Keep Momma Happy

These days it is rare that all three of our adult children are under one roof.    The smell of a juicy turkey baking and my famous sweet potato pie usually reels ‘em in each fall.   Next to cooking, my favorite thing is taking pictures–taking pictures of them.  Collectively, they are my finest moment and the loves of my life.  I cherish the holidays with them and hope to capture just the right smiles for our family photo Christmas card.  Do they care?  You decide.

Family portrait 2012…

Achieved  after  an  appropriate  amount  of  begging,  bribing,  and pretty-pleases with sugar on top.  This is what my little cherubs offered up.  I’m not alone.  My sister-in-law, Auntie Karen, solved the lack of enthusiasm in her family this way:

Toby, the Pomeranian, was the only one with any “cheese” so she hung up her son and daughter’s empty sweatshirts where their beautiful smiles should be.  Mission accomplished.

We laughed about it on the phone and wondered where we went wrong.

Was it the cupcakes we baked for all their birthday parties at school?  Was it when we made their beds and washed their clothes?  Was it all the worrying we did when they got their driver’s licenses?  We decided it had to be all those bedtime stories and fairy tales that turned our sweet little ones into unrelenting, nonconforming monsters.

Sometimers

The Michigan Secretary of State gave me a gift on my 40th birthday…a restricted driver’s license because for the first time in my life, I couldn’t read the eye chart.  Wasn’t that a real kick in the pants?

Fast forward a decade and along with my reluctant acceptance, I now own several pairs of eyeglasses.  Why do they call “them” “pairs”?  Anywho…on any given day I might sport the schmancy designer sunglasses with the big Liz Taylor 60′s lenses or the Vera Bradley night shades for night driving.  My backups are a couple of buy one, get one free deals.  They are stashed in coat pockets, consoles, and purses.  Sometimes they are laying out on the kitchen counter or left behind at a restaurant by mistake. 

Wouldn’t you just know it…Jennifer called and asked me to go to the movies with her.  Something about a vampire and a wolf.  Nearsightedness means never going to the movies without your specs.  We were meeting in a little bit and I searched high and low for my Vera Bradley’s.   Without them, I can’t read any of the movie credits or see the distinct lines in an actor’s face.  Heck, I can barely tell a boy from a girl on screen these days (with or without the eye wear.) 

After 20 minutes of running up the stairs to look, back down the stairs to retrace my steps, and searching every cubby hole in my car twelve times, I found them!  They were on top of my head. 

The Breaking Point

What kind of an idiot plans a total home renovation

in the weeks right before Thanksgiving?

Demolition started months ago.  Walls came and went with the appliances as a new kitchen was created from scratch.  I’m no Martha Stewart, but on any given day I could copy a recipe down on any horizontal surface using only my finger on a makeshift drywall dust etch-a-sketch.  Optimistically, three days before Thanksgiving I brought a frozen turkey home to thaw in a small fridge, upstairs.  My pots and pans were buried in storage boxes, the new oven was in the middle of the dining room, and we had no running water.  Minor technicalities.  WWMD?

Miracles do happen and on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I began the unpacking and moving-back-in process.  The song, “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall, A Hundred Bottles of Beer” kept running through my mind as I cherry picked through dozens of boxes in the garage in order to find the basics:  serving spoons, bowls, spices (paper plates, plastic forks and napkins we could buy) my Kitchen-aid Mixer, and baking pans.  What a cluster.  I found crap I forgot I had and never knew I needed.

By 10 p.m. that day all the essentials were in place but my food cupboards looked worse than Old Mother Hubbard’s.  Heading out to the grocery store for EVERYTHING for turkey dinner for 14 was next up on the hit parade.  I didn’t have a cup of sugar, a jar of gravy, or a bowl to put them in in the house.   My shopping list was organized by aisle, row, quantity and temperature.  Stick THAT in your pie hole, Martha.

After almost two hours lugging a 700 lb. shopping cart up and down the Meijer Store aisles, I was wrecked.  I pulled up to the check out lanes in time to see the last checker click her light off.  The only lanes left open were self check out.   My blood pressure was rising; I could feel the veins in my body begin to snap, crackle, and pop.  My hand struck the “help” button which gave me the opportunity to vent to the guy running the 17 self checkout lanes.  Now this guy was a sharpie; one look at me and he knew it was a postal moment.  To his credit, he called up front for a checker to help ring and bag my crap.  By this time it was all crap.  The whole night.  My feet hurt, I was exhausted, it was after midnight, and I had a good “crab” going.

Fine.  With seven items on the belt, I looked back and saw a young mom and dad with a 10 month old baby boy in their arms, and five items in their basket, waiting for me to finish checking out with Goliath.   Remembering all the years I towed two carts; one with two kids in the basket and one kid in the seat, and one as full as this behemoth was, made me stop and prioritize.  The memory made me human again.  Managing a smile, I invited them to take “cuts” and complimented their little guy.  He was a cutie.  The mom and dad seemed happy and the baby was happy (even at midnight!) and they took pity on me, refusing the offer twice.

Feeling a sense of renewed urgency and quite a bit of guilt, I started whipping the cans and bottles and dry goods up on the belt; both hands were flying like a fast forward movie reel and my head was buried down looking for the next easy item.  When I looked up again, the dad had sneaked up past me and was cheerfully loading my groceries into a new cart.  He said, “It looks like you needed some help.”  My dear Reader, God works in mysterious ways.  This was nothing short of divine intervention and I was thankful.  Prior to that exact moment; I was truly at the breaking point.

We chit chatted and I learned that they were both 28 years old.  Their mothers did a good job.

