Diane

           Oh my goodness!

          Between the thirty-four pictures I didn’t have time to show you last time and thirty-seven new ones this time, I hardly know where to start. I’m thinking if I don’t get to last week’s missed photos this week, you’ll likely never see them. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know.

          My cute little redheaded sister was coming this week. She was coming east to visit one of her sons and his family and since she was that close, she would come to see us, too.

          It’s no secret that I dislike vacuuming and dusting. I threatened, three weeks ago, in my morning love note to my peeps, to vacuum my floors. Stuff happened and for one reason or another it got put off, then postponed, then delayed, then deferred, and before you knew it, a week had passed.

          Only two weeks until Diane’s visit. If I vacuum this week, I’ll just have to vacuum again next week! I thought.

          “I’m saving up the housework,” I told my oldest and much-adored sister. She laughed.

          Cleaning the apartment that no one’s lived in for six years was a J-O-B job! I thought I was going to be able to clean it one day and our house the next. So, what do I do? I want until two days before Diane’s scheduled arrival to start cleaning.

          “You just can’t get in a hurry about that stuff,” to quote my handsome neighbor Lamar Kipp. He put off installing a handrail on the basement steps for fifteen years.

          “We’d better turn the water on a few days early in case we have to fix something,” my handsome mountain man said.

I thought that was a pretty smart idea. We got our phones out so we could talk to each other during the process. Mike turned on the water and waited by the valve for a quick shut-off while I went into the apartment and checked all the pipes for leaks.

There were none.

Cleaning day arrived. Going through the garage from our house to the apartment, we see a puddle.

“Something in the bathroom’s leaking,” Mike said.

Luckily, it was just a connection under the sink that needed tightening. We sopped up the water, put a fan on it to facilitate drying, and kept an eye on it. After a few hours, I checked and there was a very slight dampness around the connection. It wasn’t quite sealed but we were afraid too much tightening would break something.

“I don’t think it’s enough to worry about,” I said. “We can slide a pan under it for now and fix it later.” Sometimes those really small leaks will seal themselves, and that’s what we were hoping for.

I worked on the kitchenette first, wiping out all the cabinets. Mike had already taken off the top layer of grime when he put the ceiling back up and painted.

Opposite the kitchenette is the living room. The furniture was wiped down and polished.

I evicted several spiders while cleaning. Orb weavers are kind of cool spiders so I took all of those outside and set them free. The other kind of spider I came across was the cellar spider and those guys I just sucked down the vacuum cleaner hose. Does that make me a racist? I wondered as I chased yet another running spider with the hose. Spiders don’t have races they have species. I guess that makes me a specie-ist.

          Mike worked on the breezeway and got that looking pretty good.

The apartment has one bedroom which is barely wide enough for a queen bed. You have to turn sideways and shimmy down the wall to get in the bed.   

           But it’s long enough for a dresser on the other end.         

           At the end of the first day, I’d finished everything that I wanted to do except sweeping and mopping the floors.

I checked the cabinet under the bathroom sink to see how wet it was and it was still damp. I didn’t want mold to grow so the next day I put a small heater inside and shut the doors. I checked it often because I didn’t want to melt anything or start a fire.

I finished the floors and checked the bathroom sink. There was a puddle and it was dripping worse than ever. Now we had no choice but to crank on the nut a little harder.

“First, let’s take it apart and put a squirt of WD-40 on the washer,” Mike said. “It’ll let it slide and not bunch up.”

This time we got the leak to stop and we didn’t crack or break any of the pipes. But it was wet again. I opted to use the fan and not the heater.

Mike and I did a final walk-through to make sure we’d gotten everything done in the apartment that we wanted to get done.

“It’s cleaner than when we lived here,” Mike said.

“That’s because there wasn’t any junk to clean around,” I justified. Between that and my dislike of housework, that is.

I spent the rest of Tuesday doing what I could on our house. “It’ll just have to be good enough,” I told Mike.

Diane called me Wednesday mid-morning to let me know when she was leaving for our house and what time we could expect her. She wouldn’t be here until late in the afternoon. That gave me another half day to work on our house.

About the time I thought Diane would be rolling in, my phone rang. It was her.

