Naughty Children, All of Us

I found out that my seven-year-old grandson got into trouble in school.  A note was sent home.  It seems he had a book on his lap and was reading it when he was supposed to be paying attention to the book they were working on during his reading class.  His excuse, he had already read THAT book.

I'm afraid I didn't say too much about that because his father Chris was there.  Chris did exactly the same thing when he was that age. He, too, was an early reader.

And what about this grandmother?  I was the third girl in my family.  My older sisters always brought their school books home from the little one room school on French Road. I pounced on them. When I reached first grade myself (there was no kindergarten in those days) I already knew how to read and I was writing cursive.  When the teacher found out she was angry and told my parents they should never have taught me.
It was a big surprise to them.

I, too, used to hide books from the teachers until the fourth grade when Mrs. Koepp, an enlightened teacher, realized I had read every book in the little school. She started bringing me boxes of books from the Seymour library. By the seventh grade I was regularly excused from reading classes to do other projects.

The same thing was true all the way through high school. I had read all the textbooks before the first day of any class.  I was almost always reading something else when called on.  I got very good at watching the pages that the other students were on and flipping to the right spot, all the time reading something more interesting cleverly hidden behind other books or on my lap.

I told Gary about Evan's problem. Gary had the same problem in his school.  He said the solution was simple:  Evan has to get better at hiding the books he's reading.  He may be right.

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Speaking of reading, don't miss Bettyann Moore's story at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  "Still Life With Leprechauns  is a perfect story for St. Patrick's Day.

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I won't be writing a blog tomorrow.  St. Patrick's Day is also my birthday so I'm taking the day off.

A Weekend Just for Me...Sort Of

We began the day with snow, though it never amounted to much and melted immediately. Gary said we should go to Appleton and take care of errands there. 

We began with his haircut.  He and his father before him have been going to the same barbershop since the 1970's. He comes from a family that doesn't like change. He needed a haircut, he came from Illinois to get it at the barber he knew. While he was being shorn, I walked along College Avenue, stopping at the City Center when the snow/rain became too intense. It wasn't all that cold, but College Avenue often has a strong wind that can chill a walker to the bone. I found that a shop in the City Center that used to have great ice cream now was a sandwich shop.  Sad that. Even sadder, the special of the day was corned beef and cabbage. I was born on St. Patrick's Day but I've never liked it.  

Next we went to the Fox River Mall where we went to the cafe court for lunch. We like the chicken teriyaki there. We always get one portion and split it.  For exercise, we walked around the mall. One circuit is one mile so we've often used the mall to exercise. 

Now we come to the true reason for this trip. We went to the Apple Creek RV center so I could see the camper Gary wants to buy. It would be much bigger than the one we have. What he wanted me to see was the little room at the end which would serve as an office for me. He said we might want to someday live in the forests and I would need a place to write. We shall see where that leads.  

We bought groceries at Aldi's, always looking for bargains. From there, we went to Walmart, except I didn't go inside. Instead I checked Payless Shoes to see if there were any shoes that I might want.  I did find a pair that would be comfortable but not in my size.  

Finally, we went to Goodwill where I found a book I had been searching for, a journal of sorts with some inspirational ideas.  

All in all, a satisfactory day.   

Recycling Mishap

It's not always easy.

This morning I put out the recycling which mostly consists of Rascal's empty cat food cans.  There weren't a lot so I didn't use the big recycling bin. Instead I put out the kitchen waste basket, carefully putting it to one side of the driveway.

Then I went inside to get ready for my performance at the Clintonville Senior Center. I took a shower, did my makeup and put on my storytelling costume.  I packed the autoharp, some of my books, and other paraphernalia in the car.  I was in the house checking over my purse when I got a phone call about another performance.  I worked out the dates and time with the librarian. I finished up in ten minutes giving me a little less than the hour I needed to get to Clintonville.  I went back to the car, started it and backed out....right over the waste basket.  In the ten minutes I was in the house the guys in the recycling truck had come and gone, tossing the wastebasket in the middle of the driveway right behind me.

The wastebasket was jammed under the car and I couldn't pull it out.  I tried driving up a snow bank, thinking that would give me the space to loosen the it. That's didn't work.  I tried backing forward and backward.  Nothing worked.

I finally decided to drive to the nearest service station for help. The dragged wastebasket made an awful racket.  I was a few yards from the gas station when the basket let go. I went back, picked it up and threw the ruined and unrecognizable basket in the back of the car. The plastic basket will be in the next recycling day, two weeks from now.  

With a little speeding, I made it to the performance.  Tonight Gary is in Appleton for a meeting and afterwards, will pick up a new kitchen bin.

Urgency

There's an urgency about my writing these days.

I'll be 69 on Sunday.  I come from a family that is not long-lived.  If genetics is a key, I can expect my health to decline in my 70s.  I may not live until 80.  I am not being morbid here and certainly I take good care of myself, but how long can I write?  A stroke could put an end to my scribblings.

I've spent too many years letting events lead me from one career to another.  I've been a storyteller, a musician, a teacher, a librarian, a director, an escrow officer, and so on, when all I really should have been doing was writing.  That is the direction I intended my life to go when I was in high school.

I've dreamed novels, written down ideas for plays, thought about screenplays and never got around to doing the work.  Now I feel the urgency.