My bill came to a coupla-hundo and sixteen bucks.  I paid in 50′s and when the young couple wasn’t looking, I whispered to the cashier, “Put my change on their tab,” and hurried out with my spoils before they figured it out.   It was a little after 1 a.m as I opened the hatch on my car and chucked my coat (with the key fob in it) up to the front seat and piled all those plastic white bags so high that the hatch wouldn’t close.  “No worries,” I thought, “I’ll just tap the driver’s door, get in, and move the rear seat up.”  Apparently, the automatic doors don’t work unless the fob is OUTSIDE of the car.  Nice.  Now steam was flying up out of the top of my head again.

I had to go back to the cart corral, retrieve the cart, and unload all the crap I had just loaded so I could crawl on my hands and knees into the back of my car, over the rear seats, into the front seat to get that fob.  It was an I Love Lucy fiasco only without the humor.   Just as I climbed back out of the trunk of my car, the young couple walked past me.  They had been parked in the same row.  They didn’t recognize my big fat can backing out of the trunk, but when my head popped out, they were surprised and smiled.   I saw that the two of them were absolutely beaming.  The mom was holding the baby so the dad came up to me and hugged me tight.  She smiled, and they both said that nothing like that had ever happened to them before.  We each took a moment to appreciate this raw, rare and meaningful moment when all of us did what we could to help a stranger.   We shared a few more holiday wishes and we left better people than when we had arrived.

Happy Holidays

Twenty Twelve!

Voila

The wood is natural, not stained.

Happy, Happy, Happy

The big day arrives!

Bumblebees

Me and Woody.  That’s what I called us.  We were six and five in 1966, living on 52nd and Kedzie, on the south side of Chicago.  Woody carried a little red metal tool box that year, everywhere he went.  The handle flipped this way and that but fit perfectly into his little hand.  Summertime and big, yellow fuzzy bees were bumbling on dandelion tops. 

It was my job to stomp on them and his job to collect them and place them in the trays of his tool box.  We went walking around the block, back when kids could walk around the block, stomping and collecting bumblebees.  I would “kill” them and he would pick them up and put them in the toolbox.  Our collection.

The streetlights came on; our cue to go home.  Woody put our treasures under the bunk bed in our room.  I had the top; he the bottom.  He used to put his feet up and kick the wooden slats to send me a message.  I used to throw my dolls and toys down, wallside, sneak attack, to hit him back.  We giggled.  Innocence.

Mother heard a dull buzzing sound coming from our room.  It kept getting louder.   Upon further inspection, she detected it was coming from under the bed.  That morning we had gone to school so she took it upon herself to investigate.  The sounds were coming from inside Woody’s little red toolbox.

I would have like to have been a fly on the wall when Mother opened the box and hundreds of previously stunned bees came to life.

The Sound of Silence

Winter Camp.  Barren trees, whipping winds; a chill that blows through a jacket and rattles the bones.  All around me this November day are signs of hibernation.  The chitter of squirrels is missing.  Songbirds are gone.  Flowers have wilted and died.  Grass is every shade of brown.  Days are short.  Only the occasional caw-caw of the black crow breaks the sound of silence.   The crow is the only sign left of life.   Stillness and solitude in the campground.  Crackle of fire and hiss of hot dog  at the end of a whittled branch is the only warmth.  Feeling alone.  Feeling peaceful.  Able to feel.  Feels okay.   Another day.  November in the big woods is divine.  Time to think.  Time to be.  Me.  Alone with my thoughts and plans and hopes and dreams. 

Hocking Hills, OH where the Delaware Indians carved a long ago life.  On a trail I spooked a deer; a majestic eight point buck in his prime.  He blew at me and waved his flag.  A gift.

   At daybreak along a well worn trail, I happened upon a cave years ago carved by glaciers.  Colorful rock, sturdy, and home to early man.  Ancient.  Sitting on a stone perch, I can imagine life for its inhabitants.  Holed up against the elements.  Safe. A good life.  For sure.

November people are sung under the blankets in their soft beds.  Plastic blue tarps cover pontoons and RVs.  Children are finishing homework.  Bikes, bats and balls are put away.  Crock pots are out and soups are made.  Turkeys are being flash frozen by the millions.  Christmas trees are baled, stacked and ready to ship.    Me?  My nose is cold.  My campfire is hot.  Winter camp.  My favorite time of year.  Time to think.  Time to be.  Time to reflect.  A simple time.  Quiet before the storm.

Stuck, Stick, Stuck

The dynamic duo never disappoint when it comes to heavy equipment.  We just took delivery of a 5000 series Deere tractor with a nice front end loader and within an hour I got “the call.”  She’s not stuck, she’s STUCK.  It took a real professional to accomplish this; someone gifted in the art of forward and reverse.   I don’t get my undies in a bunch anymore.  It is just another day on a farm blessed with two skilled technicians, Adam and Bryce.  When they are not busy destroying things, they are playing in the sandbox with their elephant masks on.

It was the mud’s fault–slicker than dog sh*t

As this year’s farm season winds down to a crawl, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the glory days of summer.

“Lets drive around with our masks on!

“Events” this year include a backhoe with a splinter shoved up its grill, the 8WD JD 9300 articulating tractor–an unstoppable tractor–stopped so bad that it took two more big tractors and a cruise ship tow line to get it out, a ruptured muffler that got a hillbilly fix job, a Blue Ox with blown rubber, shattered glass on a red jeep, and the best:  using the spray rig with 60′ booms to launch a little bass boat–stuck only because SOMEONE forgot the rig was loaded hundreds of gallons of water.  She went straight down to Davy Jones’  locker.  Brilliant.

Morning Wood

Then there was the day the Freightliner missed a step and fell into a ditch.  Good times.

These days I wake up happy simply because we haven’t been a featured story on “I Survived.” 

Git-r-Done

The trusty yellow fixer upper.

Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.