up a gray fabric background and a bunch of lights and take literally hundreds of pictures until we finally get one that looks like it does the lamp justice. During the last week of January, we spent days (well, nights, really, since being dark outside helps) shooting pictures and screening them. The job becomes beyond tedious.

There I am, obsessing over the way the lamp looks, trying to make sure it is as dust-free as possible.

I have some dental tools I use to pry any goop out of nooks and crannies.

We think (hope!) we have a fairly good picture of this shade and sent it off for voting last week, along with the quilt panel. Maybe it will be in the 2013 calendar, or maybe not, but at least we gave it a try.


The 2013 Calendar hopeful.

The moon was full tonight and I took the doggies out for a walk after supper dishes were done. I tried to entice Carl to come along, but he was under the hood of my car, tinkering with the power steering pump. The dogs and I headed to the Back Eight and we all enjoyed the brisk night air. The temperature was around 20 degrees which is chilly, but there was no wind at all. The stars were brilliant in the deep blue sky and the moon was so bright it almost hurt to look directly into it. The blades of grass in the hayfield were all diamond-dusted and the moonlight glinting off of them was mesmerizing, like walking through a field of sparkling gems as far as the eye could see. I wish I'd had a tripod along to take a picture.

Joel took this picture around midnight....if you look closely, you can see the stars. And if the melt-down continues, soon you'll see the entire lawn, too.

But winter ain't over yet. Not by a long shot, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil says.

It was really cold out there tonight, and Kantankerous Karen saw her shadow.

I'm predicting more snow.

We'll see if I'm right.

Glass and Class

2012-02-06T02:17:00.000-06:00

Another weekend has come and gone. We spent most of it in the pursuit of working on the stained glass lamp we had started last March. However, the weather was so nice out that we nearly were sidetracked into taking our chainsaws out to the Back Eight to start thinning some of the trees. Carl went for a walk with me and the dogs on Friday afternoon and while we were out in the white pines we got to thinking how we could go to work right away; we'll just go and grab the chainsaws and get 'er done. But then we decided we'd better spend the time working on the glass right now, because winter is getting short, too.

Saturday was a very productive day in our basement studio. Joel was home for the afternoon and was cutting glass along with Carl. Ann stopped in for a visit and was running the grinder nonstop, taking off the rough edges. I was working on laying out the patterns for the next repeat at the light table. The three of us really made a lot of progress. Dave stopped home for a bit and tuned up our computer and Kayla came down and joined in on cutting glass, too. The laburnum lamp is a big one, with 1,986 pieces. That's a lotsa glass to handle. I won't bore you with the process again, since I've done that in the past, but if you're interested in what goes into the making of a stained glass lamp, here's a link to my earlier post about building the Rosebush lamp last winter:

The Rosebush Shade From Start To Finish

A few weeks before Christmas, I was down in the studio trying to decide what colors would work best for the new shade. I can be so indecisive when it comes to selecting glass for any project, and will often spend hours just poking around in our stash looking for 'the' right glass. The Laburnum shade consists of predominately yellow flowers with, of course, green leaves and brown stems. The background is a very important element in any stained glass piece, too, and I had it narrowed down to two colors.

We bought the discarded pattern cabinets from a fabric store and boy, they make great storage for tools and wonderful platforms for the glass grinders.

This piece of glass would have made a wonderful background for the Laburnum, but it wasn't the one I went with. I may regret not choosing it, time will tell. The one I decided to use is much darker with purple highlights. In upcoming posts, I'll show you the progress so far.

Right now, I have to head for bed. Tomorrow is Monday (ok, today is Monday, since it's getting really late!) and I have exercise class in the morning.

We have a wonderful group who attend our exercise class; they are very serious about fitness. Being surrounded by such a dedicated bunch certainly does help make exercise more fun and the time just flies.

Here's a look at my exercise class:

My hope is someday I will transform my body, too!

Chickens and Scales

2012-02-03T19:45:00.001-06:00

This is what our last snowfall looked like in late January. I woke up to see large snow globs falling silently on the garden. It was such a peaceful sight. I wanted to post these pictures a week ago but since my derriere is still not thrilled about me spending a lot of time sitting down, I didn't get a chance to write.

Time is going by so fast, it's scary. Here we are in the first week of February already. So much of this snow is gone now, it's been a very odd winter. Even the chickens want to spend as much time outside as they can, and that's very unusual for normally the temperatures would be too cold for them.

I do love to watch it snow. It covers up all the imperfections and gives the garden a fresh, clean look.

The day I took these pictures we nearly had a disaster occur. I had just come in from feeding the chickens and was finishing up some housework when suddenly my little dogs started barking in the house. I wondered what had set them off and then I heard the hens squawking. Looking out the window I saw the cause; two big German Shepherd dogs had wandered into our yard and were chasing my nine little hens. I was horrified and grabbed my ski pole off the back porch and sallied forth (forgetting my coat) to chase the beastly curs away. Dogs are notorious for killing chickens and I was scared to see how many of my prized hens would be dead.

One of the dogs was in the chicken coop chasing two of the hens from perch to perch and bolted when he spotted me. The other one was in hot pursuit of one of our black hens and was just coming around the front of the house when he nearly ran into me. Despite the dogs' huge size they were startled by me brandishing my ski pole, screaming like a banshee. I was so mad! The two canine culprits left my yard at a gallop, looking back at me from time to time as I continued hollering at them.

I still don't know how the Girls escaped, but not one of them was harmed. That's amazing. I had two hens on top the gazebo roof and one on the garage and the other six were scattered all over the yard, but thankfully, they were all unharmed. I recognized the dogs as belonging to a distant neighbor. I've spoken to the owners before about their dogs being at large, but it doesn't do any good. It looks like the pair escaped their fence. They haven't been back since, which is a good thing, because I don't think the Girls would be as lucky twice.

We've lost a few chickens to random dog attacks over the years, and of course, to hawks and opossum and raccoons. Of all the marauders though, dogs can do the most damage because the chicken's frenzied flapping and running just ignites a dog's natural instinct to give chase. When I was a kid back on the farm, we lost twelve chickens all in one afternoon to a stray dog attack. The carnage was heart-breaking. The dogs didn't kill for food, they killed for sport. It's a sad thing.

I know letting chickens run free-range is asking for trouble because it's not possible to protect them from everything that wants to prey on them, but yet keeping them penned up all day long is not healthy for them, either. At night the coop is closed just before dusk after the Girls have gone to bed and after checking to make sure the coop contains only poultry and not any other predators. We made that mistake a year back; someone closed the coop door one night not realizing there was an opossum in with the chickens. The next morning I opened the coop up to find two dead chickens and a nasty big ol' rat-possum sitting in one of the nesting boxes sucking eggs and growling at me. I'll spare the details, but suffice it to say that was the last henhouse that varmint ever saw. I detest opossums, they look like gigantic rats.

But, we were lucky this time. The hens that could fly made their way to higher elevations and the other ones headed for cover under the spruce trees. I have always loved dogs, and I know you can't really blame the dogs for doing what comes naturally. It's the owners who let them roam around who are to blame. Those two dogs make me nervous when I walk after dark, too; they're so BIG! I'm always on the alert and I'm always carrying my ski pole just in case. Yeah, like it will do me a whole lot of good--but hey, it's something to fend them off if need be.

And yes, I'm still walking with Leslie Sansone every day since New Year's Eve.

Talk about another scary encounter; on February 1, I decided to make my way out to the freight scale in the garage and weigh in to see if I'm getting anywhere with the poundage. I was really nervous about this, more than I care to admit, because I was thinking with my luck, I'd have gained weight instead of losing it.

I had to thread my way in between Carl's stash of recycling and our bicycles before I could even get to the scale. I made sure to wear the same coat and shoes I had on the first time I weighed in and came armed with a flashlight so I could read the numbers. It's one of those scales where first you have to put a metal disk that represents 100, 200 or 500 pounds and then you slide the little weight on the balancing arm up until it floats perfectly even. The scale is underneath Joel's kayaks and I had to duck to stand on it, so I was crouched on the platform trying to balance the scale arm and still read the number holding the small flashlight in my teeth. I was stunned when I saw I had lost nearly 30 pounds! I stood up fast and hit my head on the kayak and that's when I got some sense knocked back in my noggin. Of course I hadn't lost 30 pounds in four weeks, DUH!

I then realized I had been leaning on a pile of wood stacked right next to the scale. Ooops, let's try again. My end result after 31 days of Walking With Leslie was: Drum Roll Please! 9 pounds lost. Not earth-shattering, to be sure, but still better than nothing. (Better than gaining nine pounds, anyway.)

I'm walking my snowblower trails every day, too, and am averaging around 6-7 miles a day total, counting an hour of aerobic walking each day. It's not much, but I do feel more fit. I'm still working on those Asian squats from my last post, but still haven't got the technique down yet, I tip over backward almost every time, but I can get a little lower with my heels flat on the floor. I can do the pivot to stand technique as long as I always use my left leg as the leg in front. Every time I try to use the right leg out in front, I end up with a sore knee. And surprise, surprise, I'm getting so I can do sit-ups much easier, too. I have a long way to go yet, but I'm hopeful I'll at least be in better shape for spring gardening than in the past.

I'm noticing some of the walking workouts are getting easier. This sorta creeps me out in a way. Does it mean if one mile is easy, then you must do the two/three mile walk and then finally the four mile and then Five Mile Walks? (I'm able to do the Five Mile Walk all at once, though it is a lot of work for me, sweat, sweat.) I read somewhere that as your body becomes more conditioned, you simply need more exercise to challenge it to lose weight. I love exercise, so that's not a problem, but I'm just wondering......is there ever an end to the amount you'd need to keep weight in check? That crabby former doctor of mine said 15-20 miles a day.......was she right? Oh, dear, I hope not. I'm still writing down everything that I hoist into my mouth too, which helps keep me honest. I'm not possessed by the thought of dieting, I'm just cutting portions to a reasonable size. We'll see where it takes me.

Hopefully not 15-20 miles from home!

Pivots and Squats, What's A Gardener To Do?

2012-01-27T00:58:00.000-06:00

If you have a few minutes, ok, a minute and twenty seconds, would you please view this video and tell me what you think? Doesn't this gentleman make this look so easy? That's the way I want to get up and down in the garden. Simply pivot and get up. Like the camera man on the video says, "It's Magic!" I want me some Magic in the garden. I want to do the Martial Arts move and pivot up and pivot down just like him.

I'm assuming my thighs are the problem (along with having to hoist too many pounds). My thighs must be too weak. My knees do not like getting up over and over again, and that's also probably due to too much weight and also improper form in the movements. I'm fine when I'm down on my knees, but the getting up is another thing. I found myself last year using a five gallon pail for something to push off from or a garden stool at times, too.

Do any of you notice pain upon rising from your knees? Have you found any exercise that helps? My knees don't bother me at all when I walk (thank goodness) but I did notice pain climbing stairs. I was told the best way to ascend stairs is to put the entire foot on the step (not just the toe) and push yourself up using your heel and leg muscles which takes the strain off the knees. That has been a wonderful fix for the stair climbing. I used to just step up using my toes on a staircase, but using the heel helps a lot.

And another thing I do wrong: whenever I had to squat down to weed or pick up something, I was up on my toes. That's the stance I had used all my life, even as a farm kid because you have to squat down over and over again when you milk cows. Ouch--- the knees! Now I read online that there is a better way to squat.

Who knew?

Check out this video:

The only problem with using this squat technique is I tip over whenever I try to get all the way down. I was watching an online video of a young, athletic-looking guy trying to do squats keeping his heels on the floor and he kept tipping over, too. I giggled because I could relate to his struggles. It's going to take some practice and strengthening. When Joel was home, I asked him if he could do it and he had no problem whatsoever. Arghhh!! I have to work on this.

I do NOT want to land on my still-sore behinder just yet, so I'm going to keep working on strengthening my thighs and doing squats as low as I can for now. I know the key to all of this is not to overdo anything. Slow and easy is the motto for this old gal. Flexibility is not my middle name. That's right, I can't touch my toes, either. Can't even come close. I like to think my failure to reach my toes is because I'm rather tall and I have short arms (I'm all about the excuses, LOL) but I know it's because I need to work on my flexibility. It will come with time and effort.

(I hope.)

I can't wait to hear from all of you gardeners as to what works to keep you flexible, especially in regards to getting up from a kneeling position.

I want to pivot and stand. It looks Magical!

Where Have I Been?

2012-01-26T01:06:00.001-06:00

Walking, walking, walking. That's where I've been. I get up in the morning and am in a rush to get dressed in my gym clothes (a sorry pair of old shorts and a t-shirt) tie my hair in a hastily thrown-together ponytail complete with a sweat band, all so I can get in front of the TV and be on 'time' for my Walk at Home workouts with Leslie Sansone. Nothing like having Leslie in your living room to get you ready to exercise.

Teddy and Pudding dogs glance up from their comfy doggie beds to survey my wardrobe and sigh audibly as they turn around and face the other direction. They don't want to watch the spectacle. Gotta love Shih Tzus, they have relaxation down to a science. My frenzied flopping around in the living room doesn't interest them one iota. Twenty-five days have elapsed since I got on this exercise kick and I haven't missed a day yet. Ok, so I'm a bit OCD. I admit it.

We don't have a bathroom scale, I know, how silly. We used to have one, but I wore it out years back by:

A. Weighing myself too often

And

B. Weighing too much.

(If it was a one of those talking scales it would probably say, "Only one person at a time, please!")

So now the only scale we have is an antique freight scale out in the garage. Yes, a freight scale. How's that for irony? I hopped on it New Year's Eve when we weighed some meat we'd just brought home from the packing plant. Carl was there and read the number out loud for me.

I said, "Come again?"

He repeated the number.

I said, "Surely you jest." I kept looking to make sure the meat we were weighing wasn't on the scale with me, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Oh, dear. That's not good. The old Polar Bear doctor was right. I have to do something.

He said no, no jesting. That was the number on the old scale.

Thankfully Carl didn't make anything of it, but see, he's been married to me for 33 years and he's a Smart Man. A Smart Man knows instinctively not to exclaim, "Wow! Isn't that an all-time high for you?" A Smart Man knows this is Dangerous Territory to be in. Especially if he wants me to cook for him again.

That was twenty five days ago and I have not been back out to the garage yet for a weigh-in. I don't want to become super-obsessed with the sheer poundage, I just want to work at getting fit. At this point, I could not handle the agony of seeing the numbers haven't gone down even a little or worst of all, have gone up! I do know my jeans are a tad looser, and I'm taking that as a sign all this work is helping. I keep a diligent food journal and write down the calories in the ketchup. Having hypothyroidism makes this all a bit more difficult, too, as my dosage is changed often.

My friend Nancy suggested I join a free exercise class at our church where I am the among the youngest participants. I go twice a week with a group of people who are in their 60's, 70's and 80's and believe me, they are in good shape. It's amazing and humbling to know I find the workout difficult at times. The leader of our group is in her 70's and can do pushups like a teenager. Since I cannot do pushups like that, I was simply stunned watching her drop to the floor and give me ten. I struggle through two and that's from my knees, not straight out. The lady is so fit; I can only wonder what she thinks of me. (I'm secretly glad she hasn't told me, it would hurt.)

Ironically, the fall down the basement stairs in December was the true catalyst for all this frenzied exercise since there was no way I could sit comfortably. My rump is getting better, but it's still far from happy about my being seated for any length of time. When it first happened the only thing that made the injury feel better was walking. Little, mincing, baby steps to be sure, but the walking made everything better. I wasn't able to walk much at first, but now am up to five and a half miles again most days, and today, up to eight. I'm aiming for at least sixty minutes of aerobic exercise (per my pedometer) every day. Leslie does much more than just walk, it's all low-impact, but it sure makes me sweat and I've found muscles I didn't know I owned when I do her floor exercise strength training routines, too.

So, am I any skinnier? Looking in the mirror, I'd say, nope, not yet. I always remember my mother saying when she was around 50 years old that she was glad she didn't live in a nudist colony. She said clothes cover up a multitude of problems and I wholeheartedly agree now that I'm 53, too. If I had to move to a Nudist Colony, I'd be the one living in the hosta bed fertilizing the 'Sum and Substance' hostas nonstop. Those big leaves would make a great cover up for anyone my size.

We've had a little snow and Joel's taken the 574 out and plowed my walking trails in the Back Eight for me. I took the snowblower to the other trails around the garden again. It's been wonderful to be out and about every day for walks with the dogs. And Carl, sometimes, too. He has been going with me a few times now, which is great; I know he walks a lot at his job and I don't want to force him to go out again, but he's been enjoying it. I love to go out just before sunset and enjoy the twilight.

Up by the woods in the Back Eight

Yep, that's me, snowblowing my walking trails in the gardens.

I'm going to keep pecking away at the weighty issues in my life.

I sure do miss blogging and visiting all my friends, though. Hopefully, soon I'll be able to sit for more than five minutes at a time.

I'm more than a little behind in everything this winter!

Ahhhhh...That's More Like It

2012-01-14T21:26:00.000-06:00

We are finally back to normal January weather. I wasn't sure I'd ever say this, but I'm really glad to see it. I often wondered what it would be like to live in a climate where the seasons didn't change much and this winter (or lack of it up until now) was a sample of what it might be like. It was pleasant in some aspects, but unsettling in others.

I'm used to snow. And when it was near 50 degrees earlier this week with no snow on the ground, I found myself restless. It was too nice to stay indoors and work on stained glass or the dreaded housework, but yet the nights were too cold to do any mortaring work on Castle Aaargh, so I would find myself at loose ends, wandering around wondering what to do.

The yard in early January

The dogs and I were having a wonderful time cavorting around outside, and if I would have known how much time I had to get the fall cleanup done, well, then I wouldn't have had to rush at all back in October and November. We even loaded up a trailer full of rocks on Monday. I don't remember EVER moving rocks in January. It felt good to hoist a ton or so; we had some smaller ones we wanted to move from one pile to another. (I don't need a gym for upper body workouts, ha. I have my rocks.)

But, finally, on Thursday, we had a mini-snowstorm that dropped a little more or less than five inches. Ah, yes, that's the way it should be.

Snow, snow everywhere.

Ernie all nicely frosted

Snow transforms everything

Sudddenly the slightest bit of color just pops out of the white.

The ornamental grasses were bent but not broken by the dazzling snow display.

I was thinking how pretty a winter wedding would look down in the Formal Garden if the wedding party could stay warm. The dwarf crabapple trees, 'Coralburst' were frosted just perfectly all around the dome.

I went overboard taking pictures from every different angle.

The trees were just perfectly dusted with snow. Any little breeze and the flakes would sift off the branches with a shimmering sound.

There's that subtle touch of color again, a yellow cedar showing up on the other side of the dome.

From inside the dome the stone wall we started to replace last summer shows up much better in the winter. And so does the red barn in the background.

I know, more of those crabapple trees, but I couldn't resist. In spring, they are a gorgeous bubble-gum pink color, but I like the white 'blooms' too.

Summer is much more colorful, I wholeheartedly agree, but I need this time, too. More time to reflect and recharge.

Teddy and Pudding dogs and I can still do our walkies in the Back Eight. The snow won't slow us down just yet. It's got to get deeper before that becomes a true problem.

The scenery is all different now.

The trees are so stark and beautiful

Once again, the colors show up so much more vibrantly than before the snowfall.

Our trails are still there, only now they are magically transformed.

We have to make tracks before the snow gets too deep.

It's great to be back to normal!

Wednesday Weirdness

2012-01-11T15:26:00.000-06:00

The weather has been so nice out for the past week that I've been spending much of it outdoors. I took down all the Christmas decorations which is a record for me, because they would normally be buried under a coupla feet of snow by now. This has got to be the oddest January I can ever remember. I hear we're in for a snowstorm by tomorrow, though, and that's a good thing. We don't want bitter cold temperatures that are bound to come to catch us without a nice, warm blanket of snow.

I haven't been blogging as much lately, either, mostly because my tailbone is still healing and I can't sit down. So in the meantime, I've caught the fitness bug. Every morning I walk, walk, walk, walk ala Leslie Sansone and well, it takes time, 73 minutes if I do the five mile workout.   I have high hopes it will do me some good. We'll see. I read somewhere that most resolutions don't make it until February 1. I didn't make a resolution, so I wouldn't feel guilty about breaking it, ha!   Someone asked me if I'm seeing results yet, well, I've only been doing this for eleven days, so nope, I haven't seen massive results yet.

I ordered another DVD that came in the mail yesterday and I sat down and watched it for about ten minutes. Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to sit and watch it, but I was already done with my other workout. Anyway, I think I'm going to keep that one on the side until I'm in much better shape because to tell you the truth, I was completely worn out just watching them hop around. What I like the most about Leslie Sansone's workout is the simple steps. I'm really not very coordinated and her workouts are easy to follow.

Over twenty-five years ago I used to tape (on my Sony Beta-Max, remember that?) a workout that came on TV every day and try to follow along with it after work. I was twenty-something years old then and the exercise program was aptly named the 20 Minute Workout. There were three or four young girls on rotating platforms who would jump and hop around and stretch and lunge with their big hairdos and 1980's leg warmers and tights on. They did everything but sweat.

It was impossible for me to follow. I'd be just getting into the routine only to look up and see they'd moved on to yet some other contortionist act. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, I'd hop up and down flapping my arms like a chicken in an attempt to catch up on all the moves I'd missed.   I felt I had to do all the steps since they were imperative to achieving a Size 2 body. Needless to say, it never happened. The Size 2, that is. I would usually end up gasping for air and feeling woefully inadequate while they continued disco-dancing their way to skinnydom. I never mastered the art of bending over at the waist, grasping my ankles as my ponytail grazed the floor and gazing seductively through my legs at the camera either. Those little smirks and suggestive winks were so over-the-top. I think it was more of a tape for men to watch then for flabby women to work out with. I always made sure to do the cool-down, though, that I could handle.

The only problem with all this walking is it cuts into my blogging time, and I need to write for my mental health as much as I need to walk for my physical health. So I've been writing snippets here and there every day. And with the weather being so unseasonably warm, we're starting to panic about the stained glass, too. We usually build a lamp or two over the winter and if we don't get our rears in gear, that won't happen. It's hard to concentrate on stained glass when it's almost 50 degrees outside.

We did get the little window done for the stained glass quilt for the Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists this past weekend though. The pattern they sent out was a selection of the Spider Mum lamp. It turned out fairly well.

I am sitting shivering as I write this. I did something really stupid this afternoon. Since we have our little flock of nine free-range hens, we are still getting at least four eggs a day probably due to the warm weather. Carl and I love boiled eggs, so I took the oldest ten or so of the four dozen we have on hand (I pencil a date on the eggs every day) and set them to boil on the stove.

