Dining Room: It has been worse

Not really a makeover, I just cleaned and redecorated a bit.

I think in October I'll work on the kitchen.

One down

Yesterday Steve and his crew mowed the grass and cleaned up the remains of the pile of limbs by Jerry's driveway. So that's one worry off my mind. I asked Steve if he knew a good place to call to get my water-in-the-basement problem fixed. He said he would call the plumbing company that he uses in Trussville and ask them, and if they did that kind of work, he would let me know.

...Creatures great and small

Back in the spring, I noticed that a cardinal had a nest in the hedge outside my office window. I saw at least one young bird before it started to get its color. Now, almost every day when I sit at the desk, I see beautiful fat redbirds coming and going at the bush. One of them lit briefly on my windowsill, one day back in the summer.

Last night I was watching TV. The door to the deck was open and the porch light on, and through the screen I saw an enormous possum come up the steps and proceed to the bowl where I had left cat food for the black cat. It didn't seem to like the cat food much, just ate a little and scattered a lot around the bowl. Then it explored on the deck, out of my sight, for a while, then found the steps and went off into the dark.

Here alone most of the time, I could get lonely now and then, if not for all the animal life that keeps me amused or concerned. I know I shouldn't leave food out for the cat, but one day a crow sat on the deck rail and gnoshed a little. That same day a large blue-and-black butterfly had the little bowl covered with its gorgeous wings, but flew away before I could get the camera.

My sister Ramey gets deer in her yard, which I try not to covet. Once she saw a white squirrel, and on rare days a big turtle appears.

A Favorite Meal

This afternoon I got a bean in my bonnet, that is, a craving for beans.

Great northern beans, cooked with a strip of bacon. Green tomato relish. Cornbread. A big glass of milk.

I only cooked a small pot of beans, a small cake of cornbread, because I pretty well knew that once I got started, I would eat the whole thing. And I did.

Jed had to work in Birmingham this morning, so he came over yesterday afternoon. We had seafood at Ruby Tuesday's for dinner, and he helped me move one piece of furniture out of my dining room. After his presentation to some prospective customers today, he shuffled on back to Atlanta. It was a very nice visit.

Just Call Me Sweetie Pie

I think I've done enough complaining to last for the rest of this year. I resolve not to whine again until after January 1, 2010--that's when I'll be looking my annual medical checkup in the face, so I'll have to groan a little.

Irony, irony; and why I'll never hire anyone again

All summer long, I picked up fallen limbs and piled them under one of the trees. Once I asked Steve to get his crew to clean up the back of the lot, so he ran the mower over the dead leaves and left, and charged me 30 dollars extra. The pile of limbs grew and grew, till it was almost as high as me. You can say I should have started out piling them on the curb; with 20-20 hindsight, I can see it now.

One reason I piled them all neatly together was that I expected Jerry to break them up for kindling for his fireplace in the winter. That's what he did last year. But this year he didn't.

I went out yesterday afternoon to pick up the white thing that I thought was trash, and found that it was a ceramic pot that I had left standing under a tree after planting what was in it. A few feet from it was the pile of limbs; the rain/flood had deposited them neatly beside Jerry's driveway. It had also floated the wooden frame of Jerry's flower bed out into his driveway.

Now, instead of worrying about how to get the pile of limbs about 50 yards out to the curb, I only have to move it a third of that distance. Of course, the water compacted it all till it isn't nearly as high and brambly as before. Also, the dead leaves and twigs from my yard form a long line this side of Jerry's driveway to the back of his lot. My yard, especially the area under the trees, is clean as a pin.

All of this just gives me something else to worry about, like messing up the neighbor's property. The wind already, 2-3 years ago, blew one of my trees down onto his garden. There's nothing funny about it, but the imp that sometimes sits on my left shoulder laughs its head off at the irony of it all.

By the way, Jerry's name isn't Jerry, it's Jared.

