My current desktop photo is a dragonfly.
I am going to spend our time together this time trying to scratch a dozen or so items off my note list. Considering my letter-blogs generally cover only three or four subjects at a time, it doesn’t look hopeful does it. And what’s more, I sometimes go off on wild tangents that don’t have anything to do with anything on my note list at all! Like now. It occurs to me that I don’t exactly know what to call my weekly news, ramblings and musings. Some of you read this as a letter delivered through the good old USPS and some of you read it on my blog and some of you read it on your email. I’m getting tired of calling it a letter-blog so put your thinking caps on and help me come up with a better name, would ya? I could combine the two. Leblog? Bletter? All suggestions will be considered.
Hey! Guess who’s back in town!
Yep! My Jersey Boy, Mr. Z!
You may remember that last January he moved to Amarillo, Texas to be close to his son, but he never could adjust to a new life there. Every time I talked to him on the phone he expressed his unhappiness.
“Come back,” I would tell him.
“No, I can’t. I told Jeff I would give it a fair chance,” he would tell me.
“Well then bloom where you are planted,” was the best advice I could give to him and sure sounds a whole lot better than, “Well then quiturbitchin,” don’t you think?
Just kidding. Really I am. I never get tired of hearing his raspy old voice no matter what we talk about.
Late July, Annie, his wonderful sister-in-law, drove to Texas and moved him back, at his behest of course.
“I tried to like it there. I gave it a fair chance, but I just wasn’t happy,” he told me.
And I think six months was a fair try.
Annie was able to get Mr. Z an apartment in the same complex he had lived in before, but she couldn’t sign the lease agreement for him so she wasn’t able to get a key and get his apartment set up before he got here. Consequently he had to stay with someone else during that process.
A few days into his stay, he tried to exit the apartment through the patio door. The front wheels of his electric chair caught in the tracks of the sliding glass door and threw him out onto the concrete pad. They called an ambulance, the hospital did x-rays but didn’t find anything broken and they sent him home. He was in a lot of pain so a day or so later he goes back to the hospital. This time they did an MRI and found he did indeed break his spine. Now they send him to the veterans hospital in Columbia where they evaluated him and decided due to his age the best course of action was time and therapy. They ship him back down to us here at the Lake and he is in Lakeside Manor, which has two wings. One an assisted living facility and the other full nursing care. He is on the full nursing side and you know what? I think he likes it!
“You just like flirting with all the pretty young nurses,” I told him and he laughed.
“Can you believe and old man like me broke his back?” Mr. Z asked.
Had it been anyone else but me, they might have replied with a little sympathy. Something like, “I’m so sorry!” or “You poor man!” But because it was me, and because we did have this conversation before (he probably forgot) and because I was kinder the first time, this time I don’t pull any punches.
“Yeah, you dumbass! What were you thinking!”
Totally not the response Mr. Z expected. He stopped scrubbing his face in that way that he does and dropped his hand to look at me.
I smiled.
He laughed. “I didn’t want to go the whole way around,” he said.
“You’re in an electric chair!” I exclaimed incredulously. “How hard is it to go around?”
Yeah. He didn’t have an answer for that.
He’s only about three miles from me and I try to get out there at least once a week and read my latest letter-blog to him. Mr. Z’s eyes get tired pretty easy and he is almost blind in one eye, so he has to close it in order to focus the other eye, and he has to keep it closed which makes him look all squinty and winky. Besides, he likes me to read to him; I read with all of the inflections I try to write into the stories.
I was reading Mr. Z my letter-blog of August 30th, the one I titled Blather because it had a bunch of different things in it that didn’t amount to much of anything, and I got to the part where I was talking about Kat. “But did you know that in Kat’s generation, in my family, we lost Jessica at thirty-five years of age, Michael at thirty-three, and Kat at thirty-four? Three children, all in their mid thirties, all of the same generation and all of them parents of twins?”
And just then it hit me. Something that is so obvious to those of us who knew and loved these ‘kids’ that I never thought to include it in the story.
This is what I should have written:
“But did you know that in Kat’s generation, in my family, we lost Michael at thirty-three years of age, Jessica at thirty-five, and Kat at thirty-four? Three children, all in their mid thirties, all first cousins to each other, all of them parents of twins, and all of them killed in car accidents?”
