thisendoftheswamp

The Squire has requested (under pain of death – sorta) that I start emptying the myriad boxes, crates, and cartons from my mother’s “estate”. Today, I actually plowed through three cardboard boxes.

A few days ago I had discussed the Charge-a-Plate that most of the people in Baltimore carried in those pre-VISA days. Lo and behold, in one of the boxes, I found my mom’s plate, and the “velvet” lined case used to carry it. Notice on the case itself, a small ring to attach the case to the inside of your purse.  Even though the card carries my mom’s signature on the back, the front is embossed with my dad’s name, Ernest Parker, as it was assumed in the 40s and 50s that the husband would be the breadwinner in the house hold.

Totally worthless, but pretty nifty, none the less. Something for my kids to sort through when I shuffle off.

Last night I tied the dog out about 8:00. When I went out at 8:15 he and the rope were gone. The usual routine. Check the road, and then wander around with a flash light, calling his name. (Why the H— doesn’t he ever pull these stunts during the day, when I can find him?)

I heard him bark once, which gave me an idea where he was – back and to the left. Didn’t find him in the neighbor’s yard, so decided to see if he had wandered into the next yard up. Our neighbor has not mowed his back yard all summer, so I was trekking knee-deep in my robe and a pair of snow boots – I know; always the fashion plate! – tripping over vines and stepping into pot holes.  Finally found the little bugger, snagged on a rosebush, and the line stretched as far as he could go. I had to follow it under bushes and around trees to unhook him, and then the fool wanted to explore some more.

I am too old for this nonsense.

A friend came over today to help me try to finish papering the kitchen (How long, O Lord, how long?) and remarked that one of our light switches was upside down. No big deal. My dad and The Squire had cut the wire too short when they installed that light and it wasn’t worth redoing the entire thing.

On the other hand, all of the switches in the house where I lived with the Late and Unlamented were put in right side up, but wired upside down.

I asked him about it, and he looked at me as if I was a banana short of a bunch. “See that?” he said, pointing to the word OFF on the switch, which was pointing down at the moment, but the lights were on.  He flipped the switch up, so the word OFF was hidden, and we stood there in the dark. “Now, what’s so odd about that?”, he asked.

I didn’t have the heart – or the nerve – to tell him, but it did have a sort of odd-ball logic to it. I simply had to remember they were Russian switches.

Good old Colonel Upizoff.

I stopped at Sheetz this morning to grab a cup of coffee, and had to flip through over a dozen little tags on my key ring before I found the right one for the clerk to scan.

I’m not really complaining about using these tags. Ten cups of coffee purchased at the gas station earns me one free cup, plus they give me 3 cents off each gallon of gas. Our local grocery store has a program that lets you earn credit toward gas purchases, plus your organization can turn in the receipts and get back 2%. (If you see somebody digging in the trash cans, it’s probably a member of our church.) Most drug stores have some sort of “preferred customer” program, and my library card is also on my key ring.

As I was searching for my Sheetz card, I asked the clerk if she was old enough to remember Baltimore’s Charge-a-Plates. It was a metal plate, maybe 2 inches by one, with your name and address embossed on the front. The edges turned over to seal a piece of paper with your signature. Each of the big department stores in Baltimore had a notch on the card. The salesgirl – always a woman – put the card into a machine very similar to the ones in use today, where you slide a bar back and forth over the card to imprint the customer’s name and number. AND, you only had to carry ONE card!

Baltimore also had a delivery business, so you could buy an item at, say, Hutzler’s, tell the clerk it was C.O.D., and the next day, a big brown truck would pull up in front of your house, you’d pay the man, and voila! Plus, it was free.

Those were the days, my friend, those were the days!

This morning I had to run to the grocery store, and saw a man – who had to be my age, at least – schlepping around in his pajama bottoms.  A lot of teens also do this.

Most people don’t wear undies to bed, right? Are these folks wandering around without underwear? Flannel pj’s or not, it must be awfully drafty! If they take off the pajama bottoms to put on what my grandmother used to call “dribs”, why don’t they just pull on a pair of jeans?

