Do you want anything?

 August 2020  My phone rang one evening a week ago.

“Do you want anything?”  Mom asked.  “Someone’s coming in the morning to take the rest of the stuff we don’t want before the house sells.”

Hmm…  What would I want…

I want a piece of siding, so I can remember what color the house was.

I want the window my brother broke with the back of his head (that's a funny story).  

I definitely do not want the light fixture from my old bedroom.  I still have nightmares about it.

I want one of the bathroom sinks that I cleaned so many times, but they never looked clean, so I can show my grandchildren that bathroom fixtures should never be mustard yellow.

I want the bank that I used to shoot arrows at and sculpt mud on.

I want the big picture window, where I would stand for hours watching for my siblings to arrive home from college.  And we would watch magnificent sunsets through it.  On spring mornings we would watch for the spray planes to dive over the orchards. 

I want all the memories that only come back to me when I turn a corner or glance out a window.

I want the wildflowers.  Ookow, soap bush, hound’s tongue, buttercup, Howell’s lily, dogwood, bitter cherry, chocolate bells, hawthorns, wild roses, trilliums…  They were my friends.

And, of course, I really want the fantastic hearth.  But I just don’t have anywhere to put it. 

“No, Mom, I don’t want anything.  But thanks for asking.”

**Two years later, the house has been leveled.  It seemed so cruel, until I realized that my memories are still mine.  Everything my family has become, and how that place influenced us, can’t be taken away by the new owners.  The important things are in my heart, in the present, and in the future.**

Sandwich Box

 My mom didn't use Tupperware or other such containers.  I don't know why.  We used Saran wrap (plastic wrap) or repurposed containers (cottage cheese, sour cream, etc.).  At some point in high school I started making my own lunches, consisting of little more than a peanut butter and jam sandwich.  Eventually it was nothing but the sandwich.  I ate a lot when I got home.  

I didn't like how my sandwiches got squished in my backpack everyday.  None of the old containers my mom saved were the right shape for putting sandwiches in.  One day I came across a greeting card box that was the perfect size and shape.  (I had probably used all the cards; I wrote a lot of letters in those days.)  I painted the box with some old acrylics and used it to protect my lunch.  

Several kids commented on my sandwich box.  They were confused why I would put food in cardboard.  I did wrap the sandwich in plastic first, I'm not a savage.  I was confused why other people found it strange.  I had made a solution to my problem, isn't that perfectly normal?  So far as I knew, no one had invented Tupperware for sandwiches.  I'd never been in that part of Walmart.  

Today, I have lots of sandwich boxes.  The store-bought, purpose-made, plastic kind that snap together.  Pink ones, green ones, clear ones.  Such luxury.  Have I mentioned that my kids are spoiled?

Relationships with Pets (CTTWWS)

 

There was a dog.

She hung out near the middle school when I was in 5^th or 6^th grade.  My friend and I named her Butterscotch, because that was the color of her spots.  We assumed she was a stray, and we would bring her scraps from our lunches.  Eventually, my friend found better things to do, and it was just Butter and I. 

I’m sure I asked my mom multiple times if we could adopt this dog.  I’m sure she figured this dog had an actual home, or wouldn’t stick around, or some other sensible reason.  None of it made sense to me at the time.  Eventually Butter stopped coming.  I heard that she had been adopted by someone I didn’t like, but that’s probably not true.  Then Mom got me a puppy, a beautiful Labrador.  She was adorable and chewed on everything.  Unfortunately, she only lived a couple months before she got sick and died.

She was just an animal.  I got over it.

At one time we had as many as 30 cats.  I remember one of my classmates was horrified when I told her that we kept our cats outside and only fed them once a day.  Her father was a realtor.  Our cat population was eventually wiped out by disease.  I recently googled the symptoms; they resemble feline distemper.  I remember going to pick up a kitten I was fond of and finding it stiff as a board.  I still remember how it felt in my hand, how it felt when I dropped it.  I ran in the house, unsettled and upset.  I told Mom, “Fatso’s dead,” and one of my brothers turned and said, sneering, “You’re not crying, are you?”

It’s just an animal.  Get over it.

