They Call Me Mrs. Brogan

I was at the grocery store last night.  Yeah, I know, that’s not usually my deal, but I couldn’t avoid it.  Anyway, one of the employees happened to address me as “Miss.”

It threw me for a little bit of a loop.  In theory, I haven’t been “Miss” for a little over 28 years now.  Realistically, I passed the “Miss” stage of my life when my kids started school.

Most women of my acquaintance vehemently detest being called “Mrs. Last Name.”  Every single one of them will say, “My name is [insert first name].  Mrs. Last Name is my mother-in-law.”  

I’ve never had that feeling.  I mean, geez, I’m proud of my husband and his last name...why would I not like being called that?  My guess is that being addressed as Mrs. Last Name makes them feel old.  

I’ve never had that feeling either.  And, really, so what?!  Being older--not old--equates respect in my mind.  

Mrs. Brogan encompasses so much:  wife, mother, nurse, chef, chauffeur, and wailing wall.  So, when my kids started school, I got tired of being “Young Man’s mom” or “Molly’s mom,” so I started telling their little friends to call me Mrs. Brogan.  

To this day, if I see some of their friends, I am still Mrs. Brogan, and you now what?  I like that a lot!

I call my best friends Mrs. Last Name all the time.  However, if I use their first names, I shorten it up to one syllable.  Ang, Jo, Tash, Vick.  Molly just pointed out to me not too long ago is that I don’t do that with men’s names.  Men’s names I expand out to the full given name:  Nicholas, Steven, Thomas, Michael.

Isn’t that odd?  I don’t know why I do that, but after she told me, I realized it was true.  Interesting.  

Then there are the nicknames.  My dad’s best friend goes by Duke.  Even though I always knew his real first name, the nickname is how I heard him referred to as a kid, so that’s how my kids know him.  When Young Man graduated from high school, he got a card signed “Dave & Joy.”  He looked at me and said “I know who Joy is, but who the hell is Dave?”  He’d never, in 18 years, heard Duke’s real name!  

I have a friend who used to come and get rhubarb from us when her kids were small.  That would have been, oh, 20 years ago now.  They still call me Rhubarb Jude.  

Over the years, I’ve noticed that Captain’s classmates--the guys anyway--all refer to each other by last name.  Dose, Fitch, Rucker, Weber.  It’s like a club or something.  

I could go on an on, and you could likely tell me funny stories about names in your family or circle of friends as well.  And if you are like me, when you tell the story, there is always a smile on your face!

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World's Worst Shopper

It’s a confirmed fact that I am not a good shopper.  However, until just recently, I thought this was limited to store-type shopping only.

Nope.

I can screw up online shopping as well, and in a major flustercluck kind of way that I and I alone am capable of.  

In light of the dread and failure of my store-type shopping, I have opted for the last several years to do the bulk of my Christmas shopping at Amazon.  I have a Prime membership, so I get free shipping which makes it a huge plus.  

So, Thanksgiving night after gorging on turkey and stuffing all day, I came home and plopped my butt in my rocking chair, grabbed my phone, and “went to town.”  Amazon...here I come.  

I mowed through my list of gifts in nothing flat.  Hit the “Checkout” button, got the confirmation email that the order was received, and patted myself on the back for being so efficient.  

Next morning when I was checking my email, there was one from Amazon that there was a problem with my debit card and the payments (they’d divided my one huge order into two) were declined.

What the fudge, you say?  No way...there was twice enough money in my account to cover the total!  Backtrack to My Order History and find out that I had forgotten--in all my swift efficiency--to update the experation date on my debit card.  Rod rammit.

Go back, fix that, resubmit the order.  New confirmation email received, and I called it good.  

Until the next day.

Payments declined again.  Are you fudging kidding me?!  Now what?

Keep digging in the email InBox and find a fraud alert from the credit union.  They thought someone had stolen my card and was trying to stuff their stocking on my dime, so they were declining all payments until I contacted them to tell them otherwise.  This would explain a couple other embarrassing moments I’d had the day before.  

Fine.

Call the credit union, verify that, yes, it was me doing all this shopping.  Apparently they are also aware that retail therapy is not my cup of tea.  Got them all straightened out and go BACK to Amazon to submit the order.  

Day #3 when I’m checking my email, I see that the payment for one of the two orders had been approved and one was declined.  SO MANY BAD WORDS!!