I used to set a timer for ten minutes when I boiled eggs before, but for Christmas I was given one of those plastic egg timers that turns from red to black when the egg is done to the hardness you would like. Well, wouldn't you know I put the eggs on to boil and went to the basement to start doing laundry and forgot all about them. There's no timer that goes off when they're done, you're supposed to watch them. Of course, a watched pot never boils, so I thought I'd get a good start on the laundry.

It wasn't until I heard a weird popping noise upstairs that I ran up to find the kitchen enveloped in blue smoke. I grabbed the smoking pan and went right outside with it where it finished billowing in the driveway. Such a mess and such a smell! The egg timer melted down on one end and the eggs themselves had started to char. I wasn't gone that long, but had chosen a smaller pan than usual and it had boiled dry. And wouldn't you know, the smoke alarm that normally goes off when the toast gets a little warm remained mute through all of this mayhem.

I turned the furnace off and opened all the windows and went back to washing with my wringer washer. It's now a few hours later and the house is a chilly fifty-three degrees but at least it smells much better in here now.

Time to turn up the heat or pop that new exercise DVD in..........that will heat things up around here. But I will shut the windows first!

I Want Mom Jeans

2012-01-04T11:53:00.002-06:00

I'm sorry, but what is the deal with jeans?

I stood in my local farm and garden store just before Christmas with literally hundreds of jeans from various makers stacked in their little particle board cubicles all staring back at me. There they were, in a limited range of colors, shades of blue and black, pre-washed or extra-dark-rinsed according to current fashion and taste.

Mid-rise, low-rise, at-the-waist, just-below-the-waist, lower-on-the-waist.......good grief. Slender cut, boot cut, straight leg, slightly flared. Slender stretch, classic fit, skinny jeans, petite, medium, long.

I know what I want.

I'm 53 years old.

And I'm a mom twice over.

I want Mom Jeans.

Is that asking too much? I don't care if 'Mom Jeans' are SO out of fashion, I really don't. I want jeans that have a zipper longer than two inches and I want the waistband to be at my WAIST and not a mere whisper above my netherlands.

I know, I know, I'm 53, soon to be 54 and sigh, I probably shouldn't be wearing jeans anymore, especially in the current shape I'm in, but I have worn jeans virtually all of my life and I'm not gonna stop now. They are what I'm comfortable in and that's the end of the story. I could never get used to sweat pants, it just ain't gonna happen. Spandex, jeggings, capris, what-have-you are not my forte'. I just want denim. Five pockets, please, no rhinestones, or pocket flaps to make my dented derriere look even bigger, no bizarre washes or rinses that make them look white in certain areas and darker in others, I don't need trendy, I need comfort and utility. I want a dark rinse, because, believe me, after a summer of weeding and throwing rocks around, they will be stressed.

I was doing my Leslie Sansone walking workout this morning and one thing I found so refreshing was the fact that not all the people in her video are a Size 0. There are some ladies my size (gasp) and that means a lot to me. The larger ladies were all properly covered with workout pants and shirts that met them at the waist. The majority of the skinnier chicks were, of course, wearing the cropped tank tops and the low-rise workout pants. Good for them, though I really can't see how low-rise is comfortable, even for skinny chicks. Fat or thin, I would be constantly tugging my pants up and my shirt down. But that's me. And you all know I'm weird.

Who really likes the low-rise jeans? I read somewhere (yes, I actually did an online search for the answer) that low-rise is supposed to make the torso look longer and leaner by giving the illusion of a longer waist. Really? Well, maybe, if you're built like a ten year old boy. But if you're built like me (and I have more in common with a Mack Truck) then low-rise spells disaster. I'd best be wearing a t-shirt that comes down to my ankles so there will be no involuntary sightings of non-appetizing culinary confections.

You know what I'm talking about. Love-handles AKA the dreaded Muffin Top. Or in my case, more like a Loaf Top. I think even the menfolk out there will agree there's such a thing as a woman showing too much cleavage. However, pardon me, (ahem) butt cleavage is Really Not Cool. With all the old jokes about plumber's butt, why does the fashion world purposely set out to make it a much more common sight? I saw a young girl bend down in the grocery store the other day and halfway up she had to drop the canned goods to rescue her modesty. She was close to full-frontal (and rear-al) disaster.

When I bend over, I want my jeans to have my back side fully covered, thank you very much. I do this for you, the unsuspecting public. No one wants to see that.

Go put some Mom Jeans on.

(My apologies to Leslie Sansone, this is SO not her video!)

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T14:59:00.002-06:00

Here we go again. Another new year is upon us. This is always a rather melancholy time of year for me. I know I'm not alone in this feeling, though. Many people feel a bit down during and after the holiday hustle and bustle. Carl was off of work for a week and a half and we had such a nice time together that this morning things felt a bit empty around here.

I decided to try turning over a new leaf this morning. Though I walk as much as I can around the farm and down the road, winter is making an appearance finally. We now have about two inches of snow on the ground. I won't be able to do much walking off-road once the next snowstorm hits. Normally in the winter, I cross-country ski. But, it is also customary that I take at least one or two tumbles a winter when I'm on skis. (Just call me Grace.) I'm not looking forward to falling on my dented derriere again, so I'm thinking the skis will have to wait until next year. Once the snow gets a little deeper, I will get out my snowshoes, which is fun, too, but I prefer skiing. The thought of a gym membership has never appealed to me, not even when I was slimmer. I prefer to look ridiculous in private.

I have never invested in exercise equipment. I don't have enough room in this house for a treadmill. I know a few people who owned one, and it ended up being a clothes hanger. That's all I need, a big ol' place to toss coats on. NOT. I had thought about getting a Wii Fit when they first came out, but so many people told me it wasn't worth the money and it would end up sitting in the corner (or the cabinet, or wherever you store exercise equipment). I thought it looked like great fun, but I guess it gets old after awhile?

And, to tell you the truth, running on a treadmill seems silly; like a waste of time and energy. Being an old farm kid, I never had to worry about not getting enough exercise. Exercise opportunities and work go hand in hand on a farm. You're always walking or running somewhere, pitching something, hoisting buckets and bales and climbing ladders to get to the haymow.

Ann and I often talked about how much of a shame it is that all the work on a weight-lifting machine or treadmill or aerobics class couldn't be put to good use. In other words, it would be so much better if you could get something productive done while you exercise. Maybe I should see if I could generate electricity for the house. Carl should be able to rig up some sort of a Rube Goldberg invention that would make all the energy output useful.

In years past, Carl and I would saw down some trees during the winter which is a great workout, running my little chainsaw, piling up brush, loading the wood. Makes you feel alive. I love the fresh air. But we haven't had any trees to take down for awhile now and the only other work is Castle Aaargh which needs warmer weather because right now the rocks are frozen down to the ground. I do have some dead branches to clear out of the white pines in the Back Eight, though, as long as the snow doesn't get too deep. So there IS something I could be doing.

I do try to make my walks count. My mother lives a little less than a half mile away, so I take the opportunity to stop in and see her almost every time I go for a walk. That way, I'm checking in on her and seeing how she's doing and we have a nice visit. Of course, the dogs, Teddy and Pudding, are guests of honor at Grandma's house and have special pillows they gravely wait to have laid down for them on their perch by her big kitchen window. They know the drill so well that if I try to walk by without stopping, I have two seriously confused dogs on my hands. We have to stop and see Grandma. It's a tradition.

So, I rented a walking exercise video on New Year's Day and am attempting to sweat myself into better shape. Heaven knows the shape I'm in right now isn't a good one. Actually, I am counting my blessings because after my little trip down the stairs things could have been much worse, so I am grateful I'm still walking. I could be in a body cast. But after taking a hard look at the old pictures of the way I was and now viewing the way I am, well, I'm a lot overwhelmed. How's that saying go? Every journey starts with a single step or something like that? Well, I've gotta a whole lot of steps in front of me. Staying motivated is always the hardest part.

After renting the video, I was intrigued; I wondered if there were other ones out there that are fun, too. The walking one is really a lot more intense than I thought it would be, but I have to take it back on Friday. I took a completely out-of-the-box step yesterday afternoon and ordered a dance exercise video online. We'll see how this goes when it arrives. (I didn't even tell Carl I did this.) I figure a DVD is a lot smaller to store in a closet than a treadmill or an elliptical thing.

Not that it will end up in the closet.

I'm going to dance myself fit.

Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Wish me luck.

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: The Rest of the Story

2011-12-23T22:41:00.002-06:00

So, now we've come to the end of this tale and it took me so long, it's also almost the end of the year. This green as the corn farm girl finally figured out how to survive in the working world and did a lot of growing up.

My wonderful dog, Sparky (yes, he's a lot bigger than Teddy and Pudding!) and me. August 1977

During our first year, Sharon and I had a good time at the insurance company, well, at least when Martha wasn't looking. When we were hired, All Casualty Mutual was in the process of building a brand-new home office out in the country, ironically, very near my Aunt Dorothy's farm, on several hundred acres. They were going to be moving their entire office out to the new location around the spring or early summer of 1977. This was great news, after the move I would not have to drive downtown to go to work anymore and I wouldn't have to walk down those smelly city streets. My commute time was cut down another fifteen minutes and best of all, the entire trip was now going to be on rural roads.

Yes, I know, are my glasses big enough? There I am, 18 and a Working Girl

We were all given new identification cards to swipe before we entered the building and I, for one, was thrilled with the new location. Not everyone was, though. Many of the employees missed the close proximity of the stores and restaurants at the old office building downtown. That was when another major change was made, the company gave everyone the option of cutting their lunch break from fifty minutes to thirty, and in some cases, twenty. Many people went for it, me included, since it meant we would get out of work earlier.

Shortly after we moved out to the new building, the company had an open house for employees and their families. My folks and Carl got to come along and get a tour of the place. It was really something, all white with windows floor to ceiling and skylights with flower beds running the length of the building on the inside. The beds had Peace Lilies planted in them and some sort of tropical trees. The new building was only two stories, but it was a sprawling place with curved staircases between floors. It was an architectural marvel for the time.


These files were just part of my responsibility...there were a LOT more files not pictured, more than you can imagine. And that would be a non-Martha-approved stance for working.

There were big developments in my private life, too. Carl and I became engaged on Valentine's Day, 1977.

Sharon was way ahead of me on that front; she was married in May of that year. Carl and I went to Sharon and Duke's wedding and had a great time.

Apparently, I had a really good time at the wedding, judging by the way I look in this picture above. Isn't Sharon a beautiful bride?

Work went on rather well after the insurance firm moved out to the country. I continued to live at home and worked in the barn, milking cows nights and weekends and doing field work.

Here I'm chopping cornstalks back on the field after Dad had gone through with the cornpicker. Chopping them down with the greenchopper made it much easier to plow in the fall. I wish we still had that chopper, but the 574 is still with us.

Carl snuck up on me one day while I was putting bedding down in the stalls and took this picture. I loved this work.

Carl and I had some free time, too. He was enrolled in technical school by then and had a year of learning ahead of him. We did find time to run around and have some fun, though. Carl had an older car, a 1967 Buick LeSabre that rode like a boat. Parked next to my Nova, it looked like a yacht.


Carl's ride in 1977, a 1967 Buick Le Sabre

I could never get him to pose by his car, though he would pose by mine as long as I agreed to also.


Kids! We were just 18 year old KIDS! Where did the time go?

No, I did not run over the poor dog, Sparky simply passed out laughing from my silly pose in this picture.

Carl graduated from technical school and found work as metal fabricator in late 1977, and he's been there ever since, thirty-four years.

Carl, 19 years old, visiting at my folk's house after work. He was over every morning before we went to our respective jobs for breakfast, too. I've been feeding this character for a very long time.

When I wasn't working on the farm, we would spend our free time on Sunday afternoons wandering the back roads and the woods. We haven't changed much. This is still our favorite thing to do.


Me, in some woods somewhere, 18 years old.

Another favorite thing was riding dirt bikes, too. Here I'm trying out Carl's cousin's bike at Carl's folk's house.

In the fall of 1977, some sad news came my way. Sharon was expecting her first child and had decided to leave the insurance company. The news hit me hard. Yes, I had made other friends, too, and things were going ok, but I was going to miss Sharon so much. We had fun at work and now it was going to come to an end. I was in the midst of planning my wedding and asked Sharon to be a bridesmaid. She agreed.

In October, we celebrated Sharon's last day with a little luncheon and as was traditional, a gift from the department. That was a hard day for me. People came and went a lot in our department, though; it was not unusual. Judith had long since left for another position in the company. I didn't miss her.

Finally, September 1978 rolled around and Carl and I got married. We had so little money, since we were now 20 years old and in the process of building our house, so we hired a friend of Carl's to take our wedding photos using Carl's camera. We had to cut corners wherever we could. I bought the second wedding dress I tried on, one that was a 'demo' dress at the bridal shop and the store dry-cleaned for me. It was pretty enough, and the price was right, $150.

I hadn't seen Sharon since she'd quit the year before until it was time to buy the attendant's dresses. I had no sisters, so my best friend from childhood, Valerie, was my maid of honor and Sharon and another friend from work, Denise, were my bridesmaids. We went to the same bridal shop and I picked out pale pink dresses for the girls even though the saleslady had a canary about pink not being the right color for a fall wedding. I didn't care. They were on sale and my bridesmaids didn't revolt, so after a half hour shopping session, we were done. We all made it to the church on time, too.

There's Sharon, on her way down the aisle. In the balcony above, is my dear, late friend, Connie, who sang at my wedding and my old chorus teacher, Mrs. P, who played the organ.

There's my dad and I, making our way down the aisle, too. This is the only picture I have of my father and I together on my wedding day. He had hired a neighbor to milk the cows for him that night and though the man was completely trustworthy, Dad left right after the I do's. He had to get back home to his cows. I wish he'd stuck around for just ONE picture afterward, but oh, well. That's farm life for you. I understood.

Here's another rare photo: the man on the left is my late brother, Bob, talking to my mother-in-law. I have so few pictures of him. With her back to us is my sister-in-law, Mary. And would you believe one of the few photos I have on my wedding day of my dear mother, the Infamous Elusive Lucille, is the lady in the middle by my brother, looking very tense. I WISH I had a picture of Mom that showed how beautiful she looked that day, it was the only time she ever wore a formal gown. The age of digital photography has made taking endless photos an easy thing, but in the days of film and developing costs, pictures were kept to a minimum. If I could only go back, I know what photos I would take now..........

1964, my brother Bob, 19, my dad, 51, me, 6 and my mom, 44 in our living room. This is the only family photo of us all together. (The spring horse was my birthday present.)

Anyway, back to my wedding and the story at hand...


The new Mrs. and those impossible plaid seats in my Nova.

We made it out of church and over to a park for photos before driving to the hall for our dance. Most couples head for a bar to tip a few, but Carl and I were and are hopelessly square.

This is our only 'sort of good' wedding photo of the two of us. Too bad we didn't pick up the empties from somebody's party the night before. While we were posing for this shot, the wedding party was milling around.

L-R: Valerie, Duke, Denise, Dan and Sharon

We were on time for the supper, too, which is always a good thing.

L-R: The pastor and his wife, my dad and mom, Sharon and cousin Dave

After our wedding and a short honeymoon to the most romantic of all honeymoon destinations, fabulous South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, Carl and I both went back to work.

My job with the insurance company went on for just a little over ten years. Our goal was to get us out of debt and then start a family and be a stay-at-home mom. Luckily, this was one of the few plans that actually worked out well. June 1986 rolled around and I found myself very pregnant. I told my boss I probably wouldn't be coming back.

How's this for irony? I was sent down to employment for an 'exit interview' about a week before I was due to deliver. When a person left the insurance company's employ, they had a few questions to ask about your work experience. I waddled down to employment that day with some bittersweet thoughts running through my head. No, it wasn't the same building I'd had my horrible first day in a decade earlier, and the person I was to be interviewed by wasn't Alice, either, but there was one thing that was the same.

Who do you think gave me my exit interview?

Judith.

I couldn't believe it. After all these years, I didn't think that would ever happen in a month of Sundays. I hadn't even realized Judith had ended up working in Employment. Surprisingly, it was an ok experience, she was bit more friendly this time. Seems I wasn't the only one who had done some growing up.

Joel was born the next morning, at 7:13 AM. The same way I started work almost the day after graduating high school, I started my career in motherhood the day after work. I was 28 years old.

Joel, 1986. He's the one in the middle, holding the micrometer. He did grow up to be a machinist!

Joel and me, Christmas, 1986. He's six months old here and I'm still 28.

After I quit working, life was really different. I didn't know much about raising babies, and poor little Joel would be an experimental test baby for this new experience. My childhood had been filled with tractors and cows, not babies and diapers (I'd never babysat or changed a diaper until I had Joel) and I had a lot of learning to do. Thank goodness my mom was able to help me through the worst of the first few days and ever-patient Carl, was a huge help, too.

In four years' time, David made his appearance and our little family was complete.

David, six months old, 1990

As anyone who has had children knows, their growing up years simply fly by. I was so lucky to be able to stay at home and enjoy those years, it's something I've never regretted. Sure, we had little money after going down to one paycheck for any luxuries, but what a small price to pay for time so precious. Time like this I'd never get back. You can't put a price on it.

When our kids were growing up, Sharon and I got together only a few times. She and Duke only live about thirty miles away, but for some reason or another, we didn't visit back and forth much, except to surprise her on her 50th birthday party a few years back. We always wrote to each other at Christmas, though. How I treasured each and every letter from her.

So, fast forward to a night this past October 2011. Carl and I were out on a ride in the Clintonville area, doing some geocaching with Joel. One of the roads we crossed looked so familiar and I said to Carl, "Isn't that where Sharon and Duke live?"

Joel drove down their dead end road and turned in the driveway. I had second thoughts after we drove in, we hadn't called ahead and I didn't know if they'd mind us barging in. There was Duke, sitting on a bench by his back door in the dark. He didn't seem surprised in the least to see who it was come to bother them on a Sunday night. Sharon came out of the house and we hugged. We had such an enjoyable night talking and vowed we'd not let so much time elapse before getting together again.

I forgot to mention something else here: Sharon is my most devoted blog reader bar none. She doesn't comment because she's got computer issues, but she apparently reads EVERY word I write, dear woman that she is. I can't tell you what that means to me, either, because I'm frankly amazed anyone is reading my extended ruminations at the keyboard.

So, now FINALLY I am going to get to the Middle-aged women don't bounce thing and what happened to my poor, sad tailbone: Sharon invited us over to play cards on December 11th. Joel was able to come along too, because his girlfriend was working and Ann was also able to attend. We were having a great time playing cards until I decided I needed to use the restroom. Since there were so many of us, we had to pull the table out from the wall a little which made it difficult to get around unless someone stood up. I waited until Sharon was up tending to something before I used the facilities.

On my way back to my seat at the table, I remembered she'd said a person could go around through another door to get back to the kitchen, so not wanting to inconvenience anyone, I thought I'd do just that. Unfortunately, it was a bit dark in the hallway I was in and I thought the door in front of me was the right way to go. It wasn't. I took a step forward and the next thing I knew I was going down the basement steps on my behinder. (Yes, it's ample, but not ample enough, apparently.) Oh, that hurt. I had surgery on my backside years and years ago, and the area is always tender, so this was definitely not on my list of Fun Things To Do.

Thumpity, thump, thump, thumpity, thump, thump, look at Karen go! Thumpity, thump, thump, thumpity, thump, thump all the way down the stairs she goes! (Just thought I'd throw in a Christmas tune.)

Poor Sharon was horrified and ended up giving me all sorts of things to help her defrost from her freezer. (The frozen coconut was very good, by the way, very flexible.) I know she feels terrible about this, and so do I. We were having so much fun until I decided to try sledding down her basement stairs sans a sled. The bruises are now starting to fade a little, but I had some very impressive ones. Carl said he was glad I didn't go into the doctor, because I looked pretty gruesome. He didn't want to appear on America's Most Wanted. I did call the clinic though, and their advice was pretty straightforward, regardless if it was broken or not, there's not much they can do about it. Time heals all. Even middle-aged women's derrieres. It will be quite some time before I can plop down in a chair and not look like I'm checking for a hidden porcupine first, but it's much better than it was. I'm a tough old gal.

Some great things have come out of this though, I've talked to Sharon more in the last few weeks than I have in years. It's just like the old days again. And in her Christmas card that arrived today, she said we're definitely going to have a rematch at Sheepshead, too. (I bet they will put up a barricade and flashing lights to deter me from the stairs.)

So, what have I learned?

Me, 1959. Just over a year old on (gasp) a staircase.

Middle-aged women don't bounce very well...........

but there is no such thing as too many friends, old and new, near and far.

I am blessed.

Thank you all for your friendship, it means so much!

And may you all have a Very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

Karen

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 10

2011-12-22T23:19:00.000-06:00

After another bad night's sleep, I headed back to work. I was stillvery nervous, but at least now I knew where to park.    Idiscovered a slightly shorter, less windy way to walk to work from theparking lot on the hill by taking a shortcut through an alley. There wassome sort of a garage and tire business that was on my new route.    Mixed inwith exhaust fumes from the traffic a block away, the smell of rubber wasoverpowering, even on a cool morning. I'll never forget that stench.

My second day wasn't as eventful as my first had been, thank goodness. My supervisor, Martha, was satisfied I had the Soundex down and I was put to work filingfolders on a huge circular file. I was a little intimidated byMartha, but not really scared of her because she was so like Miss H. from highschool--all business. She seemed to be fair, though, and had nofavorites. Her rule was an honest day's work for an honest day's wage, and thatdid not change according to her mood.   Even though she was tough, I appreciated the fact she was consistent.

The entire department was run very rigidly. On my second day, I saw two co-workersexchange a few pleasantries back and forth, and Martha, who was training me atthe time, broke off from her instructions to glare at them. The twooffenders stopped talking, but then, a little while later one of them went overto whisper something to the other. That's when Martha got up from thespare chair by my desk, marched up to them and said, "Is there a problemhere? Do you need more work to do? I'm sure I can find yousome."   The properly chastened ladies in question shook their heads and blushed.

No talking beyond short pleasantries was ever allowed. In an office with over 60 women, the only noise was a few typewriters in the back,the ringing telephones, and the teletype machine. It was like working ina big library.

I liked the working part of the day; the work was intense, butrelatively easy and simply required speed and accuracy. It was hard beingthe new kid on the block though; so many of the other 'girls' my age had been workingthere for some time already and had made friends. Therewasn't any room for an outsider. Sometimes they would smile back at me asthey went about their work, but I was simply part of the scenery. It's hard being a new employee in a big company. I'm sure it's much the same in smaller companies, though, too.   Until people get to know you, they tend to be a bit standoffish. Apart from a curt 'Good Morning' from Martha every day which I returned inkind, I had no call to strain my voice box, which was ok, because we weren'tthere to chat anyway. We were supposed to be working.

