books

Unrepeatable

/ wvfurandroot / 9 Comments

What do Eric Clapton, Dexter and dog biscuits have in common? They, and a multitude of other surprises, were my Valentine’s gift from HMOKeefe.

The man has a knack for giving the exact perfect things at the exact perfect times.

It’s a marvel.

He sent me not one, but two, boxes. They arrived Friday and I opened the packing boxes just enough to make sure the contents were intact. And then I closed the boxes back up to wait for Valentine’s Day. [I drive people crazy with that. For me, the anticipation of opening is almost as exciting as the gift. I’ve been known to wait until after the New Year to open Christmas gifts.]

I noticed when checking the packaging that there were dog biscuits. I had to smile. If not for HMOKeefe my dogs would never have treats other than the occasional marshmallow. [All three of the dogs would produce cold fusion in their water bowl if they thought it would get them a marshmallow.]

The two boxes have been setting on my kitchen table for two days. After a couple cups of coffee and the fixing of my DSL jack (long story), I opened the boxes.

Woo Hoo! Too much fun. Besides dog biscuits, inside I found books including how to go about writing your first novel in six months, a kaleidoscope, green M&Ms, an Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood CD, hand and foot warmers (presumably for my trek up and down the hill in the snow), a refrigerator magnet, candy, and panties.

The magnet reads You are unrepeatable. There is a magic about you that is all your own… I think that applies more to him than me. I’ve never met a man like HMOKeefe. He is the perfect man.

Now is that a plethora of treasures or what?  There was also a season’s worth of Dextor episodes nestled in there.  Woo Hoo!  Blood spatter and a serial killer for Valentine’s Day. Damn, I love that man. 

Much of it, including Dexter, was packed into a heart-shaped, red box which reminded me of an earlier Valentine’s Day. One year, along with a lot of other things, HMOKeefe sent me nesting boxes vividly emblazoned with roses. As a child, I loved playing with the Barrel of Monkeys that featured nesting barrels and a tiny monkey in the smallest one. I love Russian nesting dolls. I love containers. I’ve had those boxes, nested, sitting here and there pending completion of the painting and decorating projects for a long time.

After seeing the heart box of this year’s gift, I stacked the boxes and put them in the corner of my dressing room – for months now, that corner has cried for some decoration or furniture. They’ll be perfect there.  [The stack is as tall as I am.]

I know just what to put inside each of those boxes.

Friday night I began the onerous task of cleaning out, organizing, and painting my study. Like the family room project, I’ve only been threatening to do this for years. [And the family room project has turned out fabulous. I’m three for three on drama-free painting jobs – I have high hopes for the study.]

HMOKeefe frequently sends me letters and cards. I save them. I have stacks and stacks of them. Periodically, I like to go through them and re-read them, but they’ve gotten unwieldly and some of them have been packed away and buried in one of the three Closets I Am Afraid Of. [No kidding, you can’t believe how many there are and you can’t believe what a mess those three closets are – you’d be afraid too.]

Those boxes will perfectly house his words of affection. [And, Dman? You best get writing – I’m going to need more or the boxes will topple over.]

And speaking of love letters, my Valentine’s Box also included a love letter scrawled on a legal pad and tucked into a beautiful card. He once made fun of me for sending him a letter written on Mead 3-hole punched, college ruled notebook paper. Again, I had to smile.

One of HMOKeefe’s great charms is that he makes me smile with his thoughtfulness and caring. I do love this man. In answer to his question in the letter and on this morning’s voice mail, yes, I will be his Valentine again this year.

He mentioned the other day that we should start looking at engagement rings. I was rather nonplussed since we have yet to live in the same zip code. [For those of you who don’t know, he lives near Boston.]

I reminded him that I used to think I didn’t like diamonds until I discovered that actually what I didn’t like was small diamonds. I haven’t heard another word about engagement rings since. It was with some relief that there was not a ring in one of those two packages.

The relief centered on the fact that I would like the experience of shopping together with him to find the perfect ring. HMOKeefe likes to shop – one of the many things I like about him. I think it would be fiercely romantic and a lifetime memory to choose it together. Besides which, I desperately need a manicure.

This blog posting is my Valentine to him. I think he’ll enjoy it – a love letter of sorts – not the norm, but that’s what I love about his gifts to me – wonderful little oddities packaged with love.

And, yes, I will marry him. [Probably not today, DMan, but, yes, I will marry you.]

Love, Connie (jamming to Clapton and Winwood)

[The puppies don’t know it yet, but they’re about to get a Valentine.]

In Need of Iron and Fizz

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

Really, all appearances to the contrary...I'm not...

Really, honest, I don’t try to be a Drama Queen. It just happens.

