heart day

i was in the greeting card section of the store looking for valentines, and a man and woman came up and stood, one on each side of me, and started going through the cards, much like i was. suddenly the guy says “i found yours!” and a few minutes later the woman says “and i found yours!” so they stepped behind me, exchanged their cards, read them aloud, and gushed over the sentiments. then they kissed and put the cards back in the rack. i looked at them and said “that’s sweet! aren’t you buying those for each other?” and the woman says, “no, we do this every valentine’s day. we find the perfect cards for each other, trade them and read them, but we don’t buy them. we’ve been been doing it for 41 years, and look,” she says, “we saved over eight dollars just this year alone!” romantic and smart!! happy heart day to you and your valentine!

thrift store gift

each christmas, the girl and i exchange one gift that's been gently used or repurposed. this year, i gave her a spice rack from our community services store, the local place where we have always donated used clothes, books, and household items. i got it at a half price sale, so it was only a dollar. i was thrilled to find it and knew it would look good in the kitchen she had been renovating. 

fulfilling my christmas wish for colorful scarves with metallic elements, the girl bought me this long teal scarf, not a color i'd normally wear, but one that now looks fantastic with my recently-turned white hair. it has metallic threads - and even sequins! as i wrapped it around my shoulders, the girl told me it was my thrift gift, that she had bought it at goodwill. even better!! 

to get used to the color, i wore the scarf first to work, a few hours only - and yes, i loved it! so i wore it two days later to an important meeting filled with people i did not know. midway through the meeting, my fingers found a stiff strip across one end of the scarf, just above the beautifully tied fringe. what was this thing? i lowered the section to my lap and surreptitiously tried to peel off the sticker. it would not budge. i turned the section into my lap and tried to hide it for the rest of the meeting.

that night at home, i inspected the sticker and realized its purpose; i had seen tabs like this on my own father's clothes. on it was a first initial and a last name. this scarf belonged to a woman who lived in a communal situation, someone who shared storage and laundry facilities with others. she wore this to dinner at her independent living community. she put it on for movie nights in the common room of an assisted living facility. she wore it when she wanted to look pretty for visitors to the nursing home. and the tag was prominently placed to make it easier to return the scarf to her should it get misplaced or taken away for cleaning. 

i have tried to remove this tag, and cannot. it must be glued - pulling will only rip the delicate threads of the weave. so i wear the scarf with the tag strategically placed inside, against my shirt and hope that it stays that way. and each time i wear it, i take with me the memory of a w. schoolcraft, another white-haired woman, one who had impeccable taste in scarves. 

downsizing

in the midst of the summer gardening and room painting and kitchen redo (no, it's still not done), i am trying to clean out useless things. stuff i've held onto for most of my life that means very little or nothing to other people. things i don't want the girl to have to deal with when it comes time to clean this place out for the last time. here is a perfect example of what i mean. it's the end of a roll of vinyl wallpaper i bought in 1981. 

we were moving out of state, leaving family and friends, and starting new jobs. the girl was turning five, and beginning school in a few months. with all the details of the packing and moving, uppermost in my mind was making the transition as easy and fun as i could for her. we rented a house sight unseen because it was in a small rural neighborhood and had a big yard and four bedrooms. we chose for her the room with the most light and the most nooks and secret spots for playing. and i made it a priority to have it completely redone and beautiful before we moved in.

and this is the bedroom wallpaper that she and i chose, sitting one evening on the porch swing of the house we would soon be leaving, the only home she'd known. we both gasped when we turned this page, and knew we had found the perfect wall covering. in an effort to capture the experience, i saved this piece when we left the rental for our new home in our new state. and i've had it ever since, tucked in the back of the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser. 

of course, my tastes have changed significantly since then, and i am now admittedly horrified to think that i imposed such graphic chaos on so young a psyche. but at that pivotal, transitional time of our lives, it was just what we both needed. 

sweet!

at work, i have deemed myself the designated recycler and, two saturdays a month, i'll take the excess paper - the old magazines, the outdated newspapers, the packaging materials - to the transfer station. after i'd done this for several years, i found out from area children that the nice elderly man at the recycle house passes out tootsie pops to kids when they recycle. hey - i recycle! i like tootsie pops! so i mentioned it to him and last fall, he began to include me! he knows i only like the chocolate tootsie pops, so he always saves one for me. but today, a windfall - one that made me smile all the way home.

extremes

around noontime, i realized it was not only sunny and above freezing, it was actually a bit warm outside. so i went out into the yard in my indoor birkenstocks. i sat for a bit, i took some photos, i enjoyed the sun. when i had to come back inside, i opened the kitchen window and smelled the clean air while i worked and cooked and puttered.

but within an hour, the sky darkened, the wind began to howl, and a snow squall blew in, lasting about thirty minutes. new england really has some crazy weather, but it's one of the things that makes this an interesting place to be!

a pumpkin feast

see that fat, furry little guy? in november, he decimated every october pumpkin i tossed into the compost pile. this was a tiny sugar pumpkin that i thought i might cook and freeze, but it sat too close to the woodstove and began to get mushy. so yesterday, on my way to put it in the winter compost barrel, i thought better of it and pitched it out into the side yard. and there he is - back again for one last pumpkin lunch!

rawr

this one deserves its own post, late or not. when friends go on trips, i ask them to bring me back a rock. here's one that a friend found for me. do you see the face?