I vaguely remember, when I was about 7, finding a large black dog sitting on a blanket in the kitchen, and my dad sitting at the table.  I was upset because I wanted to keep the dog, but it had been hit by a car and Dad had brought it home so he could “put it out of its misery.”  I asked why we couldn’t take it to the vet, and Mom said something about animals being too miserable not being able to walk, it was better for them to die.  I think the dog had broken at least one of its hind legs, perhaps its spine.  Dad was probably preparing his pistol at the table.  That was not the last time I remember Dad using the lead painkiller on an animal.

Over a decade ago, one of my brothers brought his family to visit, and took his oldest daughter fishing.  He told us that they would be doing catch-and-release, since his daughter couldn’t stand the thought of killing fish.  I was astounded.  The same guy who told me to “toughen up” and “get over it” was allowing his daughter to have feelings.  I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about it, because I probably made him feel bad for the things he said when he was just a kid.

When I was 12, we got Zeke.  He was a mutt of a puppy.  One of my adult sisters was living with us at the time.  She, being very modern, insisted that he get all his shots and get fixed.  I think she paid for it, too.  He lived a long life: he was my buddy all through high school, welcomed me home after every term of college, even got to meet my first child.  When I was pregnant with my second child, he was so miserably old that we decided it was time for him to go to the big doggy park in the sky.  Once again, my sister spoke up, insisting that he be put down by a vet instead of by Dad.  I miss Zeke’s floppy little ears.

Muddy Chickens (CTTWWS)

 We had a flock of chickens for a while.  I think I was around 10 years old.  There might have been as many as 8 chickens, maybe more, maybe less.  Two roosters, the rest hens.  The roosters I could catch without much difficulty, but the hens were too fast.  

I had a favorite puddle in the driveway.  It filled up from a leak in the hose faucet when we watered the front garden.  I played in that puddle a lot.  

There's this thing you can do with chickens.  When they're upside-down, they kinda go into a trance.  You can hold them by their legs, their wings go out, and they go stiff.  

Now, dropping a chicken into a mud puddle onto its feet isn't very entertaining.  It doesn't make much of a splash, the chicken has no emotional reaction, it just walks away the same as you dropping it anywhere.  But if you hang the chicken upside down first, then drop it into the puddle, you get a big splash and lots of clucking and a flustered, shaking chicken runs off.  

I tell my children that this is what I did as a child because there was no YouTube.  

I don't remember which came first, the roosters attacking me or the puddle torture.  But I got quite scared of those roosters after they flew at me with their sharp parts a few times.  It always happened when the hens were around, so it was likely a protective move.  It wasn't until recently that I made the connection between my treatment of the roosters and their aggression towards me.  

Please don't think that I was an evil child.  I don't think I was.  I never mistreated people or misbehaved at school.  My parents had old, farmer-type opinions of animals (although my mom was certainly displeased when I told her about the game I played with the chickens and the puddle).  They were even more dismissive toward emotions, so maybe this was my way of acting out my feelings.

Sleeping on Mom's hospital room floor

 In early December of my senior year, my mom got her second hip replaced.  After school I drove ten minutes to the Hood River Hospital to visit her.  She was almost recovered from the anesthetic by then, but she didn't say much to me other than, "You didn't need to come, I'm fine, go home and do your homework."  My sister was also there.  I felt unusually sleepy, so I laid down on the floor and dozed off for 10-20 minutes.  At the time I didn't know why I was able to sleep on such a hard floor, during a time in my life when I hadn't napped for well over a decade.  In retrospect, it might have been because the hospital room was warmer than anywhere I had been since September.  Our house was impossible to warm up with Dad and I gone all day, and my high school wasn't well heated, either.  When I got up, Mom urged me to go home.  She couldn't bare to be a burden.  Plus, it was starting to snow, and she got very nervous about people driving in the snow.

It's beautiful to drive while snowflakes fall.  The snow wasn't sticking so I wasn't nervous; I knew I had time to get safely home.  I was deep in thought.  When you get to the western edge of White Salmon, leaving town on SR 141, the road is flanked by oaks that arch over and form a sort of tunnel.  I was awe-struck by this picture, with the snowflakes pouring down, and I began to cry.  I didn't know the reason, but I was feeling something and it needed to come out.  Perhaps it was the strangeness of seeing my mother in a hospital, or the prospect of going home to a cold and empty house.  Despite how much I had hated the way my mom's anxiety had limited my options so much throughout my childhood, I think this is when I started realizing how dear to me she was.  This is when our relationship started shifting, when I started feeling anxious for her.  