My basement is truly flooded, this time. Last night the water was about shoe-sole deep, and the mildew scent was overpowering. When I started the car yesterday afternoon, it coughed and groaned before the starter caught, and I left the motor running at CVS while I ran in and got my prescriptions that I had called in.

I know exactly what must be done: Hire someone to install a sump pump. Hire someone to haul off everything in the basement except my deck table and chairs. Hire someone to clean, de-mold and paint the basement.

In addition to my impecunaeity, so far I have not been very good or lucky at hiring people. Citing: Allen Bergal for landscaping. Martin's Tree Service to trim limbs out of the trees. Lee Kingry, The Window Factory, to replace the deck. Shane Mozingo, handyman. Atchison's Landscaping and Turf to correct what Bergal did to the lot. Willis Cain, partly to correct what Kingry did to the deck and chimney.

My experiences in hiring people have made me suspect that hirees just don't take a woman and her cash seriously--except when it comes to taking the cash. Now, I apologize if I'm 'way off base with this, but it just seems that way to me. They tell me they'll be here Monday, and I assume they mean next week, or at least this month, and sometimes it turns out they meant sometime this year. Or next year. They tell me the job will take a week or ten days, but what they leave out is that the week will be spread, one or two days at a time, from early spring to midsummer. I'm through, I tell you.

I'm not going to hire anyone else, except Murray's Garage to come out and start my car when the battery corrodes again and won't respond. It always amazes me when Murray's Garage tells me they'll be here in 30 minutes, and they turn up the same day.

From now on, when somebody needs to be hired, I'm going to be very busy practicing on my horn. I mean, working on my novel.

Fall cleaning/redecorating

This weekend, I'm going to try to finish up the dining room. It's the smallest room in the house, so maybe I can handle it. Got a great idea for throw-pillows on the little settee. Wish I could think of how to raise the settee's height about six inches--when I sit on it, behind the table, the table edge just brushes my chin. Oh well, the tall people can sit behind the table, if I'm ever lucky enough again to have six or more guests for a meal.

A while ago, I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. I looked out the window and saw the latest passerby-thrown trash in the side yard. I still had on my reading glasses, so couldn't quite make it out, but it's big and white and has the shape of a large Chik-filay styrofoam cup. I said a prayer for the trash-throwers, that they'll change their littering ways.

There's a little black-and-brown spider on the lamp table next to my desk. It has three white spots--two of them are at the end of its antennae, which it sits and wiggles at me. I think it's the kind that bit my arm a couple of years ago. Now it has traveled the scanner cord from the table to the desk. I said a prayer for the spiders, that they won't bite me again as long as I don't bother them.

O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!*

Chipmunk
Bird call
Busy gray squirrels
Yellow butterflies
Leafy oak branch that brushes the ground
Scent of new-mown grass
Heat of the sun on my face
Cool of the breeze on my neck
Deck of a sturdy house under my feet
Dear friend's voice on the telephone

. . . thy winds, thy wide gray skies,
. . . thy mists that roll and rise. . .
World, world! I cannot get thee close enough!*

*from "God's World," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

* * *

Anyway, Joyce Earle phoned today and said that we have lost another classmate, Hoyt. We're dwindling down.

Joyce is indomitable, one of those who strive to hold the world together. Her husband Jack is recovering from surgery. Joyce cares for him, and for 2 friends, a mother and daughter, who are both ill and disabled. Also, a cousin in the early stage of Alzheimer's is coming to stay with her.

Our old mountain hermit, Mr. Lowery, used to say (to my grandma), "Cranky, I hope you live always." I hope Joyce and Jack live always.

Sandra and Joyce, about 2005.

Re-Pinked

I'm putting the old pink damask back on my dining room chairs. That whole room is going to be slathered with pink and gold. I love the turquoise picture frames and Pat's possum picture, but they'll have to go somewhere else. The major problem is that I have a lot of pink fabrics and bric a brac, but none in the shades and textures that I want to use.

