Box Spring Seedling Stand

My friend Santwana started a zero waste Facebook page for her neighborhood. So, when I told her about the seedling rack that I made out of a box spring, she wanted pictures to share on her page. Here’s an overview:

This twin box spring was cut in half and folded to stand freely on one end. It made natural shelf space for trays of seedlings.

If I recall correctly, some mattress warranties are dependent on using the box spring that comes with it. So, with every new mattress coming with a new box spring, how are the two ever separated? And yet orphaned box springs are a dime a dozen online.

Correction: They are free.

Taking a box spring that I didn’t need was the price of a free bed frame from FreeCycle. The people who were giving away/off-loading these items were trying to avoid a disposal fee. Since our regular trash service allows for three “large trash” pickups a year, I took the deal. I just needed to make a call and put our new box spring on the schedule. Then like magic someone would come and haul it away. Easy. And yet there it sat in the garage. Maybe someone could use it? But no one ever responded to my posts. Maybe it could be upcycled? But the votive candle holders everyone was making out of box spring springs just seemed like reshaped junk, much like a lot of pasta dishes that require varying degrees of effort.

In the meantime, I’ve been developing an interest in restoring old furniture. Knowing very little about it, I wondered if the springs some people were using to make Christmas wreaths could be used in the seat of a chair. Maybe I should open up the box spring to see what’s what. But wait! Finally, a bite. Someone actually needs a box spring sans mattress. Fine. I brought it in the house to inspect it more closely and vacuum it. False alarm. She won’t be needing the box spring after all. In the meantime, Michael and Bert – our cats – claimed it as a scratching post. And they liked napping in the perfect hammock of a box spring turned on its side.

With all of the chairs I’ve been collecting, my house was already taking on a workshop vibe. But the box spring pushed it into grunge.

So, I took it apart with the idea of reshaping it into a cat palace. A bigger better hammock with a footprint more to my liking. It would be something Michael and Bert could climb like a tree. Unfortunately, there weren’t any springs like the ones I saw on YouTube. So, there was nothing in that respect for my rescued chairs. However, the black fabric that covers the bottom of box springs is the perfect material to cover the bottom of a chair. And the padding from the box spring could be used for the seat of a chair. Having been covered in the factory with bomb-proof polyester, it was in great shape.

I’ll use the padding from the box spring and the black material that covered the bottom of it for my rescued chair projects. Instead of folding the black material, I should have rolled it to avoid causing creases that can’t be ironed.
This chair was free on Craigslist.
The first layer under the fabric is cotton. Underneath that is horsehair which can be reused.

After removing the upholstery from the box spring, I removed the center brace and cut the cross slats in half. This gave me a chance to use my fancy laser level. It let me strike a line down the center of the slats, so that I could easily cut each one in the same location. Then with Brian’s help, I folded the box spring in half lengthwise and stood it up on its end. I reattached the center brace to support the open end of the slats that had been cut. Then I attached an additional strip of wood to support the slats on the other side of the fold.

The next morning, I couldn’t see a cat tower anymore. I don’t know why but it became a tower for seedlings instead. Thankfully, Michael and Bert didn’t seem to mind, although I did wake up one morning to find a tray on the floor with teeth marks in it.

I started with making trays that fit seven pots and it worked. But I decided to go with shorter trays so that everything was contained within the frame.

Since I needed trays of a specific size, I made them using foil insulation. To make them, I cut an 8 x 21″ piece of insulation then pinched each corner and secured it with a rubber band. To add support and to more uniformly hold up the sides, I added a rubber band around each end of the tray.

There are fourteen shelves – seven on each side of the fold – that hold trays with six pots each.

Yes, those pots are made out of newspaper and a dab of tape. I’ve used them in the past and they work great. Here’s the YouTube video where I learned how to make them. Or if you do a search for newspaper seedling pots, you’ll find other methods that do not require any tape.

While I really like the look of my seedling tower (I don’t get an old mattress vibe at all. I think it’s really cool!), I figured that it would be a pain to water. But for me, it’s fine. A little water in the bottom of the tray and a couple of squirts with a spray bottle seems to work fine. In case I wanted to make adjustments to maximize the sun exposure, I put the seedling tower on a rug so that it’s easy to slide on the wood floors.

I saw a YouTube video where someone made a display rack for a store with the same idea of using these built-in shelves. In that case, they did not fold the box spring in half. They also added wheels. I can see where that might make a nice seedling rack too.

To maximize light, I’m thinking about adding more foil insulation so that it can close around the structure at night and open and reflect light back to the tower during the day. There’s probably an optimal way of doing this, but I don’t know what it is.

I’m playing around with the idea of adding foil insulation that could be closed around the structure at night and opened to reflect light back onto the structure during the day.

Somewhere I have lights I could potentially add.

We’ll see how this works. In the past, I’ve just had luck putting seedlings in a tray by the window and keeping them moist. As I learn more about it, I can see there are some best practices that might yield even better results. In the meantime, I’m also trying winter sowing. My friend Santwana mentioned that she was doing this, which is what prompted me to do seedlings this year. It’s funny how life is a circle that way.

If you wanted to try this, I’m sure you could make someone’s day by taking an old box spring off of their hands.

Let me know if you have ideas for improvements.

Upcycled Oven Mitt

Today our friend Faith stopped by for our regular Saturday coffee hour. When she mentioned that she needed some mousetraps, I was happy to save her a trip to the store. Her visit was timely, as I’ve been in a decluttering mode. While extreme examples of hoarding make me feel sick to my stomach, even more repulsive is how easily we throw things away, wherever that is. A-W-A-Y. It sounds more like paradise than a landfill or an incinerator. Or it could be a prison: He’s going away for a long time.

The language around acquiring and discarding stuff is interesting. I feel sorry for the artificial Christmas tree that’s posted on Craig’s List or FreeCycle with a note that says: “We need to get rid of it by Sunday.” After twenty years of service, this is how it ends. They just “get rid” of you, as if treating a case of lice. It feels disrespectful. On the other end of the spectrum there’s “rehome.” That’s a little precious. “I would be glad to rehome the working treadmill that you’re not using.” Of course, up top, I’ve already said “upcycle” and “declutter”, two words that spellcheck doesn’t like, though it’s notable that “spellcheck” is just fine. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Staring into my kitchen drawer, I wonder how many oven mitts a person can use at once. It’s a maximum of two, right? One of the mitts has a hole in it, something I discovered months ago when I burned myself on a baking sheet. And yet, there it is. Un-re-homable. I’ll have to throw it away or let these things pile up until pictures of them are posted on the Estate Sale app next to my teddy bear.

This is where YouTube comes in. Somewhere along the line, YouTube decided that I might be interested in learning how to reupholster furniture. One thing leads to another, and now I’m learning how to make box cushions. That’s why I saw a drink cozy as I looked at this useless mitt. While my sewing skills are limited, I could picture it. So, I tried to make one.

Being careful not to tap the soda can with the sharp scissors, cut the stained worn out top from the bottom that doesn’t wear out as fast. Take out one seam on the sides of each of the two pieces and open them up in a single flat layer.
Trace a soda can on the top part of the open mitten. Then trace a bigger circle around that. If I did this again, I would use the measurement from the cup I used for the outer circle and use a compass to make a pattern.
Wrap the bottom part of the mitt – finished side up – around the can. Move it so the top of the can extends past it enough to drink from it. Use a pin to mark the fabric where the bottom of the can is. Trim off the bottom from the pin plus a 1/2 inch or so for the seam allowance. Secure the binding on the top, if needed. Add more binding to each side. I used part of an old sheet (the red strip). Cut out the circle for the bottom. Mine didn’t look so great, so I topped it with denim from some old jeans. I covered the inside of the bottom with the red sheet, but didn’t do anything with the sides on the inside.