A friend just posted an appropriate passage from Tom Robbins’s novel Jitterbug Perfume. A young Indian woman, Kudra, has developed a passion for scents (and the mixing thereof) only to find herself arranged to marry a rope maker. Robbins writes the following which resonates loudly with me:

Rope. The Gods have a great sense of humor, don’t they? If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot you own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. The dull and prosaic will be granted adventures that will dice their central nervous systems like an onion, romantic dreamers will end up in the rope yard. You may protest that it is too much to ask of an uneducated fifteen-year-old girl that she defy her family, her society, her weighty cultural and religious heritage in order to pursue a dream that she doesn’t really understand. Of course it is asking too much. The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

Clearly, I’m not piloting my ship correctly.

While I don’t think I’m “dull and prosaic”, my adventures have been such that my central nervous system feels minced and not just chopped. Perhaps if my adventures had meaning.

I wrote a blog post yesterday morning while waiting on the electrician. He’d rigged things so I had heat throughout the house, but only power in the kitchen – no internet, phone, hot water, or whirlpool baths. I’ll upload that post tomorrow, maybe.  [There’s newly developed laptop drama.] In it, I lamented having as my goal wanting to be bored. Finally, I was well and truly bored. I’d been stuck in my house, more or less, for a week without power and/or heat.

When did we have to start paying Knights in Shining Armor?

This morning, while waiting on the electrician to come and finish the replacement of my circuit box, I tripped over the cat in the dark and spilled my cup of coffee on the laptop. Guess what won’t work? My entire life is in that thing. Oh, sure, I can get the stuff off the hard drive by taking it to a shop, but if trying to dry it out doesn’t work, I’m going to be living without a laptop. I’ve really gotten attached to that thing.

I read somewhere that in such instances one should immediately remove the battery, dry everything off with a towel as much as possible, turn upside down and wait 24 to 48 hours. This is what I’m doing. I also chant, “please oh please oh please oh please” a lot. We’ll see.

I arrived home to power, heat, a working dishwasher, and a closet bi-fold door that will now shut. I was rather disgruntled at not to be able to curl up on the sofa with the laptop and proclaim my joy to the world. More importantly, I’ve got a boatload of photos and emails that I HAVE TO HAVE. I have a week’s worth of work on there. This laptop thing is a disaster. I’m not even done with one disaster. . . And so I lament the drama of my life.

Wall O'Art

Fortunately, my blue room makes me smile and I used the traditional laptop time to hang the “art” that just arrived in the mail. Yes, Virginia, you can buy prints of fine art for $4.99. The hanging went reasonably well. I bought these new-fangled hanger thingies that made it a breeze. No more wall anchors for this chickie.

For a better balance of color, I had to move things around on the top of the desk. The arrangement still needs work. The Moss West Virginia poster needs to relocate to another room, the one Georgia O’Keefe needs to move to the to-be vacated-wall and another Georgia (Morning Glories, perhaps) needs to be procured to complete that section of the room.

This Matisse *really* knocks me out - Decorative Figure. . .

Over the desk is now the perfect spot for Matisse’s Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground – one of his odalisques. I’ve been looking for this thing FOREVER and finally found the print at a reasonable price – next paycheck maybe.

 I have a thing for Matisse –he just knocks me out. I like Georgia, but she’s no Matisse. The two of them together are a yin/yang that please me. Tom Robbins also rocks my world and one of his novels features Matisse’s Blue Nude – I love how the circles of my affections intersect.

[Oh yes, I can hear you art snobs rolling your eyes. Yes, I chose prints to go with the room. But please remember the room was painted the color it is to go with the objets d’art that were already in the room. And besides, I bought prints that I had always liked – I didn’t just go shopping for blues. So there. As for my pedestrian taste – sue me.]

The print I haven't found yet.

So, yes, back to Tom Robbins – I’m lamenting the meaning of all this chaos. The big stuff I can handle – bone marrow transplants, etc. – it’s all this little crap that’s getting to me. I well and truly feel as if I’m being nibbled to death by ducks – the mundane is going to do me in if I don’t find the oars of my metaphorical boat and start rowing in a different direction. Ah. . .but what direction might that be?

Hell if I know. 

I do know I need fizz that doesn’t fizzle and iron that doesn’t rust.  And adventures that are  little less prosaic (and expensive).

Damn that Stephen King

/ wvfurandroot / 9 Comments

Damn that Stephen King!

Back in 1983, I found myself living in my parents’ house in a suburb of Milwaukee. The parents had moved back to West Virginia (and boy was I jealous) and I was in the house so as for it not to be empty while it was up for sale.

The Ex and I had just started dating. My mom had met him briefly before heading out for Country Roads.

It was a harsh winter, but then all Milwaukee winters were harsh.

It was a sort of big house and I wasn’t used to being in that house alone. It groaned, it creaked, snow fell off the roof – all those things that can be a bit spooky even if you don’t spook easy.