bestseller

since i've semi-retired, one thing i'm just not doing enough of is keeping up with new books. it's odd, i know, but it's true, and it bothers me a lot. so when folks started talking about the girl on the train and what a thriller it was, i thought- i must read it. since i didn't want to wait for it at the library, and because i didn't want to lose my resolve, i downloaded it to my kindle and began to read straight away. and, from the get-go, i did not like it - at all. i'd read rave reviews - so i kept on reading. friends gushed about it - so i kept on reading. i finished it friday night. and i hated it. yes, i did.

today at the library, i saw the print version at the desk, so i thumbed through it. inside, characters i didn't know, scenarios i didn't recognize, whole paragraphs i didn't recall. how could this have happened? did i fall asleep and miss large chunks of the story? am i really that poor a reader?

i went to the kindle app on my phone to check. and the cover (which i never look at on ebooks) was very different. so was the author's name. slowly it dawned on me - i read the wrong book. 

in hindsight, it's no wonder. just look at how many there are!  what am i reading now? station eleven...i think. 

hide 'n go seek

she wanted to play, and here's how she hid. camouflage, she told me.

easter 2015

happy easter!

the tradition continues. i am amazed. two friends i have long suspected are in different states this easter morning. 

christmas birds of a feather

over the weekend, the little girl was here, helping to decorate the christmas tree. although there are many, many ornaments to choose from, she chose every single one that her mother had made in school or admired years ago as a child. this christmas, the tree borders on tacky, but i like it.

as i was rearranging a few tonight (to make room for the ornaments i like!) i noticed these three red birds, neatly arranged on the bottom branches. i called the little girl to ask about it. she told me yes, she put them together on purpose, because she thought it looked nice. kind of like a flock, she said.

i'm not moving a thing.

the mighty oak

walking up from the mailbox this frosty morning, i stop to marvel at an oak leaf standing upright in the grass, backlit by the sun. and i'm delighted when it doesn't topple over as i hurry inside to fetch my camera. 

estimation

i'm a pocket person but i'm picky about what i keep in them. a beach rock, lip balm, a token from a friend, a flash drive. bills, neatly tucked up in a colorful paperclip. but seldom do i carry coins. it's just too much jingle. so, like many others, i toss them in a container and there they sit until they fill the thing up. for a while now, i've transferred the contents to a bigger container as i fill the smaller one. finally this week, the little girl and i decided to take them to the change machine at the bank.

what a wonderful opportunity for a lesson in estimation, thought the teacher in me. so we brainstormed ways to go about doing that. we decided to start by counting the change in one fistful of money. then she counted the number of additional fistfuls from the container. pencil and paper multiplying that was a bit beyond her abilities came last. we estimated that there was roughly $125 in change.

on the way to the bank, the little girl reminded me that the counting machine wouldn't take foreign coins. we decided there had to be some in our stash since we live so close to Canada, but we weren't worried.

at the bank, we dumped all the coins into the machine. we watched in awe as the coins dropped in and the displayed total grew larger. as the noise started to slow and the display finally stopped, we looked at each other in disbelief. $124.69. and in the coin return, a single shiny Canadian quarter. i was so dumbstruck, i didn't even think to take a picture of it!

we were so close!!

pranked

a late april fool's day gift from the little girl. not a brownie, but a brown e. she thinks it's absolutely hysterical - and she almost got me.

full circle

when i was a child, my father's mother lived close by and i'd often walk to her house. food was important there and she was always cooking and baking. she'd feed me ginger ale floats with vanilla ice cream and tell me that i'd remember her when she was gone because of them. i do have a lot of food-related memories of her - she taught me how to measure shortening by putting water in a measuring cup and then adding the crisco. she always let me sift the flour and mix with the egg beater. i make her gingersnaps at christmastime.

as i worked in my own kitchen this afternoon, a forgotten memory came spilling back to me. in my grandmother's refrigerator there was always a partially eaten cold chicken, leftovers sitting on a
flowered plate in the middle of a silvery gelatinous pool of congealed juices. i remember thinking it was one of the most disgusting foods i'd ever laid eyes on. i couldn't bear to touch the quivering jellied mass or eat the slimy chicken. it was just too gross. yet here i was today, the grandmother myself, shredding leftover cold chicken and scraping that same goo from one of my own plates to add to the stock to make soup for my granddaughter's dinner. i've come full circle!

prepping the turkey

...for preschool story hour! 

this is the craft that goes along with this week's book!

prank

i anticipated we'd be out walking in the woods this glorious fall weekend, so i took an acorn from the fidget bowl, drew a tiny face on it, and placed it along the path on an isolated bed of moss where i was sure the little girl would find it. and find it she did. she let out a gasp of disbelief, a whoop of joy, and gave me a big hug after i finally admitted that, yes, i had put it there. then she ran back to the house laughing and whooping some more and yelling, "this is hysterical!"

what a great reaction. i must do this for her more often!

riches from the beach

found on the beach today: a dollar and a half dollar. the little girl insisted i add the quarter dollar, too!

4th of july

these are still my favorite fireworks. 

i seek them out every year, i'm still in awe of the animation, and they still make me laugh!

 

 hope your independence day was spectacular!

alliteration

out my window, in my garden, left-leaning lupines. i thought that sounded hysterical, all those l sounds, and wanted to capture the sight to add to the blog or to instagram. it was even more funny, though, when i downloaded the picture file and realized i took the shot from the wrong side!