Once the two pieces were ready, I sewed the side piece to bottom, using what I learned from the YouTube videos about making box cushions. A better sewer could whip out a much nicer version of this in no time. Other than starting with a perfect circle, if I did this again, I would consider adding a button hole to the top edge of the overlapping side. I don’t think I can do that now that everything is assembled.

The good news is that there’s less to throw away. The not so good news is that we’ve never used cozy’s. We have friends who use them and that’s what gave me the idea. In fact, I have a foam cozy that was a freebie at an event and it was my intention to give this thing to my cozy-loving friends. Now, instead having one cozy that we never use, we have two of them!

At least I didn’t make a wind chime out of old CDs.

In the spirit of giving old things a new life, I gave my new cozy an honest try. I could appreciate the appeal of it. When Brian saw it he laughed and immediately recognized his old oven mitt. He had to admit that it was convenient to put down his drink without being tethered to a coaster.

After I’m dead, people are going to come to my estate sale and they’re going to find this cozy on a table full of kitchenware and possibly, unless a relative feels some attachment to it, a bear.

Paw in Pocket

“Bert has his paw in my pocket.”

I got the camera.

Bert on Brian’s chest with his paw in the shirt pocket.

The first five pictures I took were totally black because I didn’t notice right away that I wasn’t in the point-and-shoot mode. That required a flash that made the picture look flat.

This is a nice picture of Brian. The light catches is eyes. But the picture is still flat.

I flipped though some of the pre-sets on the camera to see what would work.

Our messy living room.

I liked the slower shutter speed better. But I needed my subjects to stop moving. A tripod would have helped. I like that this picture had more light variation and isn’t so flat. But does it have a focus? The lamp in the background is probably blown out. But this was an improvement over the flash. I like the suggestion of trees through the window and the way the blue wall color shows.

Bert with his paw in Brian’s pocket.

In the pictures without the flash, Bert’s orange markings stand out better.

Speaking of Bert, he would like to have breakfast now. I assume that’s why he is meowing at the office door. As for me, I am going to get back to working on some writing. After I had already told some people that I am writing a novel, I heard an author say that he doesn’t like to make such announcements because you can’t be sure that the thing that you are working on wants to be a novel. So, then you have put yourself in the position of forcing – let’s say – a short story into being something that it isn’t. Or maybe after a lot of work you discover that you don’t have anything. Why not fail in private? Jinxing myself aside, I feel mostly confident that I will finish this. Whether it turns out to be “anything” can be another problem for another time.

Restoring Old Homes

With all of the old homes that are being torn down in our neighborhood in favor of density, it was distressing to come upon a gem that had some “architectural interest,” though it had fallen into disrepair. Next to an open lot – maybe two – that had already been cleared of the homes that used to be there, I was certain that Brian and I were looking at the future site of yet another apartment building that would be made with particle board. My heart sunk. I didn’t think that the house had much of a chance of escaping the wrecking ball.

I was wrong.

Southwest corner of the house.

Recently, Brian noticed a crew working on the home. We confirmed that the place is being restored and I am relieved. For starters, the house is sitting on a brand new foundation after having been moved from the adjacent empty lot. On Sunday, two guys were busy framing a new garage.

Front.
Front zoom.
Porch. The Christmas lights on the front porch hint at an interesting story. Who put them there? The previous owners? Was it a last hurrah of some sort? The new owners – the people who are fixing it up? I am picturing a celebration after they had just bought the place.

Density in the city core is supposed to be the environmentally responsible thing to do. However, if that’s the case, then why not require the buildings that replace old homes to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards? They should be state-of-the-art, zero-waste and carbon-free (almost free?) structures. Green roofs. Grey water. Passive solar. The works. They could be made to last for centuries. And they could be made for Minnesota. What do I mean by that?

Several years ago, I was in Virginia for a wedding. The area had been going through a crazy heat wave that ultimately took the power out for many of its residents, including the family of the bride. The hotel where several of us were staying was not effected and so there was some shifting to accommodate various guests, some of whom were getting baked out of the spare bedrooms where they were staying with the locals. Even the bride took over one of the rooms at the hotel so that she could get ready for the big day.

It was scary. And it made me wonder. When did we stop designing buildings based on the conditions of the natural environment versus the assumption that air conditioning (or heat) would always be a simple flip of the switch? Do we have to go back to adobe homes? Our own house that is just over a hundred years old was also built with the belief that we would never need to worry about the supply of cheap power or the consequences of using too much of it. So we have added insulation and taken some other steps to conserve energy. But now that we know what we know, when we build new housing, shouldn’t we build for the environment from the start?

When I took these snapshots, I didn’t anticipate that I was going to make a video with them. But I wanted to try it and used what I had.

And that is just considering the energy standards. There are also human standards. For example, we were talking to a couple at a friend’s party (pre COVID-19) who were telling us about their woes looking for a town home in a retirement community. The good ones have – ahem – community spaces. And this couple was holding out for one such place. According to them, the newer developments treated things like lounges and meeting rooms as wasted space, which is to say that they were not included. While the two embraced downsizing, retreating to their pod where they would feel isolated wasn’t what they had in mind when they decided to retire.

There is also green space to consider, which is another aspect of the human standard. New buildings should have green rooftops. Courtyards. Enough grass for a picnic. Balconies. Playgrounds. We cannot concern ourselves with this, right? However, we do concern ourselves with how many parking spaces there will be, which is funny since density is packaged with this idea that the new arrivals will use the public transit and therefore should eliminate any concerns about the impact on traffic. In the meantime, in one of the apartments going up near us, eliminating balconies from the plan is supposed to assuage the fears of the neighbors who see the development for what it is. College housing. Elsewhere, another development received a variance that essentially traded green space for parking.

It feels like people are pitted against each other in weird ways and bad decisions come out of that. I wonder if it’s because economic problems are easier to solve than human ones (I think I am channeling Brian here because this is a theme for him.). If I only have to think about the cost per square foot, it is easy to find a solution. But if I have to ask myself whether I want my grandmother to live in a place where there will be almost no chance that she will get to know her neighbors or whether a little kid wouldn’t be better off growing up in a place where there are trees and grass – those are bigger, messier questions that will depend more on stuff that cannot be expressed algebraically. These are values that exist outside of ledgers.

A while ago, I recall reading about a family that was selling their house on Marshall Avenue to a developer. The neighbors were upset for all of the reasons you would expect. But the sellers insisted that they had no choice. They needed the money to retire (it might have been a case of a parent who needed to move to assisted living, but the point here is the same). I just hope that they were able to find a place where the developer did not skimp on the community space because that is what the market dictated. Now, why people are in the position of making economic choices that they would rather not make is another issue. But I mention it here because long term care security and a broken health care system are a part of this story that should be explored further.

Finally, I have a question about how the neighbors are economically impacted by these developments. For example, down the street from where I live, a property sold for over a million dollars to a developer. The one on the corner across from it sold for 700,000 dollars. But what if suddenly having an apartment building next to your house makes your property value go down? Or what if, you can no longer see the sky when you look out of your office window and this really depresses you? What if it shades your tomato plant? Should you be compensated for this? Conversely, do these over-market-value sales have an impact on my property taxes, since home valuations are based on recent sales of comparable homes in the area? Or should I expect my property taxes to go down since there will be more people to share costs?

