A manicured yard

When we had 18 of the pine trees taken out of the backyard a couple of years ago, we had some of the stumps ground. As a result, we wound up with two patches where nothing would grow except a few straggly weeds. The barren patches were a blight on Dad’s view from his favorite chair in the den. Something obviously had to be done. He splurged on sod.

He’s been nursing it like a baby. He waters it faithfully and instructed me not to mow it. The grass is green and flourishing. It grew so tall that it waved in the breeze, like prairie grass you see on tv. Afraid that I’d be accused of killing it, I carefully skirted it when mowing the rest of the yard. It was like our own private wilderness preserve.

Returning from my walk one morning this week, I was surprised to see Dad down on his knees doing something to one of the patches of sod. Closer inspection revealed that he was cutting the grass by hand using a pair of pruning shears. Since I was sure that his vast collection of yard implements included a scythe or swing blade, I asked why he wasn’t using one of those tools, designed specifically for cutting tall grass, instead of using pruning shears. “I might cut down too close and scalp the grass,” he explained. Okay, then.

I guess that's what they mean when they refer to manicuring the yard.

What are you reading now?

I confess to having been in the reading doldrums recently. I currently have 10 books checked out from the library and have started 5 of them and finished 0. I tried thrillers, murder mysteries, more high-brow fiction, nothing was capturing my interest. Last night, in desperation, I picked up the one memoir in the pile, One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman; a stroke, a marriage, and the language of healing.

I've been enjoying memoirs recently, but wasn't sure if this one might be too depressing. I was hooked by the end of the first page. Ackerman writes beautifully. She uses big, unusual, descriptive words and carefully fashioned phrases. I would read the book for her sentence structure alone. Hooray, I've finally found something to read!

I'm on the waiting list for The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It's a fictional book about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. Since I enjoyed The Movable Feast so much, I figured I might like this as well.

I'm listening to Janet Evanovich's latest, Smokin' Seventeen, in the car. I have to admit she threw me for a bit of a loop with this one. While I've always thought the Morelli/Ranger loving 2 men at the same time storyline was the perfect fantasy, I have to admit I have very mixed feelings about the latest development in that triangle. I'm frankly a bit disgusted with Stephanie at the moment. I keep reminding myself that it's just fiction, but I still feel a sense of distaste. Maybe this series has gone on too long?

My bedtime audiobook at the moment is The Best Defense, book 2 of the Barbara Holloway series, by Kate Wilhelm. The narrator is Anna Fields who was a leading star in the audiobook industry before she drowned in a freak accident when her basement flooded during a storm and she was trying to save her work. I'll listen to anything she reads which is how I started listening to the Wilhelm books. They're legal murder mysteries and I'm finding them surprisingly enjoyable. I've listened to two in a row now and have a third waiting.

Attention to detail

We hit Oscar’s for breakfast this morning as usual. Oscar’s is one restaurant with three adjoining dining rooms. We always sit in the room farthest to the right. When we walked into our dining room, I noticed it seemed darker than normal. There was a big piece of plywood nailed over most of the front plate glass window.

The storm that came through about 6 p.m. last night blew out the window. Fortunately, no one was sitting in that dining room at the time. They found glass shards everywhere, all the way back to the far wall. There are gouges in the tables and rips in the upholstery of some of the chairs. One waitress, who was there at the time, said she heard the noise and ran screaming back to the kitchen only to find the back door had blown open. Sounds like a frightening, but entertaining, dining experience.

Dad’s breakfast arrived first. He always gives me half of his hash brown potatoes. Since I had no plate, he had nowhere to deposit my portion. This presented him with quite the quandary. He sat there and stared at his plate. I finally told him to push my portion over to one side of his plate. There was no point in his fried egg getting cold. He could have put my share of the potatoes in his saucer, but he’s quite the stickler for proper place settings. A coffee cup requires a saucer. I drink out of a mug, so I didn’t have a saucer to offer.

Since I eat faster than Dad does, I still finished my breakfast first. That’s okay, I just sit and drink coffee until he finishes eating. He still had what looked like half a piece of toast when the waitress came by with the coffee pot. I had her fill my cup halfway, no point in filling it all the way when I wouldn’t have time to drink it all. I had only taken a couple of sips when Dad tossed his napkin onto his plate, indicating he was finished.