          “Hello!” I cheerfully say. “Where are you?”

          “I’m in Tunkhannock at a charging station.” She’d told me that there was a chance she would get an electric car. Looks like she did.

“When will you be here?” I asked.

“It says it’ll be seven hours until it’s fully charged.”

          “Does it have enough charge to get here?” Mike asked. “If it has the right plug, we can plug it in here and let it charge overnight.”

          “I don’t know,” Diane said.

          After much discussion back and forth, we decided to rescue her.

          Crossing the Susquehanna.

          Freshly painted totem poles. I didn’t realize they had three of them.     

 

          Pointing out a bumper sticker on the truck ahead of us, I said, “I wonder what that says.” Thinking about it for a few minutes, I guessed, “It probably says Where in the hell is Coon Valley?”

          We found Diane with little trouble.

          Her car tells her all the charging stations in the area and if they are a slow or rapid charge. “I’m just gonna go down to Scranton and use the rapid charge,” she said. “It’ll take like ten minutes to charge.”

          We all piled in the EV and chatted away the twenty-some miles.

          “Is the road open,” I asked Mike when I saw what road we were on. It had been closed because of recent flooding.

          “I think it was only closed the one day,” Mike said.

          They were still working to clear and fix the road but at least one lane was open.

          We found the rapid charge machines at a Sheetz gas station. Diane got the car plugged in, inserted her credit card, and got the juice flowing.

          “Thirty-three minutes to full,” we read from the display screen.

          “Way better than seven hours!” Diane said.

          The time passed quickly.

          A mural across from where we were charging.

          It was getting dark by the time we left Scranton and headed back to Tunkhannock.

Because we were anticipating Diane’s arrival, we’d held off on supper. I’d called several restaurants on the way and everything would be closed or getting ready to close by the time we would get there.

          “Let’s just eat at Perkin’s. They don’t close until ten,” I said. "And it’s right down the road.”

          There weren’t many people eating at eight-thirty so between one other couple and us, we had the place to ourselves.

          Diane is her mother’s daughter, let me tell you. I watched her, the way she ate, her mannerisms, and could see our mother.      

             The next day was already planned out. Breakfast, graveyard, home to make pumpkin roll and homemade bread.

          A couple of road pictures on our way to Dushore, although I’m sure you’ve seen them before.

         We’re sitting in the restaurant chatting when I notice Diane has slowly picked up one straw after another until she’d gotten all four and was fiddling with them.

          “Are you going to weave those all together?” I asked and nodded to the straws in her hands.

          She glanced down and seemed only then to be aware of what she was doing. She laughed.

          “I wanna try basket weaving someday,” I told her. “You know that basket in the finch cage? I paid eleven dollars for that! And it was a cheap one! I bet I could go out and collect my own dried grass and make one myself.”

          “It’s a lot easier to buy one,” Mike pointed out.

          “Yes,” Diane agreed and tipped her head, “but it’s not as satisfying.”

          Walking out of the restaurant, standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross the street, Mike commented on the water trucks. “Look at them all! I bet there’s fifty water trucks!”

          That might be an exaggeration but there were a lot!

          “Can we go past the pajama factory and show Diane the factory that Mark’s parents used to own?” I asked. Mark is married to our beautiful cousin Lorraine.

          “Sure,” Mike said.

          Cresting a hill behind the factory, I exclaimed, “There’s the church and graveyard!” I guess every other time I was up this way I was too busy seeing other things to notice it peeking up in the distance.

          We get to the T at the end of the road and the old school is there. Mike normally makes a left and goes back out to the main road at this point.

          “Can we go up past the front of the school?” I asked.

          Mike took a right and much to my surprise pulled into the driveway of the old place. I’d never seen the back of it before. Mike pulled off into a grassy area and we sat there looking for a few minutes.

          “I’m going to go look in the windows,” I said, pulling on the door handle and getting out.

          Diane followed.

          “DON’T GO INSIDE!” Mike yelled from his open window.

          “I WON’T!” I yelled back.

           I took a bunch of pictures but I’m only gonna show you a few.