This is not a rant against density. However, it is an observation that it is not the only thing and it can be taken to an extreme. The airlines serve as a cautionary tale. Over the years, we have watched legroom on flights disappear. And now just as we thought that it would have been impossible to jam another row of seats into economy class, the industry has been considering yet another tier of traveling where passengers would essentially stand for the duration of the trip. Yep. Too far.

Saturday Coffee

Roblyn 21XX – The Podcast

Roblyn 21XX, Issue #7, January 17, 2021

Back in September, I started to dread winter. We anticipated feeling even more cramped inside our bubbles, as Dr. Fauci predicted a surge in coronavirus cases. Maybe we would get antsy and panic like a flock of ducks flushed out of the security of the brush. So, Brian and I started hosting Saturday coffees with the idea that by the time winter came, we would have established a routine where we could easily pop out of the house for a quick hello with the neighbors.

That was the plan. And it still is. But there would be no perfect record, as I had hoped. The single digits eventually forced a cancellation of our Saturday routine. More would follow. Though disappointing, the bitter cold gave me an idea. Or it might be more accurate to say that it brought an idea forward. Could we base a podcast on the neighborhood zine that we have been publishing since July? Would this offer some additional connections that might be valuable?

I was adamant that the zine itself should be printed and delivered to households. That’s why I began with what I alone could manage, which was essentially my block. Then a few people offered to print and deliver even more copies. It became the model. The zine would be as big as this volunteer pool would allow. And while we don’t quite cover it at present, I see the natural physical boundaries of the zine to be east of Cretin, west of Cleveland, north of Marshall and south of St. Anthony Avenues.

Though I love the e-newsletter that I produce for my podcast, QuOTeD, The Question of the Day, I was positive that the Roblyn 21XX zine shouldn’t be online. Part of what makes it cool is that you have to live here to get it. (Note: I have mailed hard copies upon request. Most notably my parents are subscribers.) However, I think a companion podcast to the zine is different. Yes, it is online. Yes, there is a screen. Yes there are links to click. But, a podcast like this could also be our private low powered radio station where there is a little more room, like a secret swimming hole before it is discovered by litterbugs. Plus, there is a warmth in hearing a voice. Maybe it can warm us up on those days when it’s too cold to do much else.

So, just as I did with that first issue of the Roblyn 21XX zine, I made a pilot episode of its companion podcast. This could be a one-and-done, a nice idea that doesn’t have legs. That would be fine. Or it might stick and become something even better. Either way, I enjoyed making this episode and hope that you enjoy it too.

Rebekah

Thank You

Siamese cat

Siamese Brothers

It’s hard to take a picture of a cat that does not ultimately feel generic. Thank goodness for my digital SLR. It was a Christmas gift from Brian a number of years ago. The point-and-shoot mode is decent. And on the occasion that I want to play with the f-stop and aperture as I did when I was experimenting with photographing a lamp, I can do that too. But easy access to cheap and instant photographs should not mean that no one has ever seen a cat as adorable as Michael or Bert. But it is hard to resist picking up the camera when they are piled together in a blissful slumber or doing some otherwise irresistibly sweet thing like staring into the dishwasher as if they had just solved a crime.

When Brian floated the idea of getting more than one cat, I had my doubts. But the rescue outfit where we adopted these guys explained that kittens do better in pairs. For one thing, they need a high level of stimulation that would be hard for most people to provide. Both of these guys do a pretty good job of entertaining themselves – making a toy out of a candy wrapper, for example. But it is still very nice that in addition to us, they have each other.

And yes, I was serious about the dishwasher. For some reason they are fascinated with it. It’s another reason why we are lucky that our kitchen has a door that can be shut. Because they are “banished” from it on a routine basis.

These guys crack us up every day. Their latest game is to stalk each other among some small boxes scattered in our front room. Thinking about childhood and the forts we used to make with lawn chairs and blankets, I threw a sheet over the boxes. Last night, this occupied them long enough to let us enjoy our strawberry smoothies in relative peace.

On that note, Bert is at the door. He isn’t rattling the doorknob yet, but he is letting me know that it is time to move to the recliner where he can pile on and kneed my fat tummy like bread dough. With his eyes closed tight, he sticks his face in my plush housecoat and roots around and gnaws like he expects to find milk. He likes the smell of coffee. But I tell him that coffee isn’t for cats. Eventually he falls asleep. Michael will join us later. I make a game out of who will get up first. My coffee will cool before I can finish it. So, I’ll want to zap it in the microwave again. But I don’t. This is yet another way two kittens have changed my life. When Brian stirs, they will forget about me. He is Man Food Source. They know the routine and they will supervise him until he has successfully executed his morning duties.

Bert is resorting to scratching.

Better go.

Homemade Fig Newtons

A snack idea turned into monster memories and a response to a scary post

Can prunes be an adequate substitute for the leftover Halloween candy in my freezer?

We tried to get rid of it, the bags of miniature Snickers and 3 Musketeers. Brian was handing out so much candy per customer that it prompted one observant kid to ask whether we had had very many trick-or-treaters. Sounding even more grown up was the young woman who told us to stay warm as I stood there in the doorway wrapped in a comforter. Enjoying what was left of unrestricted youth, the teen was roaming the neighborhood with her friends on the one night that a random stranger might be welcomed. Trick-or-treat for as long as you can.

Eventually, we might circle back to the fun it was to put on a wig. College bars. Parties. You’re back to deciding what to be. A Potluck? Now you have to decide what to bring. So, there you are, Little Red Riding Hood with your tater-tot casserole and cold feet because those are the shoes that go with that outfit. You came with Doug. He’s a wolf. Of course, he is. He brought a bag of pretzels. We hate Doug. Then those parties you somewhat dreaded – parties that required overcoming barriers, psychological barriers, just to leave the house – these parties will be something to miss while you’re either supervising your own monsters or cooing over the costumes of other people’s kids.

“What a beautiful princess you are!”

“What a scary ghost!”

A lollypop and a bacon strip – a pair for some reason – came to our door the year I started to write this post, 2019. The bacon worried – and probably hoped – that he might offend a vegetarian. He was itching for something, an encounter that would cue the statement churning in his head, a belief in search of context. What exactly did he want to say all puffed up like that? A skeleton – first the meat and now the bones – carried a ten-gallon pumpkin for her stash. Her mother was quick to tell me that “She picked it out!” We laughed. Smart kid. Brian has robbed a baby of the fun of dropping something into his bucket of candy. So, he gives the boy another chocolate “for the hand.” Held in the arms of his father, the boy’s little arm swings around like a boom. His candy lands with a pleasing crinkle. You can see this on the baby’s face. He did that. Did we see? Yes. We saw. You did that! Good for you, kid!

It’s amazing what can be understood and between whom. A baby. A man. A politically incorrect slab of meat.

Or is it dumbfounding what is confused?

A Facebook post about a left-wing global warming conspiracy brings me down. It is liked and shared without question, replacing the discussion we might have had.

This is from my Facebook feed.

The guy who posted this used to be a friend of mine. We were part of the same weekly dinner group. At some point we lost touch, only to reconnect on social media. There I can see that things are going well for my old friend. Girlfriends. Dogs. Skiing. Lots of pictures in beautiful places. Nature. There is God. Crusaders are mixed with A Course in Miracles – something I associate with Marianne Williamson who endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president for ’04 and who herself ran for the office in 2020 as a peace candidate. What I remember about Williamson’s take on The Course was that one can be centered in love or fear. The idea prepared me to deal with those who have made an art out of scaring people, be they salespeople, politicians or someone who thinks they are closer to God than I am. Anyway, the contradiction reminded me of Stu.

