Home Alone

With Gary in Illinois, and likely to be there for some time, I'm alone here in this house. Not lonely, however.

I lived alone for years so I am used to that, certainly more used to living with a man.  Gary, too, lived a solitary existence before he came to this house.  We adapted by having separate offices on different floors.

Still, he was always around. This week I came to the realization that I liked having the place to myself.  Gary is a packrat and stuff kept spreading.  I like simplicity. Having so many things in the rooms made me feel claustrophobic. I avoided the living and dining rooms almost entirely. The kitchen was becoming almost unworkable.

Since Gary is gone for now, I set about doing a clearance. I cleared out the tools he left lying about, threw out newspapers and magazines, and put dishes and pots we weren't using in bins. I took out the extra leaf in the dining room table so the room isn't so crowded.  

The most important thing was to clear the floors so I can walk through a room without fear of tripping on things.

All of Gary's things are now in boxes in his basement or in his office.  Eventually, I suppose he can sort things out.  But for now, the house is more comfortable....at least in my opinion.

The house is ready for my yearly solstice party.  

Planning for 2013

It's been a happy day.

Yesterday, after weeks of looking, I found the 2013 calendar I wanted, exactly like 2012's.

On the right side is my list of things to accomplish that day. Nineteen check marks is about right. On the left side is where I write my calories during the day.  If there are any specific appointments I need to make, they are noted in the area by the date.

Each morning as I wake up I do the Sudoku puzzle.  By the time I finish it, I've had my first cup of tea, meditated a while on the quote of the day and am ready for the day.

Today I began by marking upcoming trips and performances.  By New Year's Eve, I'll have jotted   birthdays, car maintenance schedules and deadlines down.  Yes, I am pleased with the calendar.

Today was also the day I finished every bit of decorating.  I found strings of lights I didn't remember and put them on the honeysuckle bush outside. I gave up on the fiber optics trees because the rotating disks didn't work. Instead I used the extra lights on them.   I figured out how to use the timers so that the lights go on automatically.

Tonight, I walked the streets of Seymour looking at the lights.  Tomorrow night I'll be out again, but there could be snow which makes Christmas that much lovelier.  Another joy.

Finally, Wade Peterson filed his latest short story, "The Envy of the Neighborhood"  at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  When we started the blog, I was writing my "seriously depressing Christmas stories" for people who hate Christmas.  Wade's initial reaction was that I was crazy but then he began to write them himself.  Today's is setting the bar high.  How will I top this one next week?

The funny thing is that although we write these stories, we both love Christmas, the season, the lights, the music, the whole shebang.

In a week, on December 15, we'll be holding our last book signing of the year at Sissy's Treats and Treasures. We hope to see some of our local readers there to talk books, enjoy the charm of Seymour's own coffee shop, and wish us a Merry Christmas.

Endurance

Years ago, when I was in my late 20s, my mother told me that I should have my children while I was young enough to enjoy them.

My older sister who was sitting nearby. Her four children were tearing around their grandparents house screaming. Karen was pregnant with her fifth. She looked exhausted.

“Is that true,” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “You have to have your children while you're young enough to endure them.”

I was thirty when Chris was born and sixty when he presented me with my only grandchild.

Tonight, I was babysitting with Evan while his parents were at a company party. It was literacy night at Highland Elementary School.. It was up to Grandma to take Evan to the event. Highland School is only a little more than a block from Evan's house. Even before he was conceived, Chris and Tisha picked out this house because they knew that Evan could walk to school and that is what we did on a warm starry night. At least I walked. At seven Evan is a little dynamo. He tore ahead of me to the corner. He waited until I reached him, crossed and tor ahead to the school.

I was tired just watching him.

The school served a simple lunch of hot dogs, vegetables and fruit. Evan went manic on me, running around with other boys, with me chasing him down to finish his lunch. His teacher sat down and talked with me. Evan had had a bad day at school, combining word sounds to make new words and coming up with “swears”. But we agreed that he was a smart boy, top of his class. He's an excellent reader and good at math, too. There's a lot of his father in him, I told her, and he turned out fine. I have faith in Evan.