Double check the debit card information at Amazon to verify all was well there.  Yep.  Go to the online bank statement to see if there were any clues.  

Oh yeah...there it was.  An automatic payment had been deducted between the time one order was approved and the second was declined.  This automatic payment put me two stinking dollars...TWO DOLLARS...short of the total of the order.  

Pals, I made up words sailors don’t even know.  By this time I was so fed up, I just completely canceled the second order and decided to brave the malls and do actual store shopping for those items.  Free shipping wasn’t worth this kind of angst.

 

Two days later, the items from that first order that finally was approved and shipped was delivered to my door.  Joy and rapture, right?

Yeah...no.

In all my swift efficiency, I had ordered the wrong size of one thing.  Back to Amazon to find out their return policy which, as it turns out, is actually very easy to walk through.  I am not ashamed to say that I paid an extra $20 to have UPS come right to my dang door and take the item for return shipping.  

But, I am happy to say that with careful budgeting and extreme due diligence while on Amazon after the above fiasco, I have completed my shopping, and it should all be delivered by Christmas.  

I finally realized what I need to alleviate my retail woes.  I need a personal shopper.  I sheet you knot...I would pay someone to do this for me because I hate shopping in any way, shape, or form!

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Childhood Christmas Memories

The little country church where I went as a kid was recently in the news.  It had appeared that someone had stolen a headstone from the cemetery, but thankfully, that was incorrect.  Listening to the news story brought back so many memories.

Immanuel Lutheran church in Potsdam is quite small compared to most churches.  At full capacity, the main sanctuary area would seat around 125 people.  You could cram another dozen in the balcony if they didn’t mind being cozy.

Sunday mornings involved the church service at 9:30, with Sunday school immediately following.  While the kids were in Sunday school, the parents were in the basement having coffee and cookies.  The men would solve world problems while the ladies chatted about kids, sewing projects, gardens, and calf chores.  Remember, I said it was a country church.  

Some of the strongest and most precious memories I have of my childhood church are of Christmas Eve.  Starting six weeks before Christmas Eve, Sunday school lessons were suspended and replaced with pageant practice.  

We did the full Nativity story complete with costumes.  Because ours was a little country church, our Christmas Eve service was at 8:30 at night...after night milking.

I remember that my mom--the most creative person I know--made crowns for the three kings and a pair of 4-foot angel wings out of chicken wire, paper mache, and gold spray paint.  

The kings wore fancy robes, the shepherds wore plain robes, and Mary wore a dress and head scarf thing with a really uncomfortable wire headband to keep it in place.  Baby Jesus was someone’s baby doll wrapped in a flannel baby blanket.  The angels (preschool and kindergarten kids) wore white gowns with gold garland halos.

The most sought-after parts in the pageant were Mary and Joseph. Big Brother had the part of Joseph at least a couple of years. How appropriate as his name IS Joseph! That was an easy part because Joseph had no speaking to do. He just had to stand there and look dazzled by his fiancee.

Mary didn't speak either, at least that I remember. People spoke to her.

Or, more accurately, an angel spoke to her. Gabriel told her,

Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.  And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:  And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

When Mom was in charge of the pageant, everybody who had a speaking part had to memorize their part and be able to say it loud enough to project to that balcony.  And folks, we went by the King James version of this story with all those thees, thines, and thous in it.  

To this day, when we watch Charlie Brown's Christmas and Linus recites the angel’s message to the shepherds, I can say it right along with him.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign to you:  You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.  And suddenly with the angel there was a multitude of heavenly host praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.”

And in my little country church, there was singing.  All those wonderful old Christmas hymns:  Silent Night, Joy to the World, We Three Kings, O Come O Come Emmanuel, Away In A Manger, Little Town of Bethlehem, and Angels We Have Heard On High.  Again, the children’s choir had to memorize and project.

After the pageant was over, each kid got a box of animal crackers and a box of Christmas candy.  

Taking part in the pageant on Christmas Eve made it all seem so real, yet magical, to me as a child.  My kids always had theirs at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon a week or two before Christmas. The message was the same, but not the feeling of it.

I wonder if those costumes are still in use at Emmanuel or not.  Probably not; they would be 40 years old by now.  I wonder if they still do the Nativity pageant on Christmas Eve. Probably; some traditions are meant to continue. But all those memories that I tucked away as a child to be cherished as an adult are still strong and vibrant.  

