House Quirks

 If someone told me that he/she lived in a house with no little quirks that have to be considered, I would call that person a fibber.  Every home on the planet has at least one little "bug" that needs to be fixed "when I get around to it".  Especially homes with some age on them.  My own home is no different.  In fact, as I age, I have considered composing a little house manual to pass on to the next owner, when that time comes.  I'm just not sure there's enough time in the world to do that...

I live in what I call a little bungalow.  It was built in 1968, on a concrete slab.  It is considered a National Home, which I believe is a pre-fab.  The internal walls are thinner than the norm.  It's all on one level on a corner lot.  I bought this place when my daughter was still in middle school.  She has long since flown the coop, but I'm still here, 30 years later.

Thirty years.  I've never lived ANYWHERE that long in my life.  Although I'm not necessarily in the location I would have chosen for myself, I finally, FINALLY, have some roots.

And speaking of roots, I always wondered why the previous homeowner showed me where the sewer cleanout was on the outside of the house.  I mean, weren't there other things that were important to know?  Well...not so much.  It only took me a couple of years to find out that the mature maple tree at the front of the house sits directly over the sewer line, and tree roots clog the sewer line every couple of years.  Plumber required.  Without sewer rooting, toilet overflows happen!  

So let's count that as Quirk #1 for my home: sewer clogs that don't always give fair warning that they are about to happen.

Quirk #2: probably has to do with electricity.  The home, being small, has only limited electrical service.  I don't understand all of the jargon, but my entire house has 110 service?  Does this make sense?  In any case, breakers don't blow regularly except:  can't have hair dryers going in both bathrooms at the same time; can't run the toaster and the microwave at the same time...  The list goes on...

Quirk #3: some electrical outlets work well, and some don't.  The one right next to the stove would not "hold" the plug for my electric knife or my crockpot, for example.  I decided to have it replaced by my handyman, and in the process, it blinked out taking my refrigerator with it.  Twice.  Had to call an electrician to get it fixed for good.  Some outlets are controlled by a light switch to which lamps are supposed to be connected.  Some aren't.  It is what it is.

Quirk #4:  behind a picture in the main bathroom is an electrical plate where a light switch used to be.  Why is it there?  When the house was built, the back door led in to a very small utility area, which (in turn) had a door to the bathroom.  Thus, one could access the bathroom from the main part of the house or directly from the back door.  (I think the idea was that people could come in from the back yard without having to traipse through the house to use the bathroom.)  It didn't take long at all for me to decide that the second door was a waste of space, so I had it taken out and wallboarded up.

Quirk #5:  There are kitchen light switches just inside from the garage room and just inside the back door, but nothing to turn on the kitchen light from inside the house.  That means that the kitchen light goes on first thing in the morning and stays on all day until time to retire.  Oh...and one of those two switches acts up sometimes...

Quirk #6:  the house is built on a concrete slab.  That means there is no crawl space through which to thread electrical wires, water pipes, or anything else that needs to go from one place to the other invisibly.  All of that has to be done through the attic and down into the living space, and it is a problem.  The main problems is that the attic--accessible only by a pull-down ladder in the garage room--is unbearably hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.  Anything requiring water delivery or passage out of the house (think air conditioner condensate pump) is subject to frozen/cracked/ruptured pipes or tubes, which leads to leaks on the ceiling.  (I know this from experience in this very house.)  

The problem?  The refrigerator has only one place to be in my small kitchen, and that is quite a few feet away from the sink plumbing.  That is complicated by the fact that almost all new refrigerators in stock in major home stores have ice makers.  Ice makers require a water source.  The last time I had to replace my refrigerator, I had to get a color I didn't want and an ice maker I couldn't use because money and time IS an object for me.   (When your refrigerator goes on the fritz, you don't have time to wait for a multi-week ordering process.)

Truth be known, it IS possible to rig up a water source for an ice-making refrigerator in my house, but it would be tricky.  Tubing would have to travel up through the sink, pass through a cabinet, make a 90-degree turn, go through another cabinet, make another 90-degree turn toward the floor, the another 90-degree turn to hook up to the refrigerator...and somehow, all of this would have to be couched in some sort of hollow trim so it couldn't be seen.  Not gonna happen on my watch! 