In the past two years, I've written short stories for Black Coffee Fiction which is now in a book by the same name.  My novel, Yesterdays Secrets, Tomorrow's Promises, is now published.  In April, I'll have another collection of short stories.  In the fall, Wade, Betty and I will publish another Black Coffee Fiction collection. I hope to finish another novel next winter, followed by a Christmas collection soon after.

Today, I have three books on the shelf at the Muehl Public Library and hope to have seven at this time next year.  This after putting off writing for over fifty years.

People ask if I'm making any money and I truthfully can answer, I don't much care.  Those words have been stopped up inside me and are now spilling over. More than earning money, I am concerned that my books will be read.

Turkey

A couple of months ago, Gary bought a free range turkey from an Illinois friend and sent it up here with his sister.  It resided in the freezer downstairs until today.Gary will be here over the weekend to celebrate my birthday so I decided the time was right to roast that bird.  I went down the stairs, opened the freezer and hauled the turkey out.  It took both hands and I wished I had brought along gloves it was so cold and frozen solid. 

It took all my muscles to cart it upstairs.  A 16.77 lb. turkey for two people.  What was he thinking?  I planned on putting it in a roasting pan to defrost it in the refrigerator but it was too big.  It was also too big for my big soup kettle.  It is now in the refrigerator in the vegetable bin until I can go shopping tomorrow for an aluminum pan big enough.  

While I'm in the stores I will have to get the rest of the requirements, stuffing, yams, potatoes and so on.  

I've asked Chris, Tisha and Evan to come over on Saturday to share the feast.  I figure it will take five hours to roast a bird that big so I will have to set the alarm and start cooking by 7:00 a.m. 

That is not what is making me unhappy.  It is this:  Rascal was going through the kitchen when I was shoving the turkey into the fridge.  He stopped immediately.  He knows what a turkey is.  He knows that it must be cooked.  He began to yowl.  Now he is even unhappier about his daily nosh than usual and he is never that happy about my offerings to begin with. 

When the feast is over, I'll make a pot of turkey soup and grind up most of the remaining dark meat for turkey tacos plus some homemade cat food for Rascal.  

I'm tired just thinking about it. Women should not work that hard on their birthdays. 

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I'm on the fourth story of sixteen that will be in my short story collection. They need very little editing since they were originally in the Black Coffee Fiction blog.  I find after over two years of writing these stories, I can't remember exactly what was in them.  They are better than I thought.  

Bugs

I was right about yesterday's precipitation forecast. We were supposed to get almost six inches of snow.  Instead it rained and sleeted.  The sidewalks were slippery this morning but by this afternoon the ice melted and I was out walking again. There are no big storms forecast for the next two weeks so it may be we are done with storms and can go right into spring.

That would be heaven, but then a box elder bug dropped on my desk right in front of me.  Yes, spring, but then come the bugs and flying insects.

The box elder bug probably is a transplant from Illinois that Gary brought here during one of his breaks. The farmhouse is full of them.  Whenever I go down there, I am preoccupied with capturing and killing them but it hardly makes a dent.  There are hundreds of them, so many he really should call an exterminator.  I am not happy to see them starting up here.

Then there are little flying gnats. I am starting my spring planting by bringing in pots from the back yard. I will be filling them with flowers from the planting trays in the dining room. It works well except that after several days the gnats begin to emerge.  I walk around the house killing them between my two hands. To the neighbors I probably look like I am learning a Spanish dance.

Worse, I found the first earwig of the year floating in the dish water. Earwigs are the worst bug of all.  I think they are coming up from the basement. Yuck.

So yes I love spring, yes I love summer, but there is no season that is perfect. The bugs are here to tell me that.

Searching for Spring

It rained all night and on and off during the day.  The damp chill did not make walking possible for my arthritic knee.

I thought I would stay inside all day and wait for the next snowstorm, due tonight, but it didn't work out that way.  What I had to do was to go out and buy cat food for Rascal. He was down to one can and I pictured how miserable he would be when he ran out during the storm and how he would pass his misery on to me.  No, nothing for it, I got the car out.

But once I was driving, I thought I might as well go take a look to see what was happening in the countryside.  I went to the marsh on Van Patten Road east of Shiocton. I found the swamp was melting and full of water, readying itself for the migratory birds. I saw a northern harrier and a rough-legged hawk, but so far nothing else except sparrows and crows.  The muskrats were wisely still wintering in their dens. I kept expecting to see the cheerful little hooded merganser in his Easter bonnet, but he's still likely two weeks away.

I drove further to see the Shioc and Wolf Rivers. The ice is thinning with about three inches of water on top. Anytime now the ice will crack and float away. Now is the time snowmobilers should be putting their noisy machines away for the summer, but there are always some that go out for a run after a case or two of beer and wind up in the drink. Just yesterday the police had to rescue two on Lake Winnebago. Is it so impossible to heed the warnings of the Department of Natural Resources?

On the way home, just east of Black Creek, I spotted something in a field. I turned the car around and got out the binoculars. Sure enough, there was a flock of over twenty big turkeys. Somehow they get through our cold winters and thrive.

Once home, I was able to wade through the remaining snow in the back yard to fill the bird feeders.

So tonight Rascal and I sit watching the bunnies back there, wondering if it will be snow or no snow.  At this time of the year, the forecasters are never really sure. It always is a matter of the temperature.  Slightly above 32 degrees F. (O degrees Celsius) and we'll have rain.  Right at the freezing mark and it's sleet. Drop further and it's snow. The prognosticators I consulted forecast anything from one inch to six inches of snow.  What we do know is that no matter how much, it will melt over the next week.