“I wouldn’t have had her refill my cup if I’d known you were that close to being done,” I told him. “I figured you still had half a piece of toast to go.” “For future reference, you can gauge the amount of toast I have remaining to eat by the portion that’s covered with jelly,” he informed me. I hadn’t noticed that he’d only spread jelly on part of the slice of toast.

Frankly, watching Dad put jelly on his toast drives me crazy. He takes an inordinately long time, taking pains to spread it just so. I could put jelly on an entire loaf of bread in the time it takes him to coat one piece to his satisfaction. Since his precision makes me want to jump out of my skin, I try not to watch. Guess I’ll have to pay more attention in the future.

TV Guide

I spent yesterday afternoon conserving energy and staying cool. I vegged out in my rocking chair and watched movies. Sometimes it’s fun to give yourself permission to do nothing productive or worthwhile, but simply relax. The Taking of Pelham 123 didn’t impress me. It was too long, too many gratuitous car crashes, and even Denzel Washington couldn’t make it a movie worth watching for any other reason than trying to kill time.

Race to Witch Mountain on the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed. Yeah, it was Disney and completely improbable, but it was also entertaining. Let’s face it, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is easy on the eyes and he was fun to watch even if the premise of the movie was old and the plot predictable.

I like Disney movies better than Hallmark movies because they don’t require that you have a box of Kleenex close at hand. I swear Hallmark has a goal of bringing a tear to the eye of everyone in the audience. I don’t care if the ending is uplifting, I don’t like the depressing journey to get there.

Oh a hot afternoon, give me mindless fun, which is exactly what Escape to Witch Mountain delivered. TNT is running The Librarian series this afternoon. They’re guaranteed fun too and Noah Wylie is adorable. Unfortunately, they’re up against the last stage of Le Tour de France.

I’ve gotten thoroughly hooked on Le Tour de France and I’ll be going through withdrawal tomorrow night when there’s no nightly installment of the race. I could care less about the actual cyclists, although the color and movement is eye catching, I just like watching the scenery go by. Yeah, it’s weird, but summer tv viewing is like that. When it’s hot, I want entertainment that provides fun with absolutely no concentration required.

FYI, in case you're looking for something fun to watch on a weekly basis, my favorite summer series are The Closer, Rizzoli and Isles, Memphis Beat, Burn Notice, Suits, and Leverage. Why are the cable networks producing shows that are so much better than the big three networks?

The attack of the killer tomato

Wasn't there an old movie by that name? The idea probably came from someone who planted too many tomato plants one summer. Thursday night, Dad not only wouldn’t agree to a whole tomato sandwich, he opted for pimento cheese. Meanwhile, despite being in the shade, the extreme heat is practically roasting my tomatoes where they sit on the picnic table on the back porch.

I made tomato bread salad for lunch. Dad was dubious, but put a small portion on his plate. I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home Friday to buy bananas for his morning cereal. While there, I decided to buy some bacon. Maybe I could tempt him with a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Adding bacon to his tomato sandwich proved to be a hit, but it also meant I had to wash dishes afterwards. I generally only wash dishes once a day, after lunch. Since supper is usually a sandwich eaten on paper plates, that means there are only 2 glasses and a knife left on the counter overnight. I dislike waking up to a counter full of dirty dishes. I’m not thrilled with ending my day by cooking and washing dishes a second time, once a day is more than enough in my book.

This morning Dad hit the farmer’s market and came back with string beans, peas, butterbeans, okra, corn, and peaches. I suggested that he should have taken some tomatoes with him and tried to peddle them in the parking lot. “I suspect they’d frown on that,” he said. “Only if they catch you,” I replied.

A bountiful harvest

“You need to start eating a whole tomato sandwich for supper,” I informed Dad this morning after my tomato picking expedition. “And we need a bigger table.” I hadn’t been back to the garden for several days, obviously a mistake on my part because the suckers turned red practically overnight. I picked 33 tomatoes this morning. Dad normally only eats ½ a sandwich, but with the bumper crop of tomatoes, he needs to up his intake. Or set up a stand and start selling them. We can’t keep up by ourselves.

