Scary Is in the Eye of the Beholder

The waning moon was large enough to cast a faint light across the sky, but everything at ground level was steeped in shadow. The nether regions of my backyard were dark. Very dark.

It was past bedtime. Twenty minutes had elapsed since I'd let the dogs outside for the last time of the day. I stepped out onto the patio and called them, softly, so I wouldn't wake the neighbors. They didn't come. I called again. And whistled. Still nothing, except, in the distance, the muffled clanging of something bumping against the wire fence.

I went inside to get a flashlight, shined it from one corner of the yard to another until its beam fell on Gimpy and Levi. They were standing on their hind legs, stretching upward against the fence, their front paws batting at something I couldn't make out in the dim light. I could see that something's eyes, though. 

If I'd go closer, I thought, I could grab Levi by his collar. I knew that if I could do that,  Gimpy would follow Levi back to the house. In my ankle-length, navy-blue bathrobe, the one with the hood, the one that looks black in the dark, I traipsed through the damp grass toward the back fence. The dogs started barking. I wondered what the neighbors would think if the noise woke them and they looked out to see a dark-hooded form, holding a torch, moving through the pre-Halloween shadows.

Once I got close enough, I could see that the object of the dogs' interest was a possum (an opossum, if you want to get technical about it, but here in Louisiana we don't do technical) that was huddled on the fence rail, its prehensile tail just out of their reach. The possum wasn't moving, and the dogs wouldn't leave it. To lean over far enough to reach Levi's collar, I'd have had to turn my back on a possum that would be no more than two feet away from my head and shoulders. No way did I want to put myself in that position.

I turned around and slogged back to the house to get Levi's leash. And the camera. If I was going to risk letting a possum jump on my back, I was at least going to get blog photos out of the deal. 

Once more I trudged toward the back fence, a witchlike figure with a digital camera strapped around my neck as if I'd been elected public relations coordinator by a majority vote of the coven. I raised the flash attachment, pointed the camera at a patch of darkness in the general area of the dogs and the possum and hoped for the best. After half a dozen shots, the flash quit working (it's working fine today), but I got some pictures of the creepy thing.

Gimpy in the red collar, Levi in the black. 

Stealthy night visitor.

I got the leash on Levi and dragged him away, Gimpy followed as predicted, and we all went to bed and slept soundly. This happened several nights ago. I haven't seen any sign of the possum since. I know it's out there, though, probably nesting somewhere with its mate, the two of them raising a pouchful of ugly possum babies, teaching them to lurk in the darkness and look like they're planning to pounce. 

Are we safe in our own backyards? I think not.

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday We All Died Laughing

Yesterday nine women--eight students and one instructor, all over the age of sixty--squeezed around an oval table in a pleasantly decorated room at the local center for senior citizens and took turns reading aloud to each other. It was the last class of our six-week session of Life Writing, and we were reading the homework that had been assigned at the end of the previous class: to write our own obituaries. Does that sound like fun?

You can't imagine how much fun it was. For one thing, we had snacks, brought from home to celebrate the completion of our writing course. We filled Halloween-themed paper plates with hummus and carrots, crackers and dip, caramel popcorn and fun-sized candy bars, then we chomped and chewed through eight recitations of death notices and the boiled-down biographies that accompanied them.

I think most, if not all, of us approached the assignment reluctantly, and, judging by the end results, we each approached it from a unique perspective. There were basic similarities, of course--names, dates, and lists of survivors--but there was so much more than that. The collection of readings ranged from poignant to humorous, from brief to expansive. There were burial instructions, last wishes, expressions of faith and love, and even some softly sung phrases from favorite funeral hymns. The experience we'd expected to be morbid turned out to be beautiful.

In between the readings, we talked. We talked about mortality, our own and that of loved ones, about special moments we'd personally experienced at funerals, about final gestures of love for the deceased. We spoke of the ridiculously high cost of publishing obituaries in the newspapers. We laughed about how squeamish our adult children are when it comes to discussing death and the decisions to be made in its aftermath. Somehow, in the years that have passed since we were their ages, we've begun to make peace with the inevitable. It was freeing to discuss end-of-life issues and ideas openly, to bat them around with no greater sentiment than if we were discussing plans for an upcoming ladies' luncheon.

The six-week Life Writing course that ended yesterday was the second session I've attended, the third for some, the first for others. Our instructor drives a long way to and from each class, but she keeps coming back, keeps urging us to dig deeper, write more, go into detail, tell our truths so that those who come after us can learn who we were and how we lived. And we do. We write about things that matter to us; in that way we get to know each other better and faster than we might if we were to meet under other circumstances. We write, we read, and along the way we build trust and friendship.

We're all different, the nine of us, and it's those differences that keep our stories fresh and interesting. What's most important about our stories, though, what makes us care about them and their writers, is that they remind us of the countless ways in which we're all the same.

Yesterday's class was reminiscent of the time just after a funeral's over, when family members and close friends gather at home, pull off their neckties or kick off their high-heeled shoes, eat comfort food from covered dishes delivered by thoughtful neighbors, and swap favorite anecdotes about the dear departed. They know there'll be plenty more crying in the days to come, but right at that moment it feels so darned good to laugh again.

Moving Day

Kim and her friends have been here with the big van, unloaded the furniture and boxes that are moving here with her, and gone on to take the rest of the load to the storage facility. We'll have other boxes and random smaller items to move in the car over the next couple of days, but as of tonight, she'll be living here again. She stayed with me for a couple of years when she first came home from New York, but that was more than a decade ago. It'll be a change for both of us. A good change, I think.

Her dogs, Lucy and Oliver, moved in a week ago so she could pack without their interference assistance. They're getting along beautifully with Levi and Gimpy, perhaps because Oliver established his alpha status a long time ago, and there's no longer any need to fret over it. Gimpy and Lucy have taken a special liking to one another. He waits for her before he goes outside each morning, and she occasionally seeks out his company even as she behaves as if Oliver and Levi don't exist. Levi has assumed the role of canine interpreter, serving as spokesman for the pack when it comes to letting me know what they want or which dog is in the process of breaking a rule. I appreciate his watchful eye; it's as if he's channeling Kadi.

It'll take a few days to get everything sorted out and in its proper place. It'll probably be an ongoing process for Kim and me to make the personal adjustments necessary to accommodate each other's needs and habits, but we're going into this arrangement with an abundance of love and goodwill, we both want it to work, and I'm confident it can.

It's a brand-new day.

**********

The song is "Brand New Day" by Van Morrison.
Click here to read the lyrics.
Thanks to vanthemanxx for posting this video on YouTube.

