Slugs in the (Not) Snow

After finally clearing out my little art studio -- bucketloads of mysterious craft supplies, dried-up paint, random lengths of ribbon and strange tools -- I did away with about 3/4's of all the stuff. Some was given away, some went into the landfill and I even had a bonfire (any excuse, eh?). We put the things back in there that actually will get used. I feel pounds lighter and the room now feels airy and serene. Maddie (10) and Caiden (6) and I (39?) tried it out this weekend, replete with gorgeous music, paints and a blow-dryer to speed up the fun parts of paint drying. I'm a natural-born clutter bug, but I have to admit that clearing out all that mess was inspiring. The colors flowed freely as our right brains took over. I really must do this to the rest of the house. I'll think about it tomorrow...

Meanwhile, in the bleak midwinter of Georgia, where nothing weatherwise is certain, we slogged through Ken's knee surgery today. Weeks of holidaying ahead for his rehab, I'm never going to get on with my January plans. I haven't even made them yet. It's almost February, with our 42th anniversary  and a camping trip looming with some of our children and grandchildren. Then there's spring and then Italy and the world keeps on turning. 

How many of you have broken their New Year's resolutions already? 

Dear Self, 

There's frozen green beans in the freezer, fresh blueberries in the fridge, lean ground turkey too. The gym is close enough to walk to and oh yeah, I forgot that I signed up again for that groovy dance program online. Something's got to give. Please do something about it.

Feeling bloated,

Rosemarie   

Yee Haw

Today was one of those days where life looks like Spaghetti Junction, where several major highways meet and cross up, outside Atlanta. That crazy place brings trepidation to my heart, any time we have to go through it. Ken still loves slinging our car to the outside of those curves, with me shrieking and cringing in full-pucker position. You'd think I'd learn to just be quiet and quit indulging his mangy-boy-creature self. It's a fact of life that all (or most) men have a 12-year-old wild boy still inside them. Now about taking that trash out...

Morning found me at the hospital with Ken's Daddy. Old age and the ravages of dementia are rapidly disconnecting him from the land of the living. When only a few weeks ago, he was able to at least string some sentences together, they now turn into the smallest of fragments, shredded and flaking away like snowflakes melting into the earth. I see this large, strong beast of a man reduced to child-like behavior, even the basic functions of eating and sleeping falling back to infanthood. He twists his blankets into knots, looking for some way out of the puzzle. Death comes to some simply. My MawMaw and Daddy died like kittens in their recliners, with their boots on. Not everyone gets that lucky. The future yawns in front of us, the unknown, the fear of it. I have to lay my heart before the Lord and ask for both mercy and wisdom for the days I know so little of. To worry is to lose today. Just stop that. 

Afternoon found me on the other side of Newnan, with four of our grandchildren who needed me. We turned off the devices, ate muffins, took down the Christmas tree and danced to beautiful music. Well, Eden danced and we swayed, the baby turning in circles and making lots of noise. Then it started... 

A fixer-upper listing of mine went viral and I was barraged with texts, emails and calls, ending up with nigh-a-dozen offers. Amazing -- a house with a bad roof, a kitchen with a caving-in floor and no updates since 1964 -- but it was hot property because it was a brick ranch in an up-and-coming part of town. I hoofed it back towards home, whipped into the Chick-Fil-A drive-through for dinner and inhaled my food while we decided which offer to take. 9:33 p.m. had us binding, with the dog at my feet and the cat curled up on my desk. I talked to my Mama for a spell and thought about the Twilight Zone that I live in sometimes. Spaghetti Junction, where there's too many carbs and a whole lotta sauce...  

Brrrrrrrr.......