I was pretty fearless. (I’m older and wiser now, my fears are substantial.)

It was me and my two cats living in that house. My cats, who’d been indoor cats, were frolicking in the freedom of living where they could go outside. Periodically, Ting would bring me a frozen, dead mouse. So frozen, it would clink when it would hit the floor. This was the extent of their hunting ability – already dead mice. Or so I thought.

The Ex and I had only been on two, maybe three dates. It’s another story to tell, but I couldn’t remember his name and when he’d call, he’d say “Hi! It’s me!” and I’d hold my breath waiting for the first name to follow. No such luck.

So.

I’m living in this house alone and I’m reading Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. I’m at a crucial part in the book and it’s way past my bedtime, but I can’t put the book down. I hear the cats at the door.

I get up, reading the book, and I walk to the door, still reading the book, and I brace myself for the cold, still reading, and open the door, still reading, feel two bodies brush against, my leg, still reading, close the door, still reading, and return to my chair where I continue reading.

[You only think you know where this story is going.]

Finally, I reach a point where I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I put the book down, turn off lights and head into the kitchen to turn off those lights when I discover the two cats and a NOT QUITE DEAD RABBIT.

It looked like a scene from Dexter in there.

I got a tad hysterical. Just a tad.

It’s like 1 a.m. or so. It’s well below O outside.

And I’m, well, hysterical.

Poor bunny - and stupid if Ting Tong, the Great and Mighty Frozen Mouse Hunter, got her.

I call a few friends, but nobody’s answering their phones. It was Friday and they were probably still in the bars. Not knowing what else to do between shrieks while watching my two, fluffy kitties torture a rabbit, I called the guy whose name I couldn’t remember.

Sobbing. Shrieking. Periodically shouting, Ting! Ashley! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

He told me later he couldn’t understand a word, but figured I needed help. It was a 30-40 minute drive not counting the time to shovel, scrape, and warm up the car. [He is and was quite a guy.] He told me he was on his way.

I went and sat in my car. I just couldn’t watch. Damn that Stephen King! I’d have handled this with my usual aplomb had the circumstances been different.

The ex shows up. By then I’m calm enough to explain what’s happened. Just barely calm enough. He went through the garage, grabbed a shovel on the way, and went through the kitchen door.

I stayed where I was. I just couldn’t watch any more carnage.

I think he finished the rabbit off with the shovel. I know he cleaned up most of the gore, tipped his hat, and said ‘Night, Ma’am and off he went. I learned later he had to be at work in two hours.

A rabbit can bleed a lot. I cleaned up a lot of blood. My cats looked very proud of themselves. I’m not sure I finished the book.

A few weeks later, I go in to take my morning shower and there’s no hot water. I go to the basement and peer at the hot water tank willing it to produce. No such luck.

I shower at a friend’s. I also talk to a guy at the hardware store who tells me it sounds like my thermo-coupler. I replaced that thermo-coupler all by myself three or four times before reason set in and I realized something else was going on.

No way am I getting The Ex involved. After the shameful rabbit thing, I’m trying to reassert my reputation as a strong, independent, resourceful, brave woman.

For the life of me, I can’t remember the part name now, but a friend’s husband declared definitively that I needed a new thingmabobbit. He offered to put it in. So, I toddled off to the hardware store asked for a thingmabobbit, gave them the make and model of my hot water heater, and tapped my shoe waiting for the guy to go get it.

No thingmabobbit in stock and he can’t get one because in water heater years, mine had been the oldest living water heater in the western hemisphere.

I tell the friend’s husband this. He says, balderdash. Off he goes to the hardware store with me in tow. We’re walking around the store and he shouts the equivalent of Eureka! There’s the exact right thingmabobbit sitting on a shelf with no price tag and a torn box.

We carry the thing to the register and Friend’s Husband says, “How come you told her you didn’t have any of these?” One thing leads to another and we can’t buy the part I need because it’s not on the inventory list, it’s obviously ancient, and they don’t know if the box was open because the part was returned defective or even if what’s in the box is what the box says it should be.

We go rounds and rounds with this guy. I say to him, “You can’t sell it because you’re not sure what it is and it’s not on your list. How about I give you $20 and I walk out of here with the thingmabobbit which isn’t on paper anywhere and you do anything you want with the $20.” Such a deal, I think. He says no.

We all go sit in the car and I’m nearly in tears with frustration. I’d like to shower at home, ya know?

A couple hours later we send another friend over there who shoplifts the damn part which Doofus had put back on the display floor.

Well. Friend’s Husband is not the home repair person he claimed to be. He had no more idea than I did of how to go about any of this. Part of me is convinced that thingmabobbit was the only hot water heater part he knew, so that was the problem.