The worst part of the rest of the first week was the lunch break. That impossibly long fiftyminute lunch hour was so lonely. I'd gaze longingly as my co-workerswould gather up their purses and head out to eat together, giggling asthey went. I missed my old friends from school all the more then. I steered completelyclear of Judith. We weren't seated near each other when we were assigneddesks, either, and that was fine by me. She could keep her own uppity company for all I cared.

I couldn't face the thought of sitting in thecafeteria alone day in and day out, so I brought a sandwich from home and ateit in solitude at my desk. Since the office was located in the heart of the downtown area, there wereall sorts of large department stores and small shops just a few steps away, soI spent a lot of my time window shopping.    When I grew tired of looking at things I didn't want and couldn't afford, I'd walk all the way back to my car and sit and listen to the radio until it was time to head back. I realized I wouldn't make any friends this way, but since my first day of work was still fresh in my memory I thought I'd lay low until the public humiliation died down.

As my first work week finally came to end, I was extremely grateful. I don't think I ever looked forward to a weekend so desperately. Two whole days to spend away from it all, what a relief. But those two days sped by much too quickly. By Sunday afternoon my stomach was back in knots again, I could think of little else, I'd have to go back on Monday. I was really down in the dumps.

Monday again, same routine; drive in, park the car, walk up the alley, go to my desk. Go to work. But something wonderful happened that day. The insurance companyhired more new employees for our department. And one of them wasSharon. (I told you at the beginning of this saga I'd get around to thepoint eventually, and here it is. Better late than never, right?)

When Martha broughtSharon around to introduce her to all the employees I smiled at her. And wonders never cease, she actually, genuinely smiled back. When Martha suggested we go to lunch together and Sharon seemed happy about it, I was ecstatic. She was the most easy-going person I'd ever met, the same age as Iwas and from a farming background. We hit it off right away. Suddenly I had someone who didn't look down theirnose at me. We could talk about work as well as our private lives and itjust felt right, like we had been old friends for years. Sharon has a wonderfulsense of humor and is one of the kindest people I've ever met.

From that point on, my attitude toward going to work every day changedexponentially. I didn't dread it as much anymore now that there wassomeone there to share the ups and downs with. It is amazing how lonely aperson can be in a crowd; even though it had only been a week, I don't think I realized how lonesome I'd been untilSharon came along. The difference was day and night.

I don't know if she ever knew what her friendship truly meant to me; but itwas an incredible gift. The first year of work went by so fast. Over time, we both made friends with most of the other 'girls', too, and had fun sneaking in snippets of conversation when Martha wasn't looking. Just like it had been in the Office Practice Room in high school, we all learned how to have just a teensy bit of fun without getting caught.

I'll never forget the day one of the older clerks decided to share a joke her son had told her with one of her closest desk-neighbors; it was so reminiscent of Miss H. and the centerfold/ poster incident. The joke itself really wouldn't have been all that funny under different circumstances, I suppose, but in light of the strictly enforced No Talking/ No Joy Allowed Rules we all worked under, just the memory of this day still makes me laugh out loud:

I was working at my desk when one of the Senior Clerks made a pretense of searching for a folder on my rotary file and then quickly bent over and whispered in my ear, "What stretches further, skin or rubber?"

I blinked in surprise, and looked up at her quickly. That's when I saw the twinkle in her eyes.

I shrugged slightly and whispered back, "I don't know, which one?"

"Skin," she hissed.    "It's a proven fact. Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked for forty miles in the desert."

And with that, she walked away quickly.   I tried so hard not to snort out loud and managed to keep it in by heading straight to the stacks of files with another pile of folders to file, doing my best to keep a solemn look on my face. Once safely in the stacks and out of sight of Martha, I was free to bust out laughing. (Quietly, of course.)

I could tell the joke was surreptitiously making the rounds from one clerk to the next; from the files I could hear sudden guffaws quickly stifled and saw many of the women laughing silently at their desks as they tried to look busy. Some of them were even wiping their eyes with the strain of not being able to laugh out loud which made it all the more funny.

Martha picked up on the gaiety right away and started patrolling around the department, peering intently into the faces of any of the would-be gigglers. All of them could pull it together until Martha walked away and then fell hopelessly apart after her back was turned.

It's a pity no one told her the joke.

Just once I would have loved to see her smile.

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 9

2011-12-20T02:58:00.000-06:00

When I got home from work that night everything at the farm was just the same. Somehow I thought it would all look different because I felt like I had been gone for a long, long time. I sat down at our kitchen table and poured out the tale of woe to Mom, who listened while she was putting the finishing touches on a cake she was frosting. She had made me a lovely meal of roast beef and all the fixings and though I wasn't very hungry, I appreciated her loving consideration.

At some point, she had to sit down during my long-drawn recitation of the day's events. She felt badly for the way the day had gone, too, and I could tell she'd been worried about me. It's a tough thing to watch a child stumble out into the world, and she was ready to welcome me back home with open arms. Not that we ever hugged or said 'those' three words or anything; my folks were not touchy-feely people, but I knew they loved me all the same.

We ate supper alone since Dad wasn't home when I got back from work. The fact he wasn't there was good, because he would have lost patience with me and my saga long before I had it all out. Dad disliked tears and flap-doodle. With Dad, you had to pare a story down to its bare essentials, he didn't want to hear 'And then this happened and then she said this and I said that', he wanted to hear the condensed version. So it was a relief to have Mom to myself to commiserate with so I could talk it out.

I had gotten home from work at 5:00, so we had to eat (and talk) quickly. We had evening chores to do. I got out of my work clothes and into my farm clothes and headed out to the machine shed to fetch the 574. It was time for me to chop hay for the cows. While I was doing that, Mom was rinsing milkers and setting up for the night's milking.

What a relief it was to be back on the tractor; for just a few minutes I forgot all about the terrors of the day and focused on the alfalfa waving in the breeze while the swallows swooped back and forth in front of my tractor catching the bugs the chopper was scaring up.

Milking cows that night was a much-needed distraction; just being around the Holsteins was a comfort. The difference between the job I was doing in the barn and the one in town was staggering. I much preferred the one at home.

In the picture above, I'm driving our Farmall H and pulling a manure spreader. Ah, it was good to be home again.

Carl came over to see me later on that night on his little trail bike. We only grew up a mile apart, so it was quick trip. He was sorry to hear things had gone so badly, too. He showed up just as we were finishing chores around 8PM and he and I went for a little ride around the farm. Everyone was doing their utmost to take my mind off my troubles and lift my spirits.

Carl, 18 years old, and his Honda 70 minibike.

But despite everyone's best efforts, the fact remained I still had to go back the next day.

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 8

2011-12-18T23:26:00.000-06:00

Ethel stared at me to see if I was serious about my parking dilemma, and when she saw my deeply reddened face, she realized I was telling the truth.

"All right," she sighed, "You'll have to go and move your car before I take you to your department," she said. "Please hurry, though, and meet us back here."

Hometown Guy and Judith were both still shaking their heads disdainfully as I made my escape. As I left, I heard Ethel say she was going to take Hometown Guy to his department and Judith was going to have to cool her heels and wait for me to get back.

"Thank you," I murmured, and rushed out of the office, back to the elevator, down to the lobby and out the revolving door. Back out on the sidewalk, I ran to the crosswalk and waited anxiously for the Walk light. I got to my car and noticed the time was up on the meter already, but I didn't see any tickets, so I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

There I am on my Graduation Day with the Nova, two days before starting work. Don't I look excited?

What I was terrified of next, however, was finding a place to park. Ethel had failed to give me a pamphlet with directions, though I doubt they would have done me any good. I was still at sea in this town, it was all unfamiliar territory. I tried my best to calm down, it wouldn't do to drive in the state I was in. My eyes started to tear up as I cussed myself out for being such a dimwit. Why hadn't I realized parking on the street wasn't the right thing to do? How could I have been so naive? I had a wild urge to simply start the car and go straight home. I thought I had done all of the 'what-ifs' scenarios the day before, but this one wasn't even on my fantasy radar.

But no time for tears now, I had to get my bearings. I remembered when Dad and I had left town on Saturday we had simply gone around the block to get back to the street that we had chosen as the best and safest route back home. But wouldn't you know, the same construction that had blocked my path earlier in the morning had also sprouted up in the next few blocks, too. I needed to make a left-hand turn and every time I tried, the roads were closed. I ended up following a detour, and hit every red light that was ever invented. Then I got turned around in a maze of one-way streets and before I knew it I was hopelessly lost.

I looked at my wristwatch and knew I'd already been gone far too long, fifteen minutes had passed already, but what could I do? I drove far enough away from the downtown area that the traffic was lightening up a little, and pulled to a stop along the sidewalk. It's a good thing I worked in the tallest building in town, or I would have never found the place again. Using the building as a beacon, I finally wended my way back to the general area on completely unfamiliar streets and kept a close look out for a parking ramp. I found one, but the arm/gate thing at the entrance threw me. What was I supposed to do here? Drive in? Pay first? Punt, pass or kick? I'd never been in a parking ramp in my life and didn't think now would be a good time to go exploring.

I finally found a parking lot that didn't have someone's company name complete with dire warnings posted everywhere. There were parking lots with signs declaring I'd better not even think about leaving my car there........."PARKING FOR HARRY'S EMPLOYEES ONLY---ALL OTHER VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER'S EXPENSE! I drove by so many private lots I was starting to think it would be more profitable to open one of my own and forget about going back to the insurance company.

The one I finally found seemed to be a public lot and thankfully, I still had enough change on me to plug the meter for another six hours (oh, good grief, I'd been gone THAT long?) and now it was time to run. Literally. I was still a long, long, way from the skyscraper and I made tracks as fast as I could. I made sure to note the street my car was now parked close to on my mad dash back. The last thing I needed was to lose the Nova. It had less than a hundred miles on it and I hadn't even owned it a week.

As I ran through the streets, I also ended up running through some road construction sites, too. Unfortunately, I drew a lot of attention from the crews. Whistles, catcalls and unpleasant propositions were flung my way as I galloped on through, "Hey, baby...what's your hurry? Where's the fire? C'mon back over here, we don't bite. Not hard, anyway." I doubted any one of them could have caught me even if they tried. I knew it was harmless heckling, but they did scare me. I had never been around that sort of thing before, either.

I ran faster.

Finally I rounded the corner and after another two-block-long dash, I was back in the revolving door and on my way up to Employment one more time. When I finally arrived, disheveled and sweaty in Ethel's conference room, there was good ol' Judith, sitting there eyeballing me again. She didn't say anything, but her snooty air plainly told me what she thought of me. She quickly rose from her chair which alerted Ethel to my return.

:"All right. You're back. I trust you found a place to park now? We were starting to wonder there for a bit. If you'll follow me, we'll get you down to your department. I'm sure they're wondering where you are." I was trying to make some repairs to my appearance as we marched to the elevator, but it was fruitless. If first impressions make you or break you, I was in a heap o' trouble.

The Records Department was on the second floor. We were led in by Ethel who turned us over to Martha, a thin middle-aged lady with a look of business written all over her. Introductions were made and Judith and I were taken on a tour of the department. The first thing that caught my eye were the files. Row after row of paper files, thousands upon countless thousands of them, each containing the insurance policies and vital information of every member insured by All Casualty Mutual. There was one wing of the huge department devoted to member files bearing the surnames A-K and another wing on the other side of the building devoted to L-Z. The sheer volume of folders was stunning. Picture the largest library you've ever seen and multiply it by fifty. This was a big haystack in which to lose a needle.

Every piece of paper correspondence that came into the insurance company eventually made its way down to Records. Each piece had to be filed in it's owner's folder. And it was all of our jobs to keep the folders current with all their forms and retrieve them for any other department needing to access the information inside. It was not unusual for over five feet of correspondence to be sent down to records in any given day and when times were good and certain types of insurance products were selling briskly, that number could double easily.

Since it was such a big department, at the time, if I remember correctly, there were over sixty employees working there, all women. In the very back of the room sat the manager of the department and on either side of her were her assistants. The powers that be were all in the back of the room and the worker bees sat in front of their superiors with their backs to them. After the supervisors and managers, there were rows of older ladies known as 'Markers' whose job was mysterious to me. I still don't really know what their duties constituted, but they were seated all day long. After the markers came the file clerks whose job it was to pull files out of those vast stacks for other departments and send them up in the in-house mail system. Then, when the files came back, they could file them back away when they were done. They sat in the middle rows and most of them were young.

There were more file clerks, phone clerks and other assorted workers in order of job levels all the way to the aisle in the front of the room where an archaic teletype thing sat, noisily spewing out requisitions for folders ceaselessly on little three-part carbon order forms. The form had the name of the member, the policy number, the date and who the file was to be sent to.

It would take me far too long to explain the workings of the job I was hired for and I don't wish to bore anyone any more than I already have, so suffice it to say, we handled paper. Lots and LOTS of paper.

Martha was a very strict supervisor and not well-liked by many of the girls who worked for her. She gave Judith and I the grand tour through the files and then introduced us to each and every one of the 'girls' in the department. I found it a trifle ironic I was simply going from a 'Dolly's Girl' in high school to a 'Records Girl' in the workaday world in such a short time, but there it was. I couldn't remember any of the 'girls' names for the life of me, either. It was all so overwhelming.

Finally, Martha took us to a desk and sat us down to learn the complex-looking code used for filing in the company, Soundex.

Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling. (Got that?)

This is the same type of filing system the DMV uses for driver's licenses. I could win bar bets if I were the drinking/betting kind and tell anyone what the first four digits of their driver's licenses are just as long as I know how they spell their last name. If your last name happens to be Smith, you're an S530. If your surname is Johnson, well, then you are a J525. Kadiddlehopper would be K341.
If you would like, me, Karen, to index your name by sound, please send me your requests. (Just kidding.)

I love words and word games, so learning Soundex was actually very easy and enjoyable. We were given sheets of sample surnames to encode and left to our own devices until lunch. At least this I could handle. My fears subsided a little bit.

Lunch would prove to be a yet another problem, though. Martha came up to Judith and I at noon and said, "All right, we'll go to lunch now. Bring your money or if you have something from home, bring that, too. On your first day I will take you up to the lunchroom to acquaint you with the procedure."

We followed Martha through our department to the elevator and waited with the other employees to board when the door opened. Once we arrived on the sixth floor, we were in an area with smaller, restaurant type tables flanking a main kitchen and a counter where we were told to pick up a tray and slide it down the metal rails as we made our food selections. I chanced a remark to Judith as to how finally, something felt familiar. I was happy to see how much this resembled the high school cafeteria back home. Judith said something under her breath that I couldn't quite catch. I asked her to repeat it, but she just shook her head and rolled her eyes again. She had the eye-rolling thing down to a science. It's a wonder she didn't get dizzy.

After we had selected our food and Martha led us to the cashier, she told us to feel free to select a table among all the other dining employees. Lunch breaks company-wide were at slightly staggered intervals so there would be room to feed the hundreds and hundreds of people who worked there.

Martha didn't sit with us, but pointed out the trash receptacles and the clock on the wall. "Lunch breaks are fifty minutes. Make sure you are back in the office with at least ten minutes to spare. Enjoy your lunch." And with that, she disappeared.

I sat down to the sandwich and apple I had selected from the counter and, trying to be conversational, asked Judith if she was hungry. She didn't say anything, so I said, "Oh, I'm so glad the day is half over. It doesn't seem like just a week ago, I was still in high school. Did you graduate last weekend, too?"

Still no reply. Judith was busy looking for something in her purse when I tried for the third time. "Gosh, I'm so nervous. But I think I'm getting the hang of the filing system, thank goodness. After the parking mistake, I was ready to go back to the farm."

"The farm.....you know what? Shut up! Do you ever just shut up? God, you're pathetic. Just do me a favor, ok? Don't talk to me," she snapped.

At first I thought she was kidding, but when she backed her insult up with another one of her icy glares, I suddenly lost what little appetite I had. This on top of the morning's fiasco was almost too much. I would have no friend in this petulant sock puppet There was nothing else to do for the incredibly long fifty minutes but try to eat my meal. As soon as Judith ate hers, she was up and gone. I stayed at the table by myself. There was no point in going anywhere. I felt so small and stupid and completely out of place. I wanted so badly once more to just go home and another wave of longing and self-pity swept over me when I thought of what I'd gotten myself into. I'd have to do this all again tomorrow and the next day and the next, with no end in sight.

The big clock on the cafeteria wall finally moved closer to quarter to one, so I made my way back to the office alone. I boarded the elevator, riding down from the sixth to the second floor with many other well-dressed professional people who also didn't have anything to say to each other. As the door opened and closed on each floor, more got on and some got off, and it was a like a bad dream. Everything was so foreign, every face was a stranger.

As I rounded the corner to our department, I needed to find a restroom. I had ten minutes until it was time to go back to encoding homophones. I came down the hallway which abruptly came into my department and noticed some of the other girls who worked in the department were standing around talking quietly. They were on the same lunch break I was, but they all knew each other. Aha, so conversations did occur in this asylum, I thought.

When they saw me, they stopped talking and stared. I smiled shyly, and glancing briefly at the restroom door I was about to enter, quickly swung it open and stepped in. That was when I heard the laughter. I thought how nice it was to hear that sound until I noticed something was decidedly wrong with the bathroom I just entered. I'd never seen toilets like those before. Oh, not again.... Would there be no end to my bad luck? I had just walked into the men's room. And the entire department had just seen me do it, since everyone's desks faced the bathroom doors.

I was mortified. I stood there in the empty men's room in dumb disbelief. What could I do to save face? Nothing but open the door and walk three feet to the correct gender facilities and hope that someday I could live this down. I tried to handle myself the way Dad did after the hecklers taunted him. I didn't have much dignity left though; this job was turning out to be the biggest nightmare of my life.

When finally 4:20 rolled around, Martha said I could go home. I picked up my purse and headed out into the sunshine again. I was stunned to see how much of the day I had missed. It was odd to think of being cooped up in a building all day long when I was so used to being outside. And I was also amazed at how tired I was, too. I hadn't done anything physical (well, except for the marathon I had run earlier in the day) but I felt bruised and sore at heart.

There was a throng of people coming out of the building and I had been told to enter and exit from now on by a back door, so we had to go through an alley of sorts. It was windy and dank and not at all pleasant. The crowd thinned out the farther we all walked as people headed to the closer, more senior personnel lots. By the time I got to my remote site, I was the only one. At least my Nova was still waiting for me.

I opened the door, climbed in, locked the door, and had a good, cleansing cry.

Then after the sobs subsided, I blew my nose and tried to find my way home.

I did not want to come back.

Middle-aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 7

2011-12-18T00:22:00.001-06:00

June 1, 1976 dawned pleasantly cool and sunny. The birds were happily chirping in the trees long before the sun had risen and I had been awake far longer than the birds, dressed and ready to go.

Carl came over to my parent's house to see me off on my first day of work. He had several months of freedom before he had to go to technical college for machining in the fall, which he spent working for his father in the family wrought iron business. As long as he was over so bright and early, I fried us both an egg for breakfast before I left for work, though I found I couldn't eat much of anything. My nerves were really frayed.

Armed with a kiss and a hug from Carl and a cheerful wave from my mother from the barn door, I carefully backed the Nova out of the garage and headed for All Casualty Mutual. I drove as carefully as I could, but it sure felt odd to be going all this way alone. I turned the radio on for company and tried to take my mind off the butterflies in my stomach. As the miles went by, the scenery changed. At first there was the beauty of woods and farms and lush green pastures where the cows were heading out to after the morning milking. When I noticed the cows, my throat became very tight and I had to blink back tears. I was homesick already. Soon I was driving through newer subdivisions and finally the city proper. My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight they were aching.

I got through the worst of the traffic but there were a few gut-wrenching moments when a detour for road construction that wasn't there when Dad and I had made the trip threw a monkey wrench in my carefully planned route. Oh, great, now I'm going to get lost and I'll be late for my first day of work! This was only the second time in my life I had driven in the downtown area but as luck would have it, somehow I ended up on Main Avenue again. Since ACM was the tallest building, I spotted it and pulled up right across the street.

Dad and I had noticed there were parking meters when we were there on Saturday, so I had come prepared with change. I plugged the meter for the longest time limit; two hours. Two hours wasn't very long, but I didn't know what else to do. The lady from Employment had told me on the phone a week earlier to park close to the building. There wasn't any other place to park that didn't have parking meters, either. Not even on the side streets. When Dad and I had noticed the meters on Saturday, I asked him what he thought. He figured I should do what the lady had told me, so I did.

There were so many cars, trucks and people out and about, bustling around and once again, I noticed the foul smell of exhaust and asphalt. I made my way to the crosswalk and finally entered the lobby of the insurance company through the big, revolving door. There was a security guard standing in the lobby who looked at me rather suspiciously. I was glad when the elevator door closed on his unfriendly face. Somehow or other I found my way to the Employment Office.

Once there, I was greeted warmly by the pleasant receptionist and ushered into a room with a table and chairs and told to have a seat and Alice, the personnel manager and the lady who had hired me, would be in shortly. There was be a short orientation meeting before being taken to my actual post. It turned out two other people started the same day as I did and had arrived before me.

One was a guy a few years older than me and I recognized him right away, though he didn't know me from a bale of hay. He had gone to the same school I had, but had graduated at least three or fours years before. I assumed he was fresh out of college. I'm not sure what department he was bound for, but he rose very high in the company, the last I heard, all the way to upper management. He was busying himself with his briefcase and didn't notice my entrance.

The other person in the room was an attractive blonde girl who looked me over rather disinterestedly. Her name was Judith and she had also been hired as a clerk in Records. (Ok, no it wasn't her name, but I'm changing it to protect the innocent.)

Alice came into the room and bid us all good morning and a pleasant welcome to our first day. Then she had us introduce ourselves and reveal where we were from. When the young man heard me say the name of the town, he peered at me closely, and then promptly flicked his gaze away.

When it came his turn to speak, he, of course, named the same town, too, and Alice said, "Oh, how delightful! Are you two acquainted?"

"No!" he hastened to say. "We've never met."

For some reason, I felt more uncomfortable since he was someone from my hometown. It made me more self-conscious, especially when he was so quick to disown me. Gee, I had taken a bath the night before.

Alice then turned to me and the blonde girl and said, "How nice that you two girls are starting on the same day and in the same department. You'll be able to lean on each other as you learn the ropes."

I was thinking the same thing, it was a stroke of good luck and maybe we could be friends. God knew I needed one in this lonely place. Judith and I smiled and nodded in tandem agreement with Alice. Then I chanced a shy smile at Judith on my own. When her steely blue eyes met mine they abruptly slid away and her forced smile melted like an ice cube on a sizzling hot sidewalk. I got the feeling I'd had so many times before. Apparently I wasn't going to be a Cool Kid at work, either.