Sometimes We Get Lucky

In May of 2007 I wrote about favorite photos I'd misplaced two years earlier. At the time of that post I'd given up hope of ever finding them, assuming I must have accidentally tossed out the file folder they were in when I'd last seen them. Last week, going through yet another plastic storage box stacked in the closet of what will soon be Kim's bedroom, I found the file with the photos in it. I felt as though this discovery was a reward from the universe, a vote of confidence that Kim and I are on the right track with her upcoming move into my home. It also occurred to me that there was a subtext to the message: Stop giving up so easily! I'll try to remember that.

The fact that these photos are some of my favorites doesn't necessarily mean that my daughters are all that crazy about them, so I hope they'll forgive me for posting them in spite of that. I bet you'll understand why I love them.

These little pirates are Kelli (on the left) and Kim (with her jaw stuffed full of candy) when they were 2 1/2 and 4 1/2, respectively. We lived in Bridge City, Texas then and snapshots from that period are rare.

This shot was taken in 1969 at a scenic overlook somewhere between Texas and Ohio. I don't know where the dog came from, but the expressions on the girls' faces show that they were more interested in the dog than in the mountains.

My daughters wouldn't be caught dead wearing these clothes in public, and they may kill me for posting this one. There was a lake behind our first house in Georgia--a lake full of catfish and also full of mallards. Unfortunately, the banks of the lake were covered in ducks--t, and the girls weren't allowed to fish in anything but their oldest, worst clothes. I hope that sufficiently explains Kelli's high-waters and Kim's shorts/tights combo.

Same lake the following summer (1973). Nobody ever swam in the lake (again because of the mallards), but there was a city swimming pool three blocks from our house. I like the view of the lake in this one, but what makes it special is the view of my daughters' pretty hair. I still remember how Kelli's curls and Kim's long, straight locks felt in my hands.  Edited 5/3/2014:  I have edited the above photo after realizing that this post gets a large number of hits from people who have seen this picture on Google Images and clicked on it for a closer look. One daughter is wearing a yellow bathing suit, the other an orange one, but I guess those colors don't show up clearly in a thumbnail photo. Ewww! 

This one was taken much later ('78 or '79) after we'd moved from Georgia to New York, back to Georgia, and then here--Louisiana. Kim was touching up her Farrah Fawcett hairstyle before heading off to her after-school job. So pretty!

This is my other pretty girl, Kelli, in 1980. I don't know where she got her natural curls, but I love the way this photo shows them off. The sofa in this picture is the bargain couch that lasted more than twenty years. On the wall behind Kelli are two of four door mirrors, with halves of placemats, cut lengthwise, between them. I had asked my husband months earlier to hang them for me, and he kept putting it off, explaining the complications of the arrangement I wanted. One afternoon it dawned on me that I could use a small book to measure the distance between the mirrors and a larger book, its spine laid on the back of the sofa, to measure where the bottoms of the mirrors should be. I had them all hung in an hour.

There were other photos among the missing ones, now recovered, but these are the ones I remembered when I'd think about what I'd lost. The universe gave them back to me, now I'm putting them out in the blogosphere.

Suppertime

It seems impossible that it's been two weeks since my last post. Where has the time gone? While I try to backtrack and figure out the reason for the time warp, I'll go ahead and post the most recent piece I wrote for the Life Writing class. Our assignment was to incorporate dialogue into a story.

It's been too long, of course, to remember anyone's exact words in a conversation that took place in the early 1950s, so I did the best I could to capture the essence of each person's speech patterns. In some cases I did use specific words or phrases I remember hearing them say, although they may have said them at a different time. Anyway, with the exception of the inexact dialogue, the story is true.

Sis, this one's for you:

**********

My sister, Judy, and I grew up as part of a multi-generational family in our grandparents’ home in Springfield, Missouri. In addition to the two of us, the family included our mother, Wanda; her parents, Lola and Lewis, whom Judy and I called Mammaw and Packy; Mother’s much younger brother, Joe; and Mammaw’s mother, Dora, known to us as Grandma.

Linda, Judy, and Wanda

Most of the time there were a couple of college students in the house, too. We lived catty-cornered across the street from Southwest Missouri State Teachers College, and Mammaw and Packy rented out one of the upstairs bedrooms for five dollars a week to help make ends meet. The house was big enough that we didn’t feel crowded except when we gathered around the small kitchen table at suppertime. Thank goodness the college boys didn’t eat with us.

Mammaw and Packy (with Sugar, the parakeet)

Judy and I set the table every evening, and Mother washed the dishes after supper. Mammaw, a short, plump woman with dark curly hair and kind brown eyes, did all the cooking by herself, although Grandma offered assistance. Tall and slender at age eighty, her waist-length hair pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, Grandma would walk into the kitchen every evening and ask sweetly, “What can I do to help?”

Grandma

Mammaw would answer, “Well, I reckon you could peel the potatoes if you don’t mind.” Grandma, who had senile dementia, would stand there for a minute, her posture erect while she studied the potatoes, then she’d mutter that she was a little tired and needed to rest, and she’d bow her head and leave the room. Minutes later we’d hear two voices raised in laughter as Grandma, her hands upraised and curled into “I’m-gonna-get-you” claws, chased Judy through the house. When they made a pass through the dining room, Grandma would spot Mammaw through the kitchen door. She’d stop chasing, walk through the door and ask again, “Could you use some help?”

Mammaw would say, “Yes, Mama, thank you, can you peel those potatoes?”

That happened several times every evening. I never saw Grandma do a single helpful thing, unless you count entertaining Judy, but if Mammaw ever lost her patience with the endless repetition, I didn’t see that, either.

Mammaw always tried to have supper ready to put on the table as soon as Packy, Mother and Joe came home. Mother and Packy both worked, and Joe usually stayed after school for football practice. Joe was more like an annoying older brother than an uncle. When Judy was five, I was nine, and he was sixteen, Joe was already over six feet tall. He was growing so fast that his body could almost be mistaken for that of a man, but his freckled face and mischievous behavior marked him as all boy.

Joe

Packy sat at one end of the supper table with Joe on his right. Mammaw sat on the other side of Joe, then, counter-clockwise, came Grandma, Judy, Mother and I. I sat between Mother and Packy. Thinking about that seating arrangement now, I suspect it was planned so that Judy and I wouldn’t sit next to each other, Joe would be separated from the two of us, and Grandma and Judy would both have someone close by who could help them cut their meat.