Sunsets in the valley (CTTWWS)

 Sometimes the wind blew hard enough that I could sing as loud as I wanted.

My siblings and I called my mom a "worry wart."  There was so much that she wouldn't let us do because she worried what might happen.  Until I got near my teen years I wasn't even allowed to go outside without permission.  Every once in a while she would yell my name, just to find out where I was.  It's an eerie sensation, as an adult, to imagine I hear her call me.  

When I started "pushing my boundaries" successfully, I would run up the hill behind our house (barefoot, of course).  I kept at it until I could run to the first peak without stopping.  There was an incredible view from there, facing west.  I probably watched hundreds of sunsets from there.  I felt like royalty, looking down on my little valley, out at the mountains, the colorful light show.  Just me, my dog, the wind, and God.

I miss having that quiet, beautiful place to go and settle my thoughts.  Anywhere I go here, there are people.  Except my closet, and that's a bit cramped. 

Winter nights (CTTWWS 2)

 It was so cold on winter nights when neither Joel nor Kevin were living with us.  They knew how to stoke a stove.  I would stack as many as six blankets on top of myself, only to find I had kicked them in different directions by the middle of the night and I was shivering.  I dreaded showering.  I would swing my hair against the side of the woodstove to try to dry it faster.  Didn't seem to make a difference.  It was a dreary existence with no warm escape, no sympathy.  My brother was mean, my mother was in pain, my dad was at work.  The wood was always slightly damp.

There was one winter when the windows started freezing on the inside.  Beautiful patterns of thick frost covering the kitchen windows, parts of my bedroom windows and some of the other windows around the house.  Our house was built in the fifties.  Some of the window frames were wood, some aluminum, none were well insulated.  The frosted windows happened several times that winter; it was unusually cold.  After that it only happened a couple times in subsequent winters.  I think my blankets were frozen to the window one of those mornings.  I know that happened to someone else at school.  

Cattle Prodding (CTTWWS 1)

 I once saw a steer jump over a fence.

It's one of those images that is etched like a gif in my memory, even though it was well before gifs were invented.  It was such a strange sight, a hefty huge block of meat lighting up off its dainty feet and barely gliding over the slackened barbed wire.  He's smarter than I thought, I thought.  How are we going to fix this fence?  Mom is going to laugh so hard at this story.

I was about ten years old.  A family from church had more steers than they had room for on their property, so they were renting our pasture.  We raised a steer ourselves during this time.  My brother and I named him Pug.  I'm not sure I had ever actually seen a pug dog, but something about this steer's face said "pug."  

The fences around the pasture were old and a bit unreliable.  We reinforced most of the fences with twine cut from hay bales.  That was a huge undertaking, mostly done by Mom.  But every once in a while a steer would find a way through the fence  I don't remember how it became my job to find and chase steers back into the pasture, but I did find it satisfying. For a long time I had a particular old broom handle that was my cattle prod of choice.  I always worried that they would kick me, but they never did.  There was one steer that escaped more frequently, and was especially difficult to coax back into the pasture.  His name was Fruitcake.  If he was feeling frisky, I would need a second person to help get him into the gate.  He wasn't much afraid of me, either.  I had to hit him pretty hard with that broom handle sometimes.

I think I learned a lot about angles from this job.  I had to figure out the best angle at which to approach the steer so as to move him toward the gate but still be able to stop him if he bolts to the right or left.  My dad helped teach me this.  He would tell me right where to stand, halfway between him and the fence.  

Pug tasted fine.  Mom would say, "We're having Pug meat for dinner."  I didn't watch when they shot him.  I'm not that tough.  There was blood in the puddle by the feed trough for a long time.  The following spring, that whole area was solid chamomile.  

Happy Easter!

 I forgot about my writing.  I'm picking it back up again.