I really didn't have any more time to worry about the frosty reception I'd gotten from my new comrade; Alice swung into her well-rehearsed 'Welcome to ACM' speech and presented us with paperwork for insurance and all the other necessary information we needed to fill out for our careers. She informed us that her portion of the new employee orientation would be rather generalized; once we were taken to our actual departments we would be fully indoctrinated.

As I sat there listening, I kept watching the clock. One hour was already almost up. The meter was ticking.

She asked the three of us if we had any questions. If not, we were going to watch a short video.

How I hated to ask the question, but I felt I had to.

"Alice, I have a question about parking," I began.

"Oh, yes, parking....well, parking here at ACM is on a seniority basis. We do have three lots with assigned parking stalls for our employees. Unfortunately the number of employees on staff far exceed the available lots, so we simply ask that all employees who are not eligible for our private lots find alternative parking in the city ramps nearby. You will find them located at a convenient distance from the office. If you don't wish to use the metered ramps or lots, there is an alternative employee lot located at a slightly greater distance. The choice is yours. You may ask my assistant, Ethel, for directions."

Oh, dear. Mistake number one. I had gone and parked on Main Avenue, right smack across the street and my meter was about to run out. Now what?

But before I could tell her what I'd done, Alice congratulated us again and turned us over to Ethel, for now it was time to watch the video.

I sat there and my stomach was doing backflips. Time was running out and fast. Would I get a parking ticket? Or would they tow the Nova? And, if they did, how would I find it in this concrete jungle? I had no idea where the impound yard was or the police station.

Finally, fifteen minutes later, the video was over and the lights were flipped back on. Ethel then asked if we had any more questions before she took us to our departments.

I heaved a big sigh, and said, "I'm sorry to bring this up again, but I need to know what to do about where I've parked my car."

My fellow new employees looked over at me curiously as I stood there, blushing furiously.

"I can give you a pamphlet that shows the lots Alice described, " Ethel said. "Then you can make your decision based on that. But as Alice already stated, there are no openings in our private lots for new employees."

"I understand, " I said, "But the problem is, I'm afraid the meter is about to run out on my car."

By now, I could only see the tiles on the floor, because that's what I was staring at.

"Why would it run out? Those meters are good for at least eight hours," Ethel asked."Which ramp did you park in?"

I gulped and said, "I parked on Main Avenue, right in front of the building."

I heard the snort of derision from my hometown guy and saw Judith roll her eyes at the ceiling as the two of them joined forces in disbelief.

Wow, talk about green as grass. All I needed now was for the elastic in my underwear to fail and my humiliation would be complete.

I missed the cows at home all the more now.

Middle-aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 6

2011-12-17T02:21:00.000-06:00

Dad and I had successfully scouted out my route for the following Tuesday and after a hair-raising trip back out of the traffic, we were finally home. I realize that the 'traffic' I am writing about would seem like a cake walk for most people who live in truly urban areas, but for a kid like me who lived where one car going by on our dirt road every other hour was heavy traffic, it was nerve-wracking.

Dad and I arrived at home safe and sound that Saturday and I felt relieved until I realized I'd have to do a repeat of this performance Monday through Friday for years on end. I tried to put the feeling of dread out of my mind, though, because the next day was Sunday and my graduation day.

It was also someone else's graduation day, too. That someone else was Carl He's been feeling a bit left out because so far, I have not included him in this story, so it's high time he got in the act. This will be old news for some of you if you've read me for long, but for the benefit of anyone who may have forgotten such vital information, Carl and I met in 1972 when we were fourteen. He was our local blacksmith's son and I was, of course, the farmer's daughter. Carl played a huge part in all of this, but in the interest of time and my sore derriere, suffice it to say he was there and I was in love with him. (Oh, I hasten to add, I still am.)

We all showed up to the school that Sunday, graduated, bid adieu to high school and went home. Graduation was a blur to me, I vaguely remember it, probably because I had too much on my mind. I had one day left, Memorial Day, and it was a very long one. I am wired pessimistically and have a sub-zero sense of self-esteem. I'm not proud of it; just stating a fact. My folks always used to tell me not to get a 'big head' on the rare occasions praise would be forthcoming, and they had nothing to fear. I remain humble.

And I was worried that Monday, oh, how worried. I tried to busy myself with anything I could, and grabbed our old push lawn mower and proceeded to mow the lawn. Nothing like physical activity to take the edge off the jitters. In high school, whenever we had to give speeches, I would always try to go first to get it over with because I figured that way, no one would remember how much my performance stank. And then I could sit and relax for the rest of the hour. So, in a way, that Memorial Day went down in history with me as one of the Longest Days of my Life. I just wanted to get the first day of work over with.

Like most human beings, I dislike being humiliated. Especially in public. And my nervous nature often gets me into a lot of predicaments I'd rather not be in. Haste makes waste and all that.

Pride always goes before the fall, then and now. My earliest memory of public humiliation is very fuzzy, I don't know how old I was, but it has stuck with me all my life. When I was a very little girl, my mother used to put my hair up in pin curls. Every night she would comb out my tresses and twirl the hair around her finger and pin the resulting curls with bobby-pins. My task was to sleep with all these pins in my hair all night long. I wonder how in the world she managed to get a three-year old kid to sleep with those things in all night, but I guess I must have been vain then. This was before I learned to be humble.

So anyway, from little on I would go to church with my mother (Dad did not attend) and people would tell me what a cute little girl I was. I was very shy, but heard the praise often (actually, I know it was my hair they found so attractive due to the resemblance to Shirley Temple, again, my hair, not me) and didn't think too much about it, one way or the other, really.

I thought I was too young to be all puffed up about my adorableness, but on the way home from church one day, I remember my mother slowed down on our drive and said, "I know people tell you you're cute now, and that's nice, but it won't last forever. I've been trying to downplay it because I don't want you to get a Big Head. You're going to be getting older and then they're not going to tell you that anymore, so I don't want you to get to thinking you're special or anything, because when they stop saying it, it will hurt."

I know my mother meant well, but that was truly a turning-point in my life. It was a good thing I was still semi-cute when one Sunday morning in church the unthinkable happened. I just vaguely remember it, but my mother has told me about it so often that it's become part of my folklore. And explains a lot about me and my personality.

The way the story goes was like this: Apparently there was a Christmas pageant and I was one of the little children who was supposed to be singing up in front of the congregation. I must not have been more than three or four years old and Mom said I was wearing a new little red jumper she had made for me. She had my hair all in ringlets, of course, and I had little white anklets with black and white saddle shoes. (I saw the picture of me wearing this get up, so I know this is true.)

When the time came in the service to head up to the front of the church, Mom said I was scared to leave her, and I clung to her like a drowning man to a life raft. Finally, after a stern whispered talking-to, she pried me off of her and I found myself out of the pew and into the aisle. There the patient volunteer music teacher motioned for me to hurry, because I was the last little 'cherub' to arrive. I was near tears, but Mom said I dutifully started to almost trot to make up for lost time on my way up that long, long church aisle.

But, I never made it.

Mom had sewn me the new little red jumper and blouse to wear that day, but apparently I was in need of something else much more. New elastic in my drawers. As fate would have it, right there in the aisle on my way up to the front of the church my underwear decided to make it's debut for Christmas, too. As I trotted, my undies descended and dropped, eventually all the way to my ankles, tripping me. I fell flat on my face.

Too bad I can't completely remember that day, because I guess I brought down the house. Mom said the laughter was prolific, even in the congregation of usually staid Lutherans, oh, I had them in stitches. How cute! My mother said she watched in horror as this all unfolded, bolted out of the pew herself, scooped me up and whisked me away to the Ladies' Room where she did a fast fix and a pin-up with a cheap brooch she was wearing. At least she didn't make me appear in front of my Adoring Public again that day. She said by the time we slunk back into church through the back door, the song was over. Thank goodness.

No wonder people found me cute. I had a regular act going. That was officially the end of any 'big-headedness' on my part.

All these things were running through my mind while I was mowing the lawn. What if this happens, and what if that? I was what-iffing myself to pieces. When I went out to greenchop that afternoon, I almost forgot to shut the cow yard gate. Luckily I remembered before the cows discovered my mistake.

When I finally went to bed that night, I tossed and turned. What if I made a major mistake my first day? Would they send me home? How would I explain my failure to my friends? How would I pay for a new car without a job?

I felt I'd put the cart before the horse, was crossing bridges before I got to them and had champagne taste on a beer budget all rolled into one.

But it's too late to shut the barn door after the cows are out.

"Tomorrow," as Scarlett said, "Is another day."

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 5

2011-12-16T12:25:00.002-06:00

After school on Tuesday, I met Dad out in the parking lot and off we went to the Shivy Garage. We were ushered into a little office with two rather seedy-looking orange plastic chairs. The salesman cordially bid us to have a seat and then the two men commenced to haggling. Dad asked the price of a new Nova.

Oh, a new Nova, eh? Well, let's see.......They didn't have one on their lot, but one could be brought in from their other dealership. We were dealing on a car I'd yet to see sitting on a lot about twenty miles away.

I had never seen a '76 Nova, so I had to do some research on them before we showed up at the garage. It was a nice-looking car to my way of thinking. Not too big. Actually, I knew a guy who owned a 1972 Chevy Nova SS. I didn't know him personally; that would have meant I was Cool, but we've already gone down that road, and as you may recall, I wasn't. But, oh, that SS was really a hot car back in the day, with a staggering 375 horsepower V8 tucked under it's diminutive hood. Complete with extremely wide back tires that stuck out past the fenders and a jacked-up rear end, this was a car to reckon with. I could have gotten to work in record time with that speed wagon.

Unfortunately, the 1976 version of the same car was not as flashy. By this time, California emissions were a concern and fuel economy was becoming an issue, why there was talk we'd be paying over a dollar a gallon for gas in the near future!

The car salesman quoted a number. Dad lobbed a lower one back over the desk. The car salesman said there was 'no way' he could entertain such a sickly, puling number. Dad brought out his trump card from his bib overalls, the one from the competitor's lot with their lowball price. (In reality, Dad did not want to buy the car from the competing lot because it was too far from home. He preferred to keep his business in our town if he could.) The salesman said he'd have to go talk to the boss.

He came back with that tense, rather sad look all car salesmen have to use when they need to prove they've gone to bat for you, the lowly customer, and said ok, they could meet the other garage's price, BUT they would have to order a different car and there would be a wait. For the price my father wanted to pay, sure, they could meet it, but they would have to be removing essential yet luxurious components. I was sitting there mutely wondering what luxurious essentials they were going to be stripping from the poor car; would it still have upholstered seats, or for that matter, seats at all? Would they take the windshield wipers off? Would it have windows that opened?

Dad drew himself up in his chair with dignity and said, "Like what?"

"Well, for this price, Joe, we can't sell you a car with an automatic transmission," he coaxingly crooned. "For this price, you're looking at a car with a standard transmission and no power brakes. I mean, c'mon now, we're here to sell cars, but we're not gonna GIVE 'em away. If you want to pay less, you're going to get less. It's just that simple."

My father was not the sort of man to be excessively proud nor arrogant, but he also wasn't the kind to come hat in hand begging, either. I saw his temper flare up and thought ok, we're leaving, but then he didn't. Though I didn't like the guy and his condescending tone, remembering my experience with the hoity-toity Driver's Ed car and that silly automatic tranny and power brakes, I was all for agreeing to the cheapened-up version of the car in question. "Bring on the standard tranny," I silently prayed, "I can drive it, Mister."

I was about to be surprised again by Dad's response. "Oh, that's the way it works, is it? Meet the price by lopping off extras. I see how it's done. I didn't ask you the price of a stripped-down car, I asked you for a fair deal on the car you have to offer. If you can't come up with one, then there's other places that sell cars."

We both rose to leave, but then the dealer had a change of heart. Ok, ok, he'd go back and talk to the boss about it again. He came back after a long ten minutes and said he couldn't meet Dad's lowest offer, but he could come down to this number and whaddya think about that? Dad leaned over the desk, took a look at the new offer, frowned, and said, "For this price, all the parts damn well better still be on it when it gets here. She needs it by Monday, is that a problem?"

No, it was not a problem. The car would be ready for pick up by Wednesday afternoon. Dad ordered them to throw in mud flaps and a Ziebart undercoating too. He got the mud flaps for 'free', but the Us or Rust treatment was extra. With tax, title and license, he cut them a check for $3,364.62 and I walked out of the garage into the sunlight the proud owner of a car I had yet to see. I didn't even know what color it was, whether it was coupe or a sedan, and whether the seats were upholstered.

There may be youngsters reading this who will gasp in amazement, "You could buy a new car for three grand and change back in the day??" Yes, you could, but my starting wage at All Casualty Mutual was just a little over $3 an hour. Which, by the way, was a staggering sum to my parents who worked for much less than $3 a week when they were my age. Ah, inflation.

On Wednesday, we had a only two more days left of school. But in Phy Ed we had a task to complete, too. I had taken a cycling class in gym and the last hurrah of my senior year was a 20 mile Bike Hike. We left the high school after classes were over by one route and came back on another, going ten miles in one direction and ten miles back. This bike ride meant nothing to me back then, I rode my bicycle constantly and even though it wasn't a fancy ten-speed, I could keep up just as well with everyone else. It was the one thing in Phy Ed I excelled at, well, that and jumping hurdles.

Anyway, we were on our way back to school that afternoon when I broke away from the bunch I was riding with and headed over to Main Street to see if my car was at the dealers lot yet. It was. I stopped my bike in the parking lot and stared at what I was soon to start paying off. It was the only Nova on the lot, so I knew this must be it. It was a cream color (not my favorite hue, but oh, well) and a two-door. I was really pleased about that, at least it wasn't an old fuddy duddy four-door. Then I decided to peek in the window and saw they hadn't stripped the seats, they were indeed upholstered with a black and white plaid. I don't know if you remember the old TV show 'WKRP in Cincinnati' or not, but I think the same cloth they used to make Herb Tarlek's tacky plaid suits were also installed in my car. Along with white wall tires. She was a Looker.

I'd agreed to meet Dad at the lot and we signed all the rest of the paperwork and I was then ushered out into the parking lot to watch while the dealer opened the doors and explained essential things about my new vehicle. Things like where the gas tank was and what sort of fuel (Unleaded Only!) to put in it and how the windshield wipers operated (they had left them on) and how the floor mats worked. Ok, class was over. They shook my shaky hand and said, "Congratulations, she's all yours."

Oh, that meant I was supposed to leave. I gulped. Ok. I can do this thing. I slid behind the wheel on that impossibly bright, plaid seat and was instantly surrounded by New Car Smell. (I love that smell, I'm weird like that.) Not wanting to keep anyone waiting, I turned the key and the car obliged me by starting. Dad stuck his head in the window and wryly remarked I'd better not rev the engine too much, look at the gas gauge. Good thing he noticed; it was just barely off the 'E'. I ever so slowly inched my way out of the dealer's driveway and remembering to use only my right foot, successfully embarked on our maiden voyage. I met him at the gas station a block away and had to borrow money for a tank of gas too, which was added to my total debt load. I was overwhelmed and not just a little scared. This was all happening much too fast. I wasn't so sure I was ready to grow up yet. I'd assumed all this debt and I hadn't even been to work.

Ok, so now I had the car in my possession but I didn't know how to get to the office. Since we still had a few days before I had to report, Dad decreed he and I would make the trip together to figure out the best way to get there. We decided to go sometime later that week, though, because we had first-crop hay to cut and cows to milk and all this running around was cutting into the farm work. I was so glad to go back to the farm and my tractors; being out in the field was the only thing that calmed me down.

Somehow I got through the rest of the school week and when Saturday arrived, we decided to head to the Big City. It had rained, so there wasn't anything to be done in the fields, anyway. I have to admit to something here; I had never been farther away from home than the Big City ever in my short life. My father had been as far as Milwaukee once, but that was years and years ago and he had driven a Model A to get there which had also needed three tire changes to make the 200 mile round trip. We lived only a dozen miles from Green Bay, but that might as well have been Timbuktu for all we went there, which for me, was once a year, right before school started. Dad drove Mom and I to Green Bay to go to Sears and Kresge's so I could buy school clothes and supplies. And that was the most nerve-wracking yearly experience of all of our lives. Traffic abounded, and we weren't traffic-minded people. At the time, the one- lane road we live on was literally a rutted up dirt trail with gravel added as an afterthought. In the Spring the road heaved up and sank down in fantastic ruts that tested anyone's ability to maneuver them and still come out with an oil pan by the time you reached the blacktopped highway.

Time had stood still on our road, but in bustling Green Bay, it had not. There were now some two-lane roads and even a few traffic lights. This was quite the change of pace for a family of farmers from the boondocks to navigate and the driving fell to Dad to negotiate. He did not feel my mother was capable (I think she was, but she believed him) so when we had to go to the Big Towns, he was the driver. Though he wouldn't admit to being scared, looking back, I know he was. He was out of his element and of course, our car was a concern, too, though he never had to get out to adjust the linkage. (I still don't know how he did it.) He would white-knuckle it all the way in to town and back out again, only breathing easier when we finally left the hustle and bustle behind.

I felt just the same way about traffic. I hated it. And I still do.

But, the skyscraper building was situated on the main avenue of the other Big City in my life in the opposite direction, and well, that's where I was going to have to drive, like it or not. Dad and I got in my Nova and headed off the twenty-two miles to scout out my route.

Dad was always cautious about driving, which is a good thing, and though he knew I could handle a tractor well enough, he wasn't so sure about my ability to drive in traffic. We were both very nervous, which made me jumpy and him more ornery than usual. To say it was a fun, father-daughter bonding experience would be a lie. It was more like a grim, headlong dash into uncharted territory. Neither of us really knew how to get to All Mutual Casualty without becoming one ourselves. Somehow we made it, mostly by spotting the tallest building on the skyline and going up and down a few streets until we finally arrived across the street from the joint. The avenue was all stop and go lights and there were a few one-way streets sprinkled in for good measure, so I was on tenterhooks driving my brand-new car in all this madness and mayhem.

Dad told me to park a quite a distance from the insurance company and both of us got out to walk down to the main avenue and see what sort of parking existed. The lady from Employment had told me to park close to the building, so Dad wanted to be sure I knew how to get there come Tuesday morning. As we rounded the corner of one large building, the windy conditions nearly blew us over, there's something about wind in that town that I'll never forget, and we both were taken aback by the ferocity of it.

And it turned out, there was another wind blowing in that town that wasn't so pleasant either. As we carefully threaded our way down the busy sidewalk thronged with shoppers, the traffic next to us had come to a stop for a red light. In one of the cars sat a bunch of young guys in a convertible. They spotted us and immediately started hooting and hollering. We were both alarmed, and I know I nearly stopped for a bit. What was it about us that drew such attention? I soon found out.

Back in the day, Dad wore plain blue bib overalls to farm in. They just made perfect sense, no belt to mess with, no pants to hitch up and very durable with plenty of pockets to carry all the necessary things, like wrenches and screwdrivers, a hunk of binder twine a pocket knife and a blue handkerchief to wipe his brow with.

When he was going away from home, though, to an auction or other event, then he always wore his 'good' bibs, the Stripes; blue and white, clean and crisp. He was very proud of his appearance, and would never appear in public wearing dirty clothing if he could help it. He always wore a clean and presentable seed corn cap on his head, too, which bore the name of the latest and greatest corn in yields a farmer could buy.

If he was attending a formal event, such as a wedding or a funeral, then of course, he had a good suit and a white shirt and black dress shoes, but on an outing such as the one we were on he would no more of thought of wearing his Sunday best suit than you would think of wearing a diamond tiara and a feather boa to the grocery store. He looked like what he was.

"Hey, looky there, it's a FARMER, boys!! Whoo, hoo! Who let you off the back forty, Gramps? Hey, Farmer, don't you think it's about time you get home to your cows? Where'd you park your tractor? Or did you ride into town on a horse? Hey, do you smell something?"

Blessedly, the light changed and our tormentors were finally on their way, though their shouts rang out down the street as they went. Dad snorted under his breath, "Well, what the h...," but then he just kept walking down the sidewalk with me at his side, with his head held firmly aloft.

Until that day on that glitzy sidewalk, I had never thought of the word 'farmer' as a dirty word or in any way inappropriate or something to be ashamed of. Though we never spoke of the incident, I was heartsick for my father. And proud, too. He had carried himself with dignity. Which was more than could be said for those jerks.

City life was decidedly different, and it wasn't just the traffic.

The green as grass farm girl was in for a rude awakening.

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 4

2011-12-16T11:15:00.000-06:00

While I was in school that day, my father was working busily behind the scenes scouting out a car for me. I can't tell you what a shock this was to me because my father was a tough character. He and Miss H had a lot of the same personality traits except Dad didn't wear bright red lipstick, dye his hair black or wear pantsuits with proper foot attire.

I had come along late in life for my folks, my dad was 45 when I was born, and by this time, he was 63 years old and still farming with no end in sight. He was born on the farm he was still working, and though this sounds Abe Lincoln-ish, he was born in a log cabin. The doctor who finally arrived to attend his debut to the world was a bit tipsy and forgot to fill out the paperwork, so it was some time later my grandparents remembered they'd never gotten a birth certificate for their sixth child. Then they couldn't remember when he'd actually been born, so there was some debate back and forth until they finally settled on September 20-27, 1913. The general consensus was it was around that time, anyway. Dad finally picked the 24th when he had to send away for a birth certificate at age 62. He said it sounded as good as any other day.

To put it mildly, there was no molly-coddling going on in my father's childhood, and there would be none in my late brother's or mine, either. Dad was raised Old School, children are to be seen and not heard, and should at all times make themselves useful. He had a love of reading and arithmetic and dreamed of going on to school past the eighth grade, but there was no money to buy better clothes and shoes, and his father had a farm to run.    Dad ended up staying on the farm he'd been born on for the rest of his life and though he was a good farmer, he was not a happy one. I think his dreams (though he never spoke of them) were always for a different life, one away from blood, sweat and cow manure.

My brother, Bob, was thirteen years older than me and had left home at nineteen to join the Army during the Viet Nam war. Other kids were running to Canada or signing up for college in droves to escape the draft, but my brother went right down and enlisted. I think it had more to do with his dislike of both higher education and farming than anything else, so off he went.

Bob had to go to the barn in the morning to milk cows before school with my parents. When he left for basic training, I was six years old and we really didn't know (or like) each other very much. He felt I was spoiled, and seeing our circumstances through his eyes, I'm sure it did look that way. While he was gone, I became my father's right-hand man out of necessity. Our farm was only 98 acres, but all Dad had left to help him run it was my mother and me. My father did not want me to milk cows in the morning before school, though. I'm not sure why, but suspect it was because he didn't want me to be picked on for smelling like a farmer. Back in those days, you didn't jump in the shower (we didn't have one) every day; you simply changed your clothes and washed up as fastidiously as you could in the kitchen sink. Bath days were Saturday night. I did, however, milk every night and helped with any and all field work I was capable of handling.