Quirk #7:  the windows don't stay up.  If you open one and want it to stay open, you need a dowel rod (of which I have several) to prop them up.   And with one or more, the upper window will slide down if the lower window is raised.  The last time that happened, it took two people to hold one up so we could prop up the other.  And cleaning windows?  HA!  The windows all need to be replaced, but I don't have the funds.  

Quirk #8: the heavy wood front door seems to shift.  One week, it's fine.  The next, it won't lock properly.  It gets worked on over and over.  The only thing I can think of that would cause this is some kind of foundation failure, and that scares the wadding out of me!  It's fine now, but for how long?  Same problem with the storm door immediately in front of it.  Suddenly, it sticks.  Never did before.  Ugh!

In spite of all, I love this little house.  It's been my home for 3 decades.  I have fought like hell to keep it through some tough financial times and worked like hell to make it livable for my family.  Yes, it has its quirks, but every home does, and I've learned to live with them.  Be it ever so humble, there's no place like HOME.  Would I ever give it up?  Yes...to be closer to my family...but until/unless that happens, I can be found in my own little hermitage.

       

First, You Just Let Your Heart Break

 There are times in life when we are asked to believe the unbelievable and accept the unacceptable.  This is one of those times for me.  

My former stepdaughter passed away unexpectedly in Tucson, Arizona, on Monday, May 9th.  My brain is still scrambled about that.  There are no details to be shared.  I probably wouldn't share them even if I knew them.  It's not my story to tell.  Still, like so many others faced with situations like this, I want to be able to DO something to fix this, but it can't be fixed.  Stephanie is gone at age 51, and no one yet knows why.

Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates of Microsoft fame, was in an interview with Oprah Winfrey a couple of years ago.  Ms. Gates and her husband had been touring in Africa, bringing life-saving vaccinations to children who would not normally have access to them.  After one encounter with an African mother who was trying to entice Gates to take her children in order to give them a better life in the US, Oprah--who has also been met with those occasions in her work with African youth--asked Ms. Gates, "What do you do in times like that?"  Her answer stunned me:  "First, you have to just let your heart break."  What blasphemy is this?  I never considered it an option to allow hurt into one's life.  Most of us run away from it as far and fast as we can, but death is the ultimate hurt destination from which we cannot run.  It's final and unforgiving.  What's left for us to do is learn how to adjust and move on.

I first met Stephanie when she was, perhaps, 2 years old.  She was an adorable toddler.  I couldn't really understand her developing speech, but I liked trying.  Steph was 6 when her father and I married, and 8 when when her half-sibling Megan (my daughter) was born.  Steph seemed to be the only person to make Megan get the "baby giggles".  We became a blended family, of sorts.

Stephanie had a slightly older brother, Eric.  I always loved it when the kids came to visit.  They made me a stepmother before I was even a mother.  I learned so much from them.  Stephanie and I were particularly tight.  She was pretty and talented and bubbly and adventurous, and as she grew, we talked about things in confidence.  She told me things that she didn't feel were "safe" to tell her parents.  As long as she wasn't telling me things that were harmful to her, I kept her confidences.  I don't think ANY of us gave Stephanie credit for the depth of the things she felt.  She was in pain a lot.

Part of the reason for her pain was my divorce from her father.  He did the same thing to me that he did to her mother, and when he tried to involve her in the deception, she blew a gasket.  She was at work when he approached her to lie to me to cover his tracks.  After he left, she called her mother, then cried and cried...and refused to even talk to him for several years.  Although I had divorced him, I had not divorced HER or her brother.  We did what we could to keep things sane...

So, what becomes of blended families that become UNblended?  Although I loved Eric and Steph as my own, after the divorce, I was only Stepmother #1.  After me was Stepmother #2, and then Daddy's Girlfriend.  I didn't have much contact with the kids because they were adults and had moved on in their private lives, and I was just a presence from the past.  I totally understood that.  But when these children die, who am I?  I'm no longer family, although I feel that I am.  The kids never forgot me, and I never abandoned them.  People are expressing their condolences to me, and yet I wonder how I am entitled to their sorrow when I wasn't a part of the lives of my stepkids.  I loved them.  I hope they knew it.