Our normal suppertime conversation wasn’t what most folks would consider stimulating. Mammaw might pass along some news she’d heard from a neighbor: “Miz Belisle says Cecil’s mama had the stomach flu four days last week. I swan, that poor ol’ lady’s sick all the time nowadays.” If nobody else expressed an opinion about Cecil’s mama or the stomach flu, Mammaw might turn to me, as she did during most meals, and urge me to at least taste the vegetables. “Linny Lee,” she’d begin, using the nickname I detested, “try this salad; it’s so fresh and good.”

“I hate salad,” I’d say sullenly, irritated that she’d called me that baby name.

Mother would quickly swallow whatever was in her mouth so she could remind me with her words as well as her eyes, “You need to watch your tone of voice.”

Mammaw would try again to make conversation: “Joe, what’d you do at school today?”

“Nothin’,” he’d mumble, then shove half a roll into his mouth, hoping it would deter her from asking any follow-up questions.

Mother occasionally talked about her day at work or her plans for the evening. Mother was a pretty woman, and she worked at the stock exchange. She was surrounded all day by old men who had nothing better to do than sit around and keep an eye on their investments and her stocking seams. “That old coot, Mr. Henderson, patted me on the fanny when I walked by today,” she reported. “He may be as rich as King Midas, but I don’t care; I told him he’d better keep his hands to himself if he knows what’s good for him.”

Mammaw, frowning, said, “Good for you, Wanda June!” Grandma smiled--she mostly smiled all the time--and took a sip of Judy’s milk, prompting an expression of righteous indignation to flit across Judy’s face before she remembered that Grandma couldn’t help the odd things she did and we were supposed to always forgive her.

Packy, dressed as always in khakis, his pants held up by suspenders, slowly shook his head and weighed in with a bit of borrowed philosophy: “It takes all kinds of people to make the world.” That was a longer sentence than Packy usually ever spoke at suppertime. He followed it up with an utterance that was more familiar to us. “Harumph,” he grunted, then nodded so that his head, his eyes and one index finger pointed at the green beans. Hands reached out from three sides of the table to get the bowl and pass it to him.

Things got quiet for a moment, except for the clinking of forks against plates, until a barely perceptible thumping noise started at Joe’s end of the table. Joe was using a knuckle to rap out the rhythm of “shave and a haircut, six bits” on the underside of the table.

Judy screamed, “I am not!” and erupted into sobs. Jaws dropped and all eyes turned to her.

“Judy, Judy, what’s the matter?” Mother asked at the same time Mammaw slapped a hand to her chest and exclaimed, “Oh, land’s sake! What in the world?”

“Joe said I’m fat!” Judy cried, tears falling on her round cheeks.

Joe raised his eyebrows and feigned an innocent expression, looking first at Mammaw, then at Mother, and lastly at Judy, whom he asked, “Are you nuts? I never said a word.”

Mammaw took up for him. “He didn’t,” she said, sounding relieved about it. “I didn’t hear him say anything at all.”

Mother agreed. She pulled Judy close as if to comfort her, but what she said was, “Stop it. Straighten up right now. Don’t be silly.”

Packy looked from one person to the other without commenting, his fork moving back and forth between his plate and his mouth in an unbroken rhythm. Grandma also looked from one person to the next, her pleasant smile seeming to say I’m so happy to be here. Aren’t we all having a lovely time? I pressed my lips together in a tight line and aimed my meanest glare directly at Joe. He blocked his face from the grown-ups by pretending to rub his nose with both hands and sneaked a smirk back at me. I knew what he’d done, and he knew I knew it.

Judy took a deep breath between sobs and tried to explain: “He did this,” she sniffled, demonstrating by tapping her spoon on the table: tap-tappa-tap-tap (pause) tap-tap. “That means I’m fat.” Again she drew incredulous stares from everyone but Grandma and me.

I backed her up. With the self-important air of a key witness testifying at a murder trial, I announced, “She’s telling the truth. I was there yesterday when Joe tapped that noise on the wall. He told Judy that every time she hears that from now on, for the rest of her whole life, she’ll know it means she’s fat. I heard him say it.”

Judy screeched, “I told you!” and her face crumpled up again.

Joe scowled and said, “Linda, you’re lyin’ and you know it,” but by then he was so pleased with himself and his acting ability that he couldn’t keep a straight face. A big grin fought its way past his scowl, and as soon as everybody saw it, the jig was up.

A chorus of adult voices began fussing at Joe. They scolded him soundly, then they all apologized to Judy and assured her that she wasn’t fat and that nothing Joe could ever say or do would make it so.

Joe’s in Minnesota now. He’ll be 78 in January. I bet he’s forgotten all about that incident. Judy remembers it, though. Every now and then, when she and I have managed to bridge the gap between her home in Texas and mine in Louisiana, one or the other of us will ask, “Remember this?” and tap out that little seven-note sequence. Then we both burst out laughing and start looking around for someone new to tell the story to.

One of these days, when we get really old, if you happen to see Judy or me sitting alone, rocking maybe, and smiling for no apparent reason the way Grandma used to do, it could just be that we’re thinking about that.

Legacy

“Write as though you were writing about yourselves to your great-grandchildren.” Those are the words I noted about this week’s writing assignment, so that’s what I’ll do. If you’re reading this because you want to know about where I grew up, what things I did as a child, my two marriages, my thoughts about religion and politics, or my hopes and dreams, I’ve already written about all that, and you can read it on the Internet. At least I hope you can; surely some version of the Internet still exists in your day and time.

But if you are my great-grandchild or another direct descendant, then there’s really only one thing that’s important for you to know about me:  I love you. If you are Owen, whom I’ve held in my arms and watched grow almost too big for them, I hope to show you enough love that you’ll feel it, if not remember it, even after I’m gone. If you are another child, born too late for us to spend time together in person, then you need to know that I am madly, deeply in love with the very idea of you.

I’ve traced our family history back into centuries numbered in three digits, and let me assure you, you come from good stock. Also from some that was not so good. You can learn a lot about yourself by exploring the lives of those who came before you. You had no choice about whose genes you inherited, but you can freely choose whose behavior you want to emulate. I hope you’ll decide that the honest farmer and the hard-working country doctor are better role models than the cruel king, but that’s up to you. I can suggest that your life will be easier if you make good choices, but I will love you whatever you do.

Most of us mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers are quick to notice our offspring’s kindnesses and accomplishments, the deeds and achievements that lift our hearts and make us love you more than ever. A funny thing about us, though, is that when we see some less than desirable conduct on your part, we nearly always think the best way we can help you do better is by loving you more. That doesn’t always work, just so you know, but the occasional failure of the theory doesn’t diminish the truth of the emotion that inspires it. Either way, you are loved.

