Laundry Day

Laundry day (which is actually every day) at my house is like an archaeological dig.  Sorting through the pile of dirty clothes can clearly show the events of recent days.

A pile of soggy towels used to tell of a water fight on a warm summer evening that got just a little out of hand.  Whereas everyone else was satisfied with glasses of water as missiles, Captain went for the “big guns” and filled a couple of 5-gallon pails to douse us with.  Really, he should know better than that, because we paid him back in full when I distracted him with a couple of hugs and kisses while the kids hooked up the hose and turned it on.

Stacks of clean, folded shirts and pants in the dirty clothes hamper used to tell me that my children had “cleaned” their rooms recently.  That must really be a kid’s trick, because I remember doing the same thing.  There was always something more important to do than clean—what, I can’t imagine--but there must have been something.

A pile of children’s bedding can bring back memories of spending a nerve-wracking night during a high fever episode.  Any parent who has done that knows what crazy thoughts run through the mind at 3 a.m.  I wonder if God gets a good laugh from all the ludicrous deals that are flung His way in times of such crises.  In my book, God has to have a sense of humor or He wouldn’t be able to tolerate the human race at all.  

Ah yes, there was always the dreaded chore clothes layer.  If Captain had an especially busy week, I might find grease, hydraulic oil, or blood...or a combination thereof...like the day after the tractor went kaput in the middle of the field when they were chopping hay.  There might be shirts with a large blob of sour milk on it—that says, “teaching a calf to drink out of a pail” to me.  It takes a few days of lessons for most of the milk to end up inside the calf rather than on the outside of Captain.  I don’t even ask what happened when clothes have various bovine body fluids all over them.  Those are usually the nights he comes in the house especially cranky and talks about selling “all those dumb animals.”  

Back in the day when Princess folded laundry, we would go from archaeological dig to treasure hunt because not everyone’s clothes ended up in the right dresser.  I can understand how a sweatshirt or pair of jeans might look the same, but I really couldn’t understand how my foundation garments ended up in Young Man’s pile of clothes.  Neither one of us was very happy with that mix up.  

I take as many shortcuts on laundry day as I can.  I don’t mind washing and drying them because—hey—the machines do the work, right?  I dislike folding them and putting them away.  That’s why I don’t fold socks at all…everybody’s socks go in a bucket and we do the grab-and-go thing.  I’m actually preserving the life of the socks because the elastic doesn’t get all stretched out by repeated folding.  That’s my story and I am sticking to it!

If anyone else were to do my laundry, there would be no significance at all in these layers of clothes, but since I view the laundry room as my meditation room (you can get a lot of thinking done while folding towels), I cherish the memories I find while excavating.

Life skills

I saw a post on Facebook last night about the things (they used a naughty word) that all young adults should know how to do like check the oil in a car, change a tire, balance a checkbook, drive a stick shift, cook something more than mac-n-cheese, and basic first aid.  The premise was that these skills should be taught in a classroom.

Our premise is that parents should step up there, although I sort of dropped the ball on most of those things.  However, I did teach Princess how to balance her checkbook.  Created a monster there because when I balance my personal checkbook--not the farm books--if I am within $20 of what the bank says I have, I’m good with that.  Nope, she has to have it Down To The Penny.  

Princess operates mostly on a debit card, and she has saved every single receipt she has ever gotten since she first got her debit card back in high school.  That’s about five years’ worth of receipts!  Good for her, I say.  Not that I don’t save my receipts because you just never know when you might have to return something or get audited by the IRS, but hers are in chronological order.  That’s just a little bit crazy.

My poor children do not know how to cook anything more than mac-n-cheese or maybe tacos.  Not because I didn’t cook to give them an example.  No, it’s because in my house, I don’t like people in my kitchen when I am cooking.  You can sit on the other side of the snack bar and keep me company, but don’t get in my space please.  

Captain, on the other hand, viewed meal preparation as a family event and everybody had to help.  So, if my kids know how to cook anything, it’s due to Captain’s influence, not mine.  

Captain also taught the kids how to check the oil in their vehicles, same as my daddy taught me.  My daddy also taught me how to change a tire by making me take off and put on all four tires when I got my first car while he stood by and watched.  

That came in handy one day in college when I came out to find a flat tire on my car.  Apparently someone had gone through the parking lot and let air out of tires because just as I got done putting my spare on, three other people came over and asked if I would change their tires as well.  And, get this, two of them were GUYS!  I made $50 that day changing tires.  Thanks, Daddy!