“It makes me want to tell my kids to be extra careful when they’re driving,” my cute little red-haired sister said when I told her that.
Since I brought the subject up I want to tell you one more thing, and I know it’s silly, but Kat is still in my computer, still my Facebook friend, still in my email and I’m still sending her my letter-blogs.
“I’ve been reading some of the letters you send to Kat,” Jesse, her fiancé told me the last time we talked.
“Oh, gosh, Jesse,” I told him. “I hope that’s okay. I’m having a hard time deleting her.”
“I know how you feel,” Jesse told me. “I can’t delete her either.”
I expect that someday I will. Who knows how long it will take.
Mike and I got the wall built that separates the two bays of our new garage.
“Is that a window?” you ask.
Yep. It’s so we can see the garage door is closed from the RV. There have been numerous times over the years when the remote in Mike’s pocket had gotten bumped and the garage door opened and we didn’t know it.
Our tabby cat, Macchiato, who was dropped off here a few years ago loves Mike and follows him like a little puppy dog when they are both outside. I was sitting here and saw him following Mike and I grabbed my camera and got a photo of it.
Macchiato is a good cat and the tenants love him and feed him and let him come into their stores and for the most part Macchiato likes people and will let strangers pet him. Another good quality of Macchiato’s is that he keeps all the other cats run off from his territory, aka our property. For three years now this is how it’s been. Then a couple of weeks ago this black cat showed up and Macchiato let it stay. Those two are buddies and are often together. It tickled me when I saw her following Macchiato and Mike.
This cat is more like how most cats are and is not too trusting. I haven’t been able to pet it yet and no one knows what sex it is. I tend to call most critters female until they do something stupid, then I know they are male.
You know something?
“You can’t tickle yourself?” you guess.
Nope.
“If you eat lots of carrots you’ll turn orange?” you guess again and I can see that this conversation isn’t going to get us anywhere so I’ll just tell you.
I have been making an effort, since we moved into the RV, to run the vacuum everyday, or at least five to six times a week. I may skip it on Sundays. Between the cat litter from the cats feet as they jump out of the litter box to the cat hair, it almost seems like a necessity, you know what I mean?
So the other day I’m vacuuming away, getting to the end of my routine and maybe in a little bit of a hurry, when I’m vacuuming out the cup holder in the front by the driver’s seat and I catch a glimpse of something plastic just as it gets sucked into the end of the vacuum hose.
Rattle, rattle, rattle, was the sound it made as it went up the hose.
“What was that?” I asked as I shut the sweeper off.
“I don’t know,” Mike answers from where he was playing solitaire on his computer at the table.
“Well, what was in the cup holder?”
“What did it look like?” he asked.
“I didn’t really see it but I got the impression it was a plastic cap of some sort, like off a water bottle,” which I knew it wasn’t.
“I don’t know,” he replies again.
“I don’t think it went the whole way down. I heard it hit here where the handle curves but I didn’t hear it go down the hose.” I unhooked the hose and shook it a few times but nothing fell out.
“Let me see it,” Mike said and I handed it over. He shook it a few times and declared it to be object free. I hooked it back up and finished my job, then I put the vacuum sweeper away.
What was that! I kept wondering. Although it was the color of a bottle cap that was the only similarity. It wasn’t the right size and there just wouldn’t have been a bottle cap in there anyway. There hadn’t been anything in there the day before when I vacuumed. What if it was something important? It just keeps bugging me until I get the vacuum sweeper out of the shower where he lives when not in use, set it on the couch, open up the door and peer into the hose hole. It was dark in there! Dah! Right! I get the flashlight and shine it in the hole but I don’t see anything except cat litter and cat hair. I pull the bag out of the sweeper and pinch it all the way around trying to feel for whatever I had sucked up and since the bag was relatively new there wasn’t much of anything in there and certainly nothing the size or firmness of a plastic cap.
It’s got to be stuck in the hose! I pick up the hose and shake it and tap it but by golly, I don’t think there’s anything in there either!
I could tear the bag open…
Naw. That was my last bag.
Besides I’m just relatively sure, like 99.9% sure there’s nothing hard and plastic in there. I put everything back together again and put the sweeper back into the shower.
All day long it drives me crazy. A little niggle in the back of my mind. It didn’t just disappear! What was it and where was it!
