Mid-Hill Farm

I live near a farm. It used to be a dairy and crop farm, but times are a-changing. The owners have sold most of their land. Part of it has been turned into a driving range. The fields where they used to do corn field mazes every October has been sold to the county to be converted into a park. The family lives at the top of a small hill in a sprawling ranch-style home which I would love to live in. It is beautiful. The family is amazingly friendly and welcomes visitors.

A few years ago we were at an event that our community holds every year called the Fall Festival. They used to hold this at the farm. At this event I met the man in charge of taking care of the machinery. His name is Marvin and he is a cross between Santa and Merle Olsen. This gentle giant told me that the dog that normally ran loose in and around the property was harmless and so it would be perfectly safe for me to bring Joy to see the animals. The dog’s name was To-Be because he “just wants TO-BE loved.” And loved him Joy did.

And so, for the past 3 years, we have visited the mid-hill farm to see the animals. There are donkeys, alpacas, watusi, deer, ducks, and geese. We take apples and carrots and bread and cereal and peanuts to feed the animals, probably every two or three weeks. Joy especially loves the donkeys. They are loud and bold and their teeth make her laugh. She gets a little skittish at the very last second that they are taking food from her hand and she usually drops it on the ground. They don’t mind in the least.

The alpacas are very curious, but very shy and easily scared. Marlo likes them the best because they are quiet and gentle and calm. They never eat any of the food we try to feed them—at least not while we’re there—but it doesn’t stop Marlo from trying. If I forget to give her some “pet food” to give to them, she doesn’t mind. She shares from her personal stash of gold fish or graham crackers. The kid’s got quite an arm.

The ducks are very animated and the geese are mostly just mean. It is fun to see them fly away, honking…and we always know when they return from their trips. The deer named Spike is easy to feed because he is missing teeth and he can’t bite. That’s always a plus.

We always come home, reluctantly, from our visit to the country in the middle of our city with wind in our hair, fresh air in our lungs, and sunshine in our hearts. What an amazing gift to give the girls—an up close and personal look at these animals. And what an amazing family, these former farmers, who own this land. They welcome visitors onto their property to enjoy their animals. They invite the community to church and community sponsored events that they hold in their “yard”. In this day and age, they certainly don’t make neighbors like that anymore

And To-Be? Marvin told us that To-Be kept running out into the street and was finally picked up by animal control, never To-Be seen again. Joy remembers him every time we go to the farm or pass it on our way to some other destination. Both girls wave at their “friends” and Joy says, “Mom, remember To-Be?” I’m dreading the day that the girls might say, “Mom, remember the animals that used to live here?”

There just isn’t enough stuff like this anymore, at least not where I live: generous neighbors, green fields, farm animals at our fingertips, and friends that just want to be loved. I know the day will come that the farm house will disappear and the animals along with it. I’m hoping it won’t be for a long, long, long time. When that day arrives I will have to just recall the words of J. M. Barrie…”God gave us memory that we might have roses in December.”

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

We had eggs

I never was a big fan of the dyeing of the eggs at Easter. Maybe I was when I was little, but I can remember dyeing eggs as a teenager at Gigi’s and not being very fond of it. I always liked the way the paper towels (I used to dry my hands or the eggs on) turned out more than the way the eggs did. And Gigi ALWAYS wanted us to wear gloves on Easter to cover up the dye on our fingers—no eggceptions (Maybe she always wanted us to dye eggs so we would stain our fingers so we would HAVE to wear gloves. Gigi?)

I am beginning to realize that a lot of my aversions stem from holidays at Grandma’s house. Every Easter when I was little we would go to church, then the entire extended family would convene at Grandma’s for an Easter feast. All of the cousins would bring their basket of eggs for a gigantic Easter egg hunt and then we’d sit down to eat. Our gross boy cousins would then crack and peel several of their Easter eggs, slather them with ketchup (of all things!) and stuff the whole thing into their mouths, with crumbly egg and ketchup oozing out of the corners. I’m not eggsaggerating.(Waiting for the gag reflex to pass…) Who eats eggs like that? (My cousins, that’s who, but besides them?) My guess is no one in civilized society.

Fortunately for me, Marlo is not eggsactly interested in dyeing eggs yet. She IS into furiously coloring them after they are dyed. Joy, however, could hardly contain herself all day long (on Saturday) in anticipation of dyeing the eggs. I tried to minimize the time spent on this endeavor, but there is only a certain amount of corner cutting you can do…the boiling, the mixing of the dyes (we used food coloring this year), doing a scavenger hunt for the egg dippers, covering the table and the kiddos with stainable clothing/table cloths. Finally it was time—and do you know how much time it took Joy to dye 18 eggs? 4 minutes. I guess if I actually liked the dyeing of the eggs, I’d be a little miffed. All that time and energy spent on the preparation and build up for 4 minutes?

So here it is: I don’t mind that it took the better part of a day to prepare for a 4 minute activity. Joy was proud of her work. Marlo embellished to her little heart’s content, and 4 minutes later I was thrilled that it was over, eggstatic even!

Good-bye, Peter Cottontail…see you next year!



Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

The People on Your Street

We moved to our olive-colored house during my last month of first grade and we didn't move from there until the year before I graduated college. Some of the neighbors were there before we came and may be there still. We invented fanciful names for all of them and sometimes exaggerated stories. You have already heard of Paty, who lived right next door on the corner. We were the second house on the right, with a big pine tree in the front yard. Third house, on our other side, was a family of four, and the dad drove a Mercedes, which was a big deal on our street. We called them (secretly), the dad: MercED, the mom, MerceLINDA, the elder son, MercErry, and the baby, MercASON. The dog was MercIGGSY. You may have realized by now, we made up our own fun, a lot.

The other side of the street on the corner were two brothers who always wore diapers with cowboy boots (when they were toddlers!!). Straight across was a newspaper editor and his wife, he would come home and have a beer and pretzels and share with us, the pretzels, I mean, not the beer.

Next to the newspaper man, a sea captain and his wife moved in and put in a pool (also a big deal on the street). We tried to make friends so we would get invited to swim, but somehow, she never wanted two pestery little girls in her backyard, so we called her Mary and did endless imitations of her squatting to water the lawn (why they put in a pool and not sprinklers, I don't know)...the funny part was imitating the cigarette she was always holding (no smokers in our family, it was taboo and therefore instantly funny) and her gravelly voice when she would yell at her dog, Skipper, when he would try to run out of the yard, "Skaaaaypaaaah!"

Next to her was Uncle Sam, who was nice and always brought us fresh plums from his tree in season. Just like we would share our bountiful harvest of oranges every year from the tree in the backyard. Uncle Sam had several high school age children, one son, Chris, who I thought was my true love and caused much embarrassment for me on several occasions.

Further down the street, it gets a little murky, because we weren't allowed to play out of Gigi's eyesight or range of her voice. There were a few other people, Merona and her sister on our side, four houses from the other end, and Karen across from them, who went to school with Paty.

We also had a lady mailcarrier for awhile, which was foreign to us, all our childhood books clearly showed that was a man's job(!) So, we were convinced she was an infiltrator, especially when she parked her mail jeep in front of Paty's house and she got out and sat in Paty's yard with a brown paper bag and cracked something on a tree trunk in code (later inspection after she left showed it was just hard-boiled eggs for lunch).

Such was our childhood cast of characters.

Then, Busy Body reminded me that:

I forgot Jimmy the milkman, Richard who stepped on my kite (the one I got as a reward for reading at school, blue, with a green gingham tail), in the houses behind ours: Brian R. and Becky M. (who was Mormon and couldn't have caffeine), Terry who ate dog food on a dare, Kelly G. who was wild and nasty (according to Paty) and therefore forbidden as a friend, the perfect Cathy O. (seriously, she always looked like a barbie or a mouseketeer), and of course, Jo and Danny--the developmentally-challenged girl and the bully whose dad was meaner than a junkyard dog...OK, maybe not, we never really met him, but his front yard looked like a junkyard. There was also that little kid who lived at the end of our street (between Paty's and Trevor's) whose grandpa (the neighborhood molestor) sat in his pickup truck all day long. And that little boy, Mony, who moved in next door to Jo and Danny--which I bet gave them the shock of their lives!

Remember Mary and her daughter Sandy were going to take Jo in and "fix" her and then Danny threw his skateboard at Sandy's car and there was almost a riot on the street because the Junkyard Dog-dad had to come over to talk to Mary about it? Also, don't forget when two sets of step-brothers and sisters moved in next door, peeping tom-ed into busy-body's window every night while blaring music to profess the eldest brother's love for her, and then the eldest sister stole half of our lemonade stand money when she just sat in the lemonade stand all day and contributed nothing.

