Monthly Archives: October 2017

It’s Always Something

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For the past few weeks, we have been getting stern emails from our home owners’ association in AZ. Your yard looks like crap, they said (in so many words). We have standards, they reminded us. Next thing you know, you’re going to park a rusty ’74 Ford Pinto in your front yard and set a ratty couch on your porch, they opined.

Well, perhaps the emails weren’t that stern, but when we pulled up to our driveway, our yard looked sad enough to make Bill swallow hard and say yoiks. Just as I suspected, Bill carried in our suitcases and other stuff and within 15 minutes, he was at work in the yard…..

My brother keeps track of our house during our absence. He stops by every couple of weeks, flushes the toilets, checks for running water and signs of pests, gets our mail, and removes the impassioned pleas for us to become Jehovah’s Witnesses from our door. But even with his much-appreciated help, whichever one of us is the first to open up the house after the long, hot summer closes our eyes and holds our breath as we unlock the door and step in.

This year, sometime in late June, I got a phone call from our AZ neighbor, a very sweet elderly woman named Patsy. Since Patsy and I are friendly but not BFFs, seeing her name come up on my caller ID made me swallow hard and go yoiks. And for good reason, as it turned out. Our drip system was spewing water like Old Faithful. Jen’s son-in-law Mark was good enough to fix that for us that time. Still, Arizona summers are long and hot, making problems inevitable. Hence, the front yard that looked like a post apocalyptic nightmare.

The inside of the house usually fares a bit better, and this year was no exception. We had, of course, the normal smells that come from stale air mixed with sewer gas. But we were scorpion free, and unlike a couple of years ago, there was no signs of termites. Unfortunately, there was also no signs of a working modem. We turn off our wifi in the summer and turn it back on when we return in the fall. Since we are as reliant on technology as the next guy, a trip to Best Buy to replace the dead modem was necessary.

Luckily, that also created the opportunity to eat an early dinner at Fuddruckers. After two days on the road dining primarily on Red Vines and Slim Jims, even restaurant food seemed like a home cooked meal.

By the time we settled in to watch the football game, we had working wifi, our suitcases were unpacked, and we were ready to tackle the rest of the chores.

Today, we will get settled in for our two-week stay. I will make a trip to the grocery store so that we have something other than beer in our fridge and Oreos in our pantry. I will even get a bag of candy in case the neighborhood kids decide to drop by, thinking our house is haunted from the looks of the front yard.

Saturday Smile: Fish Stories

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While their mom and dad are out of town, Addie, Alastair, Dagny, and Maggie Faith are having themselves some kind of fun. Their Aunt Julie (Jll’s sister), being the brave woman that she is, took the four of them to a dude ranch to learn the way of the cowboy (and cowgirl)……

The three days will involve horseback riding, campfires, and, well, I guess fishing. Judging from these photos that she posted on Facebook…..

Addie, Dagny, and Magnolia all caught at least one fish or more. Quite frankly, Addie’s looks like a dolphin.

Lots of adventures, and they made me smile.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: Magpie Murders

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Magpie Murders, by author Anthony Horowitz, is a refreshing break from many mystery novels with predictable plots and authors that try just a bit too hard to give the reader a surprise ending. Horowitz is the creator and writer of one of my favorite British television crime dramas Foyle’s War, so I was very excited to see what he had up his sleeve with the unusual format of this novel.

Magpie Murders actually gives the readers two separate mysteries to ponder – a mystery within a mystery, so to speak.

Editor Susan Ryeland is given a copy of the manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest novel featuring his famed detective Atticus Pund. Pund is very much like Agatha Christie’s famed detective Hercule Poirot, spending his time solving mysteries in little English villages, providing his readers with hints and red herrings galore. Since Ryeland has been Conway’s editor from the get-go, she is used to his formula; however, the more she reads, the more she thinks Conway is giving the reader a mystery within a mystery.

She continues to read, but just as Pund is getting ready to gather the suspects together to identify the killer, the story stops. Whaaaaat? The last chapter is missing. Why did Alan Conway not finish the book, but turn it in to his editor anyway shortly before he commits suicide?