Stu was a gay sergeant in the U.S. Air Force before Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He had married his beard who was stationed somewhere far away. Marry a lesbian and live with your lover. It was a fairly common survival tactic in the military, or so was my understanding back then. (More recently I heard a similar story. A lesbian Mormon approached a bachelor friend to suggest a marriage that would be arranged to help her pass in that world. I can’t remember what he was supposed to get out of the deal. Reluctant sex? Money? The casting off of stigmas that we invent? I’m so sorry that this person can’t just be who she is – openly – without fear of punishment.) Well, I suppose it’s naive and possibly insulting (for that I am sorry), but I was floored to learn that this gay man who took a wife for show was a Republican. “They’re called Log Cabin Republicans,” he told me.

I never knew my old dinner party friend as a particularly religious guy, though not without some belief in a higher power, a sense of mystery behind the curtain so to speak. And now here he is lauding the late Reverend Billy Graham. It’s just another thing that separates us: A religious leader who defended the death penalty instead of seeking mercy for the condemned; and a belief that pollution that could be prevented isn’t contributing to the shrinking polar icecaps.

Why is it taking me so long to finish this post? When did a first draft appear? November? 2019. That was pre-Covid-19. Remember when we used to say pre-9-11?

You’ll have to deal with the leftover candy, unless of course you’re the sort to turn off the lights and hide until eight-thirty when the little monsters go in for the night for their baths and bedtime stories. Was it not for Brian, who knows what I would do? I almost skipped it last year. But eventually I joined him on the porch. I had been washing windows and putting up lights to cheer up the place for the coming winter. It will be dark at four-thirty before you know it. So, I was tired and it was hard to get off the couch. Hard not to just doze off to the sound of Brian greeting the kids and their parents who carry babies dressed like bunny rabbits and nudge superheroes forward, often reminding the likes of Spider-Man to say thank you. Soon they’ll be wandering the streets with their friends unsupervised and without costumes or gloves or hats because this is what freedom looks like to a child.

Now it’s another kind of mask. The face coverings that are supposed to fend off real monsters have been politicized. They stand in as cheap knock-offs of fundamental human rights. It’s a misplaced grudge, of course. But it’s hard to get people to talk about the dread caught in their stomach, a feeling that they might end up on the street because a layoff is looming and they’re behind on the rent. And even if your investments might give you a sense of security, deep down you worry because you don’t really understand how the stock market works. It’s hard to get people to talk about how they have really been screwed by the system where something as basic as affordable health care is not assured. How can you relax when you know that something that started as a cough could sink you for life? And if you’re lucky enough to have a job, it might be a soul-sucking one, the kind of work where you put your time in until you can retire without going broke. But those are big rocks to move. It is easier to complain about how wearing a mask is impinging upon your freedom.

When my old dinner friend thinks of me, he remembers how I hated flies. One of the rare times we actually exchanged words on Facebook, he recalled how I had lost my mind the time they had overtaken the house where I lived. They dotted the white cathedral ceilings in the kitchen as if someone had flung a box of raisins into its frosted underside. “Guilty as charged!” I said. This has not changed… Nor has my objection to the death penalty. At what age is a child aware of lethal injections that are administered by doctors, sanctioned by the state and defended by men with Bibles? Whatever it is, it is too young to be burdened by such sad things. Whatever age it is, that’s when I knew that I was against it. Was she always that way? Yes. I was always that way. Is she still that way? Yes. We ask these things of people we used to know. We wonder if we ever knew them.

There is but a trickle of kids this Halloween night and Brian and I wonder if we should give up on our ritual of sitting on the porch with our big bowls of candy, making a game out of giving away the perfect amount to each kid so that we neither run out of treats too early or end up with a surplus. It’s a game we never win. The lulls between monsters give us a chance to reminisce. I try to remember what it was like to trick-or-treat when I was a kid. Pillow cases for bags. Being out in the dark with Matt and Amy. Ginger? Who was in charge? My dad? Yes. He must have been there. Or was it one of the “big kids” taking us from house to house dressed as clowns and witches – costumes my mother made – and – one year for some reason – really fat baseball players with painted mustaches? Or were we kids on the loose? Unsupervised. Free.

How does one respond to a long-debunked conspiracy theory? I could post a quick “Really?”, by which I would mean, “Are you frickin’ kidding me?” It’s hard to find the words that are both kind and truthful. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. This is a thing. Besides, even the smart-and-carefully-crafted-to-be-kind rebuttal is sharpened by pixels. Plus, if I am to believe the things that I am reading about this or the podcasts that are addressing the subject, it’s very difficult to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory for which they’ve already made the non-refundable down payment. It’s hard to abandon the sunk costs, even if that just means the hours someone has spent with their face in a YouTube channel.

Don’t respond. What good will come of it? Talk about fig newtons.

I can see my dad inspecting the candy that is spread out on the kitchen counter. He is protecting me. These days I try to protect him with advice like, “Don’t click on suspicious links!” He already knows this, but I warn him anyway. We both know that he is a target for scams because he is old. Why doesn’t anyone do anything about this? Why are parasites an acceptable feature of our society? Once just hours after my parents ordered a new iPhone that was to be delivered by Fed-Ex, a suspicious call was triggered. My dad knew enough to hang up. He even called Apple. Yep, it’s a scam. They were fully aware of it. I never got the full story. What was the point? How exactly did the voice on the other end of the line intend to separate my dad from his money? How did they know that he had just purchased a phone? Instead, I was stuck on a single question. When are we going to realize that we can design the world as we wish and that we need not tolerate predators that see our loved ones as easy marks? Instead, we stand around as if there is nothing to be done. We re-elect incumbents on every level of government who have failed to stop this bullshit. Impotent, we are left to rebel against the common good with a lie about a medical condition that prevents us from wearing a mask for the ten minutes it takes to buy a jug of milk. It’s pathetic.

With Covid-19 heading into another peak worse than the previous ones, now I worry more about organic viruses than the ones that infect my parents’ computer.

By the time I was in the third grade, we lived in Tehran where the locals would have been confused by tiny Frankensteins at the door. That must be why I have memories of the Halloween parties that replaced the trick-or-treating. Bobbing for apples wasn’t for me and the cake walks weren’t as exciting as tromping around the neighborhood wrapped in the smell of night. My mother made a jack-o-lantern cake for one of these occasions. I wanted to keep it. But alas it was for some other kid to win.  These must have been squadron parties, military families entertaining their kids in a foreign country. At one such party, Santa Claus gave me a camel. Who arranged for this? A lowly one-striper? An administrative assistant? I want to thank you. I still have that camel. But that’s Christmas. We’re talking about Halloween.

So, Brian and I are on the porch handing out candy. He would be content to read between customers, but he lets me sit there with him. He’s mostly cooperative when I ask him questions about what he remembers about trick-or-treating. But he does not remember how old he was when he stopped. I couldn’t say either. He marks his place and puts down his book. You can read, I say. He won’t do this until I leave or pick up my own book. I ask him how the book is going. Then business picks up. One kid. Two. Three at a time. Four. Talk of bagging it next year fades.

Of course, we didn’t know what next year would bring. It’s 2020. The department of health is advising against a traditional Halloween.

Let it go. Just let it go. But I can’t.