I also want you to realize that you’re not alone in either your joys or your struggles. In addition to the family you know now, there has been a large network of people who came before you who have held great hopes for you and have given conscious thought to what they could do to make the world a better place especially for you, whose name they didn’t even know. I’m only one of those people. You and I are part of a long chain, not only linked genetically, but also bonded by our shared history and by all of the emotional tethers attached to the word “family.” We are part of each other.

I am your past, and you’re my future. So, yes, child, I love you dearly.

Accentuating the Negative

This morning I'm working in my office, clearing, sorting, shredding, filing--that sort of thing. I just opened a small cardboard box that contained, among other things, florists' cards from my mother's funeral and a baggie full of old photographic negatives.

An idea hit me. I pulled out one of the negatives, placed it on a white sheet of paper, took a picture of it with my camera, then uploaded the image to my computer. This is what it looked like after I cropped away the white paper:

Next, using the "invert" filter in PhotoShop Elements, I changed the negative image to this very light positive one:

I then tinkered with the lighting adjustments (highlights/shadows and brightness/contrast) to make the picture as clear as I could and realized it's one I've never seen before. The final result still isn't great, but I recognize both the little girl and the outfit she's wearing from another old photo, a formal studio portrait. Here, after all the tweaking I know how to do, is an approximately 68-year-old snapshot of me, picking my nose.

 

**********

While I was working on the photo, the music in my head kicked in with a fitting scrap of a song lyric: "I put your picture away..." Those words are from a really good song, and it's Saturday, so thank you, Inner Jukebox, for suggesting this week's Saturday Song Selection.

The song is "Picture," by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.
Thanks to alexiahazlett for posting the song and its lyrics on YouTube.

Old Notes

One reason it takes me so long to clean out drawers and closets is that I have to read every doggone piece of paper I find. This morning, going through the deep drawer of my nightstand, I found a pad of paper on which I'd written several notes--late night thoughts, apparently. It touched me to be reminded of Kadi, who was determined to be the best dog ever, and Butch, my beloved blind dog. And it made me wonder what in the world was going on in my life when I wrote those gloomy haikus. Here's what I had written:

**********

Kadi holds her big biscuit between her paws, wedging it against her dewclaw, eating from one end to the other. Butch drops his biscuit on the floor, chomps a bite right out of the middle, hurries to eat both ends, then goes to where Kadi is and sniffs the carpet for crumbs.

**********

Butch hovers beside me as I eat dinner, hoping I'll give him a bite. "Move," I tell him. He backs away a few steps, turns in a circle, then comes right back to where he was. "Back off!" I say. He backs up, walks around the coffee table and shows up on the other side of me. "Butch, I'm not sharing!" I say, sternly. He stands there for a couple of seconds longer, then crosses the room, exhales deeply in what sounds like a sigh, and lies down.

**********

I'm watching a video about a 22-month-old girl taking her final exam in swim class. The child whimpers as the instructor puts her under the water over and over. The girl's mother watches but doesn't interfere. Butch, however, takes action. He eases himself off the futon and moves hurriedly to stand in front of the computer, his ears cocked and his forehead wrinkled as he tries to locate the baby in distress. The sounds of crying children and whining puppies never fail to get his attention.

**********

There were so many adjectives in each sentence that I felt as if I were standing blindfolded in a pool full of manure and flailing around desperately in search of a point.

**********

I asked you because

I needed some clarity.

You answered in fog.

**********

What if my true thoughts

Were written on my forehead?

Who would love me then?

Beside the Still Waters

See these pots drying on my kitchen counter? They were freshly scrubbed, but not because I'd cooked in them.

Yesterday morning as I sat here at the computer reading other people's blogs, my next-door neighbor called. "Is your water pressure low?" she asked. I had no idea, but I went to check on it while she waited and reported back to her that yes, it was low. Not much more than a trickle, in fact. She said she'd call the water company, then call me back.

Knowing I badly needed a shower before heading off to the writing class, I dug out my three largest pots, set them one by one in the bathtub, and slowly filled them all with water. I had bottled water to drink, so I figured I'd use two pots for bathing and save one for flushing. I'd make do if I had to.

It took a while for my neighbor to make contact with a human at the water company, but once she did, she called again and told me that someone had accidentally cut a main water line about a mile from here. The woman at the water company had told her, "They're working on it, but we don't know how long it will take to fix it."

I hung up the phone and headed to the bathtub while my potted water was still warm. I turned on the shower, mostly out of curiosity, and discovered there was enough water trickling out of it to wet down my body so I could soap it up and enough to rinse the soap off if I was very, very patient. I took a chance and shampooed my hair, but there wasn't enough water pressure coming from the shower nozzle to get a clean rinse, so I dipped a big plastic glass into my largest pot, many times, and poured it over my head until my hair was squeaky clean.

I've been reading lots of historical fiction lately in which characters struggled every single day to carry water from the nearest creek. That was their only option. Nowhere in any of those books was it written that even one of those characters felt as virtuous as I did yesterday about bathing in a small amount of water. I felt like a hardy pioneer woman.

If I'd had a mule and a wagon, I might have tried to get to class that way.

Teaching the Truth

Last week I started a second round of Life Writing classes. Our first homework assignment was to write something about high school. While writing the following story, I kept in mind that my number-one goal in writing about my life, whether I'm doing it here on this blog or in the classroom, is to leave something behind so my descendants, should they choose to do so, can learn through my own words what kind of a person I am/was. Maybe they'll find some traits they can relate to--either good traits or bad ones.

The following is what I read to the class today:

**********

From first grade through high school, I nearly always forged a stronger bond with my teacher than with any of the other students in the classroom. I liked the other kids just fine, but the teachers were the ones who interested me. They knew all the things I wanted to know, and they shared thoughts and ideas that I could keep in my head to pull out later and mull over at my leisure.

My Senior English teacher, Mary Wheeler, might have been the best of the bunch. She was sharp, funny, and observant. Nothing got past her. She was also determined to teach us more than language and literature. She wanted us to learn to think for ourselves, to develop the skills we’d need in the world outside the classroom. She treated us as individuals, and she taught each of us a lot about ourselves.

We read Shakespeare’s MacBeth in Mrs. Wheeler’s class. I hated it. Our discussions were interesting, but the reading of the play itself was boring beyond measure. For days we spent that classroom hour taking turns reading aloud, each voice a different monotone reading words with no regard for the meaning behind them. I had trouble staying awake.

Eventually it was my turn to read, and, in a bit of serendipity, it was time for the witches. Shaking off the sleepiness, I began to read in my best impersonation of a witch’s voice, building up steam as I came to the part about “double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” I don’t know what my classmates thought about my dramatic interpretation, but I can tell you this much:  they were all awake. And Mrs. Wheeler was grinning.