No one at the office wants any tomatoes. They’re either growing their own, and trying to give them away, or taking home bags full of the tomatoes our clients are bringing in. It’s getting ridiculous. I remember carefully rationing the few tomatoes that Dad brought home from the farmer’s market last year. It was all I could do to get enough slices for either sandwiches or to serve on the plate. I didn’t have enough tomatoes to do both. Now Dad’s muttering that I need to take up canning.

“I told you that you didn’t have to plant all of the tomato plants I bought,” he laughed. “I only bought that many because they wouldn’t let me buy single plants.” “Well, it seemed a shame to waste them,” I said, remembering last year’s shortage. He bought an assortment of various kinds of tomato plants. I confess to being a fan of the traditional Big Boy myself. I’m not so fond of the smaller ones that are somewhere between ping pong and tennis ball size. If I’m going to go to all the trouble to peel a tomato, I want it to be worth my while.

“Maybe you could start having a tomato in the morning with your cereal instead of banana,” I suggested. “I’m only willing to sacrifice so much. That’s going too far,” he replied. Dillon likes tomatoes. Maybe I’ll start adding them to his dinner. I’m throwing the ones that rot before we can eat them over the fence into a small garden plot under the garage window. The former owners used to grow tomatoes there and the first few years I lived here, volunteers came up each spring. I’m going to see if I can make it happen again. Dad just shakes his head and mutters about monstrous tomato plants overtaking the house.

I can see clearly now

Stick a fork in me, I’m done. I’ve been cleaning all day. It all started innocently enough. Shortly after Dad moved in, he replaced the windows in all the bedrooms and the dining room with Pella double-hung vinyl windows, the ones that tilt in for easy cleaning. I told him he didn’t need to go to all that expense. I never had any trouble cleaning the old windows because I don’t do windows. “I can tell,” he replied.

The new windows came with full screens. That meant you couldn’t look through a clear window and it was impossible to get the cobwebs off the outside without taking out the entire screen, which seemed like way too much trouble. My view was worse, not better. I didn’t see this as an improvement.

Dad decided to take his screens out to clean the cobwebs off his windows a couple of weeks ago. I thought we’d never get the screens back in the windows. We spent a testy hour struggling and in the process, I poked a hole in the screen. I decided we needed to explore half-screens. If the purpose of having these windows was so that I could clean them, the screens were defeating the purpose. No way could one person do it alone.

Dad ordered one replacement half-screen to see how it worked. It went in easily and without the full screen, you can see clearly out of the top of the window where there is no screen. I told him I wanted to replace all the screens. “But there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the screens,” Dad argued. “Of course there is. They’re a royal pain to get out, it’s a two-person job, and the view is better with half-screens.” We disagreed on the subject for several days, but in the end, he ordered the screens.

He put one of the screens in his other bedroom window as soon as it arrived. He told me there was too much stuff in my rooms to move on his own, so I should let him know when I was ready to tackle the project. Today was the day. I didn’t have to cook and the temperature wasn’t unbearable.

I moved all the knickknacks and paraphernalia off the furniture in front of the windows. Then I moved the furniture. Then we tackled the windows. The first two went in easily. The third was a real pain. It kept trying to fall out. Dad had me putting in the screens from the bottom and then stretching to reach out the top of the windows to grab hold of the screen from the top. The way he had us going about it you needed to have the arms of an orangutan.

When he tried to convince me that I could stick my head and arm out of an approximately two-inch opening at the top while he worked from the bottom, I called a halt. “Why are we struggling to reach out the bottom and the top? Why can’t we just tilt the windows in? Then we could reach everything.” He got a funny look on his face and agreed that might work. Gee, a whole uninterrupted work space versus pushing windows up and pushing windows down and trying to squeeze my arm into tiny spaces and stretch while hoping he didn’t push the window closed and trap my throat or arm.

Sometimes I don’t understand his logic. I never understand his directions. He’s not good at specifying directions like right or left or telling how much to go up or down. His favorite words are “just hold on a minute” and “Nancy, stop”, “Nancy, just get out of the way", etc. None of which qualify as helpful directions in my book. There’s a reason I dread father/daughter projects.

