Memories

I'll be 57 in June (how did that happen?) and experience plenty of senior moments. Most recently I found that I could not pull up any memory of junior high drill team, although I was pretty sure I was in one. I was really starting to doubt my sanity, so I was glad to find my old junior high drill team uniform as part of the great attic emptying. In fact, I found all my old uniforms from drill team, color guard and college songleader. I put them all in one box, then wrote out a history of each uniform to put in the box so that when I die, someone would know what they were. I ended it by advising the finder to just throw the things out or let kids play with them. As soon as I had the box finished I thought to myself, "Why burden someone with this?" So I'm going to pitch it all now. Except maybe for the frontiersman costume. DS1 might be able to use that in his 5th grade class sometime.

Anyway, I always appreciate it when someone triggers a memory for me.

Jace's last post is about being attacked by animals. I'm happy to say that this is an adventure I have not had (yet), but his story of the cat in the dip net did engage a memory from one of our visits to the Kansas farm. It was the year we went at Thanksgiving time when I was eight. My aunt, uncle and cousins were living in my "favorite" farmhouse. I don't know why I have such good memories of that house. You still mostly used the outhouse (although they were excited that they had running water into the kitchen and a toilet in the lean-to attached to the side of the house. I actually preferred the outhouse for some reason. It just seemed weird to go potty in a closet). I remember lots of corn in a big wagon (must have been going for feed 'cause it was hard like popcorn). I remember ornate metal vents through the floor into the downstairs so you could see and hear the people down there. Now I figure those vents were so that some of the heat from downstairs would go into the upstairs bedrooms but at eight I never figured out what they were for; I just thought they were pretty and wished we had them in our house at home (a one-story). I also remember Uncle being upset about the beaver that had built a dam and lodge in his stream, but I don't know if that was this trip or a subsequent trip. I remember being colder than I'd ever been (SoCA girl) when it got all the way down to 32 degrees.

None of which has anything to do with Jace's cat in the dip net. That year Aunt had chickens and would go collect eggs every day. She would let me try to get eggs, but I was afraid of the hens (who would peck at your hands for this insult). On our way out of the chicken coop one day I saw an interesting tool leaning against the wall and I asked what it was. Aunt explained that it was for catching chickens. Naturally, later I had to go try to catch a chicken with it. Mind, it was a nasty thing . Much later I figured out that it must have been to catch a chicken that you intended to kill right away and thus put the poor thing out of its misery after you had poked it with holes with this catcher thing. I did not manage to catch a chicken (thank goodness) but sure managed to rile up the chickens trying. Again, years later I figured Aunt probably didn't get many eggs from them thanks to my scaring them that way.

Kim mentioned her "seven-foot ball of belly button lint" today which sparked another memory. When DH and I were first married, he and my mother somehow ended up in a conversation about belly button lint. No, I don't remember how and don't think I want to. Anyway, DH ended up telling her how, in college, he and his roommates had a basket in the middle of their dining table where they would stash said lint. I was pretty grossed out, but they had a good time speculating what the growing Chinese manufacturing industry could do with that lint. A couple of months later I was cleaning out the lint basket in the apartment laundry facility and was struck by how clean and fluffy it was (must have been those new towels and sheets we newlyweds had been gifted with) and took a handful up to show DH. I don't remember which of us had this particular attack of the orneries , but somehow that handful of lint got put into an envelope with a note that DH had finally collected enough belly-button lint to send to China, but he thought he should send it to her first to see if she had any ideas of what to do with it.

HaHa. Good joke.

Mom never mentioned receiving the package, but several weeks later DH received a package back. It was a little patchwork pincushion (pillow shaped) complete with the needle holder. With it Mom had put a note that this was a prototype and did DH think he could keep the lint coming so that those Chinese craftspeople could fill the thousands of orders?

I keep hoping I run across that pincushion. I know I didn't throw it out but haven't seen it in years.

Lisa's blog asks, "How do you spell procrastination?"

I spell it b-l-o-g-g-i-n-g. My spring break is almost over. I never got my drive up the coast (big surprise), did not finish the attic project and - if I finish one of the garden chores today - will have only finished two of the four garden projects I had hoped to do this week. Today is technically my last day of break since I will leave early tomorrow to go spend the weekend with my parents (Saturday is scrapbooking with Mom and Sis, Sunday is quilting with Mom.)

To finish the garden project I have to dig and install four of those retainer block things, lay some landscape cloth and put down three bags of mulch. Before I do this, however, I need to rake up what I did in phase one and lay the new, 48" landscape cloth that I bought yesterday because what I had put down in phase one didn't quite cover the ground. I sure don't want to be pulling grass around the edges of these pathways so will take the time now to rake it up and change out the cloth. I look forward to showing DS2 that I did something to stay on top of all the work he did last summer when he pulled all the grass out all over the yard. He said his favorite flowers are snapdragons (and this area is what he will see when he moves back home next month) so I bought a six-pack of snaps to plant in that planter.

I also need to get some major work done on the attic project. I probably won't go back up there again yet, but will pack and stow in the storage unit what I have decided to keep. My goal is to move stuff from the second bedroom to storage, then move my scrapbooking stuff out of the bigger room (where DS2 will move into next month) into the smaller room. Once the bigger room is cleared out, DS2 can come by on his time off and do the fixing up he wants to do. I realized I don't have to have all the stuff out of the attic for him to do the demo he wants to do (he wants to take off the old wallcoverings (paper and paneling) and ceiling popcorn. I can empty the attic while he's doing that dirty work. By the time he's done with the wall prep stuff, I'll be out of the attic and we can remove the stair unit and seal up the ceiling. Of course, now that he's moving home because he doesn't get enough hours to support himself out there, they are scheduling him for time and overtime and he doesn't have time to come fix up his room like he wants). Oh, well.

I'd better get to it.