Despite being ordered by her boss to leave it well enough alone, Ryeland begins trying to figure out why Conway would end the story in this manner. As you follow along with Ryeland, can you figure out what’s going on?

What I liked best about this book is that in the first chapter, Ryeland sits down with a cup of tea and hours of time and begins to read the manuscript. And then the book is presented to the readers of Magpie Murders just as Ryeland is reading it. And the Pund novel is a fun romp, very reminiscent of Agatha Christie. Manor houses, murders, mysterious guests. If that had been the entire book, I would still be giving it a good review.

But it isn’t. Because suddenly, the book ends, and the second mystery begins. It was so much fun (if you can call murder and suicide fun).

This really is a must-read for lovers of good mysteries with challenging endings, and definitely a must-read for Agatha Christie fans. As for me, I’m on the lookout for other books by this author.

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

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Get a Job
Very often when I turn on my iPod in the morning, Google will give me an unexpected message: It will take you “X time” to get to work this morning. While it’s very kind of Google to take such good care of me, it always puzzles me. You see, I’ve been retired since November 2008. So, I always wonder where Google thinks I work. It doesn’t always seem to be the same, thereby implying that Google thinks I’m a job-jumper. While Google knows a lot about me, he/she apparently doesn’t know that I was at my last job for 20 years. Anyway, I got that message yesterday morning. It will take you 7 minutes to get to work at 7777 E. Hampden Ave. He/she was kind enough to give me the address, thereby implying that Google thinks I can’t remember where I work, perhaps because I change jobs so often. But since I had an address, I decided to check out just where it was that Google thinks I work. Much to my surprise, it was at our neighborhood Target. Now, if I was going to have a job, working at Target would be about as good as anything. Better, perhaps. Maybe Google has seen my checking account balance and simply thinks I really SHOULD get a job. Especially since the state pension plan folks have already told me (and everyone else on the plan) that we will get an increase next year over their dead bodies. And, by the way, it takes me way less time to get to Target than 7 minutes!

The Falling Leaves
When we moved into this house 25 years ago, we had more trees than we have now. In addition to the three apple trees and the pear tree that live in our back yard, we also had a cherry tree. We had additional aspens (we have lost a few over the years, the most recent being about two weeks ago when it toppled over onto our patio when it was dark outside and nearly scared the daylights out of us).  In the front yard, we had a beautiful crabapple tree. Beautiful, that is, until it started getting crabapples that fell to the ground and made a mess. So that tree went away when we had some landscaping done. As a result, we really don’t have all that many leaves to rake up each fall. We do have a honey locust tree in the back yard that I have loved from the moment we bought the house. It had a perfect branch upon which we hung a swing that has serviced all of our grandkids through the years, though Cole got pretty short-changed. All that swinging brought an end to that particular branch, though the tree continues to be healthy. The good news is that the leaves are so small on the honey locust tree that they actually don’t necessarily need to be raked. The fallen leaves won’t kill the grass. When my miniature schnauzer – Fritz – was still alive, he would go outside to do his business and would come in covered in the leaves. He was like a little honey locust leaf vacuum cleaner…..

Where Should I Sit?
We are still without furniture, though that will change later today when Court comes to help Bill unload the Pod and move the furniture indoors. I can barely contain my excitement. All of the rooms echo, something that will be alleviated when there is some furniture, rugs, etc. Once we have some furniture, I will post some photos.

Spooky
When did it become A Thing to decorate your house with outside lights for Halloween. Being a lover of all kinds of twinkling lights, I’m not complaining. Just somewhat puzzled. There is a house down the street from ours that is decorated like those over-the-top Christmas decorated houses. The kids will love it. I have never been much of a fan of Halloween. Oh, I liked it when I was a kid, but I am certainly not one of those people who dresses up. But I like those who do. We are almost always in AZ for Halloween, and will be again this year, and our neighborhood there is pretty quiet on Halloween. We are lucky to get one or two little trick-or-treaters. That’s okay. More candy for us.

Ciao.

I Only Have My Shelf to Blame

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Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity. – Erma Bombeck

Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance? – Phyllis Diller

Above are quotes from two women who could be me, except for the fact that they are famous, made much more money, and are decidedly deceased. God rest their souls.