Once I finished installing the screens, it seemed only logical to wash the windows. Then since furniture was free of surface clutter, it only made sense to dust. The unoccupied spaces where furniture normally sat were suddenly accessible to the vacuum cleaner. It would be a shame to waste that opportunity. The cleaning tasks just kept multiplying.

I finished cleaning just in time for supper. I had cooked a huge pot of butterbeans this afternoon. Dad bought a whole bushel yesterday so I’m cooking them and freezing them. I cut up a tomato and told Dad we were having leftover cheese and tomato pie with butterbeans. He elected to have just a bowl of tomatoes and beans. Fine with me. No way was I making the effort to fix sandwiches.

The only productive thing I plan to do for the rest of the day is wash my face and brush my teeth before I go to bed. I had planned to watch some of the women's World Cup soccer final which was listed as being shown at 7 p.m. I guess that is a replay because Dad helpfully told me the score when he came to supper. He apparently spent his afternoon watching the soccer match while I cleaned the house. Funny how he can communicate things I don't want to know so clearly when it's normally like pulling teeth trying to get information out of him.

Tomato, Tomatoh

No matter which pronunciation you use, I have an abundance of the juicy, red fruit. After weeks of hot, dry weather, we suddenly had some rain and all those tiny, hard, green marbles grew almost overnight into red, ripe tomatoes. Of course, that sudden growth spurt means that many of them have splits in the outer skin, which leads to rot. It takes several tomatoes to get a decent serving after you cut out the bad parts.

Still, we have tomatoes coming out of our ears. I’ve fed Dad so many tomato sandwiches that last night when I offered him a choice of pimento cheese or tomato, he quickly asked for pimento cheese. Normally pimento cheese is my fallback option, which means he gets enough of them that he rarely asks for one. So it was funny to hear him eagerly request a pimento cheese sandwich.

It’s too bad that tomato plants don’t have a sort of time-release option, like pills, so that they’d ripen over time, spreading out the bounty. In the meantime, we’re having tomatoes at every meal. I love slices of tomato with a little sugar. Dad likes them cut up in a bowl with butterbeans or field peas. Bruschetta is sublime. I know it’s supposed to be an appetizer, but I eat it for supper as an entrée. Add a Michelob beer and you have food for the gods.

Aunt Ruth

I don’t remember my Aunt Ruth. As the wife of my father’s oldest brother, Rudolph, she was my aunt by marriage. Rudolph was killed in WWII, long before my birth, and Ruth had remarried and moved a distance away, so we didn’t see much of Aunt Ruth and her son, Rudy, when I was growing up. She died this week at the age of 94.

While I don’t remember Aunt Ruth, Dad has fond memories of her. When she and Rudolph were first married, and didn’t have much money, they lived in town. Dad and Uncle Thomas were attending elementary school in the city school system. In those days, children went home for lunch. Their home was actually outside the city limits and it would have been too far to walk home for lunch. Ruth fed them lunch every day that school year.

“Can you imagine feeding two little boys you were only related to by marriage for an entire school year? Especially when you were just married and times were tough?” Dad asked in amazement. Ruth also gave Dad his first aspirin when he complained of a headache at lunch one day. He remembers she cut a tablet in half for him.

Dad says his family was “poor as church mice” when he was growing up. Ruth’s family was a bit better off, although far from wealthy. One Christmas when Dad and Uncle Thomas were about 8 or 9 years old, and still believed in Santa Claus, they woke up Christmas morning to find a new red bicycle. There was only one, so they had to share, but it confirmed their belief in old St. Nick because how else could they ever have received a present as grand as a bicycle? It was just completely outside the realm of possibility without Santa Claus. It was years later when they found out that Ruth’s parents bought that bicycle for them.

After hearing those stories, I’m sorry I don’t remember Aunt Ruth. Dad says I would have liked her.