          The first thing we notice is the wall of doors. It looks like they all lead to the same slender room.

          “What’re all the doors for?” Diane wondered.

          “It may have been a coat room,” I’m guessing. “So more than one kid can hang their coats and there won’t be a traffic jam with just one door.”

          The second floor collapsed.

          Mike moved the car down closer to us. “Day’s a-wasting!” he calls.

          “Enjoy this day, this moment,” Diane says. She was and she wasn’t ready to go. Everywhere she looked she was filled with new wonder.

          “Look at the stairs and the lights hanging on the second floor!” she exclaimed. 

          Visiting Mom, Dad, and brother Mike was next.

          Heading up the graveyard road, I see three cats on a porch. Two on the steps, one on the railing. Little did I know I’d see (and photograph) two more cats before this trip was over.

          Diane and me. In case you can’t tell us apart (just kidding!) Diane is on the left. Which means I’m on the right! But I bet you figured that one out for yourself. 

          Coming down off the hill is where I see another cat, this one in a window. 

          We stop at the Jolly Trolley for a souvenir mug.

          We pass the old hotel as we’re leaving town and point out where the train trestle used to pass over the road.

          “Let’s show her the depot,” I suggested.

          Mike made a U-turn.

          I got out, turned, and took a picture of Diane taking a picture of the depot.

          We had several choices of roads to take home. “You wanna see the house Phyllis was born in or the metal yard art?” we asked Diane.

          “The house doesn’t mean much to me,” she answered, “I think I’d enjoy the yard art more.”

          “This is something else I’d like to try,” I told her as Mike slowly drove us past.

          “Do it,” she said.

          “You have to own a junkyard to have materials and I don’t,” I said. But I also know you can go to a junkyard and buy stuff, but I didn’t say that. Welding a metal sculpture is on my Someday list.

          Under one of the outbuildings is where I saw the last cat, sitting just as pretty as you please. 

          Mike has a painting he found in a Chicago parking lot more than seventy years ago. His mom let him take it home and he’s had it ever since. No matter which way you turn it, you see something in it.

          Diane was fascinated with it. She checked out the canvas, the way it was attached to the frame, and the frame itself.

          “See these circles?” she asked. “I thought the rest of the stuff was normal cracking but now I’m not so sure. These circles are too perfect. Too even. Too regular. It just wouldn’t crack that way. It makes me wonder if there isn’t a painting underneath.”

          She was pondering all the lines when inspiration struck Mike. “Maybe if you hold it up to the light you’ll see something.”

          And sure enough! We did! There is something underneath. We just don’t know what.

         We see things that look like flowers and branched trees. Lots of patterns. But we can’t see the whole thing at once so we have no idea what we’re looking at.

“I don’t think they’re painted on. I don’t know how you could paint such evenly thin and consistent lines with a brush. Maybe a bottle with a fine tip? Could they be something like threads?” I asked.

          “I don’t think they’re threads. I was thinking something like a pen maybe. Let’s look at it out in the sunshine.”

          We took it outside but we had the same problem as we did holding it up to a lightbulb. You need a light table.

          “But I’ll tell you one thing. The canvas is breaking down. See the holes where the sunlight is coming through?” Diane said.

          It was so exciting to discover there was something hidden in a painting Mike’s owned for so long but no idea what to do about it.

          We spent the rest of the afternoon baking and chatting. We made pumpkin rolls, homemade bread, and chili for our supper. Afterward, we played games.

          “Remember playing Double Solitaire with Mom? She never LET us win. If we won it was fair and square,” I said.

          “I never played Double Solitaire with Mom. I don’t even know how to play it,” Diane said.

          We played Double Solitaire. We played Quiddler, our beloved Aunt Marie’s favorite game. We played Rummikub. Then we went back and played Quiddler until ten-thirty. It was so much fun but it was time to quit when we started making up our own words.

          “Cert,” Diane says laying her cards down.

          “I don’t think that’s a word,” I told her.

          “You know, a cert?”

          I laughed. “That’s one word and it’s not spelled like that.”

          The next morning we played a couple of quick rounds of Quiddler before she had to leave.

          It was a good visit with my younger sister. 

          Let’s call this one done!