Did anyone else grow up in such a colorful neighborhood? Or did we just have overactive imaginations?

Posted by The Editor.

Ballet Revisited

When I was three Gigi put me in ballet. I loved it. It was fun and interesting because my teacher had a Spanish accent and I had a lot of trouble understanding her. Gigi would ask me after class how I liked it and how the class had gone for the day. I would tell her, “It was fun, but Miss Blanca likes to clean a lot. She’s always talking about Lysol.” Gigi was very confused, until she heard Miss Blanca say ‘Let’s all’—which (in my defense) did sound a lot like ‘Lysol’.

I loved the leotards and tights and ballet slippers and tutus. I loved the bar exercises and all of the moves and music. I loved it all—at least that’s how I remember it.

I do remember that there were parts that were VERY challenging for me. Skipping almost put me over the edge. I could do one knee up, but not the other one. Gigi had to walk me to class and home for a couple of weeks to help me learn how to skip—with both legs.

And then there’s the whole left-right thing. I have always had trouble remembering my left from my right. It’s very tricky when it comes to a lot of things like following directions, driving, dancing—and when I was three, it was very tricky for ballet. It made it even more complicated for the recital. I was really worried about messing up because of this problem. And so Gigi came to the rescue. She made me a wrist band, out of a ribbon, Velcro, and a flower, to put on my right wrist so I could remember. It’s a good thing, too, because when the recital rolled around my class of 12 or so dwindled down to 2 and the other girl refused to go on stage. My teacher stood behind the curtain and did our “I’m a Little Tea Pot” routine with me. If I hadn’t had that wrist band, I couldn’t have remembered which was my handle and which was my spout.

That was the end of my ballet career. Other things came up, there wasn’t time or money or whatever and I just never took classes again. And I guess that’s why it’s so much fun to watch Joy in her class. She was DYING to take ballet for the longest time and we finally got her into a class in January. We got her the required attire, we prepped her (mentally) as best we could, and took her to class. And she was very serious and dedicated for the first class and a half. And midway through the second class she decided that there was more to ballet than just being a serious student.

Parents are not allowed in the room, but we can watch through the window. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I can see her talking—almost the entire class. And I see the teacher saying, “OK, now let’s…” and then Joy starts talking again. I think she talks more than the teacher. And then they start their warm ups and exercises. Joy must think that flinging herself onto the floor or making wacky faces is a way to show the teacher (and probably me) how passionate she is about ballet. She spends more time falling on the floor than she does doing plies. (And, mind you, I only get to watch the class in 20 second intervals because I am chasing Marlo around the studio.) But in those 20 second snippets, I see Joy doing belly flops on the floor, eating her snack, spilling her drink, whipping her hair around, and hanging on the bar “I Love Lucy” style.

There are a few things that remind me of my former dancing days. For one, she gets confused with her right and her left. Miss Kris has to get her to do her individual exercises (usually) more than once because she’s on the wrong foot. That doesn’t bother her in the least—just ask her, she’ll talk you through the whole thing, and give you the play by play, then recap it about 20 times just in case you missed something. Another thing that brings back some memories is that there are certain things she has trouble doing—not skipping, because they don’t skip in her class, but other things cause her problems. And I smile because I know eventually she’ll get it.

Sometimes when she’s acting like a goof I am thankful that I have to run around after Marlo because I can pretend that I don’t see what she’s doing. Other times I try to get her attention to get her to stop messing around and pay attention to the teacher, but she catches sight of me out of the corner of her eye, and then she purposely ignores me. There really are no words—what can I say? She’s 4 and she loves life and she loves to dance. And I love her.

What else is there to say?


Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

My Dirty Little Secret

I think Gigi was raised under the premise that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. Our house was always immaculate when we were growing up. Not a single couch cushion out of place, not a piece of hair in the hairbrushes, all hand-washed dishes put away immediately after every meal. I don’t know how she did it, but everything was always perfect.

Sometimes I wonder how it is that I never sent her to the looney bin, and here’s why…

When the Editor and I were little little, we lived in an apartment. The “backyard” was the size of a postage stamp with a little patch of dirt. One of our favorite things to do was dig a hole, insert a hose into the hole, and wait for the dirt to turn into mud. We would then wade into the mud and make mud pies to throw at the back side of the apartment. We were so filthy at the end of this that we had to be stripped down and immediately thrown into the bathtub. The bathtub had to be drained and refilled several times before the swamp creature effect started to wash away. (I was too little at the time to notice, but I am sure the tub had to be scrubbed with quite a bit of elbow grease to get rid of the grime we left behind.)

One time Paty and I decided that we were going to play restaurant. (I do not know why the Editor was not with us on this one—she was usually my best partner in grime.) In my little mind, it seemed that the best thing to use to play restaurant was the discarded food containers and boxes from our houses. The best place to find these items, without anyone getting upset that we were using them, was in the trash can. I didn’t think about the grossness of the situation or the filth or any of the other disgustingness that went along with this, but I’m here to tell you that playing restaurant with those things—empty ice cream cartons, empty coke bottles, empty mac n’ cheese boxes—now that was great fun! This kept us busy for hours, days, weeks even—until Gigi caught onto what we were doing. And that cleanliness gene she inherited kicked in and put the kibosh on our good times. I guess she was so busy being next to godliness that she didn’t know that one parent’s trash is another kid’s treasure.

Our aunt was a sewer (as in seamstress, not as in sewage). She could whip up anything on her sewing machine. (Gigi could too, but Gigi had little girls constantly underfoot which wasn’t always the best thing for sewing.) I don’t know why but one time our aunt made a bunch of little stuffed animals. I don’t recall all the specific kinds she made, but I do remember little wedge-shaped chicks. They were very cute, and as it turned out, a lot of fun. Our aunt made us the lucky recipients of a ton of these little animals. Instead of letting these toys go to waste by letting them sit prettily on a shelf or our beds, we made a game with them, appropriately named ‘Chickie Mess’. The Ed would sit on a twin bed on one side of the room, I would sit on the twin bed on the other side of the room. The goal of the game was to get ALL of the chickies (and other various animals) onto the bed of the other sister. As you can imagine, this was a LOT of fun—chickies flying through the air, little girls laughing and screaming and jumping on the beds. Now, for some strange reason, Gigi did not like this game. We could hear her coming (how, with all the racket going on in the thick of the game, I do not know) by the sound of her slippers, and her usually soft voice booming, “Girls!” And, just as she’d open the door, we’d stuff the chickies into the crack between the bed and the wall, and look up at her in the door way, saying (all wide eyed and innocent), “What, Mom?” (As if she didn’t know what we were doing.) I guess Chickie Mess was just too much of a mess for Gigi. One day we went to go play it and mysteriously, the chickies (and friends) were missing. Hmmmm….

Our house was next door to Paty’s house. The front corner of our garage was directly across from the front corner of her front porch. We spent many hours, standing there, in between the houses, hatching plans, chatting, scheming, and for some reason, pulling the berries off of a holly-like bush at that corner of our garage, and writing on the side wall of the garage. It wasn’t easy to do—the wall was stucco. It wasn’t particularly fun, either. I have no idea why we did it—I guess it was just something to do with our hands while we stood there scheduling our free time. This must have gone on for months. Finally one day either the Norwegian or Gigi saw the graffiti and that was the end of that. They sent me and the Ed out to clean it up. They didn’t say how or with what, but nevertheless, it was our responsibility to clean up our mess. So, obediently we went out to do it, but didn’t exactly know how to accomplish it. Luckily for us, Paty came over to offer her wisdom. She told us that mud is very cleansing. And so, being the resourceful girls that we were, we got a bucket and a shovel and the hose…and we gave the side of the house a very thorough facial (not unlike what we did to the apartment wall). Now, I don’t know if Gigi saw what we were doing and sent the Norwegian out, or if the Norwegian just came out himself to check on our progress, but the bottom line was that they were not happy with our choice of cleaning methods. To make matters worse, the “authority” on the cleansing mud idea vanished when the Norwegian rounded the corner. (Paty often did that. She was very good with selling her views and ideas to us, but not so much with the parental units.) So, the Norwegian decided that we had to stand there and watch him do the job right. He got a bucket and some kind of soap and a scrub brush. (Well, sure, anyone could clean it THAT way!) Needless to say, after that experience, our tagging days were over.

I guess sometime during my second year of college the cleanliness gene woke up in me. I realized that Gigi might have been onto something all those years. I began to appreciate the benefits of a clean living area. I became a clean freak. So much so that when the Editor and I lived together my senior year of college, we would clean our townhouse into the wee hours of the morning, probably to the major irritation of our shared-wall neighbor. He probably didn’t care that we were cleaning, but that we would sing “Cleanliness is next to godliness that’s why we’re cleaning at 2 in the morning” to the tune of “Memories” in a super high voice at the top of our lungs. I would clean and clean and clean until not a speck of dirt dared to show its ugly little face in my house.