What I did for love

I have the best closet in the house. It’s not a full-size walk-in, it’s sort of the junior version. Still, it has tons of space and a fabulous built-in shoe rack. Perfect for storing shoes so that they’re out of the way, yet can be seen at a glance. And yes, despite my continuing, but futile, efforts to buy more shoes, I do have enough to fill the shelves. So why are they almost completely empty? And why did I have to invest in an over-the-door shoe organizer? Because my closet isn’t big enough for both my shoes and Dillon.

Dillon adopted the closet as his indoor version of a doghouse. He likes to sleep in there at night. I gradually quit closing the closet door and put a foam doggie bed pad on the floor. When he started shoveling all of the stuff on the floor out of his way, I removed almost everything I had stored there. Then he started knocking the shoes off the lower shelves when he was trying to get comfortable or escape a thunderstorm. So I moved my shoes off the bottom 2 shelves. Then I emptied out the 3rd shelf from the bottom. Even that was not enough.

I came home from work one day last week to have Dad inform me, “I think Dillon trashed your closet.” Naturally, Dad left everything exactly as Dillon had thrown it so that I could see the evidence for myself. For some unknown reason, Dillon tries to escape the worst storms by attempting to climb the walls. The shoes from the upper shelves were thrown onto the floor and one had a big drool spot on it. He hadn’t chewed anything, the drool was the result of the storm-induced terror.

I took most of the remaining shoes out of the closet and shoved them under the lingerie chest and chest of drawers. That put them in a drool-free zone, but it made it a pain to vacuum and wasn’t very attractive or convenient. That’s why I now have an over-the-door shoe organizer and an empty shoe rack. I did give a thought to simply closing the closet door and taking away Dillon’s access, but that would be like taking away a person’s panic room. Not a very nice thing to do and the one time I tried it, he scratched at the door trying to get in. Moving my shoes seemed the better solution.

The shoe rack looks awfully lonely, doesn’t it?

Doctor's orders

I had my annual GYN exam this morning. I got a good report. The doctor told me he definitely doesn’t want me to lose any weight or go to a lower body mass index. I always try to follow doctor’s orders, so I headed to Krispy Kreme immediately after my appointment and had 3 glazed donuts for breakfast. I did take my coffee black.

Dad just shook his head and laughed when I told him. Then he asked if I told the doctor about my diet. “What diet?” I asked. “Exactly,” he replied. “Did you tell him about the massive amounts of food you inhale on a daily basis?” Excuse me?!

I don’t consume massive amounts of food. I eat like a normal person as opposed to someone who thinks 1 tablespoon is a serving of anything. “Well, it’s obviously working for me,” I said smugly, and finished eating my corn tart made with heavy cream.

Hooray for the Red, White & Blue!

It may be America's birthday, but I'm celebrating by watching the Tour de France. No, I haven't become a fan of cycling, I just like seeing the scenery along the way. And regardless of how some people feel about the French today (remember the idiocy of Freedom fries?) they did help us win the Revolutionary War and gave us the Statue of Liberty. So maybe it's not such a far-fetched way to celebrate.

Cause for celebration

I’m glad I live in the land of the free and the home of indoor plumbing. We’ve had record high temperatures today and I just finished my 3rd shower. I think that’s a personal record. I took my first this morning before breakfast, that’s par for the course. Midmorning, after Dillon’s walk, I got the brilliant notion to wash and wax my car. By the time I finished, the car looked great, but I was in dire need of a 2nd shower.

This afternoon after I finished all the ironing, I even ironed the pleats back into my linen skirts; I decided to get in a workout since I’d skipped several days. Naturally, that led to the 3rd shower of the day. That’s it, I’m done. I don’t plan to do another productive thing for the rest of the night. I’ve earned the right to settle down in my chair and veg out in front of the tv.

It’ll probably be another long night. A July 4th 3-day weekend means 3 nights of fireworks. The noise scares poor Dillon to death. Last night, he huddled in the bathroom and even moaned like a wounded animal at one point. I tried to get his bathroom breaks in before dark because I knew he wasn’t going back out after he heard the first pop. Then after he kept me awake searching for a safe spot in my closet, he woke me back up again at 3 a.m. in need of that last bathroom break he’d missed earlier.

I agree July 4th is a holiday that deserves celebrating. I just wish we could do it quietly.