When Bob's two year hitch was up, he came home a very different man than the farm boy who had left. He was only home about a month and burning the late night oil and doing a little carousing. His girlfriend had taken up with someone else in his absence and he was restless. And angry. There was only room for one angry man under our roof, so Dad took matters into his own hands and said if Bob was going to live at home, he was going to keep decent hours and help with the farm work. Bob hated farming and refused. Dad said he'd then have to pay $50 a month rent. This incensed my brother no end. Ironically, with Dad's help, he got himself a car, a job (in the same town I was now headed for) and an apartment all in quick succession. My mother never got over it, to this day she still feels she should have stuck up for her son, but that was that. Being his sister, and now being a mother myself of a 21 year old man, I can see it now from two different angles; I think it was the right thing to do in some regards. He was much happier on his own. For awhile.

Anyway, while I was in school that fateful day attempting to wrap my head around my future, my father was out trying to buy me a car. A new car. I didn't know this was the plan. I hadn't asked for a car, either. Ever. I realize how spoiled this makes me sound, but trust me, Dad was not a push-over in any way. He had dropped me off at the school door that morning and at some point after breakfast gone to another little town eight miles away to haggle with a car dealer on a brand-spanking new 1976 Chevy Nova. (Alison, if you're reading this, quit laughing!)

I didn't know anything about this when I stepped off the school bus that night. Mom was baking again, the woman was a tireless worker even though her day had started at 5AM and wouldn't be over to well after 10PM, being a farm wife she had unending chores in the barn and the house. I still don't know how she did it, but then, being a teenager, I took her for granted. Ingrate that I was.

Turns out, Mom hadn't known about Dad's adventure, either. My getting a job so suddenly was such an unsettling thing that we were all sort of spinning in circles. Dad was always a 'take the bull by the horns' kinda guy and he'd gone off on a car hunt alone unbeknownst to either of us. We didn't find his absence unusual, he frequented a few bars in our little town and would often come home when we were already in the barn doing the evening milking.

That Monday night, though, he came home with Big News. I was to wait for him after school on Tuesday and we were going to go to the Chevy (my folks always pronounced it 'shivy') garage and see what price the dealer in town would give us. He already had a number on a little business card in the front pocket of his bib overalls but he wanted to see if he could get the guys in town to squeak under it. I took all this in with amazement, having to finally sit down on a milk stool before I fell down in the alley. I was going to get a new car? And who was going to pay for it?

Well, he had that all worked out. In his slightly inebriated state, he sternly told me that he would pay for this new car in cash, but I was going to pay him back in installments. Now that I was employed, I should be able to make car payments of $200 or more a month and still set some aside for savings. As long as I kept working on the farm at night after working in the office, I could live at home for free and he would not charge me any rent or interest on the car loan. However, if I reneged on the deal, the car would be his. End of story.

In the space of less than twelve hours I had gone from an 18 year old kid to a woman of the world with a car loan and payments hanging over my head. This grown-up world was not all that great. I got up off the milk stool on wobbly legs and took the milker off the poor cow who was by now, bone dry. I agreed to his terms, because they were fantastically fair.

I never felt I'd grown up 'poor' because by the time I came along, we always had plenty to eat and a roof over our heads. Like just about everyone else, we always had to be careful with money, though. Always. My father had grown up poor and never forgot what it was like to go to bed hungry as a kid, and though my mother was eight years younger, she had also come through some unbelievably tough times, including the Great Depression. They knew the value of a penny. And a penny saved was truly a penny earned in those times.    That's why my father buying me a new car was such a stunning development. I don't think he could have shocked me any more if he'd come home wearing Miss H's curly black hair. I went to bed that night and tossed and turned. How was this all going to work out?

Middle-Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part 3

2011-12-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

So, here we go again, yes, it's still 1976. And I'm a newly hired records clerk at a big insurance company with less than three days of high school left to my senior year. In less than a week, I'd leave high school behind and join the ranks of the working class. But first, I had to get a car.

If you read Part Deux of this tale, you understand why the 1964 Buick Special wasn't going to be a very dependable ride to and from my new job. Sure, I knew how to fix the shifting problem, but could I find a place to pull over in traffic every day? Besides that, the car's floor had rusted out so badly that we had to keep a floor mat over the hole that had formed, especially when it rained. Hit a puddle the right way and you were in for a not-so-pleasant shower.

I didn't know how to answer my father when he asked me what I was going to do about a car because that idea was as remote as the earlier call telling me I had a job had been. I had other things on my mind. I was late for school and Miss H's first hour Office Practice class. I didn't know what to do with the news I'd been hired, and though I hadn't been what you could call 'close' to Miss H., I felt maybe she'd excuse my tardiness if I went straight to her with the tale.

A word here about the late Miss H. She was a rather stout little woman who walked with a slightly shuffling gait. She had coal black hair and always wore bright, red lipstick and proper, neat, attire. She usually wore a rather haughty smile on her red lips and had a shrewd twinkle in her eye which could turn to a merciless stare if crossed. She was the most single-minded teacher I had ever had. She lived for teaching Office Practice; it was the woman's passion and she did it well. The Office Practice room was always a hive of very intense activity. Dolly would never tolerate hilarity, tomfoolery or hijinks in her Girls. We were to behave in a proper, office-like manner at all times, or be ushered out of her class. Either you wanted to be there to learn or you could leave.

Though I attended a rather small high school with a graduating class of around 100 or so, it didn't mean we were saints. There were some very tough characters in the school at the time, and Smoking in the Boy's Room was not just a song lyric. In our school, smoking in the Boy's room (and the Girl's Room and any other room in between) was done on a regular basis. I still am not sure why this wasn't nipped in the bud by the teachers or the principal. I guess it was that time when teachers were no longer allowed to clobber errant brats any more for fear of being sued. In any event, the place reeked of cigarette smoke and we had many smoke bombs tossed in the hallways and cherry bombs flushed down the toilets.

Oh, and if you were a Popular Girl, some of the guys would stop up the huge sinks in the bathrooms with paper towels and drag the Unsuspecting, Squealing Victim into a Boy's Room to dunk her into the water tank the sink had become. The girl would emerge screaming in mock-outrage for her soaking- wet state, but I figured the Ladies Doth Protested Too Much. In other words, in my opinion, I think it was an Honor for most of them to be baptized in this manner. Sort of like being named Prom Queen or something. It made you Cool if the guys tossed you into a sinkful of water because at least they noticed you. Unfortunately, I was Not Cool and therefore trudged through my high school years in a completely undrenched, arid condition.

All of the bathrooms in the school were inhabited by smoking and other shenanigans, except for the one adjacent to Miss H's turf. Her bathroom was Not To Be Messed With. Anyone caught loitering would be summarily booted out. She patrolled on a regular basis and tossed any ne'er-do-wells out on their ear. I don't know how this five foot two inch woman succeeded in removing flim-flam from her territory when other, bigger male teachers could not, but Miss H. did and with no more than a curt, "Get OUT."

They listened and out they got.

I will never forget the day a nervous titter arose in the Office Practice Room, though. One of Dolly's Girls had used the facilities and came back to report a most unusual sighting-- someone had plastered across the mirror in Dolly's Bathroom a centerfold picture of a very naked, very well-endowed man. The news spread like wildfire through the classroom, but in a very restrained manner. Everyone wanted to see this affront to the sanctity of Miss H's domain before she did. One by one, the Girls demurely excused themselves from their typewriters to take a gander. In case you're wondering, yes, I did, too, hey, I wasn't a Cool Girl, but that didn't mean I couldn't sneak a peek.

In her uncanny manner, Miss H. detected dissension in the ranks and within five minutes of its discovery by her students, sallied forth to the restroom herself. Then there were open guffaws coming from the Girls, it was just too funny to think of what her reaction would be to this latest swipe at her dignity. In less than a minute, Miss H was back from the bathroom with her head held high, holding the offensive poster folded in half with a triumphant look on her face. She stopped just inside the door and regarded her giggling Girls with a disapproving glare and immediately silence reigned supreme. There was, however, many a covert glance to see just what she had done with the centerfold, though none of us ever did know for sure.

It was to this intrepid educator I was headed that memorable morning. I found Miss H. seated in her glass-enclosed cubicle where she could survey the antics of her minions. There, they sat in orderly rows behind their trusty typewriters wearing their 'Dictaphones' as a steady, droning voice narrated a series of business letters into their ears. Tap, tap, tap, tap. When I walked in ten minutes late, I caught the eye of my two closest friends in the whole wide world. They were both typing away, but chanced a glance and raised eyebrows in my direction when I walked in. I made a grimace back in answer and knocked politely on our Fearless Leader's door.

I explained to Miss H. why I was late and for the first time in the three years I had known the woman, she actually grinned. In fact, she beamed. I had never seen her so happy. This was the news she'd been waiting for; in all the years of her teaching career, she had been striving to place one of her Girls in this particular insurance company and had never been successful. She often told us that every summer during the break she would apply to work at their office so she could glean from the employer what they looked for in skills and behavior of their employees. Year after year she had taken a busload of hopefuls to their marble vestibule only to have them all receive courteous rejection letters. Finally she had a Winner!

Me.

I was stunned by her elation, I almost thought she was going to hug me and then I was equally fearful she would burst into tears. She said this news called for an announcement and before I knew what was happening, I was unceremoniously hauled out into the Office Practice Room. There with my arm tightly in her grasp, she literally shouted, "May I have your attention!"

Startled wannabe secretarial students stopped typing in mid-sentence to see what manner of calamity was at hand to make their teacher behave in such an unheard of way.

"Girls, I have wonderful news for you! Karen V has just come in to my office to tell me she was hired this morning by All Calamity Mutual. I know you are all as excited as I am and will wish to join in congratulating Karen on her new position!"

About this time, I would have welcomed a celebratory dunk in one of the Boy's Room sinks. This was So Not Cool.

I looked into a sea of not-so-happy-for-Karen V faces. What Miss H forgot was most if not all of the girls had gone through the same interview process I had and had been rejected by ACM. How, exactly, were they to jump up and down for joy at the news that dear ol' Karen V had succeeded where they had not? If I had been in their shoes, I would have probably bounced a bottle of Whiteout off of Karen V's head. At the very least, I expected to see a few hand gestures that were decidedly not of the 'V' is for Victory variety aimed in my general direction, but there was a general murmur of, "Oh" and a few smiles from my two buddies, and that was about it. Everyone donned their Dictaphones without being told and soon the room was filled with melancholy tapping again.

I think even Miss H belatedly realized this probably wasn't the best way to announce my employment status. She was still very jolly, though, for the rest of the school year. I was glad I could provide her with at least four happy days, anyway.

I did owe her all the credit for what I had learned. She was a fantastic teacher even though my high school years were all nose to the grindstone. I had learned how to take a mean Shorthand and how to type quite well.

Unfortunately, I would not use either skill on my new job at All Calamity Mutual.

And I still had to figure out how to get there.

Middle Aged Women Don't Bounce: Part Deux

2011-12-15T12:14:00.001-06:00

For those of you who have read Part One, yes, you're right. I did fall and injure my pride and my coccyx. (Who ever dreamed up that word for the humble tailbone must have had a weird sense of humor, by the way, but I can assure you, it's no laughing matter.)

We were at Sharon and Duke's home, like I said before, and we were all happily engaged in a rousing game of Sheepshead this past Sunday night. The way the mishap occurred I'll get to at a later date. And the way I met Sharon will also be forthcoming. But you all know me, I have to digress. But this time, there's a good reason for it. Trust me. There is.

So back to the saga and 1976. Think of this as a slightly warped 'It's a Wonderful Life' if you will.

I finally hung up the droning phone and went and sat down at the kitchen table. Now what? I knew I was supposed to be elated, but elation was far from my first reaction to this turn of events. I sat there for a bit and then, remembered what my mother always said, "When you don't know what to do next, just do the first thing in front of you." I looked at the clock and realized I was going to be late for school since the bus was long gone.

I made a mad dash for the barn and got my father's attention from the other end of the alley. They had finished up with the milking and were feeding the calves when I ran in the feedroom door.

"What's up with you? Did you miss the bus?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied rather shakily, "I got a phone call from the insurance company this morning. I'm hired."

My father was a very stern man and not given to sappy, emotional outbursts of any kind, but I could tell my announcement had stunned him as much as it had me.

"When do you start?" he asked, gruffly.

"Next week Tuesday."

"Well, get outta the barn, you don't want to stink the school up when you get there. I've got the truck keys in my pocket. C'mon, I'll drop you off." He set about cleaning his shoes on the lawn as we exited the barn.

I clambered into the Ford F-150 pickup next to him and we headed off on our three mile drive to the high school. He didn't say a word for the first half-mile of our side road. We met a few neighbors on the highway in their trucks, coming home from the sale barn. Monday was the weekly cattle auction in our little town and most farmers wanted to get their cattle to the yard early in the morning. My father gave them the standard two finger salute, which can be given without raising one's hand from the steering wheel. They returned the greeting in kind.

Then he startled me by saying, "What are you going to do about a car?"

I drew a blank. Yeah, what was I going to do about a car? The job I had just accepted was a stunning twenty-two miles from home, a distance we only traveled when visiting my father's sister once or twice a year. And even at that, my Aunt Dorothy lived on the outskirts of the big city, not in the very heart (or bowels) of it where my skyscraper office was located.

We weren't well-to-do farmers by any stretch of the imagination and our little farm was prosperous, but well, it was little, so there were no huge profits being made every year. My folks owned two vehicles in 1976, the 'new' 1968 Ford truck and a 1964 Buick Special which both had standard transmissions. Learning to drive both of them was no problem for me, since I was driving tractors by the time I was seven.   I loved the pickup. I was driving a truck when girls driving trucks was decidedly Not Cool. My dad didn't think it was proper however, and said I should always drive the car on the few occasions I had call to be out and about in public.   Of course, I did not drive either the car or truck to school, the bus went by our door and since it did, I was to be on it. Except for when I missed it.

When I took Driver's Ed in high school, we were provided with a brand-new 1974 Buick Century with, an automatic transmission. Oh, dear. This was a dilemma for me. I had been driving standards for better than half my life, and now what? I told my mom about it the night before behind the wheel instruction started. She didn't know how to drive one either.

When I was plunked behind the wheel with the semi-bored, oft terrified seen-it-all-before Driving Instructor, he gave me the standard instructions. I tried to interrupt him to tell him I had no knowledge of the new-fangled automatic tranny, but he cut me off in mid-stammer.

"This is the steering wheel. Adjust your seat and your mirrors. Look before you move and then look again. Check your blind spots. Now proceed," he sighed, long-sufferingly, and was gazing at his checklist.

My driving partner was a very popular city girl cheerleader who was nice enough, but let's face it, we didn't move in the same circles. She was also named Karen, in fact, there were five of us in the same grade, so we'd both respond whenever the instructor said our name. Long ago, in elementary school, the teachers had used a complex code to differentiate between all of us. There was Karen G, Karen K, Karen T, Karen W and finally, me---Karen V. Throughout my entire time in school, I was Karen V, which was fine by me, because no teacher could ever pronounce my maiden name correctly. It was sort of a standing joke for the entire class to shout the correct pronunciation of my last name whenever a new teacher got it wrong. I was too shy to do it. I had one English teacher insist my name really wasn't pronounced the way I was taught, she insisted she knew how to pronounce it the 'correct' way. I wasn't very fond of her.

But anyway, back to the Driver's Ed car. I backed up and my left foot automatically went for the clutch. Oh, my, no clutch; my foot hit the floor with a thud. I quickly corrected and stomped down on the brakes (which of course, were Power Brakes, yet another new development for ol' country gal me) and we screeched to a very abrupt stop. The instructor had been wearing sunglasses, and I looked over to see him carefully readjust them back to the bridge of his nose from the top of his lip where they had landed.

"What in the world are you doing?! You do NOT use your left foot to drive a car! You use your RIGHT foot to brake and accelerate. I thought you knew that!"

I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Cheerleader Karen nervously readjusting her seat-belt to a more snug position. Both of my passengers were ghastly white and clearly terrified. I received another lecture about my seeming lack of respect for the usage of the correct limbs in the safe operation of a motor vehicle, and somehow, I made it through my first experience driving an automatic. I wasn't so sure the automatic transmission was an improvement.

I longed for my Dad's trusty Ford pickup and any and all of our farm tractors. They were dependable and made sense.

I did not like our family car, though it was my mother's pride and joy; the first Buick they had ever owned. It may have borne the prestigious 'Buick' nameplate, but I swear it had a lot more in common with Stephen King's famous Plymouth Fury, Christine. The Buick Special was just as cantankerous. My dad had bought it from an insurance salesman and often said he thought the odometer had been turned back, because that car had issues. The chief issue was it's tendency to become stuck in third gear. If you've never driven a standard, this will be a 'huh?' moment, but if you have, you'll understand the implications of having to pull out from a stop sign in high gear.

To get a car to move without stalling starting out from a dead standstill in high gear is a talent all it's own. You have to ride the clutch and step on the gas all at the same time, lurching ahead ever so slowly with the car's engine running at high rpm's until the vehicle gains enough momentum to smoothly hit it's stride. No matter how many times Mom or I drove the car, at some point in our little outing to town three miles away, it always managed to get itself stuck in third gear. Dad taught me what to do to fix it, we merely had to pull over to the side of the road, raise the hood and jiggle the linkage until it was aligned properly. Then, with any luck at all, we could proceed until maybe the fifth or sixth time downshifting from third to second was required. Simply, park, jiggle and return to the driver's seat. Good to go.

The Buick also had an air cleaner problem for awhile too, which entailed two people's assistance. After church on Sunday or after grocery shopping (the only times we ever went anywhere) I would go around to the front of the car in the parking lot and Mom would climb behind the wheel. She would then reach down and pop the hood and I would raise it and place my hand over the end of the air cleaner while Mom turned the key. Then the engine would fire and I would bid her to rev it a few times and we'd be ready to roll---after I checked to make sure the linkage for the transmission was properly seated.

I remembered the sleepless night before I took my driver's test two years before. I had politely asked (you didn't beg my father, or wheedle, wail or complain to him, as he would brook no such nonsense) if I could take the Ford truck to the police department for my behind-the-wheel test, but he would hear none of it.

"There's nothing wrong with the Buick. You just don't know how to drive it! I never have a problem shifting it. No daughter of mine is going to be seen driving a cop around town in a pickup truck. Both of you women shift too fast, that's the problem. Just go slow and it will work. And for cryin' out loud, don't try to force the shifting lever inside the car, one of you two idiots are going to break it clean off and then what will we have? A car without a shifting lever, that's what."

Ahem. Ok, so I had to take the Buick to our local police department in the end, anyway. Luckily, the examiner was an older gentleman who appeared to be on his last legs. I don't know if he was dying from tuberculosis or was a ten pack a day smoker, but the poor man would give me a direction and then break out in the most horrendous coughing fit I had ever heard.

"At the corner, turn right, hack, hack, hack, ahargh, arrgh, aaaack...." and as he coughed and spluttered, he turned his head to direct his spasm out the open passenger window. Which, turned out to be a mercy for me in more ways than one. One of the rules of the DMV is that the car you appear with to take the test be in 'Good Operating Condition'. Well, I knew I was going to flunk if the car wouldn't shift. I had gone to the police station with the full expectation of being sent home a failure. The official DMV examiners were only in our little town the first Wednesday of the month, since they came from bigger cities and traveled to and from the outlying areas as a courtesy to those of us who didn't venture so far from home.

The examiner had me drive through a few residential streets in our little town of no stop lights and watched as carefully as he could, between coughing attacks, my form behind the wheel. He had me stop on a hill and park and all was well, because I never had to put the car in third. For the back streets we were on, the speed limit was just about right for first and second gear. With any luck, I might pull this driver's test off without a hitch. But then came the clincher. I had to drive down Main Street and that entailed shifting up to third whether I wanted to or not. So, here goes, we're in third gear and we're cruising back down to the police station. Maybe he'll just have me park the car and that will be it!   I won't have to shift again if I do this just right and no traffic gets in my way.   We were within a block of the station when my hopes were dashed.

"At the next corner, please make a right-hand turn," my spasm-ridden examiner requested.

Great. Now I was going to have to shift from third into second. I nodded imperceptibly and held my breath, signaled my intention, stepped in the clutch and raised the stick on the column from third up into second. To my utter amazement, all the gears meshed correctly and we were now blissfully in second gear. I could have kissed the car then and there. But we weren't home free yet. Looming ahead was the last stop sign of the trip. The examiner told me to turn right again at the corner; I was going to have to go for low gear from second. This shouldn't be a problem, low gear had never been an issue before. And that's when it happened. The Buick was stuck in second gear. I knew it just by the way the gear shift felt in my hands. Luckily, there was some traffic coming and I had to wait. But how was I going to explain the fact we were going to be pulling out into traffic in second gear?

I thought it was all over, time to 'fess up and admit the car is not roadworthy and neither am I. But as fate would have it, at the very same moment I was debating whether to cry or break the gear shift off in a fit of despair, the examiner sailed off into a fit of coughing the likes of which has had no equal in my life ever since. He was in agony.

And so was I. While he was hacking out my passenger window, gasping for air and spluttering, I was wiggling that gearshift like a maniac, willing it to shift, just SHIFT one more time, you can do this!! and though I had felt the shifter bend in the middle, miraculously, it finally settled into low gear. I was so stunned you could have knocked me over with a feather. Luckily, at the same time my transmission recovered, so did the examiner. I was seriously worried about the good fellow. Finally the traffic cleared, I smoothly negotiated the turn and we pulled up to a triumphant stop back at the police station.

"I was going to ask you to parallel park," he said, 'But since you can handle a standard tranny, I don't think it's necessary. You passed with flying colors. Congratulations." Before he could hear my profuse thank yous, he was off on another coughing fit and merely waved his clipboard at me to follow him into the building where I would pick up my license and my anxiously waiting mother.

And wouldn't you know it, on the way home, I had to stop just before the stop sign on Main Street to adjust the linkage before we could go home. Just like Jimmy Stewart/George Bailey kissing that old loose knob on his staircase, I felt like smooching the old Buick right on Main Street.

Part Three when I can sit for awhile longer.

Middle-aged Women Don't Bounce Very Well: Part 1

2011-12-15T03:35:00.001-06:00

I've been gone for a few days and oh, how I've missed blogging; boring you all with the mundane details of my day-to-day existence. The reason for my absence is so embarrassing that I was just going to pretend I was busy with Christmas preparations, like cookies and decorations and wrapping presents and other holiday-esque things. Well, I have been doing some of those things, but that's not the reason I haven't been blogging about my super-scintillating life.

I haven't been writing because I can't sit down. And typing standing up is not my forte' either. And sleep has been eluding me, too.

Why can't I sit down or sleep, you may ask? Well, there's a reason. (And, you can rest assured, there won't be any pictures in this post to protect the squeamish among us.)

