First Time For Everything

15 Sep

Blazer is a Momma’s Boy, and he has always been a perfectly behaved puppy. He never takes food from the table – although if it hits the floor it’s fair game – is friendly to visitors, patient with children, and never gets on the furniture.

Until today.

The Squire and I went out to plant some mums in the planter by the mailbox, and since the puppy has no street smarts, we left him in the house. I could hear him barking while we loaded plants, tools and potting soil into the wheelbarrow, but I figured he’d settle down in a few minutes.  After we got the flowers planted, The Squire went back to the pond for a bucket of water, while I pulled some weeds along the driveway.

He came back chuckling. When he went to dip the water, the dog’s barking seemed awfully close. He glanced up and saw Blazer’s head above the window a/c unit. The dog had climbed onto the recliner to keep an eye on what we going on outside. The first time since I picked him up in March 2008 he has ever gotten onto – or into – anything that wasn’t his.

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The Temperature War Continues

13 Sep

I just popped into the TV/sewing room to collect my knitting, and The Squire has the a/c going full tilt.

It is currently 7:50 in the evening, and the temperature outside is 60-F (or 16-C). He says he is hot. I suggested he turn off the air conditioning and open a window (the a/c unit does have a fan-only setting) and he looked at me as if he thought I was the crazy one.

We keep getting notices from the Gas and Electric company comparing our usage with the neighbors, and he can’t understand why our usage is higher than theirs.

I must love him; I haven’t killed him.

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You Needed Me

6 Sep

Last night, The Squire and I went out to dinner, and afterward spent some time strolling the mall, just window-shopping and people-watching. Suddenly, he put his arm around my shoulders and turned me to him, hugging me very close. They were playing Anne Murray’s You Needed Me over the speaker system.

This has always been “our song”, but I hadn’t heard it in years, and apparently The Squire was just as moved by the unexpected sound of it as I was.

My first marriage was a disaster. By rights, my husband should have been in jail, and it came as a surprise to everyone who knew him that he actually died a natural death. The Squire’s first marriage was no picnic, but that is not my story to tell. Although I didn’t know it at the time, The Squire played Jacob to my Rachel, falling in love with me the first time he saw me, and waiting until I was free before he ever even took my arm to cross the street. When we were finally able to date, we knew from the very beginning we would marry.

I have to admit I would have made a dreadful military wife. I lived in constant terror of losing him. If he was more than ten minutes late getting home from work, I would go into a flat spin, and a half an hour would have me calling the local hospitals. I cannot give words to the depth of my fear.

In the early 80s, I became quite ill, and spent a week in the hospital.  It was a rainy day, and I had dozed off, when I was awakened by the sensation of someone brushing my hair aside and kissing me on the forehead.  I looked at the clock, and my first thought was that The Squire had been in an accident, and had come by to kiss me good-bye. (I told you; I was a mess.)

When he showed up, unharmed, at my doorway, I burst into tears. I told him what had happened, and he asked me what time this had occurred. When I told him, he got the oddest look. “They were playing You Needed Me on the radio, and I blew you a kiss.”

If ever two were one…

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A Banner Year

3 Sep

banner 1Back in September 1983, my godson’s father designed a banner for  our parish, and the Squire and I made it up. I did the banner itself, and The Squire made the pole and the crosspiece from black walnut.

It has hung in the church, undisturbed, ever since.

The Diocese of Maryland has elected a new Bishop Suffragan, and each parish has been “invited” to bring their banner to carry in the consecration procession on the 6th. When we moved the banner, we discovered the back was badly faded. I took it up to Joann’s Fabric to see what I could find to recover it. I knew matching exactly was not going to be possible, but since nobody could see the back and front at the same time, close enough was good enough.

banner fade While I had the thing down, I realized that a lot of the black and gold braid was coming loose, so I cranked up the sewing machine and ran along most of the braid, to tack it down. When I had a fair amount of it done, I flipped it over onto the ironing board (remember those?) and made the revolting discovery that some of the fabric had not been flat, and I had great tucks and puckers on the backside, and the banner didn’t hang straight. I pulled out some of the stitching, but my bum right hand made that more difficult than I was willing to tolerate, so I just snipped some of the tucks and ironed the thing flat. It was going to be covered anyway, so it was not a life or death situation.

banner helpI spread the banner on our bed and sat cross-legged to pin and sew the new backing . Of course, dear Sir Edmund decided I needed his “help”. I put him out once, but he sat outside of the door, clawing at the carpet and hollering his head off, until I let him back into the room.