There was a stretch when it seemed like some parents were opting for house parties instead of trick-or-treating. It was safer. Warmer. Maybe, but mainly safer. It’s better to eat pizza and watch a scary movie than to worry about razor blades in your candy. Now the neighborhood listserv is abuzz with talk about how “goodie bags” can be safely distributed to the kiddos who are desperate for the kind of fun that cannot be replaced with musical chairs and party favors. That want something real. We all do.

The Facebook meme that has me torqued complains that Dr. Elaine Curry “gets no media coverage.”  Tucker Carlson seemed to like her. I know this because I watched the interview on YouTube. And now an algorithm has pegged me for a nut. But maybe I could be convinced that global warming is a hoax, if only I were to watch all of those suggested videos. Well, even as he interviews her, Tucker seems uninterested in what Curry has to say. He has is own agenda to push and he uses her to do it. In a cursory search, I did not find an example of Curry using that word – hoax. Her issue is actually more interesting than 44 blurry words on a meme. But why look any further? Two grainy photographs – a woman and a girl – are somehow enough.

Have my Internet wanderings triggered the right-wing political mail I’ve been getting? If this is how the Republicans are spending their money, I suppose there is some hope in that.

So now there’s candy in the freezer. Brian gave up sweets a long time ago and I have never had much of a sweet tooth. And yet this afternoon a candy bar did sound good. Did I say there was candy in the freezer? What would be the harm?

It turns out that rampant candy tampering was never a thing. It used to be that calling out a hoax cleared the air. Made us less afraid, assuming you were willing to accept the good news. Imagine that! Refusing to accept the good news. Instead we cling to the thing that keeps us in a perpetual state of fear and mistrust. Why are we so comfortable there when we could assume the best of people? What would Marianne Williamson with her love-versus-fear-based perspective say about that? In any case, hoax is just another word that has lost its meaning.

Curry’s issue seems to be that mainstream academia has sidelined her for presenting data that does not support the theory that burning fossil fuels is a driver of the climate crisis. She’s also cranky about the claims that there is almost perfect consensus of the scientific community on this issue. Skeptical Science refutes this along with several other of her statements.

I want the snappy response that will definitively win – and more importantly end – this argument. I want this even though smarter people than me (and you my old friend) have ended it several times only to see conspiracy theories resurrect like the zombies at my door, lies that will not die because it is so damn easy to click share and to repeat what we have heard from behind the fortress of a keyboard. I can’t stay with you here, pretending to believe in monsters under the bed. There are plenty of real monsters. If you listen, you will hear them knocking. Answer the door. Instead, you hide. You’re in the house. Except for the glow of the television, it is dark. But those pesky kids persist. They ring the doorbell anyway. So, you turn up the volume and the giant heads pound the message even louder. They pound it so hard that you’ve lost sight of a truth that used to be yours and a common sense that seemed – but wasn’t – intractable. You have been robbed. But instead you just figured that you must have spent that twenty dollars. You just can’t remember where. 

You seem paranoid. I’m afraid that it is contagious.

I tell myself to drop it.

Too much work.

Too dangerous.

Write about Fig Newtons.

What happened to you, friend?

What happened to me?

Would it have made a difference were we still eating dinner together?

If your chest is tightening, if you think I am lost, corrupted or brainwashed, I understand. You call me names, I’ve seen them on the Internet, in my Facebook feed and elsewhere. But before that, there were the businessmen who used to come into Paddy O’Neil’s where I was a cocktail waitress. Tom, a big guy in a suit, was a known tipper. I think he was a lawyer because he wasn’t a doctor and in my mind, those were the people with money. But he could have been anything. Regardless of where Tom sat – your section, mine – the alpha waitress would usually claim his table that would be stuffed with more suits who were loose with their money. So, it was unusual that I would ever have to deal with him, but sometimes I did.  He was a scotch man and I brought him the usual, a double Dewar’s on the rocks. When I was new on the job, the first time I heard him order it – dubdersrox – I asked him to repeat it. He did and it didn’t help. I didn’t know my scotches. I still don’t. In any case, most of our exchanges have long been forgotten except for this summation. “You’re a bleeding heart!” he said. At the time it hurt. Today, I would have said, You’re damn right. What led to this, I do not remember. Maybe he was extolling the virtues of Billy Graham and I just couldn’t help myself and confessed that I couldn’t make sense of his lack of compassion. Or maybe he saw me wince when he made a comment about the lazy Indians who pass out drunk in the park. I wouldn’t have been able to resist hinting at the irony, the idea that some of these suits might drive home inebriated that very night, as if inebriation were somehow classier than a bum who smelled of dirty socks. Or maybe I just asked a question that challenged an assumption and instead of taking it seriously, it was easier to slap a label on me. Or maybe you can just tell that kind of thing about a person.

I am reminded of Dr. Elaine Ingham She is a soil scientist. Like Curry, she too complained about how the university system pushed conventional wisdom. In her lecture at the Oxford Real Farming Conference she introduced herself in part this way:

Yes, I do have the academic alphabet soup after my name. So undergraduate, masters, PhD… I am currently the president of Soil Food Web, a company I started after I ran smack into my university, Oregon State university’s absolute dedication to Monsanto…

Her approach appealed to me. It made sense to me in the same way that I’ve always been opposed to the death penalty on a gut level.  Without being a soil scientist myself, it seemed reasonable to suggest that a cycle of tilling and fertilizing and applying pesticides was eroding the soil and harming the very microbes that make it possible to grow stuff. So, I am not unsympathetic to the suggestion that unpopular ideas can be shushed by the establishment or that a minority voice might actually be right, while the majority presses for conforming to bad science. Galileo was accused of heresy because he made the case for a heliocentric solar system (what did they call it before it was the “solar” system?) as opposed to one that revolved around Earth. So, there are two examples.

But this hardly means that I should concede that the climate crisis is a hoax because someone’s research didn’t warrant priority funding. Brian and I talked about this a lot. The way we choose our scientific pursuits is not perfect. It might even be unfair. But it’s a little too convenient to claim that whenever the consensus doesn’t swing your way it means that there is a conspiracy.

Brian thinks that climate change denial is rooted in the question about how we can transition to a green economy without wreaking havoc on the economy as it operates today. He’s probably right. But it’s hard for me to understand. It’s kind of like people who might vote for Trump because their 401-k was doing well the last time they checked. Or what about Stu, who married a woman just so that he wouldn’t be hassled by anyone who might notice that he was gay? How did he set aside this reality when he voted for the clowns who would have been happy to slam the closet door on his face? And lock it shut? And he did this for what? The perception that Republicans are fiscally responsible? They are not. Morally superior? Give me a frickin’ break! No wonder depression has a grip on this country. We’re constantly setting aside our values to guard our dog bones, and they are bones. That’s what you get when money rules a system.

We all have our cognitive dissonance. I voted for Joe Biden.

Likewise, most climate change deniers – those people who are smarter than a collaboration of international scientist – are the same people who will be the first to avail themselves to modern medicine be it LASIK surgery, an artificial joint, or a treatment for cancer that would have killed their grandparents. They’ll jump on an airplane without a care in the world, embrace nuclear energy and fill their homes with gadgets: handheld devices that are essentially an extension of their brains, GPS systems that rely on satellites in space, or robots that vacuum their floors. But when it comes to a warning that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are dangerously high, they’re good with brushing it off as a hoax because it’s not economically viable?

Of course, it is beyond ironic that this Facebook meme is presented as an example of “media manipulation”.  Our current president will go down in history as having invented the idea of accusing people of your own crimes. But it’s an old trick and it’s certainly being used here. A deceptive message warning us about deceptive messages? Maybe that could have been my snappy response to my friend’s ignorant post.