I hope that you have brilliant and treasured memories of your childhood Christmases that come to mind this time of year.  

Images used:

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Energizer Cubby

I have this sign hanging on my dining room wall. I did NOT buy it; it was a gift from Young Man and Mama Bear.

But it's relevant as Cubby spent the weekend with us while Young Man and Mama Bear visited friends in Wisconsin.  I forgot how much energy toddlers have...and grammas don’t!

We played with the Tupperware shape ball 100 times, listened to 1000 nursery rhymes on Pandora, washed hands 10,000 times, and drew 1,000,000 sheep, Buddy, Chewy, and Shannon pictures.

Okay, yeah, that’s an exaggeration...but you get the idea.  

It isn’t that she is naughty, because she’s not.  She doesn’t sass, doesn’t throw tantrums, doesn’t talk back (except that one time when I had to count to three and swat her butt, but who’s keeping score), and she goes to bed without a fuss.  

She is--like every other toddler out there--busy, busy, busy.  I could actually see her learning while she was here.  When she came on Friday morning, the shape ball was beyond her capabilities.  By Saturday, she could get the shapes put in if I pointed out where they went.  By Sunday afternoon, she was doing it all on her own.  That’s amazing to me.  

And vocabulary?!  Whoa...unbelievable!  The new phrase she picked up from me this weekend was what the heck...except she doesn’t get the “what” on there and it just comes out “the heck”?  And giggle like a goon!

She’s got a prankster’s soul.  She figured out if she looked at me and said “Boo” that I would jump and gasp, so she did that every chance and then say, “Shannon funny.”  Yep kid, you’re a barrel of monkeys!

She is devoted to her dog, Chewy.  Sometimes Chewy appreciates that and sometimes he doesn’t.  If she wanted to go downstairs and play (I had a dishpan of water with a measuring cup for her to play with), she would take my hand and head for the stairs, but before starting down, she would look around and say, “C’mon Chewy!”  Freaking adorable.  

She thinks Captain is still in harvest mode because when he was outside, she would randomly say, “Nampa combine corn.”  Okay, sure...if that makes you happy.

We found out she doesn’t like alarm-type noises...the microwave beeping when it’s done or the dryer buzzing when it’s done, but what really drove her into a tizzy was the smoke alarms going off when we were making pizza.  I can relate; smoke alarms tend to throw me into a tizzy too.

Diane and I took her to the Children’s Museum in Rochester for the exhibit about Clifford the Big Red Dog.  There were a whole passel of kids there, and I got to be a proud Gramma when I saw her play nice with everyone, even giving hugs whether the receiver wanted it or not!  She shared and took her turn without problem.  

The biggest snit we saw from her was when it was time to go and she did NOT want to leave.  I had to bribe her out of the museum with a promise to go home and see Chewy.  

All in all, it was a very pleasant weekend full of new memories with Cubby.  It reminded me that we are extremely lucky to have our children living nearby!

Organized Chaos

Mrs. Captain is the most organized housekeeper I know...said no one EVER!  

You moved Mrs. Captain's pen holder two inches to the left...oooh, honey, are you in for it...has been said a time or two by coworkers.  

Apparently I use up all my organizational skills for activities that pay me.  That’s how I roll.  

To prove this point, here is some photo documentation of the difference between the two.

Dining room table used as a closet, laundry basket, and art table...

Kitchen sink buried in dirty dishes…

Entryway that is hard to enter due to clutter…

Office closet that needs a sign that says “Open at your own risk”...

Captain’s desk...

My office desk…

Captain is going to be mortified that these pictures are now in cyberspace for all posterity. He likes to think that we are the only ones who have messy messes in our houses. Can we say cuh-RAY-zee? I'm pretty sure that every single person reading this has at one time or another had a mess. If you haven't, you're no friend of mine!

I wouldn’t have thrown Captain’s desk in there for comparison because it’s mostly his domain, and I am big on letting people maintain their personal space however they are comfortable with it.

That said, however, I have to use Captain’s desk to do the farm books, and it’s a conundrum because, I’m sorry, I cannot function in that kind of awful chaos.  

Math loathing notwithstanding, mostly my approach to this problem is that I clean the desk before starting book work.  Then we have a secondary conundrum because when Captain wants something that was on the desk, he can’t find it because I “messed everything up.”  Excuse me?!

My fall-back approach is to just avoid that desk until about this time of year when the book work is becoming critical.  Also a conundrum because now I can’t remember why we wrote a five-digit check in February, but it had to be important to have that many zeroes in it.

