Please Don't "Leave" Me

I have a huge yard....HUGE...and it's a hill...a steep hill.  I used to more or less ignore my beautiful yard,  there not being nearly enough hours in a day to tend it properly.  But now that I'm retired, I have tackled all kinds of things I didn't used to do, and one of those things is yard work.  At about the time I got everything cleaned up last spring, the dandelions came in, and about the time I had a good start on the dandelion problem, it was autumn and the leaves started falling off the trees.  As you can see by the photo, we do not have a shortage of trees or leaves.  But I have a pretty good rake, so I went for it.  About the time I would get one section raked up, there'd be another tree shedding and I'd have to start all over again.  So my handy hubby bought a leaf blower and spent one whole Saturday out there blowing leaves around.  The yard looked pretty good that Saturday, but by Sunday more leaves had fallen, along with a dusting of snow.  After almost a week of wind and rain and a little snow, the sun came out today and, of course, the yard is again about a foot deep in leaves.  So I had me one of my brilliant ideas.  I got out the leaf blower about a half hour before Handy was due home from work.  I figured he'd freak out if he saw me using his newest gas-powered toy.  He'd be thinking, what the hell is she doing?  She's gonna break that thing!  And he'd take it away from me and finish the job.  I heard his truck coming down the road and thought thank god he's home...my arms are getting tired.  He drove slowly up the driveway, surveying what I had done so far, gave me a big smile and a thumbs up and went in the house!  Oh, he's just going in to change his clothes, I thought.  He came back out appropriately dressed for yard work and said, "I see you have this under control so I'm going to check my bait pile."  And off he went.  My plan backfired.  I blew leaves until dark.  I'm still vibrating, and I'm sure the neighbors hate me.

MOP YOUR WAY TO FREEDOM?!

I was in Shopko on the first Wednesday of August, and I mention this because I only just recently learned that the first Wednesday of every month is Senior Citizen Discount Day.  Since I don't consider myself a Senior Citizen, I didn't think their ads announcing the Wednesday thing applied to me.  But it turns out that, according to Shopko, I've been a Senior Citizen for 7 years!  So it kind of irks me to think of all the money I squandered shopping on Tuesdays and Thursdays, not to mention Saturdays, for pete's sake! 

I also discovered that Econo Foods offers a senior discount every Wednesday.  This I learned when the check-out girl, who couldn't have been older than 12, said, "Do you qualify for the senior discount?"  I said I probably did since I did at Shopko, and I told her my age.  "Wow, I didn't think you were THAT old!" she said, as she applied an apple sticker to my More card so I won't have to announce my age every time I buy groceries.

That's how the first Wednesday of the month became my shopping day. 

So, as I said, I was in Shopko on Wednesday and something called a "Freedom Mop" caught my eye.  Logic would preclude putting the words "freedom" and "mop" in the same sentence, so I was intrigued.  Here's what it said:

"Freedom from disposable pads!"  Right away I knew this was a brainchild of a brainless man.  For women, "pads," and particularly "disposable pads," means something altogether unrelated to mopping.

"Free to choose your cleaning solution!"  I guess so, but I fail to see how this mop would offer more freedom to choose my cleaning solution than would any other mop.

"Freedom from batteries!"  Well, thank god, because I hate having to replace the batteries in all my other mops.

I may be old, but I know what freedom feels like, and mopping won't get you there.

SO, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

I've been retired from my life in public schools for almost a year now. One night at dinner, Handy asked me the above question, and I thought, What?!  You mean I have to DO something?!!  Of course, he has no idea what I do all day and naturally thinks I sit on my butt watching TV 24/7.  I'm not afraid to admit that I asked myself that question for the first 15 minutes of my retirement.  And then I just started doing exactly what I felt like doing....all the time!  I feel pretty good about what I've accomplished during this first year of retirement.  I spent loads of time with my kids and grandkids, which is always number one on my list. I cleaned and organized my entire house.  I found things I've been looking for for 15 years and things I didn't even know I had.  I hauled everything out of the attic and went through it box by box, pitching everything we don't need.  I worked on the yard!  I pulled weeds!  I watered plants!  I lunched with friends instead of 500 kids!  I shopped in the middle of the day!  I slept in!  I cooked!  It's been a grand and glorious year. 

The answer to Handy's question?  "Whatever I want!"

Now excuse me while I go watch me some TV.

What's in YOUR Fridge?

After spending six weeks hanging with the kids and grandkids down south, I was happy to come home to Handy for awhile. Long periods of time away from each other has kept our marriage strong. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had kept the house sort of clean (if you don't count the foot-high pile of junk mail on the kitchen table), but when I took inventory for a grocery list, the thing in this picture is what was in the fridge. There was also the same carton of o.j. that was there when I left (remember, we're talking six weeks here!), a package of green bacon, and a shelf full of N/A beer. This is a guy who not only knows HOW to cook, but is really good at it. In fact, also in the fridge was a tasty looking casserole of chicken and rice, but when I learned he had made it over a week earlier, that, too, went in the trash.  In retrospect, I have to give him kudos for making me feel like it was a good thing I came home.  How ironic that a dead spud in the fridge can make a wife feel wanted.