In a classroom discussion later that year, Mrs. Wheeler asked for a volunteer to define the term “non-conformist.” One student raised his hand and suggested that a non-conformist was a beatnik. “A beatnik could be a non-conformist,” Mrs. Wheeler replied, “but all non-conformists aren’t beatniks, so that definition is too limiting.” Gesturing toward me, she continued: “Linda is as much of a non-conformist as anyone I know, but she certainly isn’t a beatnik.” I was stunned. I looked like the other students, dressed like them, and did my best to fit in, but deep inside I knew I was different. It was mostly a matter of being interested in different things than they were, but I didn’t think they knew that. It was shocking to learn that the uncomfortable differences I felt were obvious to someone else.

One day near the end of senior year, class rankings were announced on the P.A. system and posted on the bulletin board minutes before the bell rang for English class. Naturally, that’s what everybody wanted to talk about as we made our way to our seats. “Where were you on the list?” the boy at the desk next to mine inquired.

“Third,” I said.

“No, you weren’t,” he retorted, “Skipper was third.”

“Skipper was ninth,” I snapped, irritated. “He was the highest ranking boy.”

Mrs. Wheeler leaned in close to me and whispered, “I wouldn’t brag about being third if I were you. You should have been first by a long stretch.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“Never mind,” she responded, shaking her head as she walked back toward her desk. “I’ve already said more than I should have.”

That was the first time I’d ever been confronted with what I now know to be an unbecoming truth: I’m an underachiever. Always have been, probably always will be. I’ve been fortunate in that many things have come easily to me. I apparently learned at an early age that I could coast through most situations without expending a great deal of effort, yet when life has presented difficult challenges, I’ve been quick to back off, surrender, move on to something easier. People say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, I get going, too. If you want to know where I go, pull out your street map and locate the intersection of Easy Way and Path of Least Resistance.

Mrs. Wheeler may have believed I could work on that particular character flaw if she called my attention to it. I’m glad she doesn’t know that things haven’t changed much in all the years since then. She’d certainly be disappointed. I’m not proud of it myself.

**********

It occurred to me after I wrote this that the part about knowing I was different probably had more to do with my introverted nature than with anything else. In hindsight I'm sure there must have been lots of other students who felt the same way I did, but it's sometimes hard for us introverts to find each other. Each of us is too busy maintaining and preserving our own, individual block of personal space. The extroverts, on the other hand, put their personalities out there for anybody and everybody to see, so I knew them better, and they were the ones to whom I compared myself. As much as I liked them, I knew I was not like them. Now that I understand what that was all about, a do-over might be nice.

The Day the Music Died

Okay, the title of this post is an overstatement, but I did sort of feel like that yesterday while I boxed up records and cassette tapes to donate--or maybe to sell; I haven't decided yet. Whatever their final destination, they all hold precious memories, and it's hard to let go of things like that. I had to remind myself again and again that the memories are in the songs themselves, not in the recorded media, and the songs will not be lost to me.

I counted as I boxed and came up with 175 singles, all of which were accumulated between late 1970 and sometime in the mid-80s. All of the 45 rpm records I'd bought before 1970, a stack about the same size as this one, were given to a neighbor when we moved from Texas to Florida and didn't have room for them in the small utility trailer we towed behind our station wagon.

Here's a small sample of the 45s:

The albums we owned did make it into the trailer for that Florida trip, so some of the 105 albums I boxed up yesterday predate 1970. Only a handful of them were purchased after 1980.

By the time my husband and I separated in mid-1980, we'd been buying cassette tapes instead of vinyl albums for a while. When we divorced, I got all the albums and he got all the tapes, a decision based once again on which medium would take up less space in the moving trailer. I continued buying tapes on my own, even bought them for several years after everyone else had switched to CDs. Being compact in size, all but a few of the tapes made it into this photo:

I did get with the times eventually and now have a nice-sized stack of CDs. I'm keeping those for now, even though I've uploaded all the best tunes from the CDs to my computer. There, they're stored alongside hundreds of iTunes selections that include many of the songs from the singles, albums, and tapes I'm finally ready to give up. The best part is that all the digital tunes don't take up even an inch of space in my house. Isn't technology amazing?

**********

This week's Saturday Song Selection is from the tape at the upper right-hand corner of the cassette-tape photo above (you can click on it to enlarge it). This one reminds me of a time when I was between relationships. I wasn't at all unhappy, but I wasn't yet resigned to singlehood status, either. I fully expected to fall in love again before too long; that's the way it had always happened before. I'd listen to music while I busied myself around the apartment, and this song always made me imagine that the kind of man who would bring me a broken arrow and a bottle of rain might be very much to my liking. I guess I'll never know for sure; I never met a man like that. I stopped looking years and years ago.

The song is "Broken Arrow," written and performed by Robbie Robertson.
Thanks to TheUnderground5150 for posting this beautiful video on YouTube.
Click here to read the lyrics.

Cyber Mechanics

There is one more thing I accomplished yesterday that I'm kind of proud of--unless I misjudged and it turns out to have been a bad thing. The "service engine soon" light has been shining on my dashboard since early spring, and I've intended ever since then to get it checked out. But. There was one great big "but," that being that I've had more than one bad experience with auto mechanics feeding me a line of bull and talking me into expensive repairs that weren't actually necessary. Based on those bad apples, I've become suspicious of all but one trusted repair company, one that specializes in tires and brake jobs, unfortunately, not engines. If the light had read "service engine now," I'd have had no choice but to bite the bullet and hope to find an honest mechanic, but that word "soon" seemed like nothing more than a suggestion and made me wonder just how important it could be.

I've been reading online occasionally for months about the many different things that could cause the "service engine soon" light to come on, and one thing I learned was that even something as simple as a gas cap not screwed on tightly could allow enough air into the gas mixture to trigger the dashboard alarm. I also learned that tightening the loose gas cap (which I've presumably done every time I've filled the tank since the warning light first appeared) won't turn off the light. Well, I wasn't about to get roped into costly repairs over nothing more serious than a loose gas cap, so when my Internet search led to information about how to reset the light, I decided to try it.

It was so easy! All I had to do was remove the battery cable clamp from the negative terminal, wait five minutes, then put it back on, start the engine, and voila! No more warning light. I figure if the light comes on again, there must be something wrong that really needs fixing, and I'll go get the work done. In the meantime, maybe the light will stay off at least long enough for the car to pass its annual inspection.

Have I mentioned how much I love the Internet? Too many times, you say? Well, here it comes again:  I LOVE THE INTERNET!