And that lasted…until I became a mother. It’s not that I don’t still want to have a clean house, but the hours in my day get swallowed up by other things (mostly by wanting to spend time playing with the girls, rather than cleaning) and I guess that deep down, I have to stay true to my roots—roots that go deep down into the (not so clean) dirt!

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Sky Diving

When I was in sixth grade my teacher did a lot of projects—and made us do a lot of projects as well. One of her favorite things was to have us present oral book reports dressed up as the main character. I have NEVER been a fan of public speaking so I found this very annoying. And I always read books that didn’t have “normal” main characters—especially when it came to biographies. The one biography I can remember in particular was about Amelia Earhart. I LOVED reading about her. She was a very interesting character, indeed. (I also loved Amelia Bedelia books—maybe it was just the name????) But I digress…

Of course, we did not have an Amelia Earhart costume. My mom (Gigi) always LOVED getting into the projects with joyful enthusiasm, much to my dismay. For my Amelia book report she decided that we should go to the Army surplus store. She got me some goggles, earphone set with a microphone, and a parachute. I had a jacket that could pass as an aviator’s jacket and we tucked some pants into boots and topped the whole thing off with a white scarf. Thankfully we did not take a picture. But I have to say, as mortifying as the whole experience was, I looked pretty authentic (for a school book report) and the goggles helped me to feel like I was covered up, so all in all, it was not as entirely embarrassing as it could have been. I think we only had to do 19 of these throughout the school year. Miss Clements had quite an imagination, God love her!

Gigi recently (recently as in about a year ago) brought me the costume box for Joy and Marlo to play dress up in their many adventures in Playland. At the bottom of the box was the parachute and headgear from my book report. Joy and Marlo are deeply entrenched in the fairy princess phase of their dress up life, so the aviator stuff is usually at the bottom of the box, forgotten and ignored.

A few nights ago I received an unexpected break in my very busy life. When we got home from work, Hubs gallantly offered to make albondigas for dinner. I didn’t have to do anything except play with the kids. I bathed them first, just to get it out of the way, and then we headed to the loft to play. After a few minutes of general chaotic excitement, they settled in to play dress up. Joy put on the former flower girls dress…Marlo put on a tutu. They started playing music and dancing, and I looked down into the bottom of the box and there was Amelia’s parachute.

I took the parachute out of the box and looked over it. I don’t think I had ever really done that before. But that night, in the midst of two magical fairy princesses dancing their hearts out, I decided that this parachute warranted a second look. I pulled all of the fasteners off and moved all of the belts and buckles. There was not parachute inside. There were rubber band looking things at the ends and the parachute lines had been cut. And then I turned it over and there was a little place right in the middle that said Data and Information. As I looked closer I realized it was a pocket. I reached inside the pocket and there was a little card—with handwritten entries on the card! The chute holder had been manufactured in 1943 and was used until 1964. And the most interesting part of all was that the owner of the chute was a man who lived in the next town over from me! (If they put stuff like this in history books, I might have enjoyed history a little bit more.)

The next item on my very busy agenda is to look this man up and find out if he or his family still live at that address. And then if I can locate him, I’m going to take him his parachute holder and have a chat with him. And hopefully learn a lot more than I learned for my oral book report. And thank him for his service to our country.

This story reminds me of an email someone once sent me. I remembered the title of the story and looked it up online. It’s a good story with a great message:



I packed your parachute!

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ' You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down! 'How in the world did you know that?' asked Plumb. 'I packed your parachute,' the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, 'I guess it worked!' Plumb assured him, 'It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today.'
Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, 'I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.'
Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, 'Who's packing your parachute?' Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory - he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.
Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

And so there it is… a great big thank you to everyone (in this story) who has packed my parachute, including, but not limited to, Amelia Earhart, Gigi, Joy and Marlo, Miss Clements, and Mr. Ward, the parachute owner. Oh, yes, and Hubs for making dinner so I could learn something new from a 6th grade lesson…and be reminded of all of the blessings in my life who provide what I need to make it through the day.

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Life is not fair

Unfortunately we have always lived within driving distance from the Fair and my ENTIRE family (growing up) always loved to go…me—not so much. One year I had perfect attendance at school and a mother who shall remain an unnamed Gigi went to school and arranged with the principal and teacher for me to miss school one day to go to the Fair (of all places). I only had to do 3x the work to make up for my absence. After she did all this orchestrating I negotiated with unnamed Gigi and convinced her it was in her best interest to let me stay home. Of course I couldn’t actually go to school because that would have been too complicated. No, I had to stay with someone, worrying about the load of homework I was facing and bemoaning the perfect attendance record that was no more.

I guess I just don’t understand the Fair…from start to finish. Why is it called the Fair? I think it should be called the UN-Fair and here’s why: There is nothing “fair” about it. I guess technically the weather is fair, but when it’s in the blazing dog days of summer, rainy would actually be a welcome relief. There is nothing fair about the attendees at the Fair. The Fair seems to draw every walk of life—even some I didn’t know existed. And then you mix these various walks with the hotter than heck weather and you get some not so fair smells, although I have come to categorize these smells as distinctly “Fair” smells. (Not so good.) The other Fair smells, like all that fried food, mingled with the attendees’ aromas is enough to make anyone want to gag. OK, well, I guess not anyone, but ME. It makes me want to gag. (If you would like to recall, I am the un-American girl who cannot eat French Fries, popcorn, hot dogs, or red meat. That’s another story for another day, but fried, processed food—especially the smell of it—is not my forte.) Don’t even get me started on the animal section of the joint! And then you’ve got the carnival rides. The rides seem to be held together with duct tape and safety pins. Yikes! And no matter where you step, the ground is sticky. Nothing makes me want to just come out of my skin like stepping in something sticky, which leads me to the restrooms. The restrooms should be sealed with crime scene tape OR they should pass out biohazard suits at the door. Seriously.

And then there are the buildings. There seem to be endless rows of never-ending buildings filled with displays, exhibits and all kinds of gadgets that work at the Fair, but never seem to have their intended effect at home. There is always too much stuff crammed into these buildings, with too many people shuffling through, all the while the product demonstrators barking at you. Inevitably someone steps on your foot a few or 27 times, elbows you in the back, knocks you over with their brand-new Sham Wow mop handle, or shoves you into the stacks of veggie choppers because they are trying to be one of the first fifty shoppers to get half price on the no-stick omelet/doughnut/stir-fry microwave genie attachment. A couple of hours minutes into this ordeal and I am ready to go home. Unfortunately, we always come in the same car, so there is no escape. I feel trapped in a crowded, noisy stench of all things UN-fair.

Now, add all these things together, along with a family who unreasonably and inexplicably loves to embrace these elements, and you have the recipe for an unhappy BusyBody. I have been fighting this yearly pilgrimage my whole life. Thank the good Lord the Fair only comes once a year.

In an effort to not seem so terrible and mean, I will admit there are a few (and I mean a VERY few) things that keep me from going over the edge on these outings. Number one: I do like to people watch. There is no shortage of material at the fair. Number two: there is one little shop that sells some very tasty fudge. If I can block the idea of vermin running rampant after everyone goes home at night*, I can eat a bite or two. Number three: if you go on a week day, it’s not as crowded and it closes at 10 pm. Thank heaven for small favors. And number four: unnamed Gigi loves the Fair. There is nothing better than watching her be delighted and excited at all of the fried food and the useless gadgets the Fair Folk try to fill you and your bags with. Most of the time I am truly my mother’s daughter…but the “I love the Fair” gene skipped over me. I guess seeing her enjoy it so much makes it tolerable for me.

And I suppose you are wondering why I am talking about it like it still happens—these forced outings to a place I cannot stand? After all, I am a grown adult, no longer required to travel to family activities with the family because I am too young to stay at school/home and fend for myself while the family ventures into the black hole otherwise known as “The Fair.” Well, as luck would have it, I was only granted a very short reprieve from my Fair sentence. I got married, and in one of those not-so-funny twists of fate, Hubs, as it turns out, shares that ridiculous love for the Fair with Gigi. Somehow or another they always manage to conspire to con/trick/bribe me into going. They play dirty and get Joy to beg…and that opens up a whole host of new germ/crowd/fear of carnival rides breaking down issues. Again, thank the good Lord that the Fair only comes once a year!

Oh, the crowds! Oh, the noise! Oh, the sickening smells! Life is definitely NOT fair!

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

*note from The Editor: This is an idea totally established by the original (1973) Charlotte's Web movie, do you remember Templeton's gluttonous night at the fair?