The other thing that we drilled into our kids that they took to heart was the evils of credit cards.  They saw us get upside down on credit card debt when they were young and learned how painful it is to restructure a budget to pay all that off.  We all went without a lot of things (insert naughty word) during the four years it took to get that accomplished, so they are extremely aware of being responsible with their credit.  

As far as first aid goes, in this house, first aid usually involves the emergency room unless it’s just a shaving cut.  Captain learned after two or three trips with something stuck in his eye (cornstalks, piece of metal) that the emergency room uses the Life, Limb, Vision triage method, and if you are in danger of serious damage to or loss of one of those things, you get bumped to the top of the list.  

Young Man tended to be accident prone in his teenage years, so we spent many a-night in the emergency room with lacerations, contusions, broken bones, and an emergency appendectomy.  Young Man's trips to the emergency room started young when he was 2 years old and got into another daycare kid's bottle of Ventolin and chugged it like Kool-Aid.  Yeah, he was TOP of the list in the ER that day due to near-death circumstances.  Freaking scary times.

In comparison, Princess only had a couple of major events in the emergency room--one for getting teat dip (that’s a chemical solution applied to cow udders to kill bacteria) in her eye and once for the rabies vaccination series after getting chomped on by a neighbor’s dog with no vaccination papers.  Even though they don’t do the shots in the belly button for 12 days in a row anymore, that is still an extremely unpleasant experience!  However, she did spend a night in the hospital at six weeks old with an unexplained fever.  More freaking scary times.  Yeesh!

While practical skills of vehicle, finance, and health maintenance are essential and should be part of every one's wheelhouse, I hope we also taught our kids the more abstract life skills of honesty, hard work, mutual respect, and perseverance and that they will teach their kids those things as well.

Name That Tune

Music moves us.  It’s a primal reaction for whatever reason.  We all have “that” song that either makes us cry every single time or makes us laugh.  Why is that and what are they?

I recently polled friends and family and got the gamut in return from old classic hymns like How Great Thou Art, Silent Night, and Amazing Grace to novelty songs like The Streak, Teddy Bear, Who Wears Short Shorts, and Little Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.  Then there is The Wedding Song, Daddy Dance With Me, The House that Built Me, Daddy’s Hands, Stars and Stripes, and Jesus Loves Me.  Every song had a reason for the reaction, sometimes a milestone event like a wedding and sometimes a memory from childhood.

Music has been a part of the human experience since the beginning.  Music has been used for praise, to tell stories, or to call men to war with drums, flutes, or bagpipes.

Young Man and Princess mock me because even now as a grandmother, I cannot sing Puff The Magic Dragon without crying.  Well, I am sorry, but when the verse about dragons living forever but not little boys…what am I supposed to do?  Even when it was part of my third grade class sing-a-long, I cried.  I know it is supposed to be about marijuana, but to me it’s about how sometimes even the most precious relationships end for whatever reason, and that’s sad.

My “always makes me smile song” is Snoopy’s Christmas.  You just gotta love Snoopy, and then if you add the whole good-will-toward-men thing from the Red Baron, well that’s worth smiling about.  

I have Snoopy on my iPod.  I know, I know...iPods are out of date and I should get with eh program and have music on my phone.  I'm not that smart, so I;ll stick with the iPod, thank you very much!  My iPod is also loaded with Lady Gaga, KISS, AC/DC, Merle Haggard, George Jones, and the Mormon Tabernacle choir.  What can I say; I have eclectic taste in music.  Mostly I have two parameters for a “good” song.  It either has to make me want to chair dance (badly) or it chokes me up.  Now that I am a Nana, I will be loading nursery rhymes on there too so I can groove it out with Cubby, and nothing anybody says will make me regret it.

Captain doesn’t particularly have favorite songs; although Young Man and Princess will always talk about Dad stomping around in the morning belting out “Bare Necessities” to wake them up.  Captain is more into advertisement jingles like the very, very old Sears Christmas jingle, the ever-popular Menards jingle, and Armour hot dog jingle.  These are what he will sing on a daily basis.  Sometimes it will be songs from 4-H camp, like “Do Your Ears Hang Low” and "Honky The Donkey."  

But, if you ask him specifically, he will say that Rodney Atkins’ song “If You’re Going Through Hell” is his theme song.  It harks back to his family’s motto of don’t let anything stand in your way, and it’s gotten him through some pretty rotten days I guess.  

They say music soothes the savage beast.  It helps us celebrate, grieve, amuse, and educate.  Here’s to only high notes in your lives.

Mother of the Groom Tales

Trying to uphold society’s perception of “the perfect image” as a middle aged woman holds a lengthy list of challenges.  Besides the whole wrinkle thing (which, if you are smart, you will refer to as badges of honor), there is the fact that at a certain point, Newton’s law of gravity takes over and you end up with furniture disease—your chest is in your drawers.  