It all started last weekend. I was so excited. We were invited to play cards at my friend Sharon's house. But, I have to back up the truck one more time and tell you how I came to meet my dear friend, Sharon.

Way back in 1976, I was a senior in high school, and a very serious one at that. I had no aspirations for my future other than secretarial work since I was a fair to middling hand at typing and also very proficient at Shorthand; which, by the way, after three years of classes, I have never used once and for the life of me, can't recall now. I actually spent some time looking at Gregg Shorthand online the other day and was saddened to find so much of it had vanished from my brain. But anyway...

Our Office Practice teacher, Miss Dolores H. was as serious a teacher as I was a student. She was known sarcastically-affectionately as 'Dolly' behind her back and her students, all female, were known as Dolly's Girls. Miss H. (ok, Dolly) was adamant about the supreme importance of Shorthand.

"Always go into your future employer's office with at least one spare pen in case the one you are writing with malfunctions. You do NOT want your employer to have to pause in his dictation of important company business because you are in need of a new writing instrument. And, never leave the cap on the pen as the additional weight will slow you down. It is my duty to prepare you girls for your careers after you have left my classroom, and I intend to turn out nothing but the finest product for your future employers."

Dolly was also a tad overboard about typing business letters perfectly. One mistake on a typing assignment led to an automatic F. I was so very cautious about typing then. Remember Whiteout and correction tape? How about those pencil-looking erasers with the little brush on the end meant to gently erode the mistake off the paper,but instead left a gaping hole if you pushed too hard? I learned how to type on a standard typewriter, the kind you had to actually push the keys on, but then one year our school upgraded to the IBM Selectric typewriter and I was stunned. What an invention!

But what can compare to today's marvels? The Word Processor and it's hallowed Backspace key are on my list of the Top 100 Best Inventions Ever. I've nearly worn the printed 'Back' part of the Backspace key clean off my keyboard after all these years. Yes, that's right, you read it here, I'm not the greatest typist anymore.

And Dolly was extremely serious about one thing, after three strict years of office practice classes, she was determined to help all of her Dolly's Girls obtain employment. She loaded up her senior students on a bus and whisked us off to a very large insurance company in the big city where we were given job interviews and aptitude tests. It was a nerve-wracking day for me because I am a worrier by nature. I barely slept the night before.

When I got off the bus with my fellow Girls, I looked around with dismay. We were dropped off on a side street next to a (gasp) ten story tall office building. This was the biggest building I had ever seen in my life, yes, I admit it! and I was petrified. The smell coming off the pavement and through the sewer grating was nastier than anything I'd ever encountered in the barn. I detested the fumes of diesel and gasoline, and the cars rushing by on the street scared me no end. What was I doing here, so far from my farm? I felt claustrophobic in the little town I went to school in, which at that time, had a population under 3,000 and not one stoplight.

I did rather badly in the interview (I was so scared!) and assumed I'd bombed on the tests (so much Math!) and went home on the school bus with the rest of my classmates, confident I didn't have to worry. There would be no job for me in this town.

Imagine my surprise when I got home from school about a week later and my mother, who was mixing bread, pointed with her elbow to an envelope lying on the table. "It's for you, from the Insurance Company," she said in a hushed tone.

"Oh, well," I said, "I guess I might as well read my rejection letter." I thought by saying that it would hurt less when I opened it, but it didn't help much.

It was indeed a Dear Karen letter. "Thank you for seeking employment with our company. At this time, we are not hiring, but will keep your name on file for future reference. No further action is required of you. Thank you for your interest in our company."

Yep, don't call us, we'll call you. Ouch.

I really did feel blue after getting the rejection letter even though I didn't expect I was going to get the job. There were more than a dozen of us who applied that day and none of them were hired, either. I changed into my farm clothes and headed out to the tractor to get the feed bunk out of the cow yard and do the day's greenchopping. Out in the alfalfa field on the 574, no one noticed the tears. I don't know why I was bawling; the insurance company and the town it was in had intimidated me to my very core. Rejection hurts no matter what direction it comes from, though. Still, I much preferred the tractor seat and the fresh air. By the time I had a load of hay for the cows, I was feeling pretty optimistic. Who wants to work in a stuffy old office anyway?

So, imagine my surprise when two days after the rejection letter, the phone rang in my parent's kitchen on the Monday before I graduated high school. It was 7AM and my folks were still out in the barn doing chores, so I picked up the phone and believe it or not, it was the big insurance company calling me to tell me I now had a job if I wanted it.

"I know this is rather short notice," the lady on the phone said, "but we have an opening in our Records Department and we are wondering if you could start work on Tuesday."

"Tuesday, as in tomorrow?" I croaked.

"Yes, as in tomorrow," she said.

"Well, I don't know if I can get out of school. Um, I mean, I haven't graduated yet."

There was a pause. "You haven't graduated yet? Oh. I see. Well, when do you graduate?"

"On Sunday."

"All right. Well, then we will expect you to start work on the following Monday."

"Um, well, that's Memorial Day...."

(Big Sigh on the other end.) "Oh yes, you are correct, the office will be closed. Then we will see you in our office on Tuesday. How does that sound?"

"Uh, well, great....I mean, yes, I'll be there. But could you tell me where I am to report? And where do I park? And what time I should arrive?"

The patient lady from Employment filled me in on all the details rather vaguely. I was to simply show up in the Employment office by 8AM on June 1, 1976. And as far as where I should park, well, somewhere nearby, and they'd assign me a parking lot later that day.

"Thank you, Karen, and welcome to the Company. Good bye." Click.

I was standing with the phone in my hand, listening to the dial tone hum when I heard another noise. The school bus pulling away from my driveway. I had just gotten hired by a big insurance company and missed the bus for high school all in one morning.

Wow.

Stay tuned for Part Deux.

Fertilizer Friday: December 9

2011-12-09T01:08:00.001-06:00

Oh, boy, Fertilizer Friday again over at Tootsie's and nothing is blooming. Or growing-- except for my anxiety. And my ulcer. I have to get at Christmas preparations around here. There's no putting this off any longer. I refuse to let the GADS get the upper hand.

I told Pudding we could no longer stare back wistfully at last summer. (Yes, that's right, I talk to my dogs. A lot. And you only thought I was long-winded in writing? Ah, no, you would be wrong.)

She didn't want to hear such sad news.

I said, "Pudding, I have to stop wandering around in the Back Eight with you and Teddy when I need to be baking, cleaning and sewing."

No more peering around in the White Forest, examining next year's mulch supply.

"I know, you love this time together and so do I, and we are very lucky there's no snow yet."

"But, now, are you listening? Pudding, do you realize Christmas is less than two weeks away? Do you know how much work I have to do yet? I'm not sure if we'll find the time to fit in our Walkies every day if I don't get some more work done around here. And since both of us are losing our girlish figures, you won't be able to have as many treats as usual."

"Ah, NOW I have your attention!"

"Your brother isn't as worried about all the fuss and frenzy as us girls are. Teddy's sure it will all come together like it always does with no effort on his part. But his coat is getting a little tight, too..."

What will happen if we run out of time for Walkies? Hmmmmm.......maybe even Teddy will have to cut down on his treat consumption."

"Aha! Now I have your attention, too, Teddy? I know, I don't want to give up treats either, so we'll have to all work harder to get the Christmas preparations done."

"Let's head to the house and I'll finish up the silly tomato cage tree I was working on, ok?"

"Pudding, no lollygagging around, c'mon now, we have to hurry."

"Treat consumption is at stake. Let's run!"

"We can make up for lost time if we try!"

"Ok, guys, help me with this last tomato cage/tree, would you?"

"Is that the best tomato cage you could find? Ok, it will have to do. It would work better if it weren't so crooked, but if I had the time I could straighten it out. I don't, so I won't."

"Now, go find me some garland....oh, is this all we have left? Ok, it's green, but it falls apart really easy. Oh, well, let's start wrapping it around the cage:"

"Just tie an end to the cage and start walking in circles. I'm really good at it." (Walking in circles, that is.)

"Ok, Teddy, so I ran out of one type of garland and had to switch to another type up near the top, but you get the general idea, right? It's pathetic, I know, but it's supposed to look like those 'skinny trees' they sell at the big box stores, and if you squint your eyes and turn your head just the right way, you can kinda see it. If you try REALLY hard. Pudding, can you see the look I'm going for here?"

"All the inventive people out there in Blogland could find fantastic things to make this look more appealing, of that I'm sure. But this is me, and you dogs know how it goes around here. Make do with whatcha got. And what I got is a lot of Autumn Joy sedum flowers that tipped over in that first snowfall. So I got out the red spray paint and changed them from brown to crimson a few days ago while you dogs were napping."

"Pudding, you may notice I left the stems of the sedums real long so I can just poke them through the garland and they'll be hidden inside the tomato cage."

'Just stick them here and there, all over the tree."

"And if you two can find any red bows lying around, we can use them, too. Another thing I found out is the red spray paint works wonders for faded silk flowers and red bows, too. I took the washed out-looking, tired flowers and bows and gave 'em a new coat of red. So far, they're holding up really well."

"Feel free to spray paint some dried hydrangeas, too. We'll see how long they last in the weather."

"It's ok to leave some of the sedums their natural color and some of them red. Just trying to mix it up a little. What's that, Teddy, you wanna go in? I know, it's getting really cold out. Ok, let's take off your coat."

"Teddy! Will you stop tearing your coat apart? I know you think you look like a sissy in it, but sheesh.....

"You're gonna need it tomorrow."

"Pudding, what do you think? Maybe if we hurry we can get it all done?"

"That's my Girl!"

"If we run as fast as we can, maybe we'll both get our girlish figures back too."

Hey, us girls can dream.

Read 'Em All Tuesday: Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes

2011-12-06T01:49:00.001-06:00

Today, being Tuesday (already?) it's time for Read 'Em All Tuesday again over at Tootsie's.

Please allow me to introduce you to another of my favorite bloggers, John (aka El Gaucho) of a blog entitled: Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes.

How I came to find John's blog on the vast interwebs was serendipitous, like so many good things in life. I usually read all comments at the end of other people's blog postings (yes, I'm nosy like that) and when I read one of John's comments, I found myself laughing out loud. I had to find out more about this character, so I clicked on his name which led me to his blog. There was no looking back, I was hooked.

Here's his blog description:
'My attempts to move from California and create a happy and sustainable urban homestead in North Dakota, with some musings on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free girlfriend, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome.'

And here is John's introduction in his very own words, shamelessly pilfered from one of his early posts:

'I am John, son of John. I live in a house with one girlfriend, two very deaf dogs and two garden gnomes. The deaf dogs provide entertainment, solace, and a furry thing to pet. The garden gnomes inhabit the out of doors and not only watch over my humble abode, but scamper around late at night and become involved in some entertaining hijinks.'

El Gaucho has a fantastic sense of humor and wit. Last night I told my friend Ann I was going to write about Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes for Tootsie's meme. She was online at the time, too, and decided to search for John's blog while we were on the phone. In a very short time I heard her chuckling, and I knew she'd found it. That's just the reaction I have every time I read John's work, too.

And here's another perk of reading El Gaucho's blog...in Ann's own words:

"Oh, that was funny! He writes very well, doesn't he? And his posts are really nice and short."

Uh, yeah, Ann. You're right. John gets to the point rather quickly, or at least in under 4,502.3 words. (Unlike me. Ok, I can take a hint.)

You read me for War And Peace- length posts, but you can read John for pure enjoyment.

And trust me, you won't doze off halfway through.

Please go and visit El Gaucho, you'll be glad you did!

Fertilizer Friday: December 2

2011-12-02T10:52:00.001-06:00

Ho, Ho, Ho.

No, I am not auditioning for the part of the Jolly Green Giant, though I do share many physical characteristics with the verdant fellow--I try to be jolly and, sigh, I am rather large. (Is there a Jolly Green Giantess somewhere?)

The ho-ing around (no, not THAT kind!) is my feeble attempt to get into the Christmas mood and out of the gardening one. I've heard a few folks say they wish we had some snow to make it seem more like Christmas. Even though I like snow as much as the next Wisconsinite, and I know it's eventually going to fall in epic proportions, I'm happy to say we don't have any.

Yet.

So today, being Fertilizer Friday over at Tootsie's, I thought I'd bore you all with pictures of the non-flowering yard. Though I try to appreciate all the seasons of the year and all the seasons of my life for their blessings, I have to confess that late fall, before snow covers the ground, is my favorite time of all. The gardening frenzy is over, hunting season is also over (except for bow-hunting and black powder, but they have to aim a lot better to hit me) and the dogs and I are free to roam at will.

This morning we did just that.

There's Teddy and Pudding hiding behind my sorry excuse for a Christmas tree/decoration on the back porch. Under all that faux-greenery lurks a tomato cage. We are on the stretch and warm-up phase of our walk. (And tinkle phase.)

First, we have to make breakfast for the Girls. Here they are dining on dear Screech's leftover cat food. Did you know that chickens will eat just about anything? They are definitely not Vegans. True story. Table scraps are their favorite and meat scraps rank highest on their preferred list. I especially like to make sure they have enough protein in the cold winter months.

Ok, the Girls are fed. Let's see what else is of interest around here.

Teddy and Pudding decided we should go for a walk in the back yard. We strolled past the Quarry on our way.

The water level is up and there's a layer of thin ice on the pond.

Lots and lots of rocks on our way to the Back Eight.

The flowers are gone that used to hide them, and the snow isn't here yet to bury them, so this is another reason I love this time of year. No work to do and rocks to look at. Doesn't get any better than that.

This early in the morning, the ground is still frozen solid and makes walking a joy, no mud, no water hazards to cross, everything is just right. And there was very little wind, either, so the dogs and I had a great time.

Heading out behind the windmill, here's something else I wanted to show you...these are old telephone poles given to us by a friend. They are all cedar and much, much bigger than they appear here, many of them are over 20 feet long. These will be used for making more split-rail fences around the gardens. I love old split-rail fences but since we are on a tight budget, we have never bought lumber. The ones we have around the yard are all from landfills (it's amazing how many we have found in the dumps over the years) or from neighbors who no longer wanted theirs. Any and all cedar logs are welcome here.

Our farm fields are definitely taking on Fall's colors. There's a shadow of the windmill in the hay field and one of me, too.

Heading up to the woods, I took a picture back toward home from the Back Eight. I so appreciate the solitude living here on this old farm of ours provides. No houses for over a mile in some directions. Just peace. This morning it was very still.

There's Mom's house on the far right. When I was a very little kid, I played up by the woods whenever I had a chance. And do you know what my favorite destination was?

This old rock pile.

Some little girls play House and Dress Up. I played Rocks. I used to pretend I was in the Mountains. Never mind I had never seen a mountain in my life and that our farm is really rather flat; this pile of fieldstone is what started my lifelong obsession with rocks. The trees you see in the background are on the line fence between our little farm and the neighbors. I sat up here and played for hours on end. My folks would worry I was lost and would yell for me and I'd have to hightail it home so they didn't have to stop work to find me. Since my late, older brother was thirteen years my senior, he had grown and left the farm, so I had no one around to play with, but that was an advantage too.....I also had no one to pick on me for being silly. It wasn't as lonely as it sounds. (And it also explains a lot about me, doesn't it??)

I run the lawnmower up here every other week or so in the summer to keep my walking trails in shape. This trail borders the woods that doesn't belong to us, on the left, with the Back Eight on the right. It was so beautiful up there this morning; the sun was warm on my face and the dogs were having a great time romping, too.

The trail I mow sort of meanders a little, I wish it meandered more; next summer I'll work on that. Right now, it basically makes a loop through the white pines. We drive our cars out here all the time, too, it's another one of my favorite things to do.

The sky was so blue today; I have to confess something, I rarely touch up any of my photos. I admire the work and diligence that so many other bloggers have put into the pictures on their posts, but frankly, I'm lazy. I might straighten one up once in awhile or crop something, but I just don't take the time to make every photo Perfect. Yup, I'm like that. What you see, is what you get. No makeup here.

Here we are on our way back toward home. I know this post looks just like an earlier one I did this fall on Walkies with the dogs, but this may very well be the last time we have such a pleasant day and I wanted to commemorate it. Teddy and Pudding have the biggest grins on their little faces, how they love this freedom!

Here we go around one of my meanders and past the old hay rake. We still use this piece of machinery, even though it is an antique.

It is very photogenic.

Just think what someone with great photographic and editing talent could do with this old wheel?

Leaving the rake behind, we walk along the frosty trail heading around the White Forest.

Coming around the corner, it's much chillier here in the shade. We all rush toward the sunshine.

Doggies in the lead, there's always something to sniff.

Rounding the bend, on the homestretch to the windmill.

We walk past the Quarry on the other side.

The pond looks really pretty right now in that dark, blue color. You'd think it was really, really deep, but it's only about five feet.

More rocks and trees. If the little kid I was back then could see this place now, I wonder if my folks would ever have gotten me back home for chores?

I thought about decorating the dome in the Formal Garden, but once again, I'm lazy. And everything I put up on a nice day like this, will have to be taken down in snowbanks up to my nether regions later on. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

No flowers, just rocks and trees. And speaking of Fertilizer Friday, this tree could use some. It's not supposed to be yellow.

The cedars are supposed to be yellow, though, so they're OK.

What a difference from August's view, though..............

The tree below could have been part of my Accidental Post for Donna at GardenwalkGardentalk...I ran into it repeatedly hauling pallets of stone out of the Formal Garden most of the summer, so it will be our Christmas tree as soon as I get the energy to find a saw.

We have been cutting our own trees for years now, this one was a volunteer seedling that sprang up in the rocks by the Quarry. I used to think I couldn't bring myself to lay a saw to the base of one of our own homegrown trees, but once I did, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I have lots of them here and there, growing on for the future. Even though our trees are not perfect, they're special. It is still a little bittersweet though. I still remember our yard the way it looked when we built this place:

Little Hut on the Back Road circa 1979

The blue line was our original one acre and the corn field behind the house is where the Quarry Garden is now and beyond that is the Back Eight. Not a tree in sight. (Except for across the road, and that doesn't belong to us.)

Oh, here's a few shots of my attempts at Holiday Decorating.

Poor Ernie. This sort of looks like a badly-disguised missile silo, but it's supposed to be a tree. In reality, it's another badly disguised tomato cage.

He was much happier in the summer:

Pretty in Pink. Sorry, Ernie. There are gardeners out there who could really dress you up handsomely for Christmas. Unfortunately, I'm not one of 'em.

The doggies say it's time to go in.

Time for their breakfast.

And time to.........

Wave goodbye to Fall!

(Sorry for the awkward pose, couldn't figure out how to take the picture and wave all at the same time, ha!) I told you I have a lot in common with the Jolly Green Guy, check out that shadow. Yikes.

Ho Ho Ho............looks like we've found the Jolly Giantess.

Linking up with Tootsie, please go and visit Glenda and all the fantastic blogs at Fertilizer Friday

I am also late for linking up with Carolyn for her lovely 'Walk in the Garden' challenge. Please do visit This Grandmother's Garden

Carolyn has indescribably beautiful photography and her post on sugar-frosted foliage is a calorie-free way to indulge your senses!

W4W: Accidental

2011-11-30T10:24:00.001-06:00

Donna at GardenWalkGardenTalk has suggested the word 'accidental' this week.

She gave us a head-start on this word, at least a week (or more) to ponder on what it means to us. My apologies in advance for not coming up with a well-thought out post which is absolutely NOTHING like the one Donna wrote for this topic. Make sure you check out her interpretation and the other fine people who linked in this week. There's a wealth of information and insight to be found with fantastic photography.

And then there's mine.

Accidental

Strange word, if you stare at it long enough, isn't it? I've been staring at it for days now, trying to come up with something. Everywhere I went, I kept thinking about the word.

Accidental.

I typed 'accidental' into my search engine of choice and had a good laugh over one of the things that popped up. Under the definition of accidental was this advertisement:

"Are You Schizophrenic? Top Five Schizophrenia Signs! What the Doctor is Not Telling You!

Well, no, I don't think I'm schizophrenic, I'm just having problems defining what the word accidental means to me. I'll go back and check on those Top Five Signs, though. I may have accidentally stumbled across something vital to the well-being of my mental health here.

I have been an accidental gardener way more times than I care to count, planting things in all the wrong places, and then having to remove them later on. Case in point, the last tree we moved this fall; a very beautiful river birch. Alas, the poor birch is not so happy right about now, but first, some history. Yes, you know long-winded me can't just tell the story without a back story:

Five years ago, Carl and I went shopping for groceries one night and on our way out to the parking lot we passed the grocery store's green house. I don't know if this is common all over the country, but around here, many of the bigger grocery and big box stores have temporary stocks of live plants, trees, and shrubs for sale in the spring to tempt their clientele. I have succumbed to this temptation many times, having bought a dozen yellow-green 'George Peabody' cedars from a grocery store once before for $5 a piece:

Can you see them there, behind Castle Aaargh's foundation in the background? We planted them in 2004.

They grew:

And it was no accident that we planted them there, either. We wanted them to provide color and contrast to the spruce trees surrounding them.

The 'George Peabody' thuja occidentalis (I guess they've been renamed 'Aurea' now) have grown beautifully.

But getting back to the River Birch.......since we had such good luck with the cheap cedar trees we'd bought years before, we decided to buy a cute little clump river birch standing about 5' tall for $8 from the same grocery store. We didn't have any river birches planted in our menagerie here yet and thought the addition of another deciduous tree might be a good idea to contrast with all the conifers. We carefully fit the the potted tree into the back seat of our car and rode home with the trunk and branches between us.

The tree seemed like a good idea and a great bargain at the time, until the day I set out with a shovel in one hand and tree in the other, determined to find a home for it. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out where to place it to it's best advantage. Finally, I gave up and put it back in the holding area behind the garage where I kept it watered and waiting for a home for the rest of the summer.

Winter was coming on and is often the case with me and my GADS, it was time to get all the forlorn, unplanted stuff in the ground somewhere. Once again I marched around the yard, siting the tree here and there, but still, no good place presented itself. Carl and I gave up and stuck the tree in the shrub bed along the lane with the promise being when we found the 'perfect' place for it, we'd move it. After all, Carl built a tree spade, so no problem. We wouldn't wait too long to move it, we know trees grow. We're not silly.

Yeah. Right. Fast forward about five years. I was out removing hosta and daylily foliage this fall and was working in the shrub border when I was stunned to see how much the river birch had grown. It was now overshadowing several conifers we prize, especially a lovely Serbian spruce and affecting the form of the junipers and white pines nearby, too. Darn it, why didn't we move it? But looking at the size of the trunk, and at the tiny space we had to work in since all the other trees had grown so much it was obvious our tree spade would never fit in the area now. Carl and I debated what we could do. We could try to hand dig it, but what a job that would be, and probably all for naught. We could saw it down, but that idea didn't appeal, either. There was a very slight chance the tree might survive if we moved it.