It was you, blue kangaroo, and the squirrels did it, too!

Joy checked out a charming little book from the library and we read it last night. It’s called “It was You, Blue Kangaroo” by Emma Chichester Clark. It’s about a little girl named Lily who blames all of her mischief on her little blue stuffed kangaroo. I guess this happens a lot—kids having a scapegoat for their naughtiness. Joy doesn’t specifically blame her antics on anyone else, she just says, “I don’t know who did that.” And she sticks to it, to the bitter end, if necessary.

Her mother actually had a scapegoat. Her mother used to go out to play and would get so engrossed in what she was doing that she would fail to go inside to go potty. She wet her pants. A lot. And when Gigi would ask her, “Why? Why did you wet your pants?” Joy’s mother would tell her, “I didn’t. The squirrels wet my pants.”

I guess Joy’s mother didn’t really think through the logistics of that statement—even though she used it consistently. How could squirrels wet your pants? Did she take them off and give them to the squirrels who then put them on and wet them, then gave them back? And while we are talking about squirrels, I am not sure where Joy’s mother came up with squirrels. There were no squirrels running around where Joy’s mother lived. I don’t think Joy’s mother had ever even seen a squirrel. The squirrels, nevertheless, took the fall, on a regular basis, for the wetting of Joy’s mother’s pants.

I guess that’s why Joy’s mother thinks “It was You, Blue Kangaroo” is so funny. And maybe someday she will let Joy in on the joke. Maybe. She just has to make sure the squirrels are gone for good and that no blue kangaroos come to take their place.

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body, who has always, obviously, been very busy.

Move over, Tylenol!

On Sunday Joy started coughing. It feels like she just got over a cold and now she’s coughing again. She insisted, on Sunday, that she felt fine, that she was NOT getting sick. On Monday, the cough started rattling in her chest, but she was still running around and playing and insisting that she was fine, that she was NOT getting sick. Early Tuesday morning (as in 3 am early) she woke up to go potty—and then it took another hour to go back to sleep because she was coughing and she had a little bit of a fever. On Tuesday when she woke up she was still running a temperature and I could tell by looking at her eyes that she just didn’t feel well. But, of course, she insisted she was NOT sick. I went to work and Gigi took care of her.

When I got home she was playing, quietly, in her room. (Clue #1 that she was sick.) At dinner she picked at her food. (Clue #2.) Then, instead of eating, she laid down on the couch. (Clue # 3). When Gigi chuckled at something cute she said, she got totally offended and left the room. (#4). At bath time, she told me that she did not want to take a bath with Marlo—she would wait for me to finish with Marlo, but she would lie on her bed and “rest her eyes” while she waited. (OK, that was the clincher.)

Before Marlo even got out of the bath Joy was asleep on her bed. She didn’t wake up when I pulled her clothes off and put a little sleep shirt on her. She is hardcore, though—she would not take any Tylenol or anything to help with the fever. And that is what this is about, kind of.

Back up there at clue #2—the picking at the food part, Gigi was trying to get her to eat. And she did eat a little bit. She had a quesadilla, salad, and orange slices on her plate. She ate the orange, had a couple of bites of salad, and drank some lemonade. But then she moved on to clue #3—lying on the couch. This was also when she decided that she was not going to take any Tylenol. I tried to coax her into taking some, then I tried bribing her, but she was pretty firm on her decision, and I decided that forcing the issue might make the situation worse, so I gave up. That’s when what this is about (kinda) took place.

Gigi said, “Would you eat a popsicle?” (I didn’t even know we had any…apparently the Norwegian went and got some yesterday—they were in the freezer.) Joy lethargically said yes, a purple one. So we gave her one and she slowly and dispassionately ate it. And while she ate that grape popsicle, Gigi told this story:

“When Samantha Jean Pocket was born I went to visit the Editor. While I was there the boys, Bubba and Stump, were sick most of the time. And since it was summer and it was hot, I suggested that we give them popsicles—they would cool them down and they would be getting some liquids, too. The Editor’s husband, the Italian, said, “Gigi, popsicles are your solution for all ailments.” I told him that they cool them down, the liquids thing, and that they have less sugar than apple juice even…and so, yes, I do recommend popsicles for sick kids.” Gigi said this with a little laugh and a little shrug of the shoulders.

The whole thing—the popsicles, the story, the laugh, the shoulders was so Gigi—but one part of it reminded me of Grandma. And that was the part where the Italian commented that her solution to all ailments is popsicles. That’s what this is about. No, Grandma did not prescribe popsicles for everything also. But she did have a solution for everything and it was an ointment called Kip. I have no idea where she got it—I’ve never seen it anywhere else but her house, but maybe I’m just not looking in the right places. But that’s not the point. The point is that any bump, bruise, scrape, cut, gash, or splinter could be healed by using kip. It became a family joke—stubbed your toe? Just get some Kip. Fell off your bike and scraped your knee? Just get some Kip. Accidentally cut off your finger while chopping a salad? Just get some Kip. We joked about it, but it was very cute—and (unintentionally) funny. And now popsicles are the new Kip, thanks to Gigi’s insistence that they can cure almost anything..

I am hoping that when Joy wakes up she will feel better, the cough will be gone and the fever will have faded away. If not I will try to get her to take some Tylenol, or perhaps I’ll just give her a popsicle. (I might try to use some Kip, but I don’t know where to find it!)

Ah, wouldn’t it be nice if popsicles and Kip could heal all of life’s hurts!

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Lila and Merona

In honor of the month of February, I want to share a tongue twister:

Lila's love laughs loudly.

Once, when we were young, we had a teddy bear tea party at our house and invited the kids from the street. One little girl, whom we called Merona (not her real name--a twist on Ramona of Beverly Cleary fame) attended and she was the source of much merriment with this tongue twister.

The game for the tea party was to sit in a circle and, when it was your turn, hold the microphone and say "Lila's love laughs loudly" three times in a row. When it was Merona's turn, she took the mike and said, "Lila's love laughs" and we all said, "loudly." So, she did it again with more volume, "Lila's Love Laughs" and we all said, "loudly." So, she did it again, but yelling this time "LILA'S LOVE LAUGHS!!"

Game over, we all laughed so hard.

Posted by The Editor.

Enchanting Paty

Growing up, our next door neighbor, Paty (short for Patricia), was larger than life to me. She was quite a few years older than I was. She was animated and imaginative and full of spunk and full of life. Sometimes she was just full of it—but I didn’t know any better. She was quite a few years older than I was and I thought she was way cool.

Paty was always telling us stories, and several of them have stuck in my head. They still make me chuckle when I think back to hearing them for the first time—and being amazed at what a colorful and eventful life she led (AND that I actually believed them!). Here are a couple for your reading pleasure…

Paty’s family was from Mexico. Her grandparents still lived there and she would go back to visit every so often. When she came back she would tell us the stories of ‘old Mexico.’ Her grandmother lived there with her aunts. Her grandfather had been buried somewhere on their property—in chains because he didn’t want to die. At night they could hear the chains rattling. It was her grandfather trying to get out of the grave. (Yes, I believed that one. Couldn’t sleep for days.) One day her aunt was alone in the house and some spirits started chasing her. (She wasn’t ever very clear as to why the spirits were chasing her, but what was apparent was that there are a lot of spirits running amuck in Mexico.) Anyway, she was running through the house and she tripped and fell near the fireplace. The family came home later to find her lying on the floor, unconscious. They had to wake her up with smelling salts. When she finally came to she started screaming—her hand had landed in the fire and three of her fingers had melted off. (Yep, I believed that one, too. I believed it so much that every time they had company next door I would run outside to look at everyone’s hands to see if anyone had missing melted fingers.)

Another time Paty had this beautiful leather purse with all kinds of designs engraved on the flap. Inside this purse she had some foam curlers (I had never seen these before) and some bubble gum. She told the Editor and me that the curlers were magic make up. We sat on her front porch for hours while she painstakingly and expertly applied this magic make up to our faces. She even gave us a piece of bubble gum at the end for sitting still and cooperating while she did our make overs. The only catch was that the make up wouldn’t appear until midnight. (We fell for this one, hook, line and sinker.)

The last one she told us was more like an urban legend story, but her version was supposedly based on personal experience. She told us that if we went into a bathroom and put water on the mirror, turned off all the lights, and said “Bloody Mary” three times that she (Bloody Mary) would show up—whoever Bloody Mary was. (Maybe she hitched a ride back with Paty from Mexico--??? Who knows? What I do know is that I had trouble going into a dark bathroom for years because I was terrified that Bloody Mary was gonna get me!)

The Editor and I told Gigi the night of the make overs that we HAD to stay up until midnight so we could see our make up. Poor Gigi. Not only did she have to put up with our antics, but she also had to do damage control with the crazy notions Paty put into our heads.