This weekend I have been watching our church's General Conference.  It is a wonderful time of instruction and peace.  Because it is Easter, most of the talks have been about the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ.  These talks are especially aimed to comfort due to the difficult times so many of us are facing.  I love General Conference weekend, it reminds me where my focus should be, not on things of the world but on things of God and eternity.  I always hope that this focus will last.  I don't know how long it does.  Taking care of the temporal needs of my family gets me so distracted and frustrated.  

I hope my children know I love them.  I hope they know I love our Heavenly Father.  I hope they understand someday what sacrifices were made for them.

Firefly

 Over the past couple weeks I've been watch Firefly with my husband.  It's okay.  I'm not in the "crazed-fan-would-kill-for-a-second-season" camp, sorry.  It has been funny hearing their cowboy dialect get better over the season.  Well, somewhat better.  Jayne sounds natural from the beginning, but Kayley still doesn't.  In the first episode, the way most of them said "ain't" sounded like they had never said the word before in their lives.  

The Cure for Crazy Dragons

 When dragons get very old, they go insane.

It's worse than senility or dementia that is found in humans.  The older dragons get, the better they get at producing and aiming the acid that gives them their "fiery" breath.  Eventually some of this acid leaks into their skull and damages their brain.  This causes agitation and insanity, which in turn causes them to breathe out more acid.  Thus their brains become more damaged.  The cycle can eventually lead to death.  Some experts postulate that dragons could be functionally immortal if it weren't for this flaw in their anatomy, or if they would simply refrain from spewing acid.  

In more recent times, somewhat of a remedy has been found for draconic insanity.  In a far northern land, some humans got the idea to make a dessert from mixing cow's cream with mashed fruit in a bowl made of ice.  They continue stirring until it is of a partially frozen texture, then they eat it.  It has become so popular that they transport huge blocks of ice to southern countries just so more people can enjoy this dessert.  By some chance, a crazed dragon managed to get some of this dessert in her mouth one day, and she almost immediately calmed down.  Word has spread, so now any town that has insane dragon problems is sure to keep blocks of ice and chubby cows close at hand.

Where do photons go to bed

 When you turn off the night light on your bedside table, where do the photons go?  Do they nestle into the nuclei of all the atoms around, waiting until the sunlight returns?  Or do they fall into your fluffy blankets, slow down to a softer pace, until some electrons get excited about the blanket folds rubbing together?  That is, if you didn't use a dryer sheet.  Certainly they wouldn't have a "Photons Only" meeting inside the light bulb, where they would discuss fashion, politics, and how annoying neutrinos are.  

 When to get out of an investment seems like too difficult of a question for me.  I prefer questions with cut and dry answers.  If I lose out on an increase, I feel like I did it wrong.  But that's my dad talking in my head.

My muscles won't stop hurting.  Even muscles that I can't quite tell where they are.  I can't figure out what causes it, or what abates it.  Such mystery.  The worst part is, if it doesn't have a diagnosis, it seems fake.  Like no one will believe me.  

I am not writing anything great today and it shows.

Humming Hymns

 We aren't yet allowed to sing in our church meetings.  I said to my husband, they didn't say we couldn't hum.  So I have been humming along under my mask, following the words on my phone (the hymnbooks have been taken away as well).  I am surprised how well I know the alto line on a lot of these hymns.  Over all my decades of singing these hymns, the harmonies have sunk into my memory and become natural to me.  

About the Pandemic

 One year after the pandemic began, I got an email from my doctor's office saying that I now qualify for the vaccine.  No explanation why I qualify.  When I went to schedule the shot, there were no appointments available.  Still I wait.

How would I describe this year?

Painful.  Divisive in some ways, yet unifying in others.  Worsening all my nightmares.  Worsening all my failures.  Lost opportunities for my children.  New opportunities to learn about humanity.

I walked past an elementary school today.  I heard children playing on the playground.  That's something I had taken for granted my whole life, children going to school.  How strange it is to feel deeply grateful to hear them back at it again.  

Something New

 The idea now is to Write Something Every Day.  I have been wanting to get back into writing for a long time now.  They say that the best way to get better at writing is to just write, so I'm going to just write something every day and hope this becomes a habit, hope something good comes out of it.  

Here's a picture.