This year, the year when Covid-19 emerged, for Halloween we sat on the lawn with our neighbors instead of waiting for the monsters to knock. Trick-or-treaters marched by to take their goodie bags from the tables that lined the sidewalk at a safe distance. It was windy. Gusty at times. It occurs to me that we are sitting under a maple that is dying and loosing its branches. Maybe we should think about moving? We don’t. The women are wrapped in blankets. Every year the blankets.

A block over, “It’s hoppin’!” There are bon fires. But I’m not sure they had anything to do with the firetruck that went by.

The neighbor’s kid is dressed like Trump. Backlit by street lamps, we can see a stick figure inside a blow-up costume that is wearing a diaper. His brother is dressed like the grim reaper. I don’t think this was on purpose. They are accompanied by the headless horseman who doesn’t have a pumpkin to carry or a horse to ride. So maybe he was just headless? When it’s time to go inside, the brothers have to walk their friend home. So a baby Donald Trump and his brother the grim reaper escorted this decapitated body down the street.

I tried to find the clip that solidified my dislike for Reverend Billy Graham. It seems like it was something on Larry King. A woman in Texas was going to be executed that night, always midnight for some reason, a strange custom when you think about it. I couldn’t find it. Instead, I discovered that the man had evolved. He actually seemed humble when talking about how he might have been wrong to condemn the gays. Elderly now, he seemed comfortable with reflection. And I was surprised to learn that he was – eventually – on the right side of the Civil Rights movement. That was something, wasn’t it? Of course, religious extremists didn’t like the Reverend’s change of heart. How easily they turn on you.

How easily they turn on you, indeed.

If only we could just be who we are, without fear of punishment.

Sometimes cold. Usually. Sometime after moving to South Dakota, I would associate Halloween with blizzards. It was probably the weather more than my age that determined when it was time to stop tick-or-treating.

Homemade Fig Newtons
Author: 
Recipe type: Snack
 
Ingredients
  • 5 prunes, chopped
  • Saltines or other cracker
  • Walnuts, 1 handful, chopped
  • Maple syrup
  • Peanut butter
Instructions
  1. Spread finely chopped prunes/prune paste on a cracker.
  2. Sprinkle the above with crushed walnuts or another nut you like. Pecans would be good.
  3. Drizzle the above with maple syrup.
  4. On a separate cracker, spread a dab of peanut butter. Use this to make a sandwich with the first cracker with prunes etc.
Two cats sleeping

Two People & Two Cats?

Wilson is gone.

That’s a hard thing to say.

I miss that little cat.

She was so good.

Such a good cat.

She was the reason why this blog is called Two People & a Cat, even though she wasn’t mentioned as much as you would expect a headliner to be. Now it would be more accurate to call it Two People & Two Cats.

Sometime in July, Brian started to look into getting another cat. I couldn’t quite picture it. So, it’s a bit strange to have two of them in the house. Two kittens. Wild animals… in the house. Here the brothers are joining Brian’s work meeting.

Brian is wrapped in an afghan because it is cold! It probably doesn’t help that we are missing an exterior door right now. It’s in the garage where I am going to paint it. It was so cold that last night I made a fire, not knowing how much supervising of cats would be necessary. They seemed to respect it. Michael parked in front of it for a good portion of the night.

Bert, on the other hand, preferred to stay warm by snuggling on Brian’s chest while he watched television.

Here he is with his eyes open. He just woke up from a nap.

When Wilson first died, I couldn’t get over how empty my arms felt. I must have hugged that little girl a lot. Indeed, I couldn’t walk by her without saying hello. And she did so in return. We were often finding each other throughout the day. I could always count on her to tell me to get up from my desk and stretch. For a while after she died, I couldn’t get to sleep without hugging a blanket. Actually, it wasn’t a blanket. It was one of my night shirts that I would squish up and put by her for comfort when she wasn’t feeling well. I probably didn’t wash that thing for a month and when I finally did, it was an accident.

Now my arms aren’t so empty. Both of these sweet peas can snuggle. They don’t mind being held, though like any cat they will let you know when they want down. Wiggle! Wiggle! They are quick to purr. They are super soft, especially Bert.

I still miss Wilson.

Talking to people who have also lost pets, I realize that one can be plagued with this question. Did she know that I loved her? Brian has no doubt about this. I probably don’t either. But once her heart stopped beating, I wanted another chance to make sure. I would have liked to have gone with her, wherever she went. I didn’t want her to be alone.

Michael and Bert are not allowed in our bedroom or office because they – meaning Bert – cannot resist climbing the curtains, which are new. Because they have doors, these rooms have become staging areas for furniture and plants that we are trying to save from being shredded. In theory, these cats will settle down as they get a little bit older. But for now, it is a treat to get inside these forbidden rooms (or a conquest depending on whether they politely asked to come in or barged in, taking their post underneath the bed). I’ll be on my way to do something – anything – taking a load of laundry to the basement and Michael will breach the bedroom door. Now instead of doing the thing I was doing, I’m waiting for Michael to come within reach so I can put him out. He purrs the entire time.

Again, another cat telling me to chill.

I have stuff to do, cat! Winter is coming and we still don’t have a door!

Any chance you can play?

The sound of bedroom doors constantly (it seems) opening and closing is new in our house.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Close.

The routines are different. Habits. Preferences. Wilson spent almost no time in the kitchen, which she treated as a pass through. As I said, she was so good. These guys? They treat it like a lounge.

But my arms aren’t so empty anymore.

They are good players. With us. With each other. All by themselves. Michael loves to play with toy mice, especially if you put one on the end of a fishing pole (out of service at the moment as some untangling is needed). Bert is more of a string man. He focuses on the string instead of the mouse and he can entertain himself with a hair thing for a long time. He is also the one who discovered “the sheet”, which they both enjoy. I was putting away some fabric scraps and he saw me folding this red sheet. Somehow he let me know that he wanted it. He sat on it and I started to pull him around. He went nuts running up it and diving into the hammock end of it where I was holding two corners (somewhat scary actually). After scoping it out for quite a while, Michael jumped on board. Now they will sit on the sheet and look at me.

At one point in the middle of our grief, Brian brought out Wilson’s adoption papers. Has she been exposed to other animals? Yes. Cats and Dogs. Children? Yes. What is her favorite toy? Unknown. She was estimated to be a year and a half at the time.

Can I have a ride, please?

So I put down whatever it was that I was doing and give Bert a ride on the sheet. Michael will show up in another minute or so. This will eventually devolve into wrestling with each cat on the opposite side of a sheet wall and me worried that someone is going to get hurt.

We are still getting to know these guys (Brian calls them “the boys”) and they are getting to know us.

I hope that they find us and these accommodations to their liking.

Wilson had a lot of favorite toys, including the mouse on the fishing pole that Michael now loves so much. When we were back at the duplex in Powderhorn Park, I used to use it to lure her out of the linen closet where she used to sit on towels while I washed my face and brushed my teeth to get ready for bed. The green feather. Toilet paper grabbed from underneath the bathroom door. It was apparently endless. Foam balls that Brian would bounce against the basement stairs. Being rolled around in the purniture. Feet under sheets. Anything dangling down in front of the cubby hole where she lay in wait. The rake / back scratcher. The gorillia / puppet / back scratcher. A bottle cap / back scratcher.

There were other things that I am forgetting.

I do not want to forget.

Quilt haning on curtain rod

Use Everything

When you open every box, you might be shocked by what you find, how much you find. We have – as Brian likes to say – an embarrassment of riches.