I think we did stay up until midnight. It was a combination of a few things that kept us up that late—yes, we wanted to see our make up, but we were also certain we could hear chains rattling and spirits running around, AND we were deathly afraid of going into the bathroom, at the stroke of midnight, to look into the mirror to see our make up. We were certain Bloody Mary would be there, staring out of the mirror, right into our beautifully made up faces!

I don’t remember how the night ended, but I can imagine that at midnight something set us (me and the Editor) off—we probably heard a noise or saw a shadow and our imaginations just went wild. We were prone to screaming that high pitched little girl scream that can wake the dead—so that was another thing that we had to worry about…the whole thing was probably not good. I am sure we woke up Gigi and the Norwegian. We probably got sent to bed without getting to see our make up, with fears of monsters haunting us…

And probably all the while Paty was asleep next door, dreaming of some new stories to tell us.


Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Hover craft and other tedium...

Busy Body and I used to have very exciting lives before we had children. She worked in CSI and I was an engineer in technology development. Don't ask me what I did, it was top-secret, classified, super-important stuff. Busy Body's work also required a lot of decorum and discretion to carry out the investigations and send those bad guys to jail. To counteract the tedium and up-tightedness we had to put up with every day, we used to email each other all the time on a variety of subjects. One stretch was a series of quizzes based on childhood memories. My favorite one was: how many doors were in the house where we grew up? I won that one (actually, it wasn't a contest, but I remembered them all and wanted some credit for retaining that useless information because Busy Body usually corners the market on it). Busy Body has the results of that somewhere...she used to print out the emails and delete them so it wouldn't take up important space on her computer at work. It sounds silly now, but it used to make laugh and laugh in my dilbert cubicle. Silly in the same way describing some of the things I do now would seem--for instance, Bubba is obsessed with a lot of electro-mechanical devices, usually robots, but this month, it happens to be hover-craft. He has recruited no less than three grown-ups to help him build one.

The first recruit is the neighbor boy who comes to vacuum the pool once a week...he will be starting college to study engineering next year and he couldn't resist helping Bubba for the better part of two hours with the leaf-blower, a pool ring, a pool raft, a small dump truck, and a toy car. They considered their experiments a success, although it wasn't strong enough to ride on, which is what I think Bubba's ultimate goal is.

The second recruit was dad, who was home for a couple of days, and they took two paper plates, cut four small, same-size holes in one, and one the diameter of the hair dryer nozzle in the other plate and then taped them together with a short "skirt" made from a plastic grocery bag. This worked, but it was also small-scale.

I was the third recruit and have failed miserably. We went to a science birthday party (how timely!) where there was a hover board powered by a large motor that all the kids got to sit on and ride. After riding it, Bubba examined it and said, "Mom, you could make this!" Maybe someday, but in the meantime while he is waiting for me to deliver, he has designed a pretend hovercraft big enough for him and Stump and Samantha to journey upon and I have been demoted from inventor to videographer/photographer. The hover craft is a small toddler bed mattress, with an office chair back turned so the armrests form rails, onto that, a small cat scratching post is set with a small fan hooked over the top and a box fan behind it. Bubba stands by the post to manipulate the fans. He says he is the "spirit." Stump is proclaimed the captain and sits in the front. Samantha is the princess passenger and sits securely, sideways, in the middle. Spirit starts the fans and off they go, warding off fish attacks and marveling at the wildlife and scenery.

Here is the magical transport...so much more exciting than a cubicle, yes?

Posted by The Editor.

A story about a story...

The Editor and Busybody have recounted the story of spelling bottom in the abbreviated form, butt. I could put my own appendage (no pun intended) onto that memory: However, for some inexplicable reason, it made me think of a storytelling incident from my very early years. This happened when I was about the age they were in that memory.



On that little farm of my childhood, we didn’t have storybooks. Mama and Daddy told us stories. Mama usually told us stories from the Bible and sometimes Daddy would laugh and correct the names and details. That would make Mama mad. She guessed she knew as much about it as he did. And then they’d have to go looking up the real facts of the matter and they’d get so engrossed that they would forget the story in progress and so we’d rather have Daddy tell the stories. His were much more exciting anyway. He read the funny papers to us with sound effects and with a different voice for each character. L’il Abner and Dagwood and Little Iodine and the Katz’n’jammer Kids were all real people in my world. Dad was usually chewing on a toothpick and he would point to the words with the toothpick as he read them. Sometime between my third and fourth birthdays, we realized that I could read. We realized this because I would read the last block and blurt it out and spoil Dad’s finale. I guess he didn’t care because he thought it was pretty smart of me to have learned to read all by myself. (Being smart was the next best thing to being good.) We also listened to stories on the radio. Baby Snooks and The Lone Ranger and Fibber McGee and other wonderful stories enhanced and entranced me. But Dad’s were really the best. He told one story that went something like this:

Once upon a time in a dark woods, there lived an old man and an old woman in an old cabin made of logs. It had been a hard winter and there was nothing to eat and no wood to burn and they were cold and hungry and the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in solid sheets. The old man HAD to go out to try to find some provisions for them. While he was gone, the old woman got so cold, and he wasn’t there to sit close to her for warmth, that she decided to chop up some furniture and burn it in the fireplace. It must have been the light from the fire, but all of a sudden, there was a knock at the door. (Dad would knock on the side of his chair and we would jump out of fright and the knowledge that something awful was about to happen.) The old lady would enquire in a quavery, old voice “Who’s there?” And a big, loud, growly, strong voice would say, “I’m a panther and I’ve come to eat you up.” Now the old lady was kind of hard of hearing and so she said, “Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t have any ketchup. I was goin’ to put some up last summer, but my tomatoes didn’t do so good and so I didn’t.” The panther was really hungry and wanted to get inside to the warm fire and a good meal and so he growled even louder, “Are you dimwitted? (I loved that word) I said, I’ve come TO EAT YOU UP.” The poor old lady didn’t know what to do. She thought she had told him that she didn’t have what he wanted and she didn’t want to have to get up from the fire, and so she told him again, “Even if my tomatoes had been real good, I probably wouldn’t have made ketchup. I don’t have that many jars and I don’t see no need of buying more since I’m so old and all.” The panther was pacing up and down in front of the door getting madder and madder and all of a sudden, he JUMPED against the door and broke it down. When the old woman saw a big, black panther coming in she started screeching and screaming (“Now, Gigi, you and your sister stop screaming and sit back down and be quiet if you want to hear this story) and jumped out the back window of the house and started running around the house with the panther right behind her. There was no place to go and so she climbed up on the roof and hid behind the chimney. The panther saw her and started running right behind her. The first time around the chimney, he got close enough to reach out a paw and snatch off her apron and the next time around the chimney, he got a little closer and he snatched off her dress and the next time around the chimney he got even closer and snatched off the rest of her clothes. The next time around the chimney (NO, No, don’t let him eat her up!), he was going so fast she could feel his hot, stinking breath and then he reached out a paw…and…TRIPPED and fell down the chimney and got burned so bad he ran howling into the woods and was never heard from again. (What a relief!) And as we were giggling in relief and appreciation for the story, Dad would look around and locate Mom and then say with a grin and a twinkle in his eye, “now wasn’t that a bear tale?” (Pun intended.) And I would say in puzzlement, “It was a PANTHER!.” Mom would scold, “You better stop telling them kids that story.”

And he did stop. Mom and I went to visit our nearest neighbors, the Wards. There was a Grandpa Ward who sat out on the porch most of the time. We’d see him when we passed their place and I’d think he must be lonely. That day, I got tired of the woman talk in the kitchen and went out to visit Mr. Ward. All of a sudden, it popped into my four year old mind that MAYBE he’d like to hear a story…and what better story than the one about the panther. To my delight (and I’m sure his) I was able to remember every word, every dramatic pause and every sound effect—just the way Daddy told it. Just as I was ending the story, Mom came out to check on me and started giving me that “GiGi, what are you doing!” look. It didn’t bother me, though. I just looked at her with that same smile and twinkle that Dad always did and finished up the story with a flourish. (Sometimes when Dad told us astory, he would end it by saying, “my, my. That sure must’ve been something. I sure would’ve liked to have been there and seen that.”) Well, it was a toss-up as to who was the most embarrassed at the end of my story, Mom or Mr. Ward. But when he didn’t laugh or say something or react in any way, I put the other ending on to it. “My,my. That sure must’ve been something. I sure would’ve liked to have been there and seen that. How about you, Mr. Ward? Wouldn’t you’ve liked to have seen that?”