We had a sing-a-long with the children in theory taking turns at the mic, but instead the boys crowded around and belted out the songs. Loudest of all was Evan, but I didn't mind because he was right in tune.

Next came a chance for the children to make trail mix following a recipe they had to read. Evan was first in line which was a shame because then he had nothing else to do but wrestle around with his friends. Before I knew what was happening, he had bounced over to another group of children that were doing a climbing exercise on the wall. I had to rush over to get him back to his own group.

I was tiring out.

When it was finally his group's turn to go to the climbing wall, he was right at the front of the line again. He climbed like a monkey then came back in line to do it again. I let him stand in line because it kept him busy though this tricky grandmother knew he wasn't supposed to get another turn. He enjoyed waiting this time because his friends were with him. They told silly jokes from a joke book he liked. He is a comedian in training. I tell Chris that he has a young Robin Williams on his hands.

Finally we were led into a room where a reading instructor explained to parents how to teach children to read, showing them strategies. Evan had let every other child go before him because he had figured out that there wouldn't be enough chairs so he would be allowed to sit on the teacher's swivel chair and turn it around and around and around until I put a stop to that.

There was a smart board in the room, which is essentially a big, big computer screen. The instructor showed all the tricks: putting a list on the screen, marking it with a “magic pen” that uses no ink and erasing the whole thing with her hand.

Evan was so excited. He wanted to play with this new technology. I was impressed that he later talked the instructor into letting him try it and was able to find new things to do with it.

There there was one more exercise, but I said, no, it was time to go home. Evan has a strict bedtime. Besides, I was winding down myself. We collected our free book and walked home. I rushed him along so fast I forgot my gloves and hat but it was a warm evening and I hadn't exactly spent a fortune on them.

We still had to get him in his pajamas, and of course there was reading time. I read him a Pokemon book and we started a second, a Batman book, this time taking turns on the paragraphs. He reads precisely and with great expression.

Now he is asleep and I may soon be myself if Chris and Tisha don't come back soon. It is past my bed time.

I really should have become a grandparent while I was young enough to endure him.

Lights, Action,Christmas!

Once the lights were on the tree it was time to put on the ornaments. I've been collecting them for six decades, starting with a glass ornament my grandmother gave me.  I still have it.  There's the red bird that always was near the top of my mother's tree.  Now it's near the top of mine.  It's battered and scratched but it means the world to me.

The ugly Styrofoam gingerbread men are a reminder of a time when Chris was very small and I had very little money to spend on a tree. We made popcorn strings, paper chains and folded snowflakes, and spent $1 on a dozen gingerbread men.  Only  three are left.  Those ugly things go on the back of the tree where no one can see them but I know they are there and what they stand for.

There are the ornaments that my son and I made together when he was a child.  There are teddy bears I bought on a shopping trip with my mother.   There are knit and crocheted pieces made by sisters.  And now there are the things from my grandson. He recorded on one of them:  "Merry Christmas, Grandma".  That was when he was three.

Each year there are two dozen candy canes.  Evan will sneak one or two off on Christmas Eve, just like his daddy used to.  There are soft unbreakable ornaments that Rascal will swipe at and knock off so he can bat them around. I know he'll do that, so I provide some he can enjoy, too.

Friends know I love ornaments so they show up from time to time. As the ornaments arrived, I had to have larger and larger trees.  This is the result.

Let anyone else have a modern, stylish tree.  This is my tree of memories of Christmases past.

Christmas Lights

Not only had I never set up the Christmas tree before, I hadn't put lights on a Christmas tree in years.  That was Gary's job.  Once he was finished, I put on the ornaments.

I managed to put the tree up before I left for Illinois, with only one branch left over.  Today was light time.

The red lights I used for years finally finally stopped working a year ago. I bought replacement lights in January at an end of the year clearance.  It was a great deal at 50 cents a box.  However, when I opened the box, I found out the wires were white instead of green and were meant to be used outdoors.