Our Yankee friends and relatives make fun of us Southerners, when a winter storm sets in. We scramble to the store when the weather man reports there will be dipping temperatures, particularly when there's also any kind of precipitation. The obligatory bread, milk and eggs leave the shelves within hours. Anyone who is a Mama of children understands this. With those three items, you can always make something that will keep your peoples' stomachs full for a couple of days. We all have peanut butter, syrup and butter stored somewhere. Even if the electricity goes off,  you can muster up a sandwich of sorts. Not that any of us would die, even if we had to fast for a week or two. I dare say, with my metabolism, given the combination of my fat stores and my pantry, I might last until Summer Solstice. When things warm up permanently in the spring, I could plant a garden (newly-nimble with this enforced fitness plan) and we'd have crops before we turned into skeletons. If society made it through, I could write a book and retire on the proceeds. That escalated quickly...

All the neighbors have scattered to the four winds. On one side, my Alaskan friend headed back to her frozen tundra. On the other, the Californians knew to scuttle back to where it never rains (or freezes). This week, our cross-the-street neighbor decided to vacate back to her hometown of Carrollton and sell her sweet little cottage. Need a house? I'm a realtor and we need a new neighbor. We're starting to get paranoid. 

Carrollton Wind Ensemble rehearsals start back tonight, after a long winter's nap. I'm not looking forward to skidding over to the Arts Center in 20-degree weather. I truly have nothing to complain about...I think about my college friend (Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee), Grace, who hailed from Miami with nothing but a sweater. She is a 6' goddess and married a 6'5 Viking preacher from Minot, North Dakota. Their first winter together, she called me from under the permafrost. Back then, we didn't have the internet and barely watched the news. She shocked me with the report of their 52-degrees-below-0 temperature reading that day. Said that the snot was freezing in her nose. It has been 40+ years, three girls later, and she's still with the dude and all that weather. Love is certainly blind.

I guess I'll quit complaining about our 20 degree weather and go find my ole Papa Bear and hibernate with him for a few hours...   

Winter Woes and Wonders

We are past Advent, but the tree is still up in all her glory. Now I've got the flu, so I'll think about it tomorrow... meanwhile it's so pretty, it's making this extended couch visit more tolerable. My poor old fake Christmas trees are truly flagging. The one in the living room is shedding as if it's a live tree, but it's not. I have three more in the barn doing the same thing, and there's still another one that I believe has to go bye-bye as well. It's like 10-feet tall and as big around as a Grizzly, simply gorgeous. It's too bad it takes two people all day just to get it put together, and that's even before the lights go on it. So if you're looking, there will be four or five trees at the curb at Rockmart Road one of these days. Feel free to haul them off at your leisure. 

I thought we were done with house projects for awhile, but then there was a box-and-a-half of flooring left from the last one (the re-do on our rotten nursery floor). If you give a mouse a cookie, she's gonna have to get a glass of milk... While debating when we were going to drive all the way to Newnan to take that stuff back, I thought long and hard about my sweet art studio. It's no bigger than a minute, painted sugary pink and full of art supplies and goodies. Ken fixed that joyous space up for me soon after we moved here. He found old trim in the barn, added some beadboard to it and finished the room. It's the perfect place to draw, paint, dream. It gets cold in there, so there's a little heater he put in there. He also installed an air conditioner for when it heats up in the summer. Each of the grandkids have their own sets of watercolors and I keep scads of pencils and paper just for them. It's a magic place. What it doesn't have is a decent floor. It's just old plywood that I painted over, well, at least some of it. There are patches of bare wood and one of the corners of the room has never been fully trimmed out. 

So instead of driving all the way to Newnan to take flooring back, we drove all the way to Newnan to buy some more, since apparently the room is way bigger than I ever knew. We made a day of it, meeting up with our youth-pastor-son Jesse and his wife and kids. After picking up the flooring, we played pickleball out in the freezing cold, hugged on grandkids and ate hamburgers at Red Robin.  I had no clue I could actually still hit any kind of ball, but maybe we're onto something. It only took me a week to recover...