Mom and I left quickly. As soon as we got home, I went out to the barn to find Dad and tell him how good I’d told the story to Mr. Ward. Mom must’ve told her own version, later,though, because he started finding other stories to tell us.


Posted by The Editor for GiGi.

The Wink

Do you remember when you learned to wink?
Did someone teach you?

It's possible I learned how to do it when I was very young--the actual closing of one eye at a time. But I really learned when to wink and how to use a wink from my Grandpa, Gigi's father.

Just like Grandma, he was sassy and silly in his own way, strong and gentle, all at the same time. He could convey so much with that wink and accompanying twinkle in his eye. He had a hard life, lived through the depression, suffered heart problems and more. But all of those factors were irrelevant when he'd tell a good story and flash that twinkle and wink. You'd think he was living the high life, and I guess in a way, he was. Irrepressible spirit transcends all, if you let it.

I was the one who taught all my kids how to wink. And, I hope they see that spark of life sometimes in me. Life is not easy. We all toil with our own troubles, heartaches, and circumstances beyond our control. I do think, however, a bit of sass and laughter will help us see our way through.

I hope all you readers had a wonderful weekend. Ours did not quite go as planned...we had one with stomach flu, one with a fever, and one day that did not crack 40 deg F all day, followed by a day in the high 60's. But, we were all together. We laughed and played and smiled in the sun that has been missing for weeks.

What was the highlight of your weekend? Please leave a comment, we love to get them!

Posted by The Editor.

The Arm, Part II

Yes, I too remember the days of no seatbelts. One summer we went on vacation. We drove from California to somewhere really far away (Florida, maybe?) in our Ford Gran Torino. It was olive colored and for that trip The Norwegian made a seat for us. Yes, there was a seat in the back of the car, but not a good one for two little girls. (The Editor and I must have been 2 and 4? or somewhere close to that.) The seats were too deep for us to see out of the windows. So a seat was made out of a long, wide piece of plywood, I guess, but covered with green shag carpet. It sat on the arm rests/door handles of the car doors. This seat was a foot or so above the real seat which made it possible for us to see the country as we drove along—no TV/DVD players in the car, no video games to play. No, we played our driving games (points for seeing animals, different colored cars, etc.) and had our old-fashioned fun (coloring books, dolls and their clothes, etc.) which handily and conveniently fit underneath the make-shift booster. It was a great set up for two little girls, on vacation, out to see the world.

That booster did negate any type of seatbelt configuration there was in that car. And that was OK because there was no seatbelt/booster/car seat law in effect.

I, too, remember Gigi putting out her arm to hold us on the seat, when we were sitting in the front with her. I always thought that it was a good system. I was never scared that I might fly through the windshield because I knew her arm would stop me. It came up EVERY TIME SHE APPLIED THE BRAKES. I guess if you were sitting in the backseat they figured that if the car stopped fast and hard enough, the back of the front seats would stop you.

I can also remember driving around town with Grandpa (Gigi’s dad). He had a white Chevy Impala with a beautiful red interior. The front seat was a long bench. He used to let me stand up next to him while he drove, with one had on his shoulder, so I could see out of the front windshield. Every time we stopped or slowed, his arm went up too. Maybe that’s where Gigi learned it from.

Fast forward about 12 years. The Editor had her driver’s license and I was her co-pilot. We used to cruise around town, seatbelt-less, having the time of our lives. Those were, indeed, the good old days. We weren’t preoccupied with safety and potential danger back then. We just had fun. (***Gigi, just for the record, if you DID read that part that the Ed told you not to in her version of ‘The Arm’, I do not recall sitting on the open window of the car while we cruised through Knott’s Berry Farm. The Editor must be confusing me with one of her friends who was with her at the time. I swear.***)

Our kids will never know those days. They do know the motto, “Click it or ticket.” And they know that their seatbelts on their car seats/boosters and/or backseats (if they are under 12, because you can’t even sit in the front if you are younger than that) have to be firmly fastened before we start the car or we might have a brush with the local law enforcement officers.

Hubs, being former law enforcement himself, usually prefers to re-live the good old days. I have to remind him, especially if he’s in the passenger’s seat, that he needs to “Buckle up for safety.” And I have to gently remind him that he is setting an example for our kids. Begrudgingly he straps himself in.

Even so, every time we slow down or stop suddenly, my arm flies out across his chest, to keep him from hitting the dashboard, like a vestigial appendage of when times were simpler.

Yes, those were the days!

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body

Note from The Editor to Busy Body: **GIGI, DISREGARD THIS NOTE. STOP READING NOW!** It WAS you on that ledge...circa when the muffler was making that horrible noise but we didn't care because it meant more people were looking at us when we cruised through...I do believe you might have been waving.

The Arm

I was driving the kids home from school and the front seat was piled with jackets, scarves, gloves, papers, lunch pails, and the show-and-tell lollapalooza. Show-and-tell is Bubba's favorite part of school and he takes it very seriously. He often crafts special displays to lecture about...usually mechanical or robotic in nature. But, I digress. This post isn't about show-and-tell, nor is it about the large styrofoam box that was on top of the pile in the front passenger seat leaning against the dashboard making that irritating squeaky jiggle noise. "What's that? What's that noise?" all the kids start shouting from the back. "Just the box, I reply." And, I put my arm out across the front seat to hold it off the dashboard and thereby eliminate the squeaking. "See," I say, "The noise is all gone..." But the motion of my arm going out across the seat brought back a memory and that memory is the subject of this brief post.

I told my kids, "Look at my arm. See how it's across the front seat? When I was little, we didn't wear seatbelts and there were no carseats. Busy Body & I used to sit in the front seat next to Gigi as we drove around town or home from school. Whenever we would slow down or stop, Gigi would put her arm out like this to make sure we didn't slide forward and bump the dashboard. After the stop, she would put both hands back on the steering wheel until the next time her foot went to the brake and then that arm would come back across the seat. That was safety for us." And Bubba says, "That was a long time ago, right?" And it was. Those were the days of just jumping in the car and taking off, all the way through high school even. When I got my license, seat belts still weren't required and Busy Body and I used to cruise all around town, looking for fun, Busy Body hanging out her window and **GIGI, DO NOT READ THIS NEXT PART, SKIP TO THE END, THANK YOU** one time I even remember cruising through the main street at Knott's Berry Farm and Busy Body with the window rolled all the way down, sitting on the door, holding onto the edge of the roof. Me? I was being a safe driver, going slowly, keeping my eyes on the road and putting my arm out at all the stops.

Yeah, those were the days.

Posted by The Editor.

The Cost of Water

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side. If ‘ifs’ and ‘ans’ were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers.” I love this nursery rhyme. It’s kind of like a child’s way of saying, “If I had a dollar for every time I (fill in the blank), I’d be rich.”

If I had a dollar for every dollar I wasted when the economy wasn’t so bad, I might have a few to spare right now. I don’t like telling the kids, “Not right now, we don’t have the money for that”, but sometimes it’s a good thing. This economy has made a lot of us get back to the very basics of life: food, shelter, family. We have those things, and for that I am extremely grateful.

We have added the people of Haiti to our prayers. Joy has been brainstorming about ways to help them. Even if her plans never come to fruition, at least she is thinking about being gracious and giving to others. It’s important to realize, at any age, that no matter how bad off you are, someone somewhere is worse off than you and you should be grateful for the things you have.

When the Editor and I were little, our family did not have a lot of money. We would have had more, but Gigi and the Norwegian sent us to private school, so that significantly decreased the cash flow in our home. Our school also had a dress code. We had to wear dresses every day of the week, except certain designated Fridays. Those days we could wear pants, but not blue jeans. Gigi sewed some of our dresses. We got some at discount stores. We got some at the thrift store, some were hand-me-downs. We got a special dress with a pair of “new school shoes” for the first day of school. This dress was usually the dress we wore for our school pictures. That dress was a big deal. The shopping trip for the First Day of School Dress was also a big deal. I, however, have never been a big fan of shopping.

One shopping trip stands out above all others. I might be confusing this trip with the First Day of School Dress shopping trip, but it was significant nevertheless. We were at one of those department stores that had a little café in it. The Editor and I were getting tired and no doubt cranky and whiney. Gigi was probably getting tired of hearing us being cranky and whiney. And so the unusual happened—Gigi found some extra money for the Editor and me to go to the café for an ice cream sundae. Suddenly, miraculously, we were not tired, cranky or whiney any more. We were ecstatic. We loved going out to eat—it was a special occasion treat. We loved ice cream and hardly ever ate sundaes. After specific directions from Gigi to stay at the table, to eat our ice cream, and not to move until she came back, we were left to savor the hot fudge sundae. Gigi had also left us the money to pay for the sundae and money to tip the waitress. It was an exact amount. The Editor knew what to do—she was older and knew about these things.