*******

Sad to learn of the passing of Patrick Swayze yesterday. The saddest part, to me, is that he had to linger and be sick, disfigured and tortured by the disease and the treatments, for more than a year. I always liked to leave a party while I was still having fun. Wouldn't death be kinder that way? Of course, it would, but we're not asked for our preferences.

Patriotic Mushrooms

The Red









The White

The Blue

All photographed in the back yard, today.

The squirrels eat the white ones. The blue ones are too hard to eat. As for the red, Granny Satterfield (SDS) always said, "Any fool knows a mushroom from a toadstool."

Did you ever get the feeling that something was gaining on you?

My bills are paid. I'm not overdrawn at the bank. We're not under a tornado warning. I'm not sick. As far as I know, neither of my boys is sick. The car started the last time I asked it to. I'm pretty sure the house isn't on fire. Mo hasn't thrown up on the carpet today. No imminent doctor's appointments. Nowhere I have to stir my lazy bones and get ready to go to. Nobody ringing the doorbell.

So why do I have this feeling that they're coming to take me away?

It isn't unusual in my experience--it's pretty well constant--, and I know it's called "anxiety." But sometimes it's worse than at other times, and when it's worse, I can't do anything but gnaw my gnails and grind my teeth. And then I remember that exercise, exercise, exercise is the temporary cure. That's why I bought the Pilates book. Lemme go find it.

Reconnecting

After a week or ten days of being without my regular telephone, I am now back in sync with the world, communicationwise. Jed stopped by yesterday on his way home from Memphis and installed my new phone box, spent the night, and left this morning about 9:30. My niece India came by for a short visit while Jed was here last night.

My refrigerator is still fraught with leftovers from the Labor Day cookout, so today they'll go to the place where all aged leftovers go--except for the T-bone. I'm going to make beef Stroganoff and angela-hair pasta, and just pig out again. Mo and I took care of the slices of cantaloupe yesterday. Believe it or not, that cat loves cantaloupe almost as much as I do.

I'm sorry the thought of a camera didn't cross my mind on Labor Day. It was probably too late for good pics, anyway, by the time Reed and Ma started running up and down the back yard chasing lightning bugs. I'll bet if you had asked her on Sunday if she could outrun a three-year-old, Pat would have said yes. We finally had to get Jason to go chase him down.

Mo surprised me by being sociable on Labor Day instead of slinking off to hide. I guess he knew they were kin. He didn't flee to the basement until Reed tried to pet him. He seemed to say, Who is that short man, anyway?

Something Accomplished, At Last!

This morning I cleaned and deodorized every inch of carpeting in my house. Now, that's a lie--Dave did the cleaning, but I did the praising and paying. I only wish Mo and I could walk six inches above the floor, to keep it clean and cat-hair free.

And not only that--Dave, and his helper-grandson Brandon, were done and gone by 11:00 a.m. And from then until now, I wrote a poem. A BIG, LONG poem. Possibly a Grrrreat Poem, but only time and judges will tell.

Now I'm hungry, and I sorely need a shower.

Down Under the Grumpies

On rare days, when I'm not in the best of moods to begin with, I get annoyed about the ninth time I have to leave the computer or the TV or a book, to open the door, to let Mo in or out. And when he's out of earshot, I may say to myself, "Darn cat! What a nuisance," etc.

'Way down deep in the middle of me, there lives a mysterious little being. It's like a little child, but one who knows where daddy keeps his gun. And on a day such as I described above, it mutters, "Don't talk about Mo like that." And the look it gives me is so dark and threatening, I immediately apologize and give Mo some extra Fancy Feast.

For Comfort

Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress trees;
Who hopeless lays his dead away,
Nor wakes to see the break of day
Across the mournful marbles play;

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown:
That life is ever lord of death,
And love can never lose its own...

From "Snowbound," by John Greenleaf Whittier

*

We had rain again this morning. Angels' tears.

Donald Vann Cleveland

December 7, 1945 - September 2, 2009

Memorial Service Saturday, September 5, 11:00 a.m., at the Leeds First Methodist Church

Reception at the Church, following the Service

***

"Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."