The Old Gray Mare....

 How does the song go?

The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,

Ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be,

The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,

Many long years ago.

Many long years ago, many long years ago,

The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,

Many long years ago.

The old gray mare, she kicked on the whiffletree,

Kicked on the whiffletree, kicked on the whiffletree,

The old gray mare, she kicked on the whiffletree,

Many long years ago.

Many long years ago, many long years ago,

The old gray mare, she kicked on the whiffletree,

Many long years ago.

• (Note that "mule" is sometimes substituted for "mare".)
• (A whiffletree is a force-distributing mechanism in the traces of a draft animal. As an energetic younger horse, the mare still had the spirit to kick even though she was harnessed up to pull a plow or similar.)

Okay, so I had to look up the lyrics (thank you, Wikipedia!), but my mother used to sing the first verse all the time when referring to getting old.  (Mom and her siblings were farm kids and tight as thieves all their lives.  They had many family jokes, made funnier by their interpretations.  I always loved listening to their tales!)

The other day, when I was trying to explain my history to a caregiver, it occurred to me that I had so many physical problems that I had to prioritize them just to make their importance known!  Yeah...I'm the old gray mare.  At the very same time, I realized that my little house-on-a-slab is also an old gray mare.  It has quirks that take experience to know.  The house was built in 1968.  When I bought the place, almost 30 years ago, the only quirk that was pointed out to me by the previous owner was the location of the sewer cleanout.  In fact, someone had carved an arrow in the cement border blocks by the house to indicate where it was.  At the time, I didn't know why that was so important, but over almost three decades in this home, I believe I now know.  The sewer line needs to be rooted out at least once every 18-24 months to remove tree roots from the line.  Bazinga!

So now, nearing the end of my years on the planet, I'm wondering if I should be writing down all the the little things that future owners of this bungalow should know.  I know it's not my job, but if you love a house, you want others to love it, too.  For instance, whenever I had guests, I had to warn them that the toilet would continue to run if the flush handle wasn't jiggled.  (I've since replaced that toilet!)  Of course, there's the sewer tree root problem.  There is a covered-over light switch that I hide under a picture in the bathroom, because, once upon a time, the back door to the house had a door to the main bathroom, with a light switch just inside that door.  (I had the door removed and wall-boarded over, and the switch removed.)  What other little things do I know that future owners need to know?

1.  If one turns off the light switch on the house side of the garage door into the house, every electrical outlet in the garage is turned off.  Not important, except that the garage is no longer a garage.  It's now a bedroom/bonus room, and has been since 2009.  I have put a block on that switch so that guests can't accidentally turn it off, but nobody but me knows that.

2.  Half of the linen closet is taken up with a brine tank for the water softener.  The water softener itself is in the hall closet next to the water heater.  The brine tank is empty, and the water softener doesn't work.  It should.  I replaced it once, but I could no longer handle the 40-lb. bags of softener salt, nor had I taken the time to understand the programming of the machine.  Replace it?  Take it out?  The path of least resistance has been to do nothing.  Unless I get inspired, it will just sit there, unplugged and unused, taking up space.

The other part of that is that, although softened water is generally a good thing, it's hard on water heaters.  For the first few years of living here, I went through three water heaters in quick succession; hence, the reason I haven't done a thing about the water softener since it (or I) gave up.

3.  Light bulbs burn out faster in this house than in any other in which I have lived.  I don't know why.  I finally determined that replacing ceiling fan lights with candelabra bulbs was a total waste of money.  The kitchen was the worst.  Light bulbs, with all of the new "changes", are so much more expensive than they used to be, I buy them and pray for the best, but no more bulbs that look like candles!  

4.  Soooo many changes have been made to this house and yard, not only since I bought it, but also since it was built.  (The way I know this is having looked at another home in the area with the same floor plan.)  For example, there used to be long swinging saloon doors to separate the kitchen from the rest of the house.  Gone.  I already mentioned the second door to the main bathroom.  Now just a wall.  Many perennial plants/shrubs outside that just died.  Some replaced; some not.  Structurally, however, the house remains solid, on a slab of concrete.