I rummaged around and found two more boxes of clear lights. They weren't red, but the wires were green. I would adapt.  I tested the lights to make sure they worked and set to work.  The tree is seven feet tall so I got a step ladder.  I started winding them around and around the tree until I got to the bottom boughs.  Then I plugged in the lights to see the full affect.  Half of the top lights didn't work. I had tested them!  No matter what I did, I couldn't find the problem.

I went to the hardware store to get more lights but they were out of clear ones.  So I began to shop.  It was the third store before I found a string of lights that would work.

Back home, I had to remove the top string, move the second string up, then add the final string on the bottom. Then I moved the lights around and until they were evenly spaced.  Then I plugged them in and hallelujah! they worked.

The project took almost all day.  I'll put the ornaments on tomorrow.   

Home Again

It was a five hour drive from the Illinois farmhouse to my house. I like driving, it gives me time to think and now it was about the two houses.

My little house here in Seymour started out as a farmhouse, probably much like the one in Illinois and maybe even older, it's hard to say.  A carpenter named Schultz bought the house and moved it into Seymour around 1949.  Then he cut it in half.  One half is the beauty parlor on the other side of the street.  Mine was just the kitchen and perhaps a parlor, now the living room, topped by two bedrooms.  What what once was a pantry became a bathroom.  Later, a garage was added to the north side and a dining room to the south, making it a seven room house.

I have no idea of the location of the original farmhouse.

Shirley's farmhouse has four bedrooms upstairs, and a kitchen, dining room, sitting room and parlor downstairs.  Cut it in half and take the kitchen and dining room downstairs, two bedrooms upstairs, and it would be very close to my house about the time it was moved.  

But I prefer my little half house the way it is.

I've always liked little places. I prefer a tent to the fanciest camper. I like my little office, just the right size to work without too many distractions.

I once lived in a two room house trailer, so narrow that there was no couch, only a love seat.  The bedroom was so tiny the double bed reached the walls on three sides. That house was perfect for me.  I liked that I could clean it from one end to another in fifteen minutes.

So the Illinois farmhouse?  If I am to stay there much this winter, I'll select a little corner somewhere and set up there.....

What Would Shirley Do?

This weekend, Gary kept saying "WWSD?" or What Would Shirley Do?

His aunt Shirley is in the nursing home but she tries to keep informed about what Gary is doing here at the farmhouse.  The first thing on her mind is her two cats Mommy and Lily, a mother and daughter.  They are farm cats and are not allowed in the house but neither does Shirley want them roaming around to be preyed on by coyotes.  She keeps them in the chicken house and tends to them daily.  They've been in that chicken house for about thirteen years.

So as soon as Gary took over he let them out and started spoiling them with special treats.  He found out if he opened a can of cat food they followed him anywhere, so at night he is able to bring them back to their domicile.

However, you cannot fool Aunt Shirley so when we visited her this morning, the first thing she said was, "You're letting those cats outside, aren't you."  Gary had to admit she was right but said he got them back in at night and she was satisfied with that. He didn't tell her that Mommy was now spending part of her day inside the farmhouse.

Gary was relieved that was her only question because he told me not to mention the big one.

Over the past few summers he, his sister, his niece and his nephew have been clearing brush from the property and stacking it in one part of the yard.  It was an enormous pile.  They wanted to burn it but Shirley insisted that they would set the house on fire so there it stayed.

Last night there was a bit of rain so the ground was wet.  There wasn't a breath of wind.  It was a great day to burn brush and so he did.  The flames went about ten feet in the air.

While he was at it, he burned bags and bags of garbage and papers that had been around for far too long.

The deed is done and Shirley is none the wiser, but I tell Gary I am capable of blackmail. If he doesn't do whatever I want I can tell her about his misdeeds.  He says Shirley knows he was always a naughty boy so it wouldn't surprise her any.

We'll see.