In most any of the de-cluttering books I’ve come across, there is this idea of releasing the things that you do not use so that someone else can enjoy them and so that – if you are inclined to take this perspective – the object itself can enjoy a better life too. This is supposed to make it easier to let go of attachments and to a great extent it works for me.

It isn’t often that I regret letting something go. But the one thing that comes to mind whenever I consider this question is a desktop rotary telephone. I bought it over twenty years ago only to realize that it had a mid-1960’s round wall plug that would not work with a modern telephone jack, at least not in the United States. By “modern”, of course, I mean modern for the time, the so called modular jack or Western jack, a name that comes from the Western Electric Company that first used it for telephone wiring. It directly preceded the explosion of mobile devices that would have happily pummeled landlines into obsolescence were it not for nostalgia and the joy of tactile things: Against the weight of a spring, pointing and dragging the dial around to the finger stop. That clicking beneath a cover of hard plastic – the coil winding up might remind you of zipping a tent shut – and the sound made as the finger wheel returns home, the “uncoiling”, could be mistaken for gurgling – faint though it may be – emanating from a swampy ditch. Are those frogs? A bird I do not recognize? Of course, if you know this sound, it is simply dialing.

There I am in my grandmother’s telephone chair in the corner of the dining room wishing that I had someone to call.

There is also the shape and weight of the receiver, hopefully pleasing, otherwise what’s the point? Dial tones. The sound of brass gongs as they are struck in rapid succession by the clapper ball. No, the ubiquitous smart phone could not efficiently snuff out this delightful gadget completely, but it did in effect stunt the evolution of things hardwired. Just try to purchase a brand new telephone, one that plugs into the wall, that isn’t junk. It is for this reason, the lack of faith that anything better will ever be made, that Brian could not resist purchasing a phone at a garage sale two years ago. The keypad is in the handset, making me think that it must be something from the 90’s. We have yet to plug it in. But there it is, just in case.

Well, thank goodness for my dad who did the dad thing and fixed this otherwise useless vintage telephone from the ’60s. On the upside are all of the tangible things previously mentioned plus a really long cord. The downside, I suppose, was the color. Beige. No fun there. There was also a crack in the housing. It wasn’t big or especially offensive, but noticeable nonetheless. But damn it was sturdy. Sturdy with a good ring. With the exception of these minor aesthetical preferences (black or red would have been groovy!), I loved that phone. So why did I take it to the Goodwill some years ago?

When I met Brian, he too had a number of rotary telephones, including the black one that sits in our living room. We couldn’t possibly use all of them, so in a gesture of sympathy for his own attachments that I might have imagined and in trying to stick with the self-imposed rule that everything must have its place or it must go, I decided to give up my old phone. After all, there was the color and that crack. Of course that’s when I realized that the phones we did keep had their own problems. For example, a poorly fitting connection on the phone in the bedroom means that I need to be careful to ensure the cord doesn’t pop out of the receiver in the middle of a conversation. Then there is the short cord, relative to the one I gave up, that makes this more likely. Faded colors. Brittle cords. Permanently foggy plastic finger wheels that are supposed to be clear.

I miss my old telephone, the one my dad fixed. But missing it hasn’t deterred me from taking a cold look at the other stuff in my environment and – if it seems like the right thing to do – letting it go.

I recently hung some random Barbie doll clothes in the tree in our boulevard. I really made a nice display of it, pinning them on a hanger with paperclips. After a few days of no takers, I was about to declare this a failed gift. But one morning while I was reading the newspaper on the porch, two women walking their dogs stopped and took note. “Can we take these?” they seemed to ask. “Yes. Take them!” I pleaded without speaking a word. “Read the sign! Free! Free!” I look back down at the paper. I’m afraid that if they sense me watching they might fly away like nervous birds.

Finally.

Hurray!

One less thing stuffed in the corners of my garage, but instead out there enjoying a better life mingling with other beloved doll clothes in the bedroom of an eight year old.

Why not imagine something good?

Of course this only encouraged me. So, next I hung a Word Find puzzle book in the tree. Brian gave this to me, along with other magazines and amusements years ago when I was recovering from a health issue. Or it might have been a Christmas stocking stuffer. He really goes over the top every year. Indeed I am spoiled thanks to the stocking that I acquired the Christmas I visited my brother’s family in Virginia. To include me in the festivities, they made a stocking with my name glued in silver glitter on the fat white cuff. Well it’s huge. I mean really big. And Brian fills this up every year. There are usually a lot of practical things like a toothbrush and dental floss, my favorite moisturizer and razor blades. Then there is candy, possibly a stuffed animal and magazines about gardening, writing and mid-century furniture. And, as I said, there could have been this puzzle book. An embarrassment of riches indeed.

Well days pass with no takers. And when it rained, I forgot to bring the puzzle book inside as I promised myself I would do. It’s under a canopy of leaves. Maybe it’s okay? Then one day, a Somali girl who lives down the street appeared. She was riding her bike up and down the sidewalk that marked what we imagined to be an agreed upon boundary where no streets would be crossed. Every time she passed, she smiled and waved at Brian and me who were sitting on our enclosed porch. Not a little wave. She waved big. Smiled big too, as if she imagined herself to be Miss America at the center of the Macy’s Day Parade. After her tenth pass or so, I yelled out the window. “Do you see the book?” “A book?” “In the tree! You can have it, if you like!” She needed some help figuring out how to release it from the binder that was tied to the string that permanently hangs from the tree. So, Brian went out to give her a hand. The pages were dry but a little wavy from having been wet. “It’s fine.” Brian said. But I worried that the girl’s mother would wonder why we were giving our garbage to children. I can only hope that the brand new and newly sharpened pencil with its fancy foam grip that I included with the book might have made up for any of its defects.

Soon after that, the girl disappeared only to return with two of her siblings. The youngest, a boy who looked to be three or four, knocked on the door. He was not a shy kid, as his knock was big. While his two sisters looked on from the sidewalk, he handed Brian a note. “My sister wanted me to give this to you,” he said. It was a thank you note and an introduction.

Of course now I am keeping my eye open for more presents to hang in the tree.

Then there are the things that are inexplicably hard to give away. For example, take these plain white aluminum curtain rods. We can’t use them. And that is the new rule I’ve declared since taking on the task of tidying up the garage. Use everything. This year we are going to use everything: Random garden tools, some that I cannot even name (the monster claw thingy turns our to be a hoe and cultivator combo); recreational equipment, including the ice skates from my childhood, a huffy bike that weighs a hundred pounds more than the bike that replaced it, and foam noodles that haven’t seen a lake in half a decade; and enough car care products to open a shop. Use it this year or let it go. And I am keeping track! “I used some burlap!” I report this to Brian as if it were the most exciting news of our lives – and these days – it just might be.

As for the curtain rods, it is not so much that I imagined they would ever be used for curtains, save some that might be used to convert the garage into a stage at some point (Note: I once saw the best play I had ever seen in someone’s garage on the hottest day on record.). Nevertheless, there was a nagging potential that I could not quite name. So, there they sat destined to be listed on FreeCycle along with a metal bed frame that has lived in the rafters of the garage ever since we moved into the house twelve years ago. But not today. Not today.

Thank goodness, not today. Or the magazine rack that I made with some of these old curtain rods would never have been conceived.

Magazine rack made from a white aluminum curtain rod and curtain rod clip rings. I also tried using cafe curtain rings, which worked but not as well, and binders looped through a standard keychain ring.