Folded my tent – and the banner – and decamped to the church, where I was able to lay it on a Sunday School table, and got it finished and hung in less than an hour. Looks good, if I say so myself.

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Suddenly Summer

31 Aug

After an entire summer of lovely days and cool nights, now that it is practically September Mother Nature has decided we really, really needed to have some hot weather.

At 5:30 it is 89-F, with such high humidity that it feels as if it’s over 100 degrees.  It was sunny this morning, so when we got home from church The Squire and I went ahead and hung out the laundry. It was so hot and muggy we were both dizzy from the heat by time we finished.  A quick, cool lunch – no Sunday dinner today – and a nap was the next order of business.

It is supposed to start raining soon, so we went out and got everything but the rugs off the line. They are as wet as they were when we hung them out, and I have no place indoors to put them. (Next house will have a basement – and no fluorescent lights.) Tomorrow is supposed to be a duplicate of today, so maybe they’ll dry in the morning, or The Squire will have the dryer fixed.

Or they will stay outside until the end of the week.

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Cleaning House

30 Aug

We borrowed Eldest Daughter’s power washer, and spent the day cleaning most of the outside of the house.  She has a longer wand, Jim'which we will need to use to get the dormers, but everything – and I mean everything – from below the second story windows is spotless.

The Squire cleaned the sidewalk beside the house and up to the far end of the drive, gave the arch a good goin’ over, rinsed the door mats, scrubbed the driveway, and even washed some shelving that holds outside stuff such as weed killer, lamp oil, and other things we need handy but don’t want inside. I think the spray was powerful enough to drill a hole in one section of shelving.

Everything got clean but his legs. It’s pretty obvious where his shorts ended and his socks began. The splash-back was pretty powerful!

We got all the laundry done, but it’s going to rain each day until Wednesday, so I put it in the dryer instead of hanging it on the line.

The drive belt is broken. The machine gets hot, but doesn’t turn. I hate going out on a Sunday, but it looks as if I’m going to have to use the driers at the Laundromat tomorrow. Can’t leave the wet clothes any longer than that, and after all the hard work he did today, I am not asking The Squire to take apart that silly machine.  Do we even have a spare belt? At least with my “solar powered dryer” all we have to do is tie a knot in the thing.

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Rust Thou Art, To Rust Returneth

27 Aug

We had our bathtub refinished around the first of July, and I went off and purchased a new shower rod, curtain and liner. While I was at it, I also got a chrome caddy to hang over the shower head, to hold the shampoo, soap, and so forth.

I had to return it last week because it had already begun to rust.

Our water is very acidic (it once ate the innards of a Mr. Coffee) but I really expected the shower caddy to hold up, as it wasn’t the cheapest one I could find. I didn’t have the receipt, but the store took it back without any discussion, and put the money back on my charge card. Monday, we went to the Y, and I stopped in the Home Goods Store and selected another caddy. This time, I kept the receipt; I’ll probably be swapping out shower caddies for the rest of my life. (Before you ask, two different plumbers quoted us an outlandish amount of money for a system to remove the acid from the water. We don’t expect to live long enough to recoup the money involved.)

Many, many years ago, we purchased new faucets for the twin sinks in the bathroom. This was a brand new model, with a five year guarantee. Within six weeks, the acid had chewed up the cartridges, so we went back to the store to get new ones. Because the faucets had a five year warrantee, there were no cartridges available, so the store gave us entirely new faucets, which The Squire had to install. A bit of a mixed blessing. After three sets of new faucets, we asked to be given some of the older models, so we could at least replace the cartridges, rather than have to go through the bother of installing the entire business – twice, because we have two sinks in the bathroom.

Sometimes change is just change – not progress. Whatever happened to those little red rubber washers?