5.  Yearly critter invasions, of the multi-legged kind.  Every year, it's something different.  For the last ten years or so, June brings big black ants into the house.  Often, I know they are there because they crawl up  my legs.  Ack!  They are easy to see and easy to crush because they are so visible.  A couple of years, I had an invasion of tiny sugar ants, not seen unless a food crumb happens to hit the floor.  Then, almost invisibly, they surround the crumb, making it easier to see and easier to stamp out.  Twice--this year included--earwigs found their way into the house.  I hate those bugs because they know no boundaries.  I could find them anywhere in the house, but mostly in the kitchen and bathroom.  All of these creatures have somehow found a way into my house, over time.  I don't have answers; only questions.  Doesn't seem to matter what I do, the critters keep doing what they do best: annoy me.  To be honest, it's not a major infestation...just embarrassing.  The infestation is done for this season, thank God.  Stay tuned!

The household Old Gray Mare, combined with the personal Old Gray Mare are quite a team!  There were times, when my daughter and I were younger, that we both wished we lived in a bigger house.  Dear Lord, how would things be for me now if I had ever acted on bigger, better, and more?  I am thankful that I didn't give in to that which I couldn't afford.  They'll probably take me out of this house in a body bag.  I'm okay with that.  This little house-on-a-slab has been my shelter and comfort for almost 30 years.  Very little else has ever been so faithful.     

        

Empty Nesting

 I'm convinced that having teenagers is God's way of preparing parents for the "empty nest".  When the fledglings have flown, is the mother bird delighted or sad that her chicks are gone?  Of course, in Nature's world, where animals do thing instinctively, the parent birds' only job is to hatch the eggs and feed the chicks until they are old enough and strong enough to fly free.  Then it's off to the next brood or migration...or simply finding sustenance to survive until the next breeding season.  It just isn't that simple in the Human world.  Human bairn stay dependent far longer than our animal friends.  It takes decades for a human chick to be ready to fly with confidence.  In the meantime, human parents have expectations about how we want our chicks to grow up.  We form connections, work hard, sacrifice, and pray that our children will grow up to be mentally and physically healthy.  Most parents love their kids so much that they would take a bullet for them.

When babies are born, parents feed them, bathe them, clothe them, and talk to them.  When they are toddlers, we rejoice in their firsts:  first smile, first time they roll over on their own, first crawls, first time standing, first steps...and the list goes on.  All of this is the same as with the parent birds, with a twist: the birds move on when their job is done, but humans cling to their children, even when grown.  Honestly, I have never met a mother who didn't feel wistful when their babies aren't babies anymore.  Not a single one!   

Teenagers present a special challenge.  They are not really children anymore, but not really adults, either.  They want to test their wings sometimes before they even have feathers enough to try to fly.  Happy are the parents that can find a way to communicate with their young ones in a way that will encourage rather than discourage!  It's a crap shoot.  What works today might not work tomorrow.  Still, we keep trying.

I was a pretty easy kid to raise.  I was a good student with virtually no teenage rebellion.  I mostly respected my parents and followed rules.  ALL rules at the time, theirs and society's.  My mother gave lip service to that, but she also repeated a saying (many times over):  "You don't pay for your raising until you have children of your own."  Yeah...that's a curse.  It means, in essence, that when it's your turn to become a parent, you will suddenly understand how tough things were for your own parents. As Sheldon Cooper would say, "BAZINGA"!  I do remember saying to my one-and-only child when she was a teenager--particularly in middle school--"I hope you have six kids and that they are all just like you!"  Yup.  That was the "payin' for your raisin' " curse.  Still, I felt that we were close and shared many passions.  In my experience, family was/is everything.  I could never be a female bird.  Turning loose has never been in my DNA.  

As my daughter's life changed, she changed with it, taking my grandchildren along for the ride.  Almost every move took her, her "new" husband, and my grandchildren farther from me in distance.  When they moved to Washington State for her husband's job, I was mostly devastated, but we found ways for me to visit at least twice a year.  I'm sure I loved it more than they did.  Such beautiful things to see!  Even in my handicapped condition, I enjoyed every second.  So many memories and wonderful experiences!  Still, I couldn't even imagine moving that far away from my parents.  I was definitely feeling orphaned, and the COVID-19 pandemic made things much worse for me.  I missed my family!  I wept daily. 