It just so happens, that in addition to the rods I had these rings with clips on them that I had found while “sorting bolts.” No doubt these were purchased years ago for some project that was either abandoned or where a better solution for whatever it was that I was trying to do had presented itself. Frankly, I don’t remember. I just know that as a pile of magazines a mile high stared me in the face, organizing maven Marie Kondo came to mind, specifically her idea that you should be able to see what you have. Stacks of things are the enemy of a tidy place. But there is no magazine rack big enough for the pace at which this stuff comes into the house. Combine all of this with having seen someone on HGTV hang a rug from a curtain rod and the idea for this magazine rack flashed through my mind. I would not be able to rest until I could see whether it was a good idea or a bad one.

I love it!

More than having the materials to make it, what matters here is having touched those materials a number of times in the course of organizing my things. I spent a lot of time contemplating what to do with these damn curtain rods. Logic would have said out with them! My own preferences for a space that isn’t burdened by visual noise would have pushed me to get rid of them. But my mind couldn’t stop noodling with the possibility that these things presented.

So they sat.

Maybe I’ll give them away tomorrow.

But not today.

Not today.

To touch everything that you own in a household that has accumulated things over years is mentally exhausting. Embarrassing, even. But it is necessary. How will you ever really know what you have? I am paralyzed and depressed by clutter. Who would not tuck in the messiness of life as if everything can be fit into a uniform box that only needs to be wrapped with the perfectly sized sheet of Christmas paper and a dab of scotch tape? But what can be imagined in a perfectly sterile environment?

Cleaning the Garage

This is from a message I sent to my friend Santwana:

Being “disconnected” has been interesting. When Wilson – our cat – died, I completely lost interest in Facebook in particular. It was like I suddenly didn’t like pizza, though I never liked FB that much… Anyway, for whatever reason, grief just triggered this aversion to scrolling through random posts. When I transferred the account to the iPad when the “email/social media” computer went down, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to resist checking it whenever there was a pause in the action (sometimes wrongly interpreted as boredom). But this has not been the case so far.

Lately, the main thing that has occupied me has been cleaning the garage. It’s the thing I itch to do the second I get up in the morning. On top of the regular spring cleaning that would normally take part of a day, I’ve been reorganizing things so that the space works better. I am looking in every box, every corner and dealing with every misplaced bolt. I make progress every day and end up spending much more time on it than I ever plan because I just get lost in how to store something tricky like the bag to the lawnmower, which is rarely used but used. Answer? Strap it to the ceiling with bungee cords and some eye screws.

… When I am staring at a bunch of lampshade frames that I’m going to make something with (more lampshades?) “someday” and wonder how the heck to store them, the last thing on my mind is checking my email. It feels great. I think that there is also something psychologically beneficial to doing something that has visible results. It’s a place to retreat when you’re not sure you’re making a difference elsewhere or worse, when you feel powerless to make a difference.

Last night I gave Brian a haircut in the garage. Then he brought out some drinks and we had a cocktail there. It might have seemed like an odd thing to do given that we have a yard, a deck, a nice porch… But there is something about being in a garage – especially a spiffed up garage – that I just love. And I figured that with the pandemic, we might as well mix it up and expand our living space.

Do I sound like a nut going on about my garage? …

Indeed I have figured out some creative garage storage solutions. For the moment I’ll share this one. Where do you keep the whiskey?

As I mentioned to Santwana, I am looking in every box and in one of them I found a set of kitchen canisters. I bought them at an estate sale years ago but couldn’t make them work in my kitchen with its limited counter space. While pretty, in the wrong space they feel like clutter. When an attempt to sell them on Craig’s List failed, I stored them in the garage. Eventually I would find someone who needs them, right? Or maybe they would become the next hot thing and I would be rich? Doubtful. So I was either going to use them or give them away. But now with everything shut down because of Covid-19, taking the set to Goodwill is not an option. It’s common to see free stuff waiting to be claimed in the boulevards we pass on our daily walks. Maybe I could do something like that? So I unpacked them and when I did I found this note taped to the top of one of the bundles: “Open with care. There is a smaller canister packed inside the larger one.”

“Open with care. There is a smaller canister packed inside the larger one.”

Of course this note was intended for somebody else. But now here I am reading it as if a stranger had written it for my benefit. It got me thinking about the notes we leave for our future selves.

Well, I must talk about “the garage project” a lot. Let me explain.

Yesterday was a yard day where I was trying to clean things up and get some basil planted. Actually, I was trying to get several other things planted too, but I only got to the basil. In any case, on my way into the house to get a bite, I found a package on the step.

Hmm, What’s this? For me?
A gift? Hmm, late birthday gift? Early Christmas? Random surprise from Brian? Ginger? Mom?
Florence! What on earth could this be?
A flask!

Notice in the background in the picture above there is a basket with a couple of books in it. My sister Amy was recently cleaning out some stuff and sent this along with a macrame plant holder that she thought I could use. And not that long ago there was a postcard from my sister Ginger. It’s a picture of Joyce Niebuhr striking a pose in front of an Iowa cornfield, leaning back with her face in the sun. She’s wearing a strapless, knee-length silky purple cocktail dress and long white gloves. There is a short necklace. A dot of an earring. What I imagine to be matching heels are obscured by turf. Did they sink into the ground? Her hair is up. Blonde. One hand loosely rests on the hip that faces the camera, while the other is elegantly outstretched holding three dog leashes that are attached to pigs. The caption reads: “Iowa Poodles”. “Enjoy your day!”, my sister writes.

With so much Zooming and various digital connecting going on, I wonder if “these times” call for more surprise gifts and handwritten notes. A simple phone call out of the blue and – yes – even the pop-over guest.

A little while back my friend Mary Jane stopped by unannounced. Anyone driving a Model T can do whatever they like. But it was actually a detectable slowness of things that emboldened my friend to break the convention of making plans, calling ahead. She says that she never wants to make plans again, an intriguing idea. I want to explore this but some neighbors have wandered out for a look at the car and Mary Jane must field questions. I am impressed. Passed down from her father, she has lived with this machine for her entire life and can talk shop with the best of them. We sat on the front lawn and visited until she had to leave in time to make it back to White Bear Lake before dark. A threat of rain made things even more exciting. It made me want to jump in the car with my friend, but of course I didn’t do that. Not even with a mask would I do that at this point. But for a moment, things were normal. Better than normal in that there was space for an impromptu visit and more room for perfect timing.

Back to the flask, an unusual gift, right? For some context here, I was telling Florence about wanting to put a flask of booze in one of those canisters. While it seemed hard to explain why this had its appeal without sounding like I had a drinking problem, she got it.

Du Nord Distillery
Let’s not waste any time!
For emergencies and pop-over guests.

In other canister news, a few days ago I noticed a trail of ants marching toward the sugar canister. Being that there hasn’t been any sugar in there for years, I concluded that the ants must have read the label and naturally had to check it out. But Brian and my friend Craig (Yes, he too had to hear about the garage!) insist that ants can’t read and that instead they’re smelling residue sugar. When you see how badly the coffee canister is stained, I can see their point. We had a discussion about deterring the ants, including making the container unsafe for food by placing a mothball in it. A salted moat was also discussed. Lucky for me, the next day there were no ants. So my theory has not changed. The ants saw a sign for sugar, went to check it out and left after a thorough investigation turned up nothing. It would be crazy for the ants to press on with their invasion, right? Fingers crossed that they stay away!

There are more boxes to open. More bolts to sort. But it’s coming along between QuOTeD Podcast episodes, a short story and the garden. Most days I make progress. It requires a certain amount of unstructured time and staring into space for answers. It requires a slowness that I quite enjoy.