UPDATE AT 7:00 PM:  Well, crap! The light came back on half a mile from my house. That's what I get for feeling smug.

It's an ordinary day, except...

...it's an especially gorgeous one! This is the view that greeted me when I let the dogs out just before seven this morning:

The early morning sunlight made everything in its path sparkle and was accompanied by the coolest outdoor temperature I've felt in months. After days of unrelenting heat, broken for mere hours at a time by drenching rainstorms, a day like today is a welcome reminder that fall will come, eventually, to Southeast Louisiana. 

The good weather convinced me to eat lunch outside again today, the first time in several weeks I've enjoyed what was an important part of my daily routine until a few weeks ago. I'd almost forgotten what a pleasure it is to sit out there with my finger-food lunch on the table at my left, a book in my lap, and two happy dogs dropping their tennis ball near my right hand at least twice a page.

Indoors today I'm doing laundry, experimenting as always to determine which order of washing the various loads is the best one to keep lint off my dark clothes. Since I'm not always successful at that--and maybe you aren't, either--here's a tip: a T-shirt-size length of contact paper stuck firmly against one side of a garment and then the other does the best and quickest job of lint removal I've ever seen.

Also, I'm still emptying drawers for Kim's upcoming move, and today it was time to buckle down and figure out new places to keep the gift-wrapping materials I've been storing in the room that will soon be her bedroom. I have a tall plastic container that holds rolls of gift-wrap paper, and I think that the whole container will fit into a long, built-in bin in the den. Rolls that are too long for that can go on the top shelf of my washer-dryer closet, along with plastic boxes of ribbons and bows. Gift bags and a rainbow assortment of tissue papers have been placed in zippered plastic bags and will now live in the living room in an end-table basket that's been empty until now. (Now, if I can just remember where everything is when I need it. I may have to do a keyword search for this post from time to time.)

Writing this mundane post in the scraps of time between chores and other activities has taken nearly all afternoon. The only good thing about that is that the laundry's all done now, so I can report that the order of today's loads was an effective one: hairy dog towels first, followed by human towels, sheets, light clothes, then dark ones. My good black pants came relatively lint free from the dryer.

The season premiere of Grey's Anatomy is on tonight. If I hadn't forgotten to put chicken in the crock pot earlier today, supper would be almost ready and the last hours of the day would be as nearly perfect as the rest of them have been. Maybe I'll take a short drive and see if anybody showed up for work at the burger place. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. 

Gotcha!

This pretty little pooch is named Buddy. He belongs to my next-door neighbor on the left. Buddy's mom installed a doggy door for him so he can go out into their large, fenced-in backyard and back into the house whenever he chooses, except when the doggy door is locked. I have a feeling someone forgot to lock it day before yesterday. That's when I looked outside to check on my big dogs, Levi and Gimpy, and saw them both doing their "this-is-not-right-oh-this-is-so-wrong" dance, pacing with small steps in a tight circle.

I walked outside to see what was up and there was Buddy, prancing in the driveway of my other next-door neighbor, the one on my right. Levi and Gimpy were correct: Buddy had no business being there. I called his name, and he glanced over his shoulder at me, then turned and walked around the side of the house where I couldn't see him anymore.

I've frequently compared the road in front of our houses to the dangerous one in Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and I knew I'd never forgive myself if I minded my own business and Buddy wandered out onto that road. I darted back into the house, grabbed a leash, and ran out the front door, intending to lure Buddy close enough to catch him and walk him home.

As I hurried down my own driveway, my path was intercepted by Buddy, who was nonchalantly heading toward home. As he trotted leisurely across his own front yard, I followed him every step of the way, intent on discovering how he'd escaped the yard. The obvious answer was that an entire section of fence was missing on the far side of the neighbor's yard, no doubt having been taken down a day or two earlier to accommodate work being done in her backyard. I stopped right there, but Buddy turned and jogged alongside the house, then, with one final glance in my direction, disappeared around the back corner.

My neighbor wasn't home, but her daughter's car was in the driveway, so I knocked on the door to let someone know Buddy had been running loose. Nobody answered the first knock, so I knocked again, harder this time, and after a few seconds the door was opened. The neighbor's daughter eyed me curiously, as if she were wondering why in the world I'd pounded on the door. So did Buddy, who had let himself back in and sat right there at her feet.

That dog must think I'm really stupid.

I Don't Care What You Think; I'm Keeping This

I am exhausted. In the best possible way. The household purge continues and today I reached a point where I could actually begin to move some furniture. Mostly that consisted of relocating four loaded bookcases from the den to my bedroom, which I accomplished with the aid of my old, grimy Moving Men furniture sliders. If I hadn't thoroughly reorganized the utility closet earlier in the week, I wouldn't even have known where to find that battered box of sliders, so yay for serendipity!

Before moving the bookcases, I took everything out of the cabinets below the built-in, non-movable bookcases, eliminated what I could, and reorganized the rest. Those three cabinets were full of office and art supplies. Two of them still are, but one now holds the few games I'm keeping and eight or ten unopened jigsaw puzzles. I found a like-new leather day planner in there and thought how useful that would be for one of the young women in the family--and then I realized that everything I used to do with the day planner, they all do now on their smart phones. I discovered enough manila envelopes in a wide range of sizes that I'll probably never have to buy one again. The same goes for sticky notes and index cards. There were four plastic shoeboxes, each containing an assortment of crayons, colored pencils, markers and chalk. One day after the big move is complete, I'll sort them all out by type. For now I'm keeping all of them.

I found stuff when I moved the bookcases, too:  mostly rolls of a dust-and-dog-hair mixture that had accumulated under them, neither visible nor reachable from the front. Also under a bookcase were the stiff, leathery, well-preserved remains of a five-lined skink. Those bookcases sat next to the backdoor, so the skink probably darted in when the door was open and sought shelter in the nearest dark space. I wonder if the dryness of the dust and dog hair mummified it.

Tabletops and counters are still covered with items to be given away or donated to thrift shops. A visitor would be justifiably horrified at the mess, but I'm beginning to see beyond it now, to imagine how it will look when all those things are gone from here and we have a functional, comfortable home again. Working towards that goal has been good for me, both mentally and physically. It's amazing what the right motivation can do to get a woman off her backside.

********

I could have reclaimed space in my home much faster if I'd taken a hint from the title of this week's Saturday Song Selection, but three lines of the lyrics sum up the reason why I'm sorting through everything carefully and hanging on to more than I need:

"No matter what you think about it

You just won't be able to do without it

Take a tip from one who's tried."

Of course, the song is about love--not decorative items stored in a spare-bedroom closet--but we all hear what we want to hear, don't we?