Through Their Eyes

There's nothing as humbling or as gratifying as seeing yourself through the eyes of a child. The above drawing was done by four-year old granddaughter, Princess 2. (She has two sisters, Princess 1 and Princess 3.)  She got the hair exactly right...and the freckles...I have lots of those.  It's brilliant that she drew me with a brown crayon. I almost always wear brown or black.  I wondered about the unibrow since I barely have eyebrows at all, but she has seen me draw them on in the morning, so I guess she was making sure they stood out.  While she was drawing this, she asked me if yellow and brown make green and now I know why she asked. She gave me brown eyes and tried to change them to green, but adding yellow didn't work so she quit after one.  I love that she gave me a great big smile.  I asked her why she didn't give me arms and she said because my heart was too big.  The smaller heart, she said, is hers.  This will be on my fridge for a long time.

It's Just an Empty Container, But Still....

 

Four of my seven grandchildren live in what I would call the Deep South....the really, really Deep South. Visiting them is always an adventure. Like now, for instance. I'm sitting on the back deck with my ipad while the children play in the woods behind their house. Freckles is on the four-wheeler, zooming around and around and around the yard while Fancy hollers at her to come and help with the construction of a "fort" in the woods. A verbal war ensues.

"La,la,la,la....I can't hear you!"

"You can't ever, ever, ever play in here because you didn't help!"

"So what? I don't want to play in there anyway!"

"Shut up, Freckles!"

"YOU shut up!"

Wise Guy, the official ADHD member of the family, has been working on the building project for about an hour now. That's gotta be a record. Oops, spoke too soon. He is now flinging acorns at Freckles every time she zooms by, tearing up the yard and coming dangerously close to tipping over at each turn, not to mention that she's doing her best to run over Bigfoot and make it look like justifiable homicide by provoking him to throw sticks at her.

Bigfoot just ran in the house to show his mother where the stuff is to get started on his English class project, which is due tomorrow and which he has known about for two weeks. I guess he got her squared away, because he's running back to the woods to work on the fort. Freckles was just ordered to get off the four-wheeler for reckless driving and she went stomping into the house. Fancy, the oldest child of the clan, is uncharacteristically focused on the construction of the fort, probably more to avoid studying for the geometry test she has tomorrow than to spend quality time cooperating with her brothers. Wise Guy, aka, self-proclaimed 'Defender of Evil' announces that he has to poop and goes inside, stopping on the way to show me where he got a giant splinter in his hand.

Earlier today, this blended family of crazy kids was getting along just fine playing Guitar Hero; and by getting along, I mean they were laughing at each other's farts without rolling on the floor gagging and making throw up noises, and singing the "One Pound Fish" song in unison until their mother is ready to strangle them all.

There is something oddly appropriate about the whole 'grenade as part of the decor' in this household.

Where Not To Retire

I can't say that I understand the allure of Arizona to so many retirees. It's a great place to go to get out of the cold, but how people can actually live there is beyond me. Anyway, I just returned from a week of basking in the relentless Arizona sun where I definitely did NOT purchase the above property. And guess what's still sitting on the back of the downstairs toilet? The replacement parts I bought several weeks ago...still in their packages, waiting for "someone" to install them. To be fair, it IS bow season in Michigan. That means Handy spends his weekends precariously perched in a tree somewhere, waiting for a deer to help himself to the feast of apples and corn piled nearby. The way this works is, many weeks before it's legal to shoot a deer, the baiting begins. That gets the deer accustomed to visiting the bait pile on a regular basis, unaware that they're being set up. Although, you'd think after awhile they'd get the hint that if it's not a corn field, don't eat the corn! Also during this time, Handy washes all his hunting clothes in a detergent that smells like dirt and sprays them with a cologne that smells like deer pee. Go figure. At that point, I try to get as far away from here as possible until it's safe to come back. If I do happen to come home for a few days (like now), I'm not allowed to touch anything related to hunting for fear of getting something that smells nice all over it. For example, if I applied hand lotion after showering and happened to retrieve a pair of dirt-washed socks from the floor, I would contaminate them and Handy would have to start over with the laundry routine. The horror. For a long time, I used to believe that hunters walked out into the woods, shot a deer, dragged it to the camp, and day was done. But I have since discovered that a large part of the deer hunting ritual is that you have to get up in your tree early in the morning and hold still, barely breathing, for many hours and then MAYBE a deer will accept your invitation to dinner so you can shoot it upon its arrival, which, come to think of it, hardly seems fair.
So back to the issue of the downstairs toilet. Since it is highly unlikely that hubby is going to even think about fixing it while he's so intently focused on being quiet in that tree, I thought I might just go ahead and do it myself. I mean, right on the box it says, "Install with confidence! Installs in 15 minutes!"  So I get out the instructions, and I swear to god, here they are:  "1. Adjust Height.  2. Install.  3. Connect."  Huh?!  Adjust height of what? First of all, how do you get the water out of the tank? Isn't that a prerequisite?
I guess the toilet will have to wait. I'm off to see my grandkids. They would never have the patience to sit in a tree for more than five minutes.