It's a bunny!!  The kids were wanting another bunny for a long time.  I saw some for sale yesterday, so I brought one home.  He's a sweet little zoomer; they named him Pepper.  Biscuit is fascinated by him, though I'm afraid he might just want to eat him.  I haven't let the two into the same space yet.  Pepper thumped a lot the first several times he got near Biscuit.  Heehee, baby bunny thumps.

That's the news from the House of Funk.  More to come tomorrow, if I keep up with this.

Guidelines for a Garage Sale Snob

(CLAIMER:  This post, unlike the last, is nonfiction.)
A couple people have expressed interest in knowing how I keep my garage sale habit under control.   There are tendencies in my gene pool towards hoarding and compulsive shopping, yet I manage to keep my house uncluttered (mostly) and my savings account well-fed (usually).  I have come to terms with the fact that I am a compulsive shopper, though I still maintain that I am not a compulsive buyer (predominantly). Thanks to the existence of garage sales and thrift stores, I can afford to not seek treatment for this neurosis.  To keep it in check, I have developed a set of guidelines for me to follow (loosely).
1.  Only go to sales at houses that look more expensive than you can afford.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not prejudiced.  It just makes sense, if I want to find used stuff that I couldn't afford new, it's going to be sold by someone more affluent than me.  Exception:  Estate sales.  Old people often have interesting, unusual, vintage stuff, no matter what their social class.
2.  Conserve gas--multi task.  One person (remaining unnamed) doesn't believe you can possibly save money by going to garage sales, considering all the time and gas it uses.  (He has clearly never looked up how much not-crappy clothes and shoes cost, then multiplied it times the number of kids he has).  So we multi-task:  only go to sales that are "on the way to the grocery store" or wherever we were going anyway.  Or carpool with a friend or family member.  Sales are much more fun with company.
3.  If you don't know what it is, you don't need it.  There are plenty of gadgets out there.  Your kitchen doesn't need that kind of baggage.  Exception:  Don't let this stop you from asking the seller what the item is.  Seize the educational opportunity.  But remember, even if the seller takes ten minutes telling you about an item, you're still not obligated to buy it.
4.  When in doubt, throw it out.  Your default should always be set to "don't buy."  If you can't think up a use for a thing, don't buy it.  If you kinda like it a little, don't buy it.  If the quality is questionable, don't buy it.  There is no shame in changing your mind and putting something back, or walking away without buying anything.  Exception:  charities for really good causes.  If a dude's cancer treatments depend on the proceeds of this sale, you should probably buy something for at least a dollar.
5.  If you ABSOLUTELY LOVE something that is decently priced, buy it.  If you could take a picture of it and put it in a dictionary under the definition of you.  If you could redecorate an entire room around it.  If you can afford it, buy it!  You will regret it if you don't.
6.  Don't buy anything electronic unless it's dirt cheap and you're desperate.  Seriously, electronic items at garage sales are almost always broken, or almost broken.
7.  Free stuff.  I can't help you there.  I lose control around free stuff.  Last week I even brought home some free fake flowers.  I hate fake flowers.
8.  Clothes.  Women:  No way those pants are going to fit.  If they were actually designed to be worn, they wouldn't be at a garage sale.  Kids:  Gotta be under $1 per item.  Unless it's boys pants sizes 5-8 with fully intact knees.  I'd pay up to $5 for those in a good brand.  Men:  I don't know anything about men.

Confessions of a Garage Sale Snob

(DISCLAIMER:  This is a work of [partial] fiction.  Please don't be offended.  Some of my favorite people live in trailer courts.)

Have you ever bought something at a garage sale that was TOTALLY GORGEOUS and you ABSOLUTELY loved it? (Like a set of plates, in my case.)  Then you go look it up on the internet to see how many hundreds of dollars it would cost new, only to find that it came from WALMART?!?!
Major let-down!  Can anything good come from Walmart?
OH WOW I FEEL TRASHY.
That's what I get for going to a garage sale within 1/4 mile of a trailer court.


A friend asked me a deep question the other day.
"Since you're such a thrifty snob, where would you shop if you suddenly had a million dollars?"
I had to think a while about this.  Then I realized, I don't know!  I've only memorized all the department store brands so I would know which ones NOT to buy at garage sales.  So I basically only buy brands that I don't recognize.  And the Gap.  Everyone knows that the Gap is upscale, though I don't know how I know, since I've never set foot in one of their stores.