Men, you can take a break here and go get a beer; the following discussion will be lost on you because all YOU have to do to look dashing at an event is comb your hair and put some nice cologne on.  

Women, grab the chocolate and a glass of wine and let’s settle in for a chat.  

Young Man got married two years ago on Monday.  While we all know that everyone’s eyes are on the bride on her wedding day, as the mother of the groom I knew there were going to be eyes on me as well.  

Wouldn’t you think that the best place to find a mother of the groom dress would be at a wedding store?  Take my advice and skip this step.  Your choices will either be Matron of the Year or Mom-turned-tramp.  There was nothing in between.  The dresses were either floor-length with high necks and long sleeves or something with less fabric in it than my average dish towel.  Seriously?!

Fine; we will move on to the higher end clothing stores and see what’s what.  Better choices but ungodly prices.  Okay, we’ll wait and hit the high end stores at clearance sale time.

My fashion guru is Princess (who looks elegant in tinfoil, mind you) and my mother-in-law, so off we went to an outlet mall near Princess’s apartment.  We hit pay dirt in the second store and found a very nice dress that would do quite well for the wedding plus wasn’t so fussy that it wouldn’t also work for future dressy affairs I might need to attend.   

Problem?  It was fairly tailored and showed all of my Villages of Cellulite and Subdivisions of Fat that I have learned how to disguise with strategic clothing choices over the years.  So it was on to the foundation garment section of a local department store.  

Have you been in one of these sections recently?  There are thousands of choices for bustiers, girdles, booty-shapers, body shapers, and thigh shapers all designed by some evil, sadistic little elf with nothing better to do than imagine a Shamu-sized woman trying to fit into an Ariel-the-mermaid-size article of clothing.  

What I discovered after locking myself in the dressing room with a dozen different devices of torture was that while no matter which piece I put on to shape some body part…it just squeezed and bulged out in other places.  It was like trying to hold raw egg in your hand.  Got the thighs sort of under control where the shaper thing was…but beneath and above the shaper…bulges that were worse than what I started with.  Belly flattener/shaper—yeah, that gave me panty lines the size of the Grand Canyon.   

After many tears and words I would slap my children for, I found the least crappy looking thing and bought it without consulting my fashion gurus.  They were miffed, but I couldn’t handle any comments at that point.  

I had that shaper staring at me for several months while the wedding got closer and closer.  Trust me, I could hear it snickering at me in my sleep, but I was determined not to embarrass Young Man and his bride on their big day by looking like a fancy sack of potatoes in the family pictures.  

A crash exercise program and some creative calorie counting got me into the control top nylons, the evil torture device, and the dress for their wedding.  Did I look like Jennifer Aniston…not even close (of course, I never did so what do you expect).  However, I looked respectable enough that no one ran screaming in terror.  

Will it matter in five or ten years what I looked like on their wedding day?  Nope, not a bit.  Will anyone even remember what I wore?  Probably not.  What matters is that I got to be there to celebrate with them as they asked God’s blessing as they started their new life together.

Apparently I am not the only one who has been through the girdle-vs-middle battle.  Check out this story for a true gut busting laugh!  http://hiccup1001.tripod.com/id23.htm

And here is the proof that men can look dashing with a lick and promise...my favorite guys looking all handsome and debonair!

Comfort Zones

We all like our routines, me as much as anyone else. Sometimes it is good to try new things.  Sometimes...not so much.  

We like refrigerator pickles around here.  I have always used the easy recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook that I gave Captain for Christmas a few years ago.  It’s a good recipe but it has all this extra crap in it like carrots and onions.  We just like salt and vinegar.  

A little...and I do mean little...research on the Internet and I found a salt and vinegar fridge pickle recipe on a blog.  Sounded easy enough and I had all the ingredients, so I put some together last week.  

Remember how I said math wasn’t my thing?  Well, science really isn’t either...they are both too logical for me.  This is probably why I didn’t realize that 3 teaspoons of pickling salt added to ½ cup of vinegar would be a nasty combination.  That’s all there was in each jar...sliced pickles, salt, vinegar, and some fresh dill...shake it up and put it in the fridge.    

The blog I looked at said they were edible in an hour, so I tried one at supper.  Holy pucker up, batman!  Drinking straight vinegar out of the bottle would have been better.  Shake the three bottles up again, put them in the fridge on their lids, leave them overnight.  