My granddaughter has started her sophomore college year on campus at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.  Her freshman year was spent online at home due to the pandemic.   She and her brother were able to come to the Midwest to visit with their dad and two sets of grandparents this August.  I was ecstatic!  At one point, I told Robin (aka Adrian) that her mother was going to miss her when she went to college.  Her response was, "I know.  She cries every time I mention it."   Aha!  My daughter is now feeling the pinch of the beginnings of the Empty Nest!  She still has a young'un at home, soon to become an 18-year-old adult, so she hasn't quite felt the whole pinch yet...but maybe she is starting to understand how very difficult it is to let go.  Adrian called her mother from campus last week, just to chit-chat.  Of course, Megan cried thereafter.  Maybe now she can begin to comprehend my anxieties when I don't hear from my own kid.  Maybe now, we can be Birds of a Feather in the process of empty nesting.   Maybe my daughter is paying for her raising?  

After all these years, the emptiness of my nest still haunts me.  I want my family to have their best life, of course.  I just wish they weren't so far away!      

When It Rains, The Money Pours

 When I was a child, I noticed the Morton Salt container on our kitchen table.  On it was a picture of a young girl, carrying an umbrella in the rain, also carrying a bag of salt with her other arm, but the bag was carried sideways with a hole in it, and the salt was pouring out behind her as she walked.  Near it was the caption, "When it rains, it pours."  

In those days, I didn't understand it.  I finally figured it out but recently wondered if the Morton Salt people invented it.  (Google says it's a twist of an old English saying, "It never rains but it pours.")  Some have suggested that the Morton ad was an effort to point out that their salt pours freely no matter the moisture in the air.  But I digress.  

My reference to raining and pouring is actually budget-generated.  Once my house mortgage was paid off three or four years ago, I knew I had an extra $600 or so to play with in my budget.  Since property taxes and insurance had to come directly from me instead of from the escrow included in my mortgage payment, I calculated how much of that "extra" money I needed to save per month in order to make everything work.  For awhile, it worked.  I could save some, and then things would hit, unexpectedly.  Everyone knows the drill, unless they are well off.  

I was just sure I could put $500 in savings this month, but, well..."things" happened.  I had two medical bills come in for my share of services, to the tune of $358.  Then my bathroom toilet was bubbling when the washing machine drained.  (Not a good sign!  It has happened before.  The result of ignoring it is a sewer backup and overflowing toilets.)  Plumber call to dig out tree roots in my sewer:  $130.  If my math is correct, that's almost $500.  So much for savings this month!  Maybe next month?

Oh, wait.  Property taxes are due next month, plus my grandson's 18th birthday, plus Thanksgiving will happen.  The next month is Christmas.

Well, drat!  When it rains, it pours!  Maybe 2022....      

The Cost of Being Poor

(Private message:  Thinking of you today, Libby--which has nothing to do with today's topic!)

 It's likely happened to all of us in our younger years, unless we were very, very fortunate.  Get in a tight financial spot, then watch it get tighter and tighter as things move forward.  As an example: Accidentally overdraw your bank account.  The bank charges overdraft fees, and so does/do the entities you were trying to pay.  That can add up to $60 or more (if you only bounced one check), on an account that already has a zero balance.  Bounce more than one, and you suddenly owe more than you can easily pay, and puts you less able to pay your bills the next month.  Of course, the answer is to pay more attention to your bank balance, but before online banking came alone, everyone has done it more than once.

I've talked about my friend Bruce who is on the autism spectrum, living in government housing on his own for the first time in his life.  He has no job and no driver's license.  Thus, everything he does has to come at the convenience of others.  It's a tough space to be in, and NOTHING is easy.  

As an example, a few days ago, he informed me that he owed the apartment complex some money for a utility bill that they paid for him.  He had $50 in cash to give to them.  It wasn't enough.  He actually owed $76, and they would not accept the cash as partial payment.  Payment needed to be by personal check or money order.  Well...money orders cost money, and he has no bank checks.  Only a debit card.  (Not sure why he didn't get checks when he opened the account, but oh well!)  I gave him my personal check for $76 to give them and took his $50 cash as payment.  When  he came out of the office, it turns out that he owes another $27 for a bill that slipped through the cracks before he got his gas deposit taken care of...  Thereafter, I took him to his bank to order checks.  The bank doesn't have temporary checks to give and can only send checks in the mail, at a cost of $12-something.  He only has $.40 in the bank...so no checks this time.