So, what did we do?

Oh, I'm afraid to show you. The images are gruesome. Anyone who loves trees will be mortified.

There is a tractor involved. And Joel. And Carl.

And carnage.

We used the H to dig out the tree. With the bucket. I know, I know, if there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Trees, I'd be locked up right now.

This image makes it look like we had plenty of room to work, but this image lies. In reality, Joel is driving back and forth on top and over hostas, daylilies and shrubs. Yes, that's right, this is an accident in the making.

First we had to get the tractor in the shrub bed. There is a small pathway there, so it wasn't total destruction, but pretty close.

Here Joel is looking askance of me to see if I'm still ready to do this tree great bodily harm. Yes, go ahead. Let's get it over with.

They almost have it out of the ground, here, note the ruts.

Ok, it's out, now. Oh, dear...

Time to reposition the tractor.

Carl is in the middle of the tree, trying to get it situated on the bucket.

Backing out carefully........

And headed down the lane to the front of the house. Joel is still checking to see if I'm really ok with this. He didn't have to worry, sadly, this was all my idea. (And fault.)

We had stalked all over on the front lawn earlier, looking for a good place to plant the tree. The place we picked out is ok, but not ideal.

Carl bid Joel to set the tree down and then dig a hole. (NOTE: Always call utilities before you dig!) Don't forget that important step, or a much bigger accident could happen, accidental death by electrocution. Gardeners being injured or killed coming in contact with buried power lines is very common. And preventable. We had this area marked out and knew there were no power lines here. The locating service is free.

Joel dug a hole. (And Carl pointed. He's really good at that. He's always pointing at stuff when Joel or I are on the tractors. And yelling stuff to us from the ground that we can't hear. Good thing he can't hear some of the stuff that accidentally comes out of my mouth when I'm driving the tractor.)

Hole sorta dug. You can tell our hearts aren't exactly into it, we all highly, highly doubt this tree will live. We did hand dig the rest of the hole and carefully tried to arrange the roots in the ground, though.

So, there it is, the Accidental River Birch. If it survives, it will be a miracle. My apologies to the horticultural community for this baring of the dark side of our gardening practices.

Still not sure if this is the way Donna intended 'accidental' to be used in a discussion of the word, though....and since I may or may not be schizophrenic (I haven't read the Five Top Signs yet) here's another random thought:

The dental part of 'accidental' brought something else to mind. I had a dentist appointment to have my teeth cleaned last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Upon my arrival in the office, the pleasant hygienist said it was that time of year again, time for X-rays. In the wink of an eye I'm wearing the lead apron, biting down on the uncomfortable thing they have to cram in your mouth and holding still while the hygienist bolts from the room to take the x-rays.

It always makes me nervous when they leave the room.. I mean, I know that's probably where the switch is to zap me. And I do understand they cannot be exposed to radiation over and over again during the course of their work day, either. But exactly how safe am I? Shouldn't I flee the scene, too?

Weren't X-rays an accidental discovery, too? Time for a little more investigation.

In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen accidentally discovered an image cast from his cathode ray generator. How he came to have a cathode ray generator in his possession (don't we all?) is open for debate, but after all, he was a Scientist.

As the tale goes, he called his wife into the room and took an X-ray of her hand which showed her wedding ring resting on nothing but her bones and, evidently, traumatized the poor lady. "I have seen my Death!" she reportedly shrieked.

The Rontgen-Ray was born. Later on, realizing this probably wasn't the catchiest name for a machine, it was shortened to X-ray (the X stands for Unknown). Come to think of it, I've made a lot of accidental X-Meals and sewed more than a few X-Garments over the years, and let's not mention the X-posts I've written that are about unknown topics. This one is shaping up to be one.)

So, I was right, the discovery of the Rontgen-Ray was purely accidental.

And so was the development of my x-rays at the dentist's office last week, too. I was tilted all the way back in the chair with the hygienist busily scraping away at my plaque-encrusted teeth while she told me about her Thanksgiving plans. I was making hasty comments in between swishing and vacuuming. I would ask leading questions, and then, when my mouth was occupied with her hands and tools, I could only make appropriate grunting sounds.

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oooooo.... uh-huh...."

(You know what I mean, right? Besides, you're not supposed to hold a conversation when your mouth is full. My mom taught me that.)

The hygienist and I were thus occupied when another person entered the room. I couldn't see the person, since I was in the chair, staring up at the light.

"You're not going to believe how her x-rays turned out," she said, in a hushed, slightly giggly tone.

"Oh, why is that? How did they turn out?" my hygienist asked.

Yes, what's this about my x-rays? I wanted to ask, but my mouth was full.

"I was developing them and sent them through the machine too fast, so they are superimposed on each other," she said. "They look really weird. You're going to have to retake them. I'm sorry, it was an accident."

"Oh, well, that's ok, accidents happen," the hygienist replied. "We'll see if any of them can be salvaged before we take more."

Turned out, I only needed one retake. No big deal. I was hoping they had accidentally stumbled upon something extraordinary in my mouth, but no such luck.

Now I'm off to Finally read those Top Five Signs. If my doctor isn't telling me something, I need to know what is being withheld. Of course, if I confront her on why she's not telling me these things, she'll probably say she didn't do it on purpose.

It was accidental.

P.S. Don't forget to read much better posts on what this word means to others at:
GardenWalkGardenTalk

Read 'Em All Tuesday

2011-11-29T12:02:00.001-06:00

I have another wonderful blog for all of you to check out for Tootsie's Read 'Em All Tuesday. Tootsie asks that we select a favorite blog from our reading list and introduce them to you.

So here we go:

Meet Myra from My Mother's Daughter

Here, in Myra's own words, is what her blog is all about:

I am a junkaholic. I love to recycle, repurpose, reinvent, upcycle things other people no longer want and create unique items for my home and garden. I hope you see something here that inspires you to look at things in a different way.

Boy, does she ever inspire! Every time I visit Myra I am simply amazed at all the wonderful works of art she and her husband Joe have created. Objects you would never think twice about using as art become materials to reuse in beautiful ways in their talented hands. Their latest creations just charmed me no end, take a look and you'll be amazed, too.

She rescued an old corn crib and is renovating it into a gazebo (her cornzebo) which is already an amazing garden feature that I cannot wait to see finished! I'll never forget the post showing that huge structure coming down the road.

Stop in and see Myra for inspiration and enjoy her creations.

You'll be glad you did!

Oh, Dear

2011-11-28T22:09:00.001-06:00

Having problems with posting. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it's definitely something. Hopefully I'll figure it out before I go bald. I'm pulling my hair out here.

Well, anyway, all I wanted to share was what else is going on around here (other than consuming mass quantities of food over the weekend) so if you're interested in my goofy antique antics, see my previous post: We Couldn't Pass Them Up.

If you would, please let me know if that post is showing up for you. I'm starting to think I'm losing it, because sometimes it does show up for me and other times it doesn't.

I'll go take an aspirin now.

We Couldn't Pass Them Up

2011-11-28T17:00:00.000-06:00

Now that Thanksgiving weekend is over, I thought I'd show you some of the other stuff we've been doing besides eating. We've been taking little, impromptu road trips lately to our favorite haunts, namely graveyards (where my new status as a geocacher-er is being put to good use, incidentally) and if an antique store or three should happen to pop up on the way, well, of course, we have to stop in at them, too.

A word here about my 'decorating/furniture style'....it's non-existent. I overheard a rather feline visitor tell another guest long ago that the decor in our home resembled 'Early American Hodge Podge', which I took as a compliment, despite the snarky way she hissed it. That is, until I found out it wasn't meant to be a compliment. (I guess that's why she was whispering?) Then I was a tad hurt.

This marble-topped table belonged to my mother's mother. Since my mother is now 91, this table is Old. It was the first piece of antique furniture I have ever owned, and the only thing I have from my grandmother who passed away at the age of 41 when my mother was 8 years old.

But I got over it and decided to embrace my trendsetting ways. Actually, the lady was wrong, our furniture was more like 'Early Marriage Too Broke to Afford Anything New' style, really. And though she's never been back to visit us again, we haven't changed much of anything since. Instead we keep adding to the mish-mashed collection.

When we got married in 1978, my mother-in-law gave Carl and I a pair of little tables she had gotten from a thrift store which had at one time been a bedroom dressing table connected by a mirror. Somewhere along the line, someone had sawed the tables (with three drawers apiece) apart from the mirror and they began their life as independent pieces. My mother-in-law had painted them a rather chalky blue color which looked nice in her home but my plan was to someday strip the paint and restore them to their original wood finish.

Our youngest son, Dave, had them in his room as bedside tables for years until he grew tired of them and stuck them out in the upstairs hallway. Since he had seeming disdain for them, I nabbed one when we finished the stained glass Iris shade a few years ago and stuck it in the corner of our dining room. (On that horrid orange vinyl floor of ours, it made quite the 'statement'. I was really going to strip the blue paint eventually...) The other table stayed put upstairs.

When Dave moved out a month ago, he came home to pick up more of his stuff and surprised me when he brought the little blue table downstairs with him. "Where's the other one?" he asked me.

I stammered, "In the corner of the dining room, under the lamp."

Well, he felt bad then. "Oh, I never noticed it there....did you want to keep them? I thought they were mine, but I won't take them if you don't want me to."

Of course they were his! They had been in his room since he was little and I was glad to see he wanted to put them to good use as bedside tables for his new apartment. (He is in the process of refinishing them now.)

Plus, this gave me the excuse to go hunting for something new for us. Well, I should say something old for us. We both love old furniture. Carl was all for the adventure. You never know what you'll find.

Like Yammie.......(short for Yawman & Erbe, an old office furniture maker extraordinaire) who came to live with us two years ago. There's 30 drawers here, yes, Thirty....and they're all put to good use.

Yammie (pronounced Ya -me, not yammy, like a yam, sheesh) is now instrumental in keeping my canned goods and recipes in order and freed up a huge amount of cupboard space in the kitchen:

Notice the inordinate amount of space in this drawer for 'Bar Recipes' aka anything with chocolate in them, followed by an Apple Crisp.....

And, another confession....I use canned corn. I just never have much luck with growing our own. It's all the raccoons around here, they get to it before we do. (That and I'm too lazy to can it.)

This is our First Aid drawer. We play with stained glass quite a bit and we're a clumsy bunch at times, so this drawer is used far too often.

I don't know what I'd do without this huge, old cabinet. We found him in a tiny antique mall, sitting in a corner. Yammie is made of quarter-sawn oak and is all in pieces, you can arrange the stacks of drawers in any configuration.

So, since Dave took his corner cabinet, we needed something to stick that lamp on. Time to go antiquing! On a rainy night a few weeks ago, we headed to a few antique stores. One we love to browse through is a huge gallery of antiques that have all been restored. They have the most beautiful furniture. If I had a huge house, (and a huge bank account) I could easily furnish my entire home with the absolutely gorgeous pieces in their store. Alas, our home is much too small for most of the lovely furniture, but we can dream, right? Their prices are not that high, though, considering the workmanship and materials that went into the furniture. They just don't make stuff like that anymore, at least not in stores we can afford.

We left the luxurious antique gallery and headed to another antique mall, arriving within fifteen minutes to closing. We decided to split up. Carl went left and I went right. Just as the announcement of the store closing came over the loudspeakers and as the lights were being flicked off, I came around the corner and there it was.

An old cabinet, the kind that held phonograph cylinders before the days of CD's.

I have a 'thing' for quarter-sawn oak and this little cabinet was so sturdily built, it just had to come home with us. Just look at the drawers; I love drawers. In this small house of ours, every inch has to count. We crammed it into the backseat of our Pontiac and off we went.

The old phonograph cylinder cabinet makes a wonderful stand for our assorted stained glass lamps, too.

I haven't named it yet. (You know I have a name for almost everything, right?) I guess I could call it Phony, but that seems rather mean. Or Cilly? (For the cylinders it used to hold?) Goodness. Some people call these Edison Cabinets, so I guess this could be Eddie, but somehow, it doesn't look like an Eddie, either. Any ideas out there?

Moving on.........here's something we found this past week at an antique store-aganza. Now, you may wonder what in the world we are going to do with these, and you'd be right. We don't know yet.

Do you recognize them? They are tree grates, used in cities to allow water and air circulation for trees growing in sidewalks. These four incredibly heavy grates are our Christmas present to each other this year.

(I put the old bow there to show how I would wrap these if I was giving them as a gift. That's right, I'd just tie a bow on them.)

They are big, about 5' wide and almost 3' tall. I was thinking a gate of some kind, because I especially like the way they look upside down with the ribs sticking up. Like a sunrise or a sunset. The guy at the antique place didn't really want to part with them all that much; he had plans to take a torch and do some creative cutting and welding, but I love them just the way they are. I was seeing them mounted on a lovely pedestal of some kind and used as a driveway entrance. Or something. That's the problem with us, it's always something.

I also thought of using stained glass as an insert. These could be used for boot grates, too, to wipe your feet off on (that was Carl's idea).

One thing is for sure, we'll use them.

For something.

Giving More Thanks

2011-11-26T09:51:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving is still going on here. Our sons had other obligations to attend with their girlfriends, so I decided to throw what constitutes a 'feast' around here (chicken, not turkey, but no one protested) on Friday night instead. I wasn't going to insist they all come here on the holiday itself; couldn't see them having to eat at three (or four) different houses all in one day. Friday worked out just great, and Ann and Grandma Lucille were here, too. Everyone had fun and us four old folks played Sheepshead until 1AM. We have one more Thanksgiving feast to attend on Sunday and we'll be done overeating for awhile. (Until Christmas.)

Speaking of giving thanks, I received the nicest surprise the other day from a dear blogging friend, Sue, who lives in England. Sue writes a wonderful blog, My Garden & Me. Before I came to know her I was always so nervous when she visited my little garden blog because Sue is, after all, a True English Gardener. If anyone would know what an English Cottage looks like, it would be Sue!

She's been cheering on our progress building the stone house with the rest of you kind people, too and I can't tell you how much we've appreciated it.

Me, back in October, hammering away.

Sue knows how much we love rocks around here and wrote me to say she was sending us something from her home to ours. When the box arrived, I was so excited. Look what was inside:

A Genuine English Rock

Look at this beauty, isn't it just the most perfect rock you've ever seen? It's white with a pale pink stripe and so incredibly smooth. I've never seen another rock like it. I love it sited right on the edge of the Quarry. It fits right in, it's the accent we always needed there. We placed our new rock horizontally and vertically, it works either way, such a versatile specimen!

From any angle, Sue's rock is so striking. Look at how it fits in with our Iceberg Rock in the background, too.

Can you imagine what the postage must have been to send a rock this size all the way from England? And I wonder how Sue found a box it would fit in? I imagine there were some grumbles from the postal carriers on both sides of the pond. After all, rocks are very heavy. We can use this rock in so many different ways here. It's truly a gem in the landscape; the pictures prove that.

But the One Place this rock would add so much authenticity to is:

(you guessed it) Castle Aaargh.

If we mortar Sue's rock into Aaargh, we could say the structure contains rock imported from England. We wouldn't feel silly or too big for our britches calling it a 'castle' then...... after all, Sue's rock is from the Land of Castles. (And Monty Python.)

My heartfelt thanks to Sue for her generous addition to our garden; she has given us a true gem which can fit in the most amazing places, be it the Quarry or Castle Aaargh. England must be a magical place, just like the Harry Potter series led me to believe.

This rock has magical properties, too.

It can even fit in the palm of my hand!

Thank you again, dear Sue, for sending us this authentic piece of England.

Castle Aaargh thanks you, too, for the right to bear the name.

It's a much better title than..........

Zoot:Welcome, brave sir Knight. Welcome to the Castle Anthrax.
Sir Galahad:The Castle Anthrax?
Zoot:Yes... it's not a very good name, is it? Oh, but we are nice, and we'll attend to your every need.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/quotes?qt=qt0470622

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T02:19:00.001-06:00

Here it is, Thanksgiving Day, 2011.

Time to Give Thanks for all the Good Things in my life:

Our sons, Joel and David

Carl, Joel and............

Trophy Rocks

Ann

David

Mom

91 Years of Love and Counting

The late Screech


Pudding

Teddy

And last, but not least, the fact we're still here. People said it couldn't be done. 33 years together; we're hoping for as many more as possible.

And I'm also very thankful for all of my dear friends....old and new, here and in Blogland.

You are all a blessing to me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Progress, but not Perfection

2011-11-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

It's getting deep around here. Time to put some boots on. I have never seen so many manure trucks in my life. Remember last Friday I said we'd been living with semis rolling past our house every few minutes? Well, guess what. Today is Wednesday and it's still going on.

They come and they go. Back and forth. To and fro. 55 mph and Jake-braking abounds. Tra la la la la..

Ten or more semis making twenty mile round trips from 8AM to 9PM all day long. There is no end to the sh.....oooops, I mean, staggering amount of manure they are hauling from the humongous megafarm. Cows are prolific providers of poo, of that I can testify. Being an old farm kid, I know how much they 'go', but we only had about 40 head of cattle at one time, not 6,800. (I looked up the dairy online and found the herd size. Well, no wonder they're running non-stop.) I can't envision six thousand, eight hundred cows all in one place.

They haul the manure down our road one mile to the next cross road and then down a half mile to what used to be our neighbor's farm. All that remains of this once beautiful farmstead is a machine shed now. The house was torn down first, followed by some smaller sheds and then finally, the barn. (The corn stubble in the foreground is our land.)

The semis are hauling the manure to a pumping station thing:

Which is hooked up by a big hose to a tractor:

that is injecting the malodorous slurry right into the ground.

Since they're injecting it, the smell isn't as bad as it could be. But it's still pungent. And there's still a whole lot of land left to cover. Oh, boy. This is going to take a lot longer than we thought.

Lots more trips to and fro.

Lots more noise.

I long for the days when farming was done the way we did it. Smaller equipment, more manageable herd size and reasonable acreage. The good, ol' family farm.

But so few of these exist anymore. Even when I was young, it was getting harder and harder to keep the kids down on the farm. Farming is hard, demanding work. There are no days off, no paid vacations. You have to be home to milk cows twice a day, morning and night, every day of the year. The weather doesn't like to cooperate, things break down and animals get sick. And there is little respect for the profession.

Times changed. Little farms like ours were slowly changing over to bigger farms as old farmers retired and their acreage was bought up by other, younger farmers. Farms went from 40 acres to 100 acres to 300 and beyond. Herd sizes went from 20 or 30 to up to 100 head. Tractors got bigger and new equipment was invented.

But somewhere along the line, the entire family farming tradition really changed. Sons didn't automatically grow up to take over the family farm anymore. There was much easier work for farm kids with way better wages in factories and offices. Sons and daughters no longer looked to farming as their future. My brother couldn't shake the dirt off his feet fast enough when he turned 18; he headed out for greener pastures and never looked back. Farming was not going to be his future, either. I didn't marry a farmer, and well, by the time Dad was ready to retire, the tornado took the barn down and that was that. He sold the few cows remaining and rented the farm land to a neighboring farmer.

So many abandoned farmsteads look like this:

No cows here. Not anymore.

No hay in that mow.

It's still a beautiful barn, but time is taking it's toll.

There are a great many old barns around that look like this one.

In ruins.

We take a lot of pictures of barns, I could post a barn picture a day for quite some time. I miss our barn, too. If only it didn't cost so much to keep a building this size in good repair. But, unfortunately, money doesn't grow on trees out in farm country, either. And once the land is sold for new subdivisions, shopping malls or megafarms, it's all over for the small farm.

Oh, well, the old days are gone. Times change.

I remember my mother saying that when my father bought his first tractor they had no more use for the workhorses, so they were sold. Mom was rather afraid of the big horses; hadn't really liked them very much, but she said the day the man came to pick the team up to take them to their new farm, she was surprised to find herself in tears.

The tractor replacing horses was a big change.

Things would never be the same after that. It was the wave of the future.

I'm not saying all advancements are bad. Tractors revolutionized agriculture. A lot more work could be accomplished in a much shorter time. Before he bought his first tractor on steel wheels, my father had plodded along behind a team of horses cultivating his crops for decades I bet our farm didn't seem small to him then.

Carl and I walked around the forty acres west of our house last night after sunset (wearing blaze orange, of course) and it was a long hike. I can't imagine what it must have been like to take a team of horses and a one-bottom plow and go out to turn the sod over. It must have taken forever just to plow one acre. Too bad they didn't have pedometers back in the day, I bet my dad and the horses put on a whole lot of miles every day.

I'm amazed at how much things have changed in my parent's lifetime. Mom is 91. Dad passed away ten years ago, but if he had lived, he would now be 98. Mom was born in 1920, Dad in 1913. A big jet was flying over rather low the other day and Mom said, "If your grandma was still alive, the sight of that thing flying overhead would have terrified her."

The stories my mother could tell of the way things used to be, the hardships endured, the work she did; they are all amazing. She's been keeping little notebooks since my dad died and journals everyday (she is a blogger, too, in a way) and has threatened that she will toss them out one of these days.

"Who would want to read this silliness?"

I begged her not to. I'm not sure what is in them, though I know she is chronicling her life and day-to-day activities. I have asked her to write down her memories of childhood and the farming years, too. I know it will be fascinating to read them (but not now, she's very private of them at the moment). But I dread the day I can read them, because that will mean she's gone. I will have to guard against getting the pages soggy.

My folks lived through the Great Depression (Dad always said there wasn't anything great about it) and a whole bunch of wars and presidents and no indoor plumbing (we didn't have an indoor toilet until I was four years old) and milking cows by hand by lamplight and walking those famous miles to school in all kinds of weather. When the sun set, it got dark. Not much else to do but go to bed. Today's cars and computers, airplanes and cellphones were all the stuff of science fiction. The wave of the future.

My mom likes some of the changes. Indoor plumbing and electric lights are definite perks. But she won't give up her wringer washing machine and washlines. But then, neither will I! She said she never thought she'd live to see farming done the way it is now, though, and to tell you the truth, I never thought I would, either.

Progress..................if farming changed this much in Mom's 91 years, what will it be like in the Future?

Maybe I'll live long enough to see time change this way of farming, too.

I'd gladly wave goodbye to some aspects of it.

Cover Me

2011-11-22T20:52:00.000-06:00

We have most of the garden put to bed for the winter, and what a relief it is. This past weekend we bought a silo tarp and did our best to pack Castle Aaargh up for the winter, too. It's really hard to stuff a building with things sticking up like door-frames and poky conduit underneath a tarp, but it's under wraps for now.

We had covered the building site back in 2005 when construction first started, too, but didn't realize how heavy snow and ice become over the course of the winter. Talk about saggage. (Is that a word?) The plastic tarp caved in under the weight of the melting snow which formed icebergs a foot thick and tore the cheap tarp and in the end, we had a round circle of stones full of ice.