And so it was, two little girls at a department store café, sitting across the table from one another, enjoying a hot fudge sundae, trying to pretend that we did stuff like that all the time. And we ate, and chatted like old friends over this sweet treat, spoons dipping into the gooey goodness, loving every bite. But then we realized that we had miscalculated our bites—we were out of vanilla ice cream, but there was still a considerable amount of fudge. And we never got to have this kind of treat, at a department store café, no less, so we determined that we would eat it—every last bite. The experience lost some of the excitement and joy with each sickly sweet bite we took. But then, an idea! Water! Water would make it less sweet. But, as hard as we had tried to pretend that we knew what we were doing, we didn’t. We wanted to “order” some water, but we didn’t know how much it would cost. And then the Editor counted out the money again and we only had enough to pay for the sundae and to tip the waitress. We couldn’t take any money from that or we would be short. We couldn’t short the waitress, that would be rude. And we couldn’t waste the treat. And we didn’t know when Gigi would return. And we didn’t want to make her feel bad by not eating it all or acting like we didn’t love it or asking for something more than what we had already gotten. So we gagged down every last bite of the now too-sweet concoction.

To this day we get a good laugh about our naïveté. (Gigi got us some water when she returned… and enlightened us on the fact that water does NOT cost anything.)

But, there is something to be said for not getting everything your little heart desires the moment you desire it. (No, I am not referring to the water.) That sundae was momentous in our little lives because it was so rare. Our First Day of School Dresses were so special because we didn’t have a closet full of them. Our new school shoes were cherished because they were something to look forward to every year.

So, if I had a dollar for every dollar I wasted when times were better, I would use the money for the necessities and save the rest of it for a rainy day…and an occasional sundae. (But not for water to go with it, because the last I checked, a glass of water at a restaurant is still doesn’t cost anything. So I guess it is true—the best things in life are free!)

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body

Living is the Art of Loving

Does spanking work or is time out the way to go? Does "Spare the rod, spoil the child" really mean we should spank our children or is the rod figurative for discipline? I know how Super Nanny weighs in on this issue, but what's a parent to do? After putting Joy in time out for 26 consecutive 4 minute time outs (for what Super Nanny would call "back chat), I have to wonder if time out really works or not. After the last time out Joy met me at the door and said, "Look, Mommy, I re-decorated this room for you!" (The time out area, affectionately referred to as the "Naughty Spot" is our guest room...and sure enough, she had rearranged and redecorated the room for me. Don't tell Joy this, but I did give her points for constructive use of time, creativity, and multi-tasking skills.)

This whole dilemma reminds me...When I was little, about 6 or 7, we went to Grandma's for the day. (Grandma = Gigi's mother) Grandma was very crafty. She sewed. She crocheted. She poured and painted ceramics. She liked to do projects. I liked to do projects. Grandma just didn't always like me to do her projects. I was little and messy and slow and probably talked way too much. And so, while The Editor was usually included in Grandma's stuff because she was not as little and very neat and quick to pick things up and knew when to be quiet, I usually found myself looking for something else to do.

Now, Grandpa had this hand-crafted bin in the garage. He was pretty crafty himself, but in a more out-doors-ey, wood-working kind of way. This bin in the garage was full of an odd assortment of pieces of wood. Being little and messy and slow and talkative was exactly what Grandpa liked. I was welcomed with open arms. On this particular day, I went out to the garage and found a piece of wood. It was light and light colored. It was about as long as a wooden spoon, and a little bit wider than a ruler. I thought it was beautiful. I worked in the garage on that piece of wood, sanding and smoothing, for several hours. When it was perfect, I went into the house and got a Hallmark bag. Around the bag it had some pretty writing that said, "Living is the art of loving, Loving is the art
of giving" (I can't remember the rest.) I thought it was beautiful. I cut out those pretty words so that they would fit on this gorgeous piece of wood. Then I went inside and ever so sweetly asked Grandma if I could glue the words onto the wood and then coat it with a shiny seal of some kind. Of course Grandma had exactly what I needed and she must have been feeling generous that day because she set me up at a table and let me go to town.

By the time Gigi came to pick us up from Grandma's my masterpiece was finished. I gave her this work of art that I had so painstakingly worked on all day. I was trying to guess where she was going to display it in our house when we got home. I was imagining her showing it off to my dad...

She displayed it on top of our refrigerator. On top of the frig she had a little antique coffee bean grinder. The drawer that caught the ground up beans (I guess) had a little knob on it and the decorated stick balanced charmingly on that little knob. I was very proud of my handiwork and would admire it every time I walked through the kitchen.

The fridge was next to the hot water heater closet. Inside the closet was where Gigi kept the fly swatter. Do you know what else a fly swatter is good for? Swatting naughty children-- and intimidating-ly swatting furniture and door frames as you march through the house to swat a naughty child with the fly swatter. I think maybe Gigi got a little over-zealous swatting the furniture one time, on her way to swat me, no doubt, and the handle on the fly swatter broke. Woo-hoo! I thought she would retire the fly swatter and that would be the end of that. But do you know what she did? The next time she went to get that fly swatter and realized it was on the disabled list, she looked around and the first thing that fell into her line of vision was that beautiful little piece of wood that I had created for her. And from that point on, "Living is the art of loving" was applied to my naughty spot when my mom felt it was necessary.

Now, having disclosed all of this--which I am sure has given Gigi grounds to dig up that spanking stick to reinstate on me---I do have to admit that we did not get spanked very often. I was deathly afraid of my mom when she got mad. She could raise one eyebrow and I knew, I knew, I was in trouble. BIG trouble. She never really had to do anything more than give me that look. To this day she has never shared the secret of putting the Fear of God into me by one look. You'd think she would so that I could use it on my kids. But no, I flounder around, trying to figure out how to make my kids behave, vacillating on the issue of spanking, cementing myself in the top 3 contenders for Worst Mother of the Year.

I think she is withholding on purpose. I think it's payback for my naughtiness and all the trouble I gave her. When my girls do something naughty, Gigi gets that "poetic justice" gleam in her eye. Oh, well. I'll figure it out one of these days. I guess for now I will just work on my art of loving. Living is the art of loving--my a$$!

Note from Gigi: You should learn to raise one eyebrow.

Note from The Editor: You left out one part of the intimidation factor--the noise her house slippers made on the carpet...zzshzzz, zzshzzz...or something like that, the noise would be really fast when she was really mad...and this brings me to another point, why were slippers such a big part of our life, the fly-swatter connection, cs-ing, skaypuh (skipper), and what not...?

Posted by The Editor

Paty, the Witch

When I was 3 or 4 we moved from an apartment to a house in a quiet little neighborhood. (Well, it was quiet before we moved there.) My older sister (The Editor) and I were pretty sheltered. We hadn’t had many friends besides each other until this new chapter of our lives. (She is, to this day, one of my best friends, but I’m not gonna lie—back then it was nice to have other friends in the mix.)

I have no idea what time of year it was when we moved there. I would like to say it was shortly after Halloween because my recollection is of us LIVING in witch costumes for the first couple of months after we moved in. However, it could have been April or June—I don’t really remember, I was 3 or 4—but, nevertheless, we were witches in a new, magical land. And, if you were ever a little girl, or have a little girl, or know a little girl, you know how silly little girls can be. The whole witch thing was how we met our new next door neighbor, Patricia. (Note: Her family called her Paty in a thick accent. The Editor)

(On a quick side note, which really has nothing to do with this story, I have an amazing memory. I really do. I just don’t have a good memory for anything that really matters. I can recite commercials from 30 years ago. I know the words to most songs on the radio from about 1980 to present day. I can tell you the name of my first grade teacher’s fiancé’s mother’s brother’s cat. I just have trouble remembering anything useful or important, like where I parked my car, what day of the week it is, or that I actually need to take my grocery list to the grocery store with me to remember everything that is on it. Maybe Gigi or The Editor could enlighten us on when we moved into that house, but I cannot. I was 3 or 4 and that bit of information falls into the “useful” category, so my brain discarded it many moons ago, I am certain, in order to make room for something completely d-u-m.)

When we moved to the house that is the home of all memories childhood, The Editor and I were constantly outside, running around, riding our bikes, climbing the trees, roller skating (in the roller skates with metal wheels that clacked every time we went over the sidewalk cracks), making up dances, singing songs, etc., etc. in our witch costumes during daylight hours, and part of the night, too, until the street lights came on and Gigi called us inside. But anyway, during these hours of new-found freedom, we noticed that there was another witch in our neighborhood. And all of a sudden we realized that she was outside, running around, riding bikes behind us, climbing adjacent trees, roller skating (in the roller skates with metal wheels that clacked every time she went over the sidewalk cracks), making up dances, singing songs, etc., etc. The witch get-up was how we found our common ground and started forging a friendship with Patricia.