I dreaded clearing all those supplies out of that room, but we took the weekend to do it. I have no clue what some of this stuff is, but I declare now to the world that half of it is not going back in there. I paid a professional organizer to sort and fix that place up a couple of years ago. We threw about half of it away. She made it so nice and neat, so much so that I couldn't find anything. But now I have to behave like Marie Kondo and get shed of much of that detritus. There's still two truckloads of insanity in there. Yes, I thought I was going to love scrapbooking, that 15 minutes, but alas, it's been mouldering in there for 10 years and I haven't made a thing. And those beautiful stained glass supplies! What are these appendages for? I don't even know where to begin. I painted the wall where it attaches to the house (it was still the original white) and trimmed out the big window. After staring at it for a sick weekend, I believe I have to also trim all the little windows that surround the room, after I rise from the dead. Papa started laying flooring today and will hopefully have it finished soon. 

It might not be the best thing in the world for me to have idle time on my hands. Today, from my sick couch, I stared at our gorgeous wavy-glassed windows in the living room and dreamt about paying some brothers to take the storm windows down and un-stick all my windows, clean them, and re-install the storms. Then when spring finally comes (oh, pray it comes soon), I can open them all up and sing "Oklahoma!" to the top of my lungs. 

There's a reason God invented Christmas in the middle of winter...  

Warm, Inside Thoughts

All the mad holiday rush was over and it was New Year's Day, somewhere around 1993 or 94. The tree was looking shopworn, there were crumbs of various origin all over the house, and bits of wrapping and broken ornaments were scattered to the four corners of the living room. A cold front moved in and suddenly we had snow and ice. The kids went nuts, throwing snowballs and muddying up everything. Then the lights went out and all laundry efforts halted. We munched on cold leftovers for a day or so, then my parents showed up to visit. The lights and warmth came back on as the snow started melting. Our tiny 13-inch black and white TV had little to offer in the way of entertainment (thinking now about how our phones aren't much smaller than that). Someone got to talking about onion rings and chili dogs, and next thing you know, we all bundled up and headed to Atlanta, to the Varsity. At the time, we had a big conversion van. So with the four kids and the grandparents, we slip-slided all the way there. The roads were empty and we sincerely wondered whether the restaurant would be open. But without much else to do, we whooped and hollered, the winter doldrums passing on by. Once we got there, with no lines, we were greeted with the traditional: "What'll ya have?!" Everyone chowed down on all the goodies: chili dogs, onion rings, frosted orange shakes, and the piece de resistance - deep fried peach pies. This was the taste of my childhood, back when Daddy worked downtown at the Post Office. He was the coach of the softball team and many evenings we were treated to grease of the best kind. Not all the Yankees that we have taken there think that it's so wonderful. I don't think much of tenderloin sandwiches either, but my Yankee Mama will drive many miles to get one, since Culver's decided to venture South. That is one big hunk of dry, mealy meat, but she thinks it's the best. Childhood might warp our sense of taste. I mean, baby birds think worms are fantastic. 

This trip to the Varsity became our New Years Day tradition. No sweating over black eyed peas, turnip greens and cornbread. We just laze into the vehicles and head there -- 6:00 p.m. on New Year's Day. At best count, it's been around thirty years of this. Some years we went to the one in Kennesaw -- it's all spiffy and new, with the same menu. But somewhere in there, Jon, our eldest son, put his foot down and said that we have to go to the real one in downtown Atlanta. Covid messed us up a couple of times too. We've invited extended friends and family, often filling up that middle room where the TV is (because there's always a football game on in there too...Papa is pretty sensitive about that). 

Last night, we also had a pre-Varsity party at our eldest son and daughter-in-love's house, since they were sick at Christmas and missed the presents. We snacked, opened gifts, did a craft with the kids (d-i-l Christmas Queen) and then headed to Atlanta. It was surreal and sweet, sitting there once again and seeing all the life busting out everywhere and getting that many grandkid hugs in one night. We are definitely filling up a room these days. 

Today it's January 2. It's cool now to scoff at resolutions, but I think it's healthy to reassess my life, even if it takes an excuse like New Year's Day to do it. We're full up with sugar, grease and some ten extra pounds. To keep on going like we're going would be pretty dumb. I heavily dislike winter, especially when they're cold and wet in Georgia. But God must have reasons for these kinds of seasons: slow down, contemplate the universe, do some inside projects, drink warm beverages, read good books (and the Good one). What'll ya have?