The song is "I Threw It All Away" by Bob Dylan.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Thanks to 3vignano for posting this video on YouTube.

Grammy's Giveaway

What a week! I've been emptying out closets, drawers and cabinets, piling the contents on tabletops and kitchen counters, sorting what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. If I were doing this on a TV show, there'd be a "what to sell" pile, too, but I have neither the time nor the energy to hold a garage sale right now, and posting stuff on craigslist would involve strangers coming to my home. (Ooh! Scary!) One thing I do know: when the time comes for my daughter to move in with me, there'll be room for her. She's going through a similar process in her present home, sorting out what to bring with her and what to put into a rented storage unit for the time being.

Over the weekend I set up a private Facebook message for my kids and grandkids (promptly dubbed "Grammy's Giveaway" by my granddaughter) where I've been posting photos of anything I think might be of interest to one of them. The first one who claims an item gets it; what isn't claimed before my next trip to Goodwill will go there with me and never come back. It's been kind of fun.

Here's a list of the items posted so far:

• Barstool, wrought iron with beige, microfiber seat. Bought about two years ago at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Seat is 29.5" high--a tad too tall for my use. 
• Crosley record, radio, CD player, rarely used. It all works, but the quality is only about two degrees above a P.O.S.
•  Big stack of 45 rpm singles, mostly from '70s and '80s. I loved them all but haven't played the records in years. Still listen to a lot of the songs on iTunes. Big stack of albums, mostly from the same era. Don't care for the music? I once saw one of the "Trading Spaces" decorators line an entire wall with records.
• Resistance chair and Smooth Rider Exercise Cycle for Resistance Chair: I bought these a few years back when the arthritis in my knees was so bad I could barely walk. Didn't use it but about three times then and don't use it now. I still really like the idea of it, though--for someone with more self-discipline than I have.
• Sharp Z-57 Compact Copier. Anybody need a small-office copier with a big footprint? Bought it so I could make legal-size copies; don't need to do that anymore. Old but still works fine and parts (toner cartridges and drum) are still available. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Bissell Spotlifter Powerbrush -- Kim gave this to me when she got a big floor model carpet steam cleaner, which I liked so much that I bought a big one just like it.
• Large afghans made by either my mother or my grandmother (I've never been sure) have been stored in a drawer in zippered plastic bags for years. Specify which one(s) you want. MULTI-STRIPE: Lots and lots of different colors. RED, WHITE & BLUE: Red, white, blue and...um...a very pale pink. (Do you think maybe she couldn't see very well?) LAVENDAR, GREEN & WHITE: This is the prettiest one, in my opinion. I like these colors together. FOUND A NEW HOME!

• Games:  Backgammon, Pictionary, Password, Code Sudoku, Scruples, Scrabble, Outburst, Ouija Board.
• Oreck XL hand-vac with shoulder strap, perfect for upholstery or auto vacuuming. Comes complete with four brushes, two extenders and a couple of extra bags. I got this as a bonus when I bought the big Oreck (after I saw it lift a bowling ball on TV), didn't really need this small one so used it only once or twice.
• Audio cassette storage boxes: Two nice-looking stackable boxes that can be repurposed and used to store craft items, office supplies, nails and screws...I don't know...matchbox cars? Cassette boxes (and I can provide those if needed) can be inserted to partition the boxes into smaller spaces. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Task Force 12" Mitre Box with 14" Saw: I remember buying this--needed it urgently for some project--but I can't remember why I needed it and I haven't needed it again.
• Pile o' Wires -- almost didn't even list this, but, as they say, one (wo)man's trash is another man's treasure. There are electrical wires (old-style extension cords with no ground), telephone wires, plus TV cable wires and a couple of computer cables.
• Black-Widow Spider Halloween Costume -- Elastic on sides makes it one-size-fits-all. (Black pants, hoody, and "hand socks" NOT included.)
• Strait-Line kit containing laser level, stud finder and sonic laser tape. These are nice tools, but I don't expect to do much more redecorating, and I'm content to hang pictures the old-fashioned way (or using simple techniques I've learned on Pinterest).
• Three ring binders: 1" stiff back (salmon colored); three 1/2" flexible backs; pocket inserts; multiple sets of dividers. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Broken watches -- I'm thinking they might be used some way in a craft project, e.g., attached to a picture frame for newborn's first photo, with hands set to time of birth. Or worn all together as a fashion statement. My first thought was to place tiny portraits under the glass, but I don't know how you'd get the darn things open.
• Hanging/folding makeup kit (plastic) -- never used. Also good for holding craft supplies, coupons, hair bows, scarves, belts, tights/hosiery, etc. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Five-quart plastic jug with spigot. Very narrow, takes up little space in refrigerator. Has a very, very slight leak. When I used it in my refrigerator, I kept a folded paper towel right under the spigot and that took care of it. Great to fill with Kool-Aid, etc., for use outdoors by small kids. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Beer or soda can dispensers -- plastic-coated wire. Three of them. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• "Bread Buddy" -- Used to use it, but I eat bread so infrequently that I now have to keep it in the freezer. Put loaf of bread in container, pull wrapper back over sides to slide bag toward opening, then snap lid over bag.
• Vintage Premium Saltine Crackers Tin - from 1978, has a few very tiny dings, which is not bad when you consider it's been part of five major moves.
• Carter's Onesie (size 3-6) months, plus matching hooded bath towel -- still has tags. I bought this for Keaton (who recently turned 10), but he outgrew them before I got around to packaging them to mail. Put them in the back of my closet, still in the plastic shopping bag, and forgot about them through Presley, Cohen, Henley, Owen and Olivia. They're perfectly fine--just not gift-worthy, because they'll need to be washed after all that time.
• Christmas mugs -- good for hot chocolate or, when filled with candy canes and wrapped in a bow, a cheap spare gift. (That's how I got both of them.)
• Ceramic Campbell's soup mug
• Stackable food storage containers (incomplete set, but mostly there). Base sits on shelf, lazy susan part pulls out and turns so you can pick out what you need. Frankly, the idea of these is better than the reality of them, because the lids are hard to put on and take off. Hm. It just occurred to me that the containers could be discarded and the pull-out lazy susan might be handy for storing spices, canned goods, etc. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Tupperware ring mold for Jello OR shrimp (not Jello AND shrimp). FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Five-piece set of Mickey Mouse Chinese mini-pliers (my assumption only). Have no idea where or when I acquired these. The package has never been opened, though it appears that I did my best to try to get it open. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• Caulking gun and caulk, bought about a year ago because I need a line of caulk at the base of my bathtub. (Still do.) Apparently, I'm either too weak or too stupid to use this properly, so I gave up. FOUND A NEW HOME!
• VuPoint 35mm slide & negative converter - Converts your old slides and negatives to digital images. This was a Christmas gift I requested and very much appreciated a few years ago; however, I switched from PC to Mac and it is no longer compatible with my equipment. The box says it's for Windows XP and Windows Vista, latest versions of Windows at the time I got it. Don't know if it's compatible with Windows 7 and 8, but if you have lots of old negatives, it might be worth checking it out.
• Astrology Kit - Quoting the box: "Everything you need to cast horoscopes for yourself, your family & friends."
• The Ken Brown Calligraphy Kit - Lots of fun, but watch out for that India ink.
• Six brushed-stainless cabinet knobs, 1-1/2" diameter. Mount them several inches apart on a nice narrow board to hang ball caps, etc. Cabinet knobs would also be pretty if they were mounted on a pretty board in two (or three) rows, with small, framed photos hanging from the knobs by cords. Also, five stainless hinges. Any "outside-the-box" ideas for using these?
• Double-switch wall plate, off-white antiqued with gold, fleur-de-lis at top and bottom.