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Momma’s Boy

20 Aug

There is no question about who Blazer belongs to. He stays upstairs in the hallway, guarding the bedroom door until I come down in the morning, and if I am gone for any length of time, he either goes upstairs and stays there, or lays in front of the kitchen door, head on his paws, willing me to come through that door. He will not eat what The Squire puts out for him until I come home and give it my official “blessing”.

I’ve been working this week – will be until Friday, in fact – and the poor boy is wasting away. Monday, The Squire could not get him downstairs for love nor money. Usually, an invitation to go get the mail will have him racing downstairs, but he didn’t budge. The Squire went up with the leash in his hand, and Blazer ran and stuck his head under my side of the bed. Since The Squire was not about to crawl under there and drag him out, the dog was in the house until I came home at 6.

Honestly, you’d think my husband beats the dog or something.

I hate to consider what will become of the dog if anything happens to me, and The Squire worries about what will happen to me if anything happens to Blazer.  As Will Rogers once said, if there are no dogs in Heaven, I want to go wherever they go.

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Oh, Joy! Oh, Joy!

15 Aug

The Squire does not enjoy any hot beverage. No coffee, no tea, no cocoa. I like all of these, especially coffee. I do not like instant coffee per se, but can’t see making an entire pot just for myself, so I have been drinking General Foods International Coffees, especially Orange Cappuccino for about twenty years.  About two years ago, it disappeared from the shelves, but complaints from consumers brought it back for a short while, until it once again faded into history.

Recently, I decided I was going to contact the company to find out where it could be purchased, and discovered it is carried at Wal-Mart, of all places. This created a  bit of an ethical dilemma for me, as I absolutely refuse to step foot in that store, but I discovered I could purchase it on-line for the same price – plus shipping – as buying it locally. I ordered four cans on the 13th, and paid for the cheapest possible shipping, which would have gotten it here around the 28th.

It arrived today!

Oh, glory, glory! Some of us are SO easy to please! I shall have to nurse it along, switching it out with the Hazelnut flavor, to make it last. Some people are so easy to please!

I have often said my mother was a piece of work. When my dad was alive, he often participated in the Anglican church’s TAPE program – Trans Atlantic Parish Exchange. You decide where you want to go, they match you up with another priest, and you swap churches and homes. You do have to pay for your transportation, but when you arrive, you have a job, a house, a car, a dog, and more dinner invitations than you can handle. (My mother said she never had to cook supper the first three months in any new location.)

My father flat-out refused to fly, so they went to the UK about three times in any two year period on the QE2. Not exactly steerage, either.

So – one evening my folks were visiting here, and I asked my mother if she’d like to try a cup of my Orange Cappuccino. This was a long time ago, back when groceries still had price stickers, and my mother turned over the can, looked at the price, all of $2.59, and remarked, “Humph, your father and I can’t afford that”.

To which The Squire replied, “I’ll have you know, my wife is worth a dollar and a quarter a week”.

She nearly choked.

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Holy Smoke!

13 Aug

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning at the unearthly hour of 8 AM. Normally, the only time I have to be anyplace at that time of day is when I am working, so when I mentioned getting up at O:dark-ugly, The Squire assumed that was where I was headed.

When I came down at 5:45 this morning I could smell “burnt”. We had over 6 1/2 inches of rain yesterday between 8:30 and 5, and I figured the rain had come down the chimney and dampened the ashes.  When I walked into the kitchen I found four very well done eggs in the compost, and two others cooling in a pan on the stove. My usual breakfast is two hardboiled eggs and a cucumber, and The Squire, bless him, had fixed me some eggs to take to the office.  He told me that he had put the first eggs in the pan, brushed his teeth, etc., intending to come out and turn off the fire once the water had boiled and let them cook on retained heat. Instead, he had gone up to bed on autopilot.

About 1:30 in the morning, the dog had started to carry on, and he had gotten up to see what had Blazer all in an uproar.

Both the kitchen and dining room smoke alarms were going full-tilt, and the eggs were not only boiled, they had exploded.

Bless him, my husband cleaned up, and then fixed me two more eggs, which he stayed and watched until it was time to turn off the heat and put a lid on the pot.

Me? I slept through the whole thing.

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