It's a Christmas tree! No, it's a Hanukkah bush! No, it's...

...A bunch of branches tied together and decorated.  Totally Pinterest worthy, am I right??  Our 5-acre estate lacks Christmas-sized trees.  There are a few tiny saplings, and a grove of late-adolescent firs (20-30 ft high).  Since spending money on a cultivated tree is almost as abominable to me as putting up an artificial tree, I whipped up this little beauty out of branches cut from the teenage trees (builds character) and some wire I found.  My kids haven't complained.  I love those kids!  They don't even notice their mother is a nutjob.  I'm sure they would rather have $10 worth of more presents than $10 worth of nicer tree, if they thought about it.
Take that, pagan tradition!!

Resourcefulness

My youngest child is going to turn 5 next week.  I feel like my world is shifting into a new phase, and my brain is having trouble keeping up.  I don't have to be in 24/7 survival mode anymore, now that she has finally outgrown the terrible 2's (yes it really has taken almost 3 years).  It is liberating to know that she is no longer likely to run down the street on a grand expedition as soon as no adults are looking.  It is a comfort to not have to worry about small or sharp objects ending up in the lower four feet of the house, and how they could be used by a toddler to kill or maim.  Unfortunately, my brain has a more complex and abstract task thrust upon it.  In their infancy they demanded simple helps with survival, i.e. "I'm hungry" or "I'm cold"  or "My bodily waste is in an undesirable position."  The new demand requires a lot more consideration.  It usually comes in the form of two words in an unpleasant voice: "I'm bored."
Now with my kids, "I'm bored" can almost always be translated to mean "I want to play computer games."  This causes part of me to become infuriated.  Too many of their adult relatives have chosen full-time gaming as a career, and that offends my work-hard-or-die-trying upbringing.  I live in fear of the song, "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Warcraft widow-makers."  So, like any good over-analyzing, way-too-fast-forward-thinking mother, when I hear "I'm bored" I also hear "I'm going to live clinically depressed in your basement until I'm 40."  That's a good enough reason to be infuriated, right??
I rack my brain daily for a preventative cure for this eventuality.  Today I came up with an idea:  It's time for a "When I was your age..."  story about Resourcefulness.  It will go something like this:  "When I was your age (referring to A, who is 8), we didn't have cell phones or tablets or even decent laptops.  I don't know when Gameboys were invented, because my family couldn't have afforded one anyway.  My dad ran a gas station, and my mom was his bookkeeper.  I had to spend many hours at the station while my mom did the books.  I had no one to play with,  no computer, nothing to play with but a few basic office supplies.  Through this terribly boring tribulation, I learned Resourcefulness (and gained a great appreciation for MacGyver).  I tested the limits of paperclips, ran experiments on the lint in my mother's purse, studied the art on the dollar bill, sketched on whatever paper was available, and thought.  Think, think, think.  I did a lot of thinking, watching the boats that did nothing in the marina.  Seriously, why didn't those boats ever go anywhere?  While we're at it, what was that weird contraption with the dark liquid?  Mom yelled at me when I messed with it.  On a few awesome occasions, my brother used it to make hot chocolate.  But I digress.
"This resourcefulness helped me immensely in years to come.  School was boring on a regular basis.  I became incredibly well acquainted with the attributes of college ruled notebook paper (the most plentiful resource for entertainment).  Home was often boring.  I spent a lot of quality time with a puddle.  It's amazing how much I already knew about erosion when I started studying it at school.  When I went out into the world on my own, I was well equipped to become a poor college student.  I was trained in the art of finding ways to entertain myself (and anyone not easily frightened) without spending any money.  My husband says I'm frugal, but really, I'm just boring.  Boredom is the mother of resourcefulness."
There you have it.  I tell my kids to use their brains (instead of the computer) when they are bored.  I try to compliment them by saying they are fully capable of finding themselves something to do.  Not much of a compliment, now that I think about it.  They certainly don't act complimented.  They usually stomp off and play pretend computer games with each other.  That doesn't mean I'm doomed, does it?