But they could be me because they apparently hated housework as much as I. Never mind the fact that both of them probably had live-in help once they became famous. I know I would not be cleaning my own toilets if I had big bucks. I also wouldn’t be making my bed, doing my laundry, or cleaning my kitchen floor. Oh wait. I don’t really do those anyway. Mostly Bill makes the bed because he sleeps later than I, and he almost always blinks first and washes the kitchen floor. When it comes to scrubbing the floor, I can be blind to dirt for a mighty long time. I do, in fact, do the laundry.

Bill and I spent all day yesterday putting a few things back to order. We moved a several pieces of furniture (those we can do by ourselves) back into their proper place. Bill made some progress to get his office back together, though there is still no room on our kitchen table to eat. Maybe a few more days when we can get somebody strong to help us.

But I did do some housework yesterday. Sanding and staining the floors required me to remove the bottom shelves from my pantry and remove everything off the pantry floor. Yesterday, Bill put the shelves back in place, and I began putting appliances and food and everything else that lives in the pantry back where they belong. But one thing led to another, and somewhere deep inside me I got some energy and willpower, and I began a thorough cleaning of my pantry. I didn’t know it was going to happen, so there were no Before photos.

I started with the shelves that hold my canned goods. Here’s a common practice for this nana: I want to make something for dinner that involves, say, cream of mushroom soup. I do one of two things. A) I add cream of mushroom soup to my grocery list without checking to see if there is any in my pantry, and there often are a couple of cans; or, B) I manage to walk the seven steps to the pantry from my kitchen table, look at my can of cream of mushroom soup, notice the expiration date was sometime during the Clinton Administration, PUT IT BACK ON THE PANTRY SHELF, and buy a new can which I use in my recipe.

So, with tremendous determination – and lots of noise – I went through my cans, one by one, and threw away any cans with expiration dates prior to October 2017. Longtime readers might recall that I did something similar one other time a number of years ago, and actually found a box of tea that had expired in the 1980s. The irony of that particular find was that it was a tea that I didn’t particularly like, but its expiration date told me that I had moved that tea to at least two different houses.

I’m happy to say that I didn’t find an expiration date any earlier than 2007, and then only one or two that went back that far. I filled up two big garbage cans with products that either carried an old expiration date, didn’t have an expiration date at all, or had a code that made no sense to me. In addition to expiration dates, I also threw away products that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I would never use. Oddly shaped pastas, cereals that I had tried and disliked, boxes that had only an eighth of an inch of product left and should have been thrown away a long time ago. I tossed raisins that had hardened to pebbles and marshmallows that wouldn’t soften in even the hottest hot chocolate. And by the way, I tossed a box of instant hot chocolate that barely made it into the 21st century.

I gathered appliances that I never use or were duplicates, and began yet another Goodwill pile. The only thing on my pantry floor now are big jugs of vinegar (and, by the way, in case there is some world crisis that requires the use of white vinegar, I have my entire neighborhood covered), and my toaster oven. I combined packages of napkins and paper plates. I threw away dozens of white Styrofoam cups, most of which were crushed or dirty, and which are supposed to give you cancer anyway, or so I’ve been told.

I filled up our big garbage can outside with my discards and waved goodbye when the trash man came later in the day and picked up the can and dumped it into his truck.

And while I don’t have a before photo, I do have an after…..

Now I have plenty of room to stock up on Thanksgiving necessities. Erma and Phyllis would be proud.

Happy to Be Home

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Let me start out by saying that we are back in our own home, empty of furniture as it might still be right this minute. Joe finished putting on the polyurethane on Saturday, and gave us permission to walk on the floors yesterday. He said we can begin returning furniture to the rooms today.

I will admit that this whole process (and frankly I’m talking about the process that began in the middle of May when Bill first began taking down the 1970s wood paneling in the family room and ended when Joe shut the front door and put our key under the flowerpot) has not brought out the best in me. I repeatedly had to remind myself that I was being inconvenienced BECAUSE I WAS HAVING WOOD FLOORING INSTALLED IN MY HOME. There are people in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico who don’t have homes.