All of this takes him exactly back to where he started.  Yes, I could have given him the money for the checks, and yes, I could have given him the money for the gas bill he still owes the apartment complex, but I didn't.  I didn't because he has come to rely on me for more than I can or am willing to give.  I have spent hundreds of $$ to get him set up on his own but not teaching him how to be an adult if I keep caving in to "help".  What am I helping??

Today is another example of that.  He usually gets a $53 check from the apartment complex at the beginning of each month--don't ask me why, but it has something to do with the government funding.  He hasn't received it yet, so today told me that he hadn't, followed by "I don't know what to do."  I've heard this from him before.  What it really means is "save me".  His mother is only, maybe, ten miles away.  I don't know if he talks to her as much as he talks to me.  When he told me he hadn't received his check and didn't know what to do, I said, "Call the office and ask."  Simple enough.  He's not dumb.  He might have thought of it if he weren't leaning on me.  

With establishments crying for workers, Bruce has applied to many.  He never hears back.  There are reasons for that, but what is he to do?  He wants to work.  He needs to work.  But he has a disability that doesn't always make him the best candidate.  So everyone says "Nobody wants to work."  WRONGO!  And how hard it is for him to try to establish life on his own with no job and no way to get there?  

I've been working with Bruce to help himself with the whole driving thing.  I'm all about taking him necessary places, like the BMV, the doctor's office, job interviews, and grocery shopping, but I live 20 minutes away in a different community.  There is only so much I can do.  He is involved in social services, but the only real answer is for Social Security to accept his disability and put him on the dole.  That takes lawyers, and lawyers take money.

Being poor is a Catch 22.  Do it or don't do it; the result will be the same.  It hurts.        

Stupid Questions?

 (Private message:  Get well, Libby!  Hope you are feeling better every day!)

As you might guess, I have too much time on my hands, but not enough.  It doesn't take much effort to exhaust myself, physically, but my brain is always going full tilt.  With a plethora of things to do that actually need my attention, yet not much ability to get them done, I spend an inordinate amount of time pondering life and the universe...on the Internet.  It's both a blessing and a curse.  Because of this, I know that there are more questions than there are answers, because every answer causes more questions.

I saw a humorous meme on Facebook yesterday about a parent whose young son asked a question that was "so unanswerable that it threatened to tear a hole in the fabric of the space/time continuum:  'Why isn't there any mouse-flavored cat food?' "   How childlike and innocent!  No one would call that a stupid question.  Inquisitive and curious, yes.  Stupid, no.  

I could remember questions like that from my own childhood.  I wondered why, if I jumped into the air on a moving bus or train, I would come down in the same place.  The vehicle didn't move forward and leave me smashed a few feet farther back.  Or why, on a hot day in the car, the road ahead always looked wet, but when we got there, it wasn't wet at all.  Or why God would let bad things happen.  The questions are always acceptable when we are young.  It's when we are adults that they appear "stupid" because, we assume that adults should already know that from their years as questioning toddlers.  

When I was teaching high school juniors and seniors--almost adults--I had one young woman come to me in private to ask if someone could get oral herpes from giving oral sex to someone with genital herpes.  (Quite a change from questions like, "Why is the sky blue?")  I'd already told my students that there are no stupid questions as long as they are sincere.  I spent part of my free period looking up the answer she sought...wrote down the answer in a note, put it in a sealed envelope, and delivered it to her later that day.  (The answer, in case you are curious, is yes.)  We never spoke of it again.  I was flattered that she felt comfortable enough to ask ME the question.  I mean, there aren't that many teenagers that could easily ask that question of a parent.)  

Truth be known, I have many questions that I'd like to ask people--many of which would sound out of bounds if they weren't sincere:                                                                                                                     1.  Why are Black women so sensitive about their hair?                                                                               2.  Do criminals actually think ahead when they commit crimes?  Do they think about consequences, and are the consequences worth what they get from the crime?                                                                3. When society lowers the bar on acceptable behavior and language, what's left?                                    4.  What to do with the questions for which there are only arguable answers?  Abortion has been debated my whole life, as has capital punishment.  Peace in the Middle East has never been established in my lifetime.  Gun control, climate change, minimum wage...and now pandemic vaccinations/masks?  5.  No stupid questions.  Sometimes stupid answers.  

My stupid question for today is why does my house blow lightbulbs faster than what the bulbs say their life is?  Inquiring minds want to know!  (I probably wouldn't understand the answers, so don't bother to tell me.  I just want things to work!)