About 4:00 this morning, Blazer began a ferocious barking. Nothing particularly unusual about that, as he considers it his business to scare off any wild things that come near the house. (Excluding, of course, leaf-blowing raccoons.) I noticed that the motion light over the drive had gone on, and simply assumed one or more deer had come for a visit.

Until the doorbell rang.

Since deer don’t generally ring our bell (they usually knock) both The Squire and I leapt out of bed, threw on something resembling clothing and dashed downstairs. A Baltimore County police officer was standing outside the dining room window, with his hand raised in an “I come in peace” gesture. We corralled Blazer, who probably would have licked the poor man to death, and opened the door.

It turned out the alarm at church had gone off, and the first person on the call list couldn’t remember the security code, so they had called The Squire. We don’t have a phone in our bedroom, so after four attempts to contact us, the alarm company had asked the county police to come to the house. The Squire dressed and went over, to find all the exterior doors open and unlocked – but the alarm was set, and still ringing. The sacristy and various offices were all locked (separate keys) so nothing had been taken. All was secured, and The Squire came back home.

He swore he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, but he was snoring the second his head hit the pillow.

Never a dull.

As I was locking up tonight I heard a familiar, but unidentifiable noise.

Not the pump, not the dishwasher, not the fridge doing something new and exciting. The raccoons had managed to turn on the leaf blower.

I really, really wish I had seen that!

Last year, in the middle of a blistering heat wave, The Squire managed to snag the last window air conditioner Sears had in stock between Philly and DC. It worked beautifully, and I would recommend it highly. But winter is coming, and we need to remove it and put it away until next summer.

And we discovered you can’t get the fool thing apart to clean it.

Cleaning the filter is easy. Pull open the little trap door, remove the screen, wipe it off and slip it back in. BUT. The augers and grills which direct the air flow are not removeable by the average person. After two years of use, they had become covered with black mold, which you obviously do not want blowing around your house. The manual that came with the machine was no help, and when I contacted Sears’ on-line Help Desk, I “spoke” with three different people, none of whom knew how the remove the dirtiest parts of the unit.

 The Squire managed to find a very hidden clip, which popped the entire front off the machine. He had to remove the electonic panel from inside, and then I spent about a half an hour with Lysol, hot water, and an old toothbrush, scrubbing all the nooks and crannies. I was sorely tempted to put it in the dishwasher.

To top it all off, the inside of the unit is conscructed entirely of Styrofoam! Try to get that clean!

So now, the dismantled air conditioner is drying out on the front porch. We’ll see how it works when The Squire gets it put back together. 

Just before I had my most recent stroke, The Squire and I spent a day or two trying to clean a clog in the drain that carries the overflow from the pond into the stream. Recently, the drain has clogged again, and the pond was in serious danger of overflowing.  Remembering how much trouble we had gone through before, we decided to rent a “mini-rooter” from Home Depot, and The Squire went off this morning to collect this machine.

The first hour, the work went fairly quickly, as each pass of the “drill” pulled up a few bits of root.

And then it jammed. We couldn’t get the drill to go any further into the pipe, and even with both of us pulling on it, we couldn’t get it loose.

Great.

I headed down to the stream to see if I could push a hand-held plumbers snake up the tube, and slipped on the wet grass – flat on my back, all the way to the stream. Too late to worry about trying to keep dry – or clean – so I got into the water and mucked about with the plumbers snake.

And then I couldn’t stand up again. (Well, better me than The Squire.)

He finally managed to get a good grip on the cable, and the both of us tugged and pulled until we saw a bit of muck at the top of the pipe. And we pulled, and we pulled, and pulled. We also huffed and puffed a bit. I think I saw one of the trees jiggle a bit, but it might have been the wind.

At any rate, this is what we pulled out of the pipe. Twenty-five feet of roots and dirt, which The Squire promptly dubbed “the Ana-ponda”.