I think I might have the answer to this dilemma.  I need to load the farm accounting software onto my laptop which resides on my clean, organized, uncluttered desk.  

Now if I could just find the installation driver disk for the software...

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Done With Calf Country

At last….I can pass back the reins for Calf Country to Captain.  Last night was the end of my duty until spring.

Being in charge of Calf Country is my contribution to spring and fall field work.  I only have to feed them at night, so it isn’t a huge time commitment or burden.

I had a few adventures, though. I feed the calves four at a time because that's how many small pails I can carry at one time. Unlike Captain, who mixes all the milk in 5-gallon pails and distributes to smaller pails right in Calf Country, I mix the individual pails and carry those from the milk house to Calf Country.

Anyway, one night I made my first trip to feed four calves, and there was a calf running loose.  

Let me back up and explain our set up.  Baby calves that get fed milk are in individual houses, called hutches, with collars and 6-foot chains, which gives them room to go in and out of their houses, explore their immediate environment, and visit with their neighbors.

Once the babies are ready to be off of milk and on a grain diet, they get moved to a group pen.  As they grow, they get moved from there to a larger group pen, then to a fenced yard, and finally to a larger fenced yard.

So there was a loose calf tearing around the hutches when I went to feed the first four calves.  He didn’t have a collar and was noticeably bigger than the baby calves.  

Logic told me this calf was from the first group pen and must have wiggled out under the gate.  From past experience, I knew that (1) I would never, ever get him back in the pen by myself and (2) he wouldn’t go further than the hutches, so I didn’t pay him much mind.

One my second trip out to Calf Country, the loose calf had a buddy, so now there were two loose calves.  Hmmmm….

On my third and final trip, there were four loose calves out and about, including Louie the Little.  Lovely.

Finished feeding the babies, got the pails washed up and put away, and then called Captain.  By the time I called him, the four loose calves were all laying down in a grassy area near the group pen.  He said to just make sure the chain on the gate of the group pen was actually latched, and he would get them back into the pen when he got home.  

So that wasn’t too bad of an ordeal.  

The second adventure went a little more sideways.  Captain brought home two new babies one morning then went on his way to the field.  I fed calves that night, no problems.  The next night I was feeding before Molly, Mama Bear, Cubby, and Diane came over for ladies night.  Molly showed up while I was feeding the first four calves, so she walked with me. I told her I just had to make one more trip with four pails to finish feeding the eight calves.   

A moment of silence.

“Mom, there are nine calves here.”  Well crap, that means I didn’t feed one of the new ones last night!!  It turned out okay, and the calf I missed didn’t get sick or die...WHEW!

The third adventure was just as sideways.  Captain, again, brought home two new calves, made sure he showed me where there were so I didn’t miss feeding anybody, and went on his way.  

I went out to feed that night, and one of the new ones had slipped out of his collar and was running loose.  I tried to coax him back to his hutch with a pail of milk, but he was having nothing to do with it and kept bounding away as soon as I got close.  Fine.

I left his pail of milk in front of the hutch hoping he would at least get back in his house.  Called Captain to tell him about the rogue calf, and he said he would catch him when he got home.

Problem was, when Captain got home, it was full dark and the calf couldn’t be found.  We hunted around some, and gave up.  Since cattle are herd animals and need their peeps, we knew he wasn’t far away.

Sure enough, the next morning, he was in one of the other hutches with his buddy.  Captain got him back in his own hutch and tightened the collar so he wouldn’t slip out again.

The biggest issue I ran into is that my system is not the same as Captain’s system.  Not that I think either of us is wrong, just different.

In Captain’s world, there is his way...and the wrong way.  Since he generally isn’t around when I am in charge of the calves, this doesn’t typically create any conflict.  However…

One night he was around when I was in the middle of feeding calves and in trying to help me do it his way, we smacked face-first into conflict.  Yes, I know he was trying to be helpful, but he wouldn't listen when I told him repeatedly his way doesn't work for me. I proved myself right, and therein lay the conflict.  

Luckily, neither one of us had the time or inclination to have a knock-down drag-out fight about it.  It was more along the lines of exaggerated eye rolls and harsh muttering under the breath.  

Regardless, my time in Calf Country is over until spring now.  It’s time to settle into hibernation mode for the winter where the most strenuous thing I do is crochet!

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