Most of the summer Bill listened to me worry that he was working too hard. And that makes me sound kind, which isn’t exactly true. I’m shying away from substituting the more appropriate word nag for worry. And then about the time I begged him to stop working, I began griping about how long everything was taking. Happily, I neither drove him to drink nor have needed to hire a divorce attorney.

The past week-and-a-half, during which we have wandered around Colorado as the finishing touches were completed have been almost surrealistic. While the hotel in which we finally landed and spent the majority of our time was a mere 10 minute drive from our house, it felt as though we were in a different country. We would drive over to our house in the morning to check out the work from the night before; other than that, we pretty much spent our time in the relatively small hotel room. We weren’t quite sure how long we were going to be there. By Sunday night, we had lost our will to eat another meal in a restaurant and had Dairy Queen for dinner. So there. My body was yearning for a home-cooked meal.

But this week is Fall Break for all of my Colorado grandkids. The McLains are at a dude ranch for a few days with their Aunt Julie (because you will recall that their parents are traveling in India). I spent yesterday with Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole, and we had ourselves a rip-roaring time.

We started out at Noodles for mac and cheese. Or Noodles & Company, as Mylee always corrects me. Once we left the restaurant (likely to cheering once the door was closed, at least by the woman who sat in the booth next to us and had to listen to Cole yell, “Abracadabra, Nana is asleep” and “Abracadabra, Nana is awake,” about a million times), we headed to Monkee Bizness, a children’s indoor playground. Lots of running around and going down slides…..

But you can only slide so many times, so our play date took us next to Wildlife Experience, a sort of indoor zoo/museum operated by the University of Colorado. And, my friends, that was the hit of the day….

At the end of our wanderings, they have an exhibit called Storyland. There are a variety of play stations based on famous children’s books. Cole let out a squeal when he saw Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which is clearly his favorite book, and one I’d never heard of.

In addition to learning Cole’s favorite book, I also learned that Mylee wants to be a police officer when she grows up, and demonstrated that fact by putting on this cap (which is actually a pilot’s cap, but I certainly didn’t spill those beans)…..

The Storyland exhibit was the favorite of the day. And the day was the best one I’ve had in a long time…..

Can you blame me?

Far Away Places

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When I was growing up in small town Nebraska in the 50s and 60s, we didn’t do a lot of traveling. We took a family vacation once a year —usually to Colorado—and we made occasional trips to visit aunts and uncles who lived near us in Nebraska. Maybe twice a year, we would drive the 65 miles or so to Omaha to shop, but it was a Big Deal.

I laugh about that now because I really don’t think much about driving the 65 miles to Fort Collins to see Jen for the day. And the round trip mileage from our AZ house to Bec’s is in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 miles, a trip I make without a second thought. It is not at all unusual to put 50 miles on my car’s odometer in a day if I’m doing a lot of errands.

I didn’t set foot onto an airplane until I was out of high school. Air travel was so different back then (when dinosaurs walked the earth). Stewardesses (for that’s what they were called) wore high heels and perky caps and fed you miserable little meals on tiny plates that balanced on a relatively normal-sized tray that was large enough to also fit a beverage. Whaaaaaat?

I flew across an ocean for the first time to Hawaii when I was in my late 20s, and finally went to Europe when I was 40 years old.

Times are so different now. Despite the fact that the flying experience is so much more unpleasant than it used to be, flights are cheaper. What’s more, the internet makes communication easier, making travel less, well, scary and isolated.

As I write this blog, one of our children and his wife are traveling in India. INDIA. Our children have traveled plenty, more power to them. But India. While they were both very excited to be able to have this experience, I think even they were somewhat leery. The trip advising team told our meat-loving son that it might behoove him to limit his meals to vegetables. India is very far away and oh-so-different from the good old U.S. of A. In fact, oddly enough, the time difference is 11-1/2 hours. I don’t know how that even happens.

As a sign of the times, their Facebook posts and email communications have allowed those of us who stayed on domestic soil to keep track of them, thanks be to God.