In the end, I ended up calling, once again, the guy whose name I couldn’t remember and he wouldn’t tell me, and he ended up putting in a new hot water heater. There was great drama involved.

[We still had 4 or 5 dates to go before we went to an office party where he had to wear a nametag. My relief was palpable.]

Playful Spirits; Vindictive Spirits

So while Chef Boy ‘R Mine and Girlfirend O’ His were here a couple of weeks ago, we blew a circuit and the dishwasher refused to work as did the outlet and light connected to the same circuit.

The barn is built on an ancient burial ground and the spirits like taunting me.

I replaced that circuit myself. (And I did a fine job.) Still no dishwasher. Still no juice to that outlet.

No, I didn’t call The Ex. I called Dad. He came and did all the same things I did and said, “Huh? That shoulda worked.”

I told him to forget it that I’d just call the Burl, The Handyman Extraordinaire, and be done with it. Two hours later, a propos of nothing, the dishwasher came on as did the light.

Those spirits can be playful.

And vindictive. The hot water heater went out about the same time the dishwasher came on.

Ancient burial ground.

So. I’m talking to another handyman today and I tell him this story minus The Ex part and he asked if I’d hit the reset button. Huh what?

So I came home tonight, took off the panel, took my pencil and hit the red reset button and sparks flew out of the top of the hot water heater.

I’m pretty sure that’s not good.

Oh good grief. Yes, I turned the circuit breaker off.

I have two hot water heaters. This one runs the kitchen and the laundry room. I can shower, but I still can’t wash the dishes in the dishwasher. Nor can I wash them by hand. 

Them spirits have a sick sense of humor.

Did I mention I’m reading a Stephen King collection of short stories? No? Well, I am.

Damn that Stephen King.

The 1988 Toothbrush

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

The 1988 Toothbrush

1988 was an interesting year. If memory isn’t tricking me this morning, ’88 was the year we moved into the barn as our residence.

It was rough – both the barn and life in the barn.

We had electricity and one working toilet. That was it.

I cooked in electric fry pans, crock pots, and a silly little portable burner. We trooped down to my parents house, towels and toothbrushes in hand, to shower.

The 1988 Barn

Eventually, we had water, but still no bathtub. I washed dishes in a tub outside on the picnic table.

Eventually, we had a tub. Sheer luxury.

We had no phone. [That proved to be rather nice. In fact, well after we could afford it, we lived sans phone.] We had framing and insulation, but no walls. There was no kitchen to speak of, though I did have a stove – an ancient thing that we bought used somewhere. The ex’s work bench served as the dining room table and it was a plum pain in the ass to move the table saw every time it was time to eat.

The barn was slow going. We were trying to do it without incurring debt. The materials we needed at the beginning were expensive. Winter was coming, so we needed a furnace. The barn was in danger of slipping down the hill, so we needed a stone retaining wall.

We picked up some kitchen cabinets somewhere – they were beat up, ugly and not well-made. I danced in joy.

The 1997 Barn

In 1997 – 9 years later, we gave up and procured a construction loan. We hired a contractor. Then the fun really began. It was a nightmare; it was a dream come true; it was frustrating and, finally, the not-quite-finished barn was a not just a loved home, but a real house. It looked like a badly-built California Contemporary, but I adore every square inch of it – still do, worrisome warts and all.

Except for recent projects, nothing has been painted since 1997. The barn has been in desperate need of interior paint and exterior stain. The exterior is daunting, so I’m concentrating on the interior.

The most annoying part of paint prep - getting things out of the way.

The family room is now underway for a new paint job – Wellspring Blue. The color is dark, maybe too dark, but right now I love the color in the can. As part of paint prep, I removed the books from the top of the semi-built in bookcases and found a toothbrush still in its packaging up there.

Puzzled, I carried the oral instrument into the kitchen. While I don’t clean often, the top of the bookcase has been cleaned at least once a year since 1997 when it was installed. The most recent cleaning was about this time last year.

The flattened package was a major clue.

I peered and found a 1988 date on the packaging. Truly, a WTF moment. We didn’t have bookcases until ’97 and the top has been cleaned, while not frequently, at least often enough that missing the toothbrush was unlikely. The toothbrush package was flattened, but clean and dust free – an important clue.

Old Webster gets more of a workout than one would think.

 

[The barn is a retirement home for dirt and dust – truly, Jehovah could create an entire metropolis of people from blowing on the dust of just one room.]

I have deduced that the toothbrush fell out of a book. The ex used to use all manner of strange things as a bookmark. That’s the only reasonable explanation. I thank him for that habit – 1988 has come flooding back. To quote Dickens; it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .

These times are also the best and worst – the yin/yang that life always seems to be. I’ll probably keep the toothbrush. De-junking is one thing; but little memory provokers here and there keep me grounded and cognizant of the yin/yang.