Remember that I mentioned I was only 3 or 4 and that we had been pretty sheltered thus far in our little lives? Well, even though we were running around in our witch costumes from sun up to sun down, it never occurred to me that Patricia might also just be wearing a costume. For probably the first 6 or 8 months that we lived there, I really thought she was a witch. It might have had something to do with her being new and mysterious because we didn’t really know her. It might have had something to do with her long, thick red hair and cinnamon colored freckles—something I had never really seen before. But mostly I think that I thought she was a witch because she was wearing that costume AND she (and her family) spoke Spanish. In my little mind that made her exotic and a little bit dangerous and very cool—but a witch nevertheless.

Patricia was 4 or 5 years older than me, and 2 or 3 years older than The Editor. We were all great friends for many, many years. We played dress up, did backyard shows, played Charlie’s Angels, played office, and had countless adventures together. As I got older I realized that her witch outfit was just a costume like ours and that she spoke Spanish because she was Mexican. When Patricia was in high school she moved away. Before she moved I told her about thinking she was a witch. She told me that she thought there were 6 of us little girls when we moved in because we were so all over the place (and also that we were always changing our clothes/costumes. T.E.). Funny. Little girls think funny things.

Joy now plays in my witch costume, the one I wore when I was 3 or 4. When she runs around in it and it rustles, I can almost hear the metal wheels of my roller skates singing the sidewalk songs of the magic of childhood.


Posted by The Editor for Busy Body

Note from The Editor: I recall the move as occurring in the summer of 1975. I was just out of first grade and was 6 years old. Is that right, Gigi?

Birthday party for me, by me

Third grade brought the onset of birthday parties. It seemed everyone in my class was having one. . Oh, now that I’m trying to recall the details of that year, maybe none of the boys had parties. But all of the girls were thoroughly captivated by the idea and participated or planned with equal commitment. I soon realized that my birthday came right at the end of the school year. A bad thing; I’d have to wait. A good thing: I could borrow ideas and explain them to my mother in terms she could understand.

She just didn’t “get” a lot of the things that seemed crystal clear to me. I had one pair of shoes in third grade. Brown. With Buckles. Brown so they wouldn’t get so dirty and with buckles so shoe strings wouldn’t have to be replaced. Every Sunday morning, my dad would take our shoes and polish them for church. Although I would feel very clean and dressed up, I had my heart set on a pair of black patent shoes. Mom turned a deaf ear. Not practical and not necessary. Those were the guidelines.

I had a lot of work to do when it came to getting a birthday party. The school year went by. I won the school Spelling Bee and went to the state finals; I was chosen to participate in a series of radio programs and was given a lot of attention at school, but at home my parents were quietly proud of me. “Pride goeth before a fall” It didn’t change our economic position or the guidelines (practical/necessary).
The time was approaching for my birthday, spelled * P A R T Y. *

Mom had finally agreed that I could have some friends over after school that day(she didn’t call it a party) but I had to tell them not to bring presents She didn’t want to financially impose on their families. Ok Ok, Mom, but there needs to be a cake, and there needs to be paper birthday napkins, there needs to be balloons, there needs to be games.

We walked home from school that day. A select group of five plus myself. We walked past all of their houses, and some of them ran inside to drop off stuff so they wouldn’t have to carry it.. My mom would probably be wondering where we were and why it was taking so long. We got to my house and I started to open the front door; hmmm, it was locked. Well, we never lock the back door,. Just stay here and I’ll run around and let you in. I went through the back porch and there was a sense of quiet about the house, I opened the back door to the house and felt the wrongness of the afternoon. The blinds were closed in the front rooms and as I hurried through the kitchen, I saw the dirty breakfast dishes in the sink. The dining room table did have a cake. Whew. I hurriedly pulled the blind strings on my way to the front door and carefully left the door open so the “closed up” smell of the house would go away.

Where was Mom? Well, we could play games. I had prepared several game components on shoebox cardboard but suddenly, they didn’t look very "partyish". One of my friends asked the question I had asked while I was putting together the games, what are the prizes? In my most confident voice, I repeated the answer I had been given, we are playing for the fun of playing.

Where is my Mom? Oh, yeah, I think it’s Missionary Society day at the church. Once a month, all the ladies go and piece quilts or roll bandages or pack clothes for children in other places who live sad, little lives, and my mom never misses the meeting. She’ll be home any time, now, though.

We are all hungry and so we decide to just move to the cake phase of the afternoon. A whole new set of problems. I had seen the dishes in the sink. That means there aren’t six clean plates or glasses. Oh, no, I didn’t see any kind of drink to put in glasses. I’ll think of that after I solve the glass problem. It was very trendy in the fifties to have “snack sets” for ladies' get-togethers. They were composed of a rectangular glass plate/tray with a ridge of glass in one corner that kept a petite glass cup from sliding around the plate/try. The tray was just the size to show off the dessert, like, like A PIECE OF CAKE. God and my mom only know why we only had six glasses, six plates and two coffee cups (from the Goodwill store), but EIGHT snack sets. They were on the top shelf of the cupboard in the kitchen, but I was a determined little girl and could climb up there and get them down. Not only was my problem solved, but it was solved with a flair (and my heart always rejoiced in flair). In getting down the snack sets, I felt that they were a little sticky. Oh, no, not a little sticky, quite a bit sticky as only dishes in the kitchen that haven’t been used can get sticky. Where is the dishtowel?

Please, all of my friends, just stay in the living room, and I’ll be out in a minute. I would rather they notice the unpolished state of that room than notice that it isn’t practical or necessary to buy dishtowels. Not when everyone is wearing three yards of material gathered onto a waistband and when it is too faded or if it gets torn, just rip it up into the appropriate sizes—hem it if you have time or use it in its ravelly state if you don’t. The dishtowel that day was a skirt I had worn to school all the last year,(ravelly) and certain to be recognized.

Here, I must interrupt my narrative with a household hint. Do not attempt to wipe off that greasy residue with a dry cloth, especially if the dishes are clear glass with a raised design. It simply won’t work.

And so, I was faced with several obstacles to just washing those dishes which I certainly could have done because I started learning when I was three. The first thing, sinks weren’t divided in those days and ours was full of dirty dishes (as you may remember me mentioning previously); second, there wasn’t enough time; and third and most insurmountable, the last time my very best friend had come over, there were no clean glasses and I started to wash one. It wasn’t practical or necessary to buy both clothes soap and dish soap and so we only had clothes soap. I took the box from under the sink and gave it a shake sufficient to dispense an adequate amount of soap, and what came out were coffee grounds. Before recycling was a buzzword, my mom recycled everything. But how was I to know that the box had transitioned from soap container to trash sack? That same friend was in the next room, but she might exercise her best friend’s right and come in the kitchen at any second to “help” me. The risk of a repeat mortification was too great. No washing.

Oh, I remember going to my great-grandmother’s house and loving the looks of a smoked glass set of glasses that she had. They had stems and I would even drink buttermilk to get the privilege of using them. So, I would put water in those cute little petite cups, cake on the tray and make a subtle comment about having smoked glass.

I found some birthday candles in the cupboard next to the snack sets. They were probably there to keep them and us safe. Them, because you shouldn’t squander the whole box on one birthday; simply put a representative number on and save the rest.) But, oh well, desperate times call for desperate measures and so I put those candles(not 9, but the contents of the box) on my cake and lit them and we were as safe as a group of nine year olds without supervision can be. Alas, my mother had not considered birthday paper napkins practical or necessary, either. No inspiration or substitution hit my brain, and so I just ignored the fact. We were all so hungry by this time, that we disposed of the cake without leaving a lot of crumbs on plate or mouth.

Oh, no, Everyone was ready to go home, but I was reluctant for my special day to end, and so I decided to walk home with the group. The routine was to walk the furthest one all the way home and then she walked halfway back and so on until, with much meandering, everyone finally was dispersed.

When I got home, my mom was back. She told me that if I wasn’t going to be there when she got home, she would appreciate it if I would leave a note. And also, young lady, never get the snack sets out of the cupboard without help; they’re for the ladies missionary society meeting when they come here.

Posted by The Editor for Gigi.

Note from The Editor: When my grandmother (Gigi's mother) was de-cluttering her house and passing things on to her granddaughters, my sister and I had the choice of the punch bowl or these pretty little snack plates. I chose the pretty little snack plates, because they were retro 50's, frou-frou girly, and I thought they would be handy for all the socials I would someday hostess. I have actually never used them. I tried once to get them out for serving cake and cookies at the holiday, but I couldn't get rid of the sticky on the scalloped edge.