Nope, they weren’t any better the next morning due to salt load.  Captain might like them...he’s a saltaholic...but I thought they were nasty.  Like I said, science isn’t my thing, but I did an experiment anyway.  One jar I left alone.  One jar I added half a cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar.  The last jar I just added water to the top of the jar.  Shook them all up again, turned them on their lids, and let them sit for seven days.  I’m here to tell you that was an experiment that failed.  They were still nasty, so it will be back to the Betty Crocker recipe.

Easy Refrigerator Pickles

6 cups thinly sliced unpeeled cucumbers

2 small onions, sliced

1 medium carrot, thinly sliced

1-¾ cup sugar

1 cup white or cider vinegar

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon chopped fresh or 1 tsp dried dill weed

In a 2-½ to 3 quart glass or Tupperware container, layer cucumbers, onions, and carrot.  In a medium bowl, stir remaining ingredients until sugar is dissolved; pour over cucumbers.  Cover and refrigerate at least 24 hours.

I tried a new canned dill pickle recipe last year, but a different outcome.  For a few years, I used Mrs. Wages pickling mix and then switched to the Ball Canning recipe.  Mrs. Wages was pretty stout, and the Ball recipe was just okay.  Back to the Internet.  Found a canned dill pickle recipe with just salt and vinegar, and of course dill.  No sugar, no spices.  I was sure they were going to be awful, but they were AMAZING!  

We finally had enough cucumbers from the garden a few days ago that I could make a batch of pickles.  It was only three quarts, but it’s a start.  The recipe is so simple!  I don’t think I’m infringing on copyrights or revealing secrets since I found the recipe easily enough with a basic Google search.  

Blue Ribbon Dill Pickles

8-½ cups of water

2-¼ cups white vinegar

½ cup pickling salt

Bring to a boil, remove from heat (or keep on very low simmer).

While all of that is going on, I have been running the jars and rims through the hottest, longest cycle on the dishwasher, and I am prepping the cucumbers.  Just scrub them under cold water to remove those pricky things, slice a little bit off each end, and then line them up according to size.  Anything smaller than my thumb I leave whole, but the rest I cut into spears.

Once the jars are done, I put a few sprigs of fresh dill (thanks Kari McGowan!) in the bottom of the jar, pack in the cucumbers, and put another few sprigs of dill on top.  Add the brine to each jar to ½ inch head space, removing any air bubbles from the sides of the jar with a butter knife or one of those fancy-schmancy air bubble removers.  Place lids and and finger-tighten rims.  Don’t over tighten them. 

My monster canner will hold 7 quart jars, but if I don’t have that many to process, I put empty jars filled with hot water in the canner as well, just to keep the filled jars from rattling around and breaking.  Fill the canner with hot water to just below the jar necks.  Cover and bring to almost a boil.  Remove jars from the canner to a large bath towel.  Cover the jars with the rest of the towel to cool and seal.  Check lids for seal in 24 hours...but they will probably ping before that.  LOVE that ping!!  Once the jars have sealed, write the date on the lid with a Sharpie, because pickles need to cure for six weeks for optimum taste.  Longest six weeks of my life…

We have enough harvest from the garden again to make another batch.  We are also overrun with zuchinni because Captain’s mom is the only one who eats them, and she has been on vacation in Spokane for three weeks.  The steers like them, though, so that is good.

We are anxiously awaiting the tomato harvest because we are completely out of pizza sauce, pasta sauce, salsa, and vegetable soup and nearly out of chili base. Not cool! I used Mrs. Wages for the pizza, pasta, and chili products but I do a homemade salsa. Hopefully (1) get the two weeks of vacation I asked for in September and (2) the tomatoes are ripe at that time or else I am going to be crazy busy canning in the evenings and on weekends!

Just because things don’t always work out the way we want or think they should, it is usually worth it to at least try something new once in awhile because you never know when you will hit a gold mine.  And if you hit big scoops of poop, you can always go back to the old way!

Middle children...UNITE!

August 12 has been designated by someone--and I would like to know who--as National Middle Child Day.  

Then again, there is a “day” for everything.  Seriously, I bet if you looked really hard you could find a National Eat Your Boogers Day because you know somewhere there are people who do that and like it.  

I get the reason behind Mother’s Day (duh), Father’s Day, and Grandparent’s Day.  Valentine’s Day is just a hyped up holiday to sell candy and cards.  What I want to know is what’s the deal with Groundhog’s Day.  

Seriously people, spring will come when God decides spring is going to come and no vermin-infested rodent from some town that no one can pronounce in Pennsylvania will change that.  And how does this stupid fur ball know that he must poke his head out of his hole on February 2 in time to be seen live on the Today Show?  Does someone call him and let him know?  Does he have a little rodent alarm clock set to atomic time?  What if he is a middle child groundhog and just doesn’t want to conform?