On Saturday, Bill and I stopped by our house to see how work on our floors was progressing. (Very nicely, thank you very much.) Where do you want to have lunch, Bill asked me.

Dare I tell him?

“To be honest,” I said carefully, “all this talk about their trip to India has made me hungry for Indian food.” I assured him I would be happy to go by myself and he could find himself a nice, juicy burger.

“No, I’ll go with you,” he said.

And so for one day we ate the way Dave was probably eating, without the fear of parasites……

My camera (and photographic ability) make this food look less appealing than it actually was, which I assure you was yummy.

But it once again made me think about living in the 50s in Small Town America. No Indian food. In fact, no Mexican food, no Chinese food, no pho, no falafels, no sushi. Fried chicken, meatloaf, steak. Not that there anything wrong with that.

For the next two weeks or so, my prayers will be directed towards India, even if I’m not.

Saturday Smile: A Day in the Life of a Birthday Boy

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It’s not every day that a guy turns 75. Bill did a bang-up job of it, I must say. Especially given the fact that we are still wandering from hotel to hotel.

Actually, we have settled into a very nice hotel a couple of miles from our house that is suiting us just fine. We may move home Sunday or Monday. And then I will have to start making my own bed.

So Bill started his day with many birthday greetings from siblings, in-laws, and friends, most via technology….

We made a quick stop at home to check out our floors, and Bill got an unexpected delivery from Amazon. His brother Bruce — who knows Bill well — sent him some happy birthday Oreos…..

And of coursr course when you ask the man who was born and grew up in Chicago what he wants for his birthday lunch, he will choose an Italian beef sandwich every time. Lunch at Chicago Mike’s in Centennial with a Italian beef combo…..

We got ready to call our Uber to take us to dinner with friends only to discover we were both wearing red. Living in a hotel doesn’t allow for a lot of clothing choices, so we went as twins…..

We finished enjoying a delicious steak dinner with wonderful friends John and Carol…..

So much revelry, but a whole year to rest up until his next birthday!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

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I’m not a big fan of nonfiction unless it is a topic about which I have a great interest. Life in the hills of Appalachia is a topic I find entirely compelling. It’s why I am such a fan of fiction – particularly mysteries – that take place in the area designated Appalachia.

Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir written by J.D. Vance, therefore captured my attention despite it being a memoir. I very often find memoirs self-serving and uninteresting. Hillbilly Elegy caught my attention from the get-go, and kept it throughout the book. Well, almost. Even the most interesting memoirs can get tedious when the author is talking about certain points in his or her life.

Mr. Vance is a former Marine who graduated from Yale Law School despite his difficult childhood. He uses the word hillbilly, a term with which I find myself somewhat uncomfortable, despite the fact that I occasionally use it to deprecate myself as part of my humor. I guess that’s why its serious use makes me squirm a bit. Still, he uses it to describe himself and his family.

Vance’s grandparents moved from Kentucky to Ohio when they were newly married. According to the author, a large number of Scotch/Irish Appalachians moved to the so-called Rust Belt following World War II in search of a better life where jobs were plentiful in the mining and manufacturing region. Unfortunately, the poverty, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, and general dysfunction followed the immigrants. You can take the man (or woman) out of the violence but you can’t take……

The book is not really so much about so-called hillbillies as it is about white working class Americans and how our system has failed them. Vance was mostly parented by his grandmother and grandfather, who were not unblemished themselves, but at least were a constant in his life. His parents were unavailable to him. His mother, in particular, failed him because of ongoing drug addiction. Aunts, uncles, cousins all demonstrated violent behavior and depended on drugs and alcohol to get through their difficult days.

There has been much talk lately about the problem of drug abuse as well as how poorly working class Americans are faring, but Vance’s perspective is different from many as this was his real life, the background from which he came. Drug and alcohol abuse, and general violence, were part of his roots. He credits his grandparents for his success.

Vance’s talk about government’s failings might be anathema to some who believe government assistance is the best way to help fight poverty. But he makes so many good points that I found myself highlighting section after section of my book. And then, unfortunately, returning it to the library.

A very interesting read indeed.

Here is a link to the book.