That's where I stopped Sunday night, but there's more to be listed as soon as I clear a spot on the table for picture taking. 

I spent yesterday getting the "taken" items cleaned up and ready for delivery, including washing and drying every single one of those damned stackable food storage containers, then moved on to washing, drying and reorganizing the food storage containers I plan to keep, the ones that have been stacked so precariously in the cabinet that one false move can cause them to tumble out. Now I wish I could think of a crafty use for the umpteen extra lids I discovered.

I also discovered two more broken watches--the total is up to six now--so I'm now thinking I'll keep those and use them in a project like one of these someday. Besides, they don't take up very much space.

Yesterday I uncovered a box of more than a hundred 3.5" floppy disks, some of them (and I wasn't always sure which) containing confidential information of the kind I would shred if it were printed on paper. So, while I watched TV last night, I sat with that box next to me on the sofa and a plastic shopping bag in my lap. One by one, I put each diskette into the shopping bag (to catch any flying pieces), cracked it open like a nut, and removed the thin magnetic disk that stores the data. Every so often I'd stop and use scissors to cut a stack of those filmy magnetic disks into pieces. Now I feel comfortable in disposing of them, but I've learned that this kind of electronic refuse isn't safe to toss into trash that might end up in a landfill. The same applies to cassette tapes, videotapes, CDs of obsolete software and expired batteries, all of which I have plenty. Finding a disposal site will be another big undertaking. Oh, well.

I'm just now realizing that I already covered a lot of these topics in another post just six days ago, which tells me that the "thin magnetic disk that stores the data" in my brain isn't functioning as it should, possibly due to overload. That being the case, I'll stop writing for now and get back to the physical activity of purging and reorganizing to make room for Kim (FOUND A NEW HOME!).

You Stole My Heart, I Couldn't Leave You If I Tried

It was 1971, about this time of the year. We lived in Miami, Florida. My daughters were just a few weeks into a new school year, one in fourth grade, the other in second. Tonight I'm remembering those days, especially the early mornings, the blond heads of my sleeping girls, their arms and legs tangled in the sheets.

My husband worked nights then, and he usually stayed in bed, sipping coffee and listening to the radio while I got the girls up, fed them breakfast, helped them get ready for school. No matter what was going on in the ordinary confusion of morning, it all came to a halt for my older daughter when one particular song came on the radio. How many mornings did we watch her, smiles on our faces, as she stood there in our bedroom doorway, toothbrush or hairbrush in hand, swaying to the music and singing along with Rod Stewart?

She's been a grownup up for a long time now, but I remember that little girl vividly. Sometimes I still see flashes of her.

The song is "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.

Thanks to AllTheLoveGoneBlack for posting this video and the song lyrics on YouTube.

Creating Elbow Room

Due to a recent series of events centered around the end of a relationship, I'm going to have some new housemates by the end of October. My older daughter, Kim, and her two dogs, Oliver and Lucy, are coming to stay for a while. In the meantime, Kim and I both need to figure out how to eliminate a lot of "stuff" from our households so we won't be stepping over it all once they move in.

As many clothes, books, and other items as I've donated or thrown away in the past couple of years, there are still too many things here that I don't need. Somehow, when one has empty drawers, shelves, closets, or floor space, items seem to drift in from all directions until everything is full again. As long as the space doesn't feel too crowded, keeping unnecessary stuff doesn't seem to be a problem. Now, all of a sudden, space is at a premium.

Over the next few weeks I'll be purging with a critical eye toward making room, getting rid of a lot of things I've kept just because I could. Things like this set of fine china my father bought me in 1965:

Thanksgiving Day Table Setting - 1978

Those were the "good" dishes, the ones reserved for Thanksgiving and other special meals back when life was a more formal affair than it is nowadays. The days before automatic dishwashers. All these dishes have a thin rim of silver around the edges, silver that will erode rapidly in a dishwasher. It's been at least twenty years--possibly thirty--since I've used them, yet they're stacked and lined up neatly, along with coordinated serving bowls and glassware, taking up one whole set of cabinet shelves. I can no longer afford to be sentimental about them. It's time for them to go to someone who'll appreciate them enough to wash them by hand.

There's a bulky copy machine I bought in 1997 when I was thinking about starting my own home-based business. It's old but it functions perfectly. I use it about once a month and don't need to use it then. Any copying needs I have these days can be handled quite capably by the three-in-one printer/scanner/copier on my desk.

There are boxes of games I no longer play because more interesting games are available online. There's a shoe-drying-rack attachment for my dryer that I've never used. On the same shelf is a fabric softener dispenser, also unused because I prefer dryer sheets. There's an unopened box of legal-sized hanging files I'll never need again, three boxes (in three different locations) of assorted wires and cables, and attachments for a vacuum cleaner I no longer own. There are non-functioning and/or obsolete electronic appliances I can't get rid of until the next annual electronics recycling day. I have tons of vinyl records, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes. A nearly finished quilt top (made by a great aunt) and three crocheted afghans (made by either my mother or my grandmother) sit in zippered plastic bags inside a drawer, where I see them only when I can't remember what's in that drawer and open it to find out. There are so many things taking up so much space, and that has to change. Now.

There are other useless things, of course, that I'm not ready to give up. One example is a round tin box full of assorted buttons I've saved over the years. My grandmother kept a button box very much like this one, and I spent hours, as a child, rearranging the colors and stringing them together with a needle and thread. There's something magical about a button box, and some kid, someday, will like mine very much.

Wish me luck, please. And focus, too; wish me that. I'm going to need a lot of both in the coming weeks.