Although I knew it wasn’t in bag I just had to be 100% sure. I got the sweeper back out, opened it up and took the bag out.
“You couldn’t find these sweeper bags anywhere and had to order them off the internet,” Myself said to Me. “That was your last one. What are you going to do for a sweeper bag?”
“I don’t know,” Me answers. “I guess I’ll just have to use the dust buster or the good old fashion broom and dustpan until I can order more.”
So I did the only thing left to do. The only thing standing between me and 100%. I tore the bag open.
Surprise!
It wasn’t there. Nothing but dirt, litter, hair, dust, and a few popcorn kernels. Carefully I folded the bag and all it’s contents together and put it in the trash. While washing my hands, the whole time I was washing and drying my hands, I wondered where whatever it was, was! It absolutely, positively, 100% sure wasn’t in the bag. It’s got to be in the hose! I got the hose out again and did the shaking and banging thing all over again -- for the fourth time!
Nothing.
I put the hose back on the now bagless vacuum sweeper and put him back in his home, in the shower.
“So, Peg, are you saying you have to take the sweeper out of the shower every time you want to shower?” you ask.
Yep. But even more than that the dirty-laundry basket lives in there with the sweeper. They cohabitate, don’t you know. But it’s just one of those things. You adjust your showering plans to include unloading the shower before you shower. It can’t be helped.
Mike comes back in a little later. “Mike, I tore the bag open. There’s nothing in there,” I told him.
“You just missed it,” he says.
“Nuh-uh,” I said and went to the trash, pulled the cucumber peels off the top and pulled the bag out. I laid it on the counter opened it up and invited him to check for himself. “See?” I challenged but he wasn’t interested in poking through it so I did it for him. “Nothing!” I declared.
“Then it’s in the hose,” he said.
You would think it is one place or the other, wouldn’t you?
I got Mike the hose and he did the jiggle, tap-tap thing and I wouldn’t have been surprised if something had fallen out of it -- those little gremlins you know -- but it didn’t. He shrugged and lost all interest in the conundrum.
“End of story?”
Nope.
The next day we are at Menard’s and I see they have vacuum bags. What the heck! I thought and went to check to see if the had MM bags for my Eureka Boss and they did! Yay!
I have a window where my housework gets done. If it’s not done in that window, chances are it’s not going to get done that day. We were past that window for that day. But the next day I get out my brand spanking-new bags and open them up and…
What!
AA! I need MM! Did I get the wrong ones? I checked the bag and nope! They say MM on the outside.
“They aren’t going to believe you at Menard’s,” doubtful Me says to Myself.
“You think I want to make another trip back to the store?” Myself replies.
“You’d be surprised what people will do to cheat a store out of a buck,” Me says.
But I wouldn’t. And I didn’t. And I took them back.
“Look at this,” I told the gal at Costumer Service. “MM on the outside, but look.” I pulled them out and opened them up and they said AA.
“They were sealed when you bought them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Can I just exchange them?”
“Yeah, go and get another one.”
So off I went, to the far reaches of the store where the sweeper bags are kept and when I get there I see there are four more on the rack. I check the first one and it’s another miss-marked package.
“How can you tell?” you wonder.
The MM has a full piece of cardboard front, the AA has only that little half piece and I could feel it through the package without opening it. I checked the next one and it was wrong too.
Oh pooh! I think and think I’m going to be SOL (pooh outta luck). But the last two happened to be right. Whew! I took three packages back up to customer service. “These two are wrong too,” I told her, then I showed her how I could tell.
“I’ll be darned,” she said.
I felt vindicated, you know what I mean?
“Did you ever find whatever it was you sucked up?” you wonder.
No, I never did. I still have hopes it will show up though, then I’ll get to say Ah-ha! In the meantime, I have to tell you that I was vacuuming the next day and not thinking about anything in particular and it hits me like a ton of bricks!
“What does, Peg?” you say.
That morning, the morning I sucked up the cap or whatever it was, I had picked up a small spray bottle of lens cleaner from the floor. Andrew or the cats had knocked it down and it had rolled under the foot kick of the counter and it didn’t have a cap on it. I barely registered picking it up and I never put it together until that moment. I’m just sure I sucked up the cap to that bottle but where it is today? I don’t have a clue. But this I know.
It’s not in the vacuum bag.
Life’s mysteries.
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