As I look forward at other celebrational days on the handy little calendar I found online (yes, it was on the Internet, so it MUST be true) I see that August 27 is National Just Because Day.  Seriously?  We need to designate a day dedicated to doing something “just because”?  Isn’t that called spontaneity?  Well, at least now you know if you see someone (or do something yourself) that might ordinarily be considered odd...you can play the “It’s National Just Because Day” card.  Go for it, let me know how that works for ya.  

But back to today’s celebration.  Maybe middle children needed their own day because they have been maligned as trouble makers for years.  I resent that, being a middle child myself.  Why stereotype middle children, or anyone else for that matter.  Who decides that first-borns are responsible, mature, and tend toward overachiever status?  Who decides that last-borns are spoiled ingrates who got everything handed to them?  And who in blue blazes thought it was a nice thing to label middle children as trouble makers?  

I don’t know what personality quirks other “middles” might have, but mine is procrastination.  I put everything off and not just the big stuff like the farm books and the bills, it’s the little stuff too.  Take mailing a birthday card, f’rinstance.  This is a four-day ordeal for me.  Day 1--write out the card.  Day 2--address the envelope.  Day 3--put a stamp on the envelope.  Day 4--put it in the mailbox.  Seriously...what the fudge?  I don’t normally eat a big bowl of stupid for breakfast, so why is it so hard for me to accomplish a simple task like putting a birthday card in the mail?!  I don’t know.  It’s a study for the ages.  

Salon appointments used to be the same way.  I’d think to myself, I need to get my hair cut.  And days--weeks--would go by until I would wake up one morning looking like Aunt Hilda Touched A Light Socket.  At that point, there were no appointments available when I would call because--hey--all the smart people had called last week!  I have figured this one out after years of Aunt Hilda episodes, and I make my next appointment before I leave the salon.  So I’m a slow learner...flog me.  

Maybe you don’t have a celebration day, and maybe you do.  I’ll just say make every day a “Happy Day”...whatever day it is.  Do things you like, see people you love, sing songs that make you happy.  Have a happy!

I did the best I could with what I had

We watched Cubby for the afternoon on Sunday because Young man and Mama Bear were having an outing with some friends.  Got me some awesome Cubby time!  She is so stinking cute, and just at that age where everything she does is adorable.

Like spilling water on the floor out of her sippy cup.  Young Man and Mama Bear had come to pick her up, and we were all sitting in the living room visiting.  Cubby was drinking out of her sippy cup, until she got bored with it and turned it upside down so the water dripped out onto the floor.

Like any good Nana, I just smiled at her and wiped up the mess.  Young Man snarked about how HE would never have gotten away with that when HE was a kid.  Dude, you were not as persecuted as you think you were.

But then I got to thinking before I fell asleep about how confusing it must have been to be a child of mine.  Consider the variety of things I actually do remember saying to my children, often over the course of a single evening:

• Don’t run through the house!
• Will you hurry up?
• Speak up!
• There is no need to shout at me.
• I only have two hands, I can’t do everything at once.
• Pick up your clothes, put the toys away, and feed the cat.
• I don’t care who made the mess, I’m asking you to clean it up.
• You spilled the milk all by yourself, you clean it up all by yourself.
• Don’t whine.
• Fine, sit there and have a fit.
• Good night, sweetheart.  I love you too.

I also remember I used to lay in bed and pray for the knowledge, patience, and will to do better with my kids as the years went by.

Now I lay me down to rest, head on my pillow I lay.

I let my mind wander and drift over events that happened today.

I resurrect mistakes I made and march them through my mind.

And once again I make a vow to try to be more kind.

I think of my two children, fast asleep amid their dreams.

And think of how I hollered that their rooms are never clean.

Is cleanliness of such import that I could scarcely keep in mind

To show my children how to be gentle and how to be kind?

What lessons will they take when at last they leave our home?

Will criticism or love be the examples they have been shown?

When at last I stand on judgment day, before the Father of us all

Will I be granted my angel wings or will I make a fall?

Lord, please remind me that what all children need the most

Is love and respect and guidance, and to be cuddled, oh so close.

Now I lay me down to rest, with my head on my pillow I sleep.

This vow I make to you, oh Lord, please help me try to keep.

I don’t know that I actually ever did a better job of it as time went on, but both of our children turned into upstanding, law-abiding, productive citizens.  They both have gainful employment that they like and are good at.  They have people in their lives that they love.  And they come home to see Mama once in awhile, so I must have done something right.  And it is my private joy that someday...not too far off...they’ll be saying that prayer while they are lying in bed at night.