So, the next year, we tried putting a center pole in the middle like a circus tent so the snow and ice would simply slide off the high spots and glide to the ground. That didn't work either. Our circus tent collapsed after the tarp tore around the point of the central pole. We'd had a blizzard with very high winds and I woke up one night to the sound of something making a tremendous amount of noise only to find the tarp in pieces and flapping away with great gusto. That was in 2006.

Winter 2010--no cover.

From that point on, we just gave up trying to protect the building for winter. We didn't cover it because there was really no point. The snow and ice would find their way in anyway.

For the next four winters, it sat open to the weather, filling up with snow. Freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing. And wet.

But this year is different, this year we got a whole lot accomplished (according to Optimistic Carl) so Pessimistic Karen thought it best we try one more time to protect our hard work from the elements since we didn't get far enough; there's still no roof. I don't know if the tarp does any good, in reality it may do more harm by holding in moisture or blocking sunlight or this or that and a hundred other calamities known only to professional stone masons, but in my mind, covering stonework with a tarp calms me down. And anything that calms me down is bound to make Carl's life easier, so he went along with my Plan on Saturday. Rain was forecast for later in the day, so we had to hurry.

My plan was to take a whole bunch of pallets and stack them up inside Aaargh and form a solid base for the tarp to rest on that could take the weight of the snow and ice with a slightly higher center for pitch. Carl went out and got started on Saturday morning while I was dealing with some housework and by the time I got there, it was clear his ideas and mine weren't the same. He had the pallets in there alright, but they weren't stacked. He more or less tossed them into a jumbled heap which he said would be more conducive to holding up the tarp and resulting snow load. I looked at this pile doubtfully.

"Ok...... if you say so," I grumbled, after restating my original, neatly stacked idea.

(That statement didn't make him very happy, by the way.). We ended up cramming the rain barrels, weed pails, and anything else that looked sturdy enough into the holes and the crannies that the tarp might rest against and finally Carl decided we were finished. (Mostly because it started to rain.)

So, here's the unveiling of the beautiful structure we will behold until at least April:

Oh, my.

Isn't that just the loveliest sight ever? I bet you're glad you're not my neighbors. We ended up using two tarps in festive contrasting colors to break up the monotony of the tarpage. Note the very slimming addition of the rope around the middle and the rocks tossed randomly on the skirt of the tarps to keep them from flapping in the breeze.

Oooooops...... appears our belt may be slipping in the back, we're going to need to do some adjusting. I took these pictures this morning just to see how the tarps are faring with the rain we had. Carl said there will be very few pockets to catch water and ice if we did it his way.

Ahem...........

Well, there's the windowsill on the left and I do agree, it doesn't look like a 'pocket' per se (more like a lake) but that's definitely water and

would you look at that? There's some ice.

Apparently we have some fixin' to do.

We still have some time to make this better since the temperatures are supposed to be mild for a few days. Will we restack this? I doubt it. But I will say something about it and point out the problems to him and be generally annoying.

I just have to remember, this is hunting season. I don't need to have my husband gunning for me.

Cover me, OK???

Walkus Interruptus

2011-11-21T09:55:00.001-06:00

The garden is just about ready for Winter, oh, there's stuff here and there that could be done yet, but for the most part, I'm just waiting for the snow to fall now. Actually, this is another of my favorite times of year, going outside now means I'm free to plunk down on the park bench and contemplate the rocks around here instead of stressing out about how many weeds or whatever there are that need dealing with.

I still need to wrap this little dwarf crabapple against the rabbits and sunscald yet.

Once the ground freezes, I can walk almost anywhere I want on the farm without sinking up to my ankles in mud. I really enjoy traipsing around our little farm and my trail in the Back Eight is my most favorite of all. I find walking to be the most therapeutic exercise in my life, and if it's not all that great for weight control, it's absolutely essential for my mental health, especially after the gardening season is over. I am not a person who loves to be indoors in any way, shape or form. I love the solitude of walking down our little road and our back yard all year round. My trail is just over a mile long.

The dogs and I walk down the lane in the Back Eight almost every day, enjoying the sights and sounds. I take their leashes off and they are free to sniff and run as much as they like (and roll in some aromatic goo, too, unfortunately!) and just be dogs. There's no one around to see us or care.

Teddy (the white one) and Pudding (the gray one) are brother and sister Shih Tzus from two different litters. I've had a few dogs in my lifetime, and they were all big fellas. The largest was the late, great, Sparky, a huge German Shepherd, and we adored him. After Sparky's passing, we were without a dog for years until these little ten pound wonders came to my attention. We've had Teddy since he was a puppy and he's coming 12 years old. Pudding is six months older than Teddy and a more recent addition to our family; she was given to me by Ann after she moved to an apartment and couldn't take Pudding with her. Pudding's been here for over two years already. Where did that time go?

Teddy is getting older, his eyesight is not what it once was, but he still thoroughly enjoys our backyard 'walkies'.

Pudding is a very hard dog to photograph due to her color, hard to make out what you're looking at most the time, but she is a die-hard walkies fan. She will go with me for miles and rarely, if ever, tires out. You'd think with those little legs they'd both be worn out, wouldn't you? I wonder how many steps they put on in a day? I should put one of my pedometers on Pudding's collar and see what it adds up to. I bet I'd be shocked.

Pudding puts more miles on than either Teddy or I do. She is forever running way ahead and then flying back to make sure we're still coming, she has a problem with us slowpokes.

She also hates to have me out of her sight and very often turns around to fix me with that adoring gaze of hers as much to say, "Are you coming??"

We take in all the scenery along the way....the oak tree in the photo above is on our line fence between our farm and the neighbor. Years ago, the neighbor (who no longer lives here) wanted to saw this tree down because the limbs were hanging over his field too much, but since the trunk was on our side of the line, I said no. He had already cut down a beautiful oak a few hundred feet away and I mourned the loss of that one so much. It made me mad, actually. I told him we'd take the limbs off this tree on his side that were impeding his harvesting, but the tree was not to be cut. I know it didn't make me popular with him, but that was over twenty years ago and I'm still glad I put my foot down. I love oak trees.

The dogs and I follow my trail along the woods. I planted some white pine up there a few years back that are really starting to grow now. We don't own the deciduous woods. I wish we did, but it's posted and off-limits. When I was a kid it belonged to our neighbor, and I know every inch of that parcel very well even though I haven't been in there since the No Trespassing signs went up. Back in the 70's, the neighborhood farm boys (and Carl, the blacksmith's son) all had minibikes and dirt bikes and they had an intricate system of off-road trails through farm fields around here after gaining permission from the farmers involved. As long as they stayed on the trails, nobody would bother them. They had a trail system going through this woods and it was so much fun. I didn't have a minibike, but I did have a bicycle and I loved riding the trails in the woods every night after milking cows. It was one of my favorite haunts. But, times changed, the farm this woods goes with has been sold and gone and now it's a no-no. I can still gaze at it over the fenceline though. And I have my memories.

I love the serenity of open fields and woods, and the memories here of farming this land are always with me. I remember my father most of all when I walk the lanes. These are the same lanes our cows used to walk to and fro when they were pastured. We rent the land out now to a neighbor and I know he would probably rather the lanes weren't there at all, but I am stubborn and demand they stay. I use them so often just for walking or driving around the farm and I also know how much gravel was dumped in them over the years in places to shore up the mud. Not all of my memories are good ones; my father was not an easy-going man, but they are all part of what makes me who I am. It's history no one else will care about and when I'm dead and gone this will probably one day be a shopping mall, but as long as I live, I hope to keep this land the way it is. Peaceful.

For now, it's land for little dogs to explore and run around on.

And land for a middle-aged woman to reflect and stretch her legs.

Looking at the tracks in the lane, it's obvious we aren't the only ones stretching our legs...I see turkey tracks and, rounding a corner, there they are for reals.

Not the greatest picture of them, because they startled me as much as I startled them.

Whoa! Look what Teddy spotted.............Deer tracks amongst the turkey tracks. Oh-oh.

And this brings my tranquil ode to walking my solitary haunts to a close. We interrupt this walkabout to announce the end of my walking in the daylight due to:

Hunting Season

If I want to stay alive out there now, I best be sporting blaze orange. And lots of it. The ten day gun deer hunting season started on Saturday and now it's not safe to venture out into the Back Eight. Or the road. And definitely not the woods. Hunters are everywhere and where you least expect them. Like up in trees. A few years back, I was walking through the woods across the road before it was sold and had the uneasy feeling I wasn't alone. When I looked up, there was a disgruntled hunter grimacing at me from his tree stand. Ooooops. I had forgotten it was bow-hunting season and had just messed up his chance at seeing any deer that afternoon. Lucky he didn't zing an arrow or three my way.

Even working in the backyard, I usually don a blaze orange garment of some type to repel bulletage. So far, it's worked. (And, yeah, I know, bulletage is not a word, either.) We are surrounded by woods, with one right across the road from us, one to the north of us, and our own Back Eight, and sometimes when hunting parties get a deer on the run, they tend to get a little careless with the lead. And that's when I go in the house and do something safer, like blog about it, because of an incident that happened about ten years ago. (Yes, it's flashback time.)

Years ago, I had just gone inside the house from hanging laundry on a very seasonable morning in November when I heard gunshots very, VERY close by. I ran to the bathroom window (not a bright idea) and saw a buck deer running up the lane right toward our house. He jumped into the Formal Garden and then back out, across our little bridge, and then tipped over about five feet from my washlines. My washlines, at the time, were about ten feet from our house. The deer wasn't dead yet, but I was petrified, because running right behind him was a guy with a gun leveled at him. I immediately hit the bathroom floor, hugging the vinyl. Yikes!

After a few seconds, I didn't hear another gunshot, and, crawling up along the wall, I cautiously peeked through the blinds at the spectacle.

The hunter was a young guy and visibly shaking (though I don't think as much as I was) and thankfully, when he saw me peering out the window, he put the gun back down at his side. Phew. I wasn't in the mood to have my head mounted on his wall, too.

I opened the window. He was still panting hard and the deer was in agony. We were both in this position of weirdness; he has just wounded a deer that ended up running as far as my washlines and I'm not sure where we go from here. I could tell the adrenaline and 'thrill of the kill' and all that was still high, and I didn't want to risk annoying the guy, so I asked him if he would at least put the poor thing out of it's misery. He did, with a knife he had on him. Then he grabbed the deer's front leg and dragged it off my lawn and into the ditch across the road. And proceeded to gut it right there. Thanks. Just what I needed. But again, a stranger with a gun, and I'm home alone..... and yes, I know he had tags on his back I could have reported him with, but like all weird accidents that happen, it all happened so fast. I was just glad to see him go.

Hence, my caution about walking during deer hunting season around here.

So now, all of my walks will be after dark, which is really not a whole lot of fun, though I do it often. At least after dark I should be safe from bullets whizzing by. Good thing I'm not afraid of the dark, though I will admit, there are times I hear things that make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Things that go bump in the night. Twigs that crack underfoot...but not my foot........hmmmmmmmm?

But the fear of walking after dark pales in comparison to having my walks interrupted permanently.

I just wish they made bullet-proof blaze orange.

Even though it's so not my color.

Fertilizer Friday: The Flowerless, Griping Edition

2011-11-18T08:58:00.001-06:00

Friday again, and Tootsie is hosting our weekly get together over at Fertilizer Friday. Reading her post this morning made me smile, even though she is exhausted with moving to a new home, tending to her children and putting up her greenhouse, she still finds the time to host our weekly meeting. Now that's Ambition and Dedication all rolled into one!

Sadly, I lack both attributes. Tootsie lives in Canada and I live in Wisconsin, and if there's one thing we both have in common, it's the seasons. We've had a mild fall so far, yes, it snowed a week or two ago, but this week it finally melted. I was glad to see it go. As November slips by, some of the days have been in the 40's (which feels really balmy to me) but I'm noticing the nights are getting much colder, we've been down in the 20's. And the last two days have had a high of around 35 degrees which still isn't too bad, if you can work in an area away from the cold wind which goes right through you.

As a result of the time of year, my garden is so over. There are no more flowers to flaunt, no more blooms to boast, no more greenery to go on about. There are alot of twigs and branches if you're into that sort of thing:

I galloped around the yard last night just before sunset to take these pictures, hoping I'd find something of interest to show but my hands got SO cold it was unbelievable. I haven't mastered the art of photography with gloves on very well, and I'm stubborn and still haven't gotten out my nice warm mittens yet either, so here we go on my whirlwind tour of what's not blooming.

But first: speaking of whirlwinds and ironically, Fertilizer Friday....you may remember my earlier posts about cutting farmers a break when they're traveling down the road with their farm equipment? Well, we have two kinds of farmers around here, the Regular Family Farmer and the Megafarmer-- and there's a big difference. The small, family farm is nearly extinct here, and it's very sad. A way of life has almost completely disappeared in my lifetime. There are a handful of smaller farms--which were considered big farms when I was a kid, seeing as how we only own 98 acres compared to their 200-300+ acres. But many of the 'big' family farms around here were sold and consolidated into mass acreage for the Megafarmers.

There's a mega-farm (not sure how many cows they have now, but I know the number is in the thousands) about eight miles from us who rent hundreds of acres in our neighborhood and whenever they harvest their crops, it's done with trucks. Big trucks. I'm talking semis here. It doesn't take them very long to harvest a coupla hundred acres of corn or hay since they have humongous equipment and hauling the crop home with the big rigs at highway speeds greatly cuts down on their transport time. Good for them, I guess, but this ain't the way farming was ever done around here before. It took some getting used to.

And we have a problem. The little side road we live on was never built for semi traffic, it's barely wide enough for two cars to meet comfortably and the roadbed is not reinforced enough for the beating it's taking. At times there are semis meeting each other on our road and flying by at speeds more suited to freeways. Since it doesn't take them very long to harvest their crops, we grin and bear the noise and the pounding of the road and the seemingly never-ending jake braking........... BRRRRRP, BRRRRRRP, BRRRRRRP of the drivers using their gears to slow down (wow, is that LOUD though!) because, ok, it's just til they get the crops off.

But what we dread is the next step. Manure hauling. That's when the trucks run in packs, I think I counted ten semis at least, coming and going from 8AM in the morning until at least 8:30PM last night. I tried to walk up to my mother's last night with the doggies and found it impossible. There's just no way to stay on the road when these trucks are hammering by. They don't slow down. Not a bit.......and the road? Well, the road is really falling apart. Big cracks are forming and it's getting bumpier and bumpier.

I know it's hard to see in this picture above, but the green trees in the distance are at my mother's place, where I grew up, and there's a semi going past her house and one coming this way. Over and over this process is repeated because they are hauling manure from the megafarm where the thousands of cows live to the land near and far that they rent. Today is Fertilizer Friday for Real around here. (Sorry Tootsie!)

I went outside a few minutes ago and hid next to Willie the Willow to try to capture the essence of living in the Peaceful Country:

Here comes a semi from the east

You can tell he's going right along, my camera setting wasn't fast enough to capture him right in front of our driveway....

(I'd hate to be my mailbox....poor thing!)

And now he's meeting another one coming from the west:

And so it goes, I counted a semi going by every three minutes for the last hour. For hours on end and for at least two if not three days straight.

For those of you who live on highways or near freeways, I know I sound like a Whiny Baby, and I apologize. But our teeny sideroad was never built for the industrial traffic these guys subject it to. I can only imagine the tax increase we'll have to pay for the fixing of the roads. When I was kid, we NEVER saw anything bigger than a milk truck on our road, but the last ten years or so have been very different.

And the smell.........oh.....boy, the smell! I grew up on this farm and manure is nothing new to me; and as all people who own any type of animal know, they all have to 'go' and poop abounds. Multiply the 'going' by say, 3000 (I know the megafarm had at least that many cows there, but there was talk of expansion up to 5000 head) and now you have a whole lot of fertilizer kept in manure pits until they haul it out and a whole lot of stink. It's a stink even I find objectionable, enough to take the paint off your house. They used to spread manure several times a year, but the laws have changed and they have to work it under the soil now within so many hours, which helps a little. But not a lot. They will be hauling this manure to the three hundred acres surrounding us until it is at capacity and then they'll move on. I hope it's soon. I miss my peace and quiet.

To illustrate the peace and quiet we normally experience, last night when I was on my ill-fated walk with the dogs, I stepped off the road into the ditch so I wouldn't get run over and took a coupla pictures of our farm....you can just make out the machine shed at Mom's house in this one:

In the one above is another forty acres...we own up to the tree line in the distance and that's our road in the foreground....

And there's our house....can you spot the windmill near the middle of the picture? The Back Eight is the dark line of trees just before the deciduous woods that doesn't belong to us. On the other side of our house is the other half of the farm. So, yes, we're secluded and it's boony here. That's why the semi traffic is such an assault. I wouldn't mind so much if the truck drivers would slow down to a decent speed; I know they're in a hurry, but I think 50mph and over (we followed one once who was doing over 60!) is just too fast for this narrow country trail. I miss the old days and farming your own patch of land with your own tractor. This idea of farming thousands of acres is the wave of the future, though, and I have to hush up. There's nothing I can do about it. So enough about that.

Moving on the Non-Fertilizer part of this post, here's what the garden looks like as of last night:

Here we are up on the back hill of the Quarry. Rocks, trees, random grasses and sedums are all that is left.

This is the time of year for the dwarf conifers to shine. This is picea pungens 'St. Mary's Broom'. Isn't she pretty for a broom?

Try as I might I could not get my elbow out of the picture here, but this is an Austrian pine on a stick, pinus nigra 'Brepo'.

I know I've showed this view countless times before, but thuja occidentalis 'Sunkist' is everything the name says.

Random shots of the stones and the trees with the last of the sunlight reflecting.

And yup, that is indeed Ice on the pond. Not hard enough to walk on yet, but soon, very soon.

I put almost all of the statuary away for the winter since freezing and thawing is so hard on it, except for the bird on the rock. He's aluminum and can take it, plus I like to have something to look at over the course of the winter.

'Tiger Eye' sumac now looks more like it's cousin, staghorn.

Behind the Quarry itself we have more dwarf conifers which are going to need some appraising in the spring. Just because they are dwarf doesn't mean they don't get big.

Standing next to the waterfall rocks; the water in the back is not frozen over yet.

I really do like this time of year; before the snow flies, the Quarry takes on a look of peacefulness. (And there's no weeding to do, so this time of year, I can just sit and look at it and not stress out.)

Let's wander over to the other side of the yard and see what's going on.

We'll go over the bridge to the Pachyberm...but we've gotta hurry, because the sun is going down. (4:30 PM....Sigh!)

The Pachyberm in all it's rocky goodness. I have to get my Christmas reindeer down from the rafters and set them up in the rocks.

The trail next to the house heading back to the River Bed has rocks and miscanthus left. That's it.

Getting darker, hurrying up.........

Nothing left down in the Formal Garden but the dome and the 'Karl Foerster' grasses and a bunch of dwarf conifers and oh, yeah, the 'Coralburst' apple trees. I finally did get all the apple tree's trunks wrapped up for winter earlier this week.

Castle Aaargh is still there, reflecting the last ray's of the sun. We're going to cover the wall with a big tarp for winter.

Weeping Norway Spruce makes an interesting statement backlit against the sunset. Here it's saying, "If you want me to grow taller, you'd best be thinking about getting a taller stake." Yes, it's true, I have a psychic link with my trees. They talk to me. (And, no, the guys in the white coats haven't caught me yet.)

The last bit of color I could find........the Burning Bush is dropping embers all over the place.

The Egress Gate; Summer has gone and 'egressed' right out of our garden.

The old Aermotor is getting ready to face another winter...it's already seen more than sixty of them.

My Christmas decorating is so lame, you're going to laugh.....remember the pedestals that hold the lightshade planters in the summertime?

Well, now they're holding something completely different....upside down tomato cages wrapped in garland.

And no, they're not completely decorated yet, and they're leaning because it's been windy. Classy, eh? I pull out all the stops here. And this way we save room in the shed because we're storing the tomato cages outside.

And YES, again.......those are silk flowers crammed in the urns, but c'mon now, I needed some color around here to look at. I stuck all this stuff in the urn last night and it was dark outside, hence the rather 'rugged' arrangement. Hey, I tried. And at least there were some flowers for Fertilizer Friday.

Even if they were Faux.

Words for Wednesday: Texture and Pattern

2011-11-15T23:30:00.000-06:00

Donna over at GardenWalk,Garden Talk has another excellent post this week for W4W:

It's all about Texture and Pattern.

Please be sure you see Donna's post; it is very detailed and informative including a fascinating way to help any gardener decide if their landscaping is as pleasing to the eye as it could be. There is always something to learn from Donna's excellent posts.

And that leads me to my take on the two words, which, unfortunately, won't be as informative or educational, but here we go:

I have always been fascinated by Mother Nature's patterns and textures; she surely does do them well. A few weeks ago, Joel and I were visiting a State Park near Wisconsin Dells and came across a tree which had fallen across a stream.

I noticed a burl on the fallen trunk and was amazed by the growth pattern.

I'm not sure of the type of tree this was, but the wood is very beautiful. Being as this tree is in a State Park, perhaps it will be safe from people wanting to take it home with them. I don't know how many other people would even notice the burl, but I have an eye for oddities. (Is that a good thing?)

Fascinating grain pattern; doing some reading on the formation of burls it turns out they are the result of the tree going through some form of stress, be it insect damage, virus or fungus. Out of the tree's suffering comes a texture and pattern of great beauty.

Walking through our garden the other day, this lichen growing on one of our granite rocks caught my eye:

The placement on the rock couldn't be any more perfect, it looks like a medallion placed intentionally. Our rock is about 3' tall and the lichen is centered right near the top. I did another search online and found out this type of lichen might possibly be Xanthoparmelia which is a genus of lichen belonging to the family Parmeliaceae commonly found on the mid-east coast of the United States. (Apparently this is a genus of algae, gosh, you gotta love the Internet, such a font of information.)

.I was fascinated with the texture and the pattern of this Xantho-whatchacallit. It's really neat.

Then there's the ornamental grasses in the garden, from a distance, just a mass of fluffy white soft textures:

A little closer look reveals individual blooms:

And really close up, there are the seeds. This particular miscanthus doesn't reseed in my garden, but I can see where it could be a problem where the temperatures are more mild.

I know I haven't even scratched the surface of what could be written about texture and pattern as it relates to gardening or my other favorite hobby, stained glass, where you start with a pattern:

and use your imagination to try to find the appropriate glass to fit the color scheme:

And hopefully end up with something

vaguely resembling what you are trying to portray. And though my pictures don't show it very well, some of the glass is textured here, too. (By the way, the end result is supposed to be grapes on the vine.)

My thanks to Donna at GardenWalk,GardenTalk for letting me link into this challenging project!