We lost Eric about nine years ago to cholangiocarcinoma.  So very young.  We lost Stephanie this week at age 51.  My heart is broken for her parents--and yes, for me.  My own "child" is also grieving, and yet no one seems to remember her in the grand scheme of things.

So, whether I'm entitled to grieve or not, I will miss the butterfly that was my stepdaughter.  She was beautiful, and tortured.  I am giving myself permission to let my heart break,  Please, God--wrap your arms around all who loved Steph.  

      

Things We Do RIGHT

 Like every other woman of a "certain age", I have often taken my own inventory of the things I've done wrong in life.  I call them mistakes.  I consider something done out of ignorance to be a mistake.  It's one of those legal "you knew or should have known"  things that what you were doing was wrong.  

If I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I did it anyway, it was intentional; therefore, unforgivable.  If I should have known, but didn't, that's just ignorance and forgivable.  But what if BOTH are false?  What if I didn't know.  If I didn't know, how is it that I should have?  As Maya Angelou once said, "When you know better, you do better." 

Every once in awhile, I give myself credit for things I accidentally did right.  I had one child.  All of my pride, joy, frustration, and fear walked around in that one person.  I was a newbie parent, flying blind with help from books and family, as needed.  (Okay...so not blind.  Just visually impaired.)  Through all the years of my daughter's minority, I made a ton of mistakes (although I didn't recognize them at the time), and several after she became an adult (for which I only take SOME responsibility.   And no one told me to do the things that I did that were right.  Thus, I/we deserve to claim some sense of pride for the good things, whether or not the results actually happened because of me/us!

RIGHT THING #1:

I sang to my child.  I sang from the moment she was born until she discovered her own singing voice, which was beautiful.  (I sat in the stands at her 2nd grade school's Christmas concert and blubbered at her solo in The Friendly Beasts.  In my defense, it was less than a month since my own mother had died quite unexpectedly.  I was already an emotional mess.  But that clear, lovely voice told me that all was right in the world.)  When my daughter was in high school, she breached some tough competition to be included in her school's award-winning show choir, Belles et Beaux.  I beamed as a Show Choir Mom.

It wasn't just Megan's talent that I reveled in--it was also her taste in music: eclectic.  She appreciated good music, no matter the genre.  Thank you.  I'll take credit for that.  I tried to expose her to all of it, and I think my own enthusiasm encouraged her taste.  She never made excuses for it, which is extra special to me.  Loving music of every type is freeing!

One of my favorite memories of my daughter as a child was when she was maybe 5 years old.  She was taking a bath with my supervision when she asked me to sing Fill It With Glue.  I confessed that I didn't know that one, but she was not to be deterred.  She got more and more demanding:  "SING 'FILL IT WITH GLUE', MOM!  SING 'FILL IT WITH GLUE'!"  I could not, for the life of me, comprehend what song she wanted to hear.  Obviously, it was something I had sung to her before, but what??  It took quite awhile for it to sink in to my thick head.  She was referring to the children's song, Let the Sunshine In; to wit:

"Mommy told me something a little girl should know./  It is all about the devil and I've learned to hate him so./  She said he causes trouble if you let him in the room./  He will never, ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom./  So let the sunshine in./  Face it with a grin./ Smilers never lose,/ And frowners never win...etc."

https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/songs/open-up-your-heart/

Yes!  Of course!  How could I have been confused!

RIGHT THING #2:

I read to my child.  Well...I suppose in the beginning, it wasn't exactly reading.  After she got past the infant stage--maybe 8 months or so--it was mostly just showing pictures and saying words.  In a waiting room, I would pick up a magazine and point to pictures she could recognize, and say the word for the picture over and over again.  And then I bought fabric books...and had a nursery rhyme/fairy tale anthology that we would sing-song.  (I didn't care if she didn't understand them because most of the time, I didn't either.)  By the time she was a pre-school toddler, we had a healthy collection of Little Golden Books, many of which were favorites from my own childhood.  I wasn't making any effort to teach her to read.  I was just giving her words and letting her hear proper grammar.  (Thank God, that worked!  I never had to correct Megan's grammar!)

By the time Megan was in middle school, she was already an avid reader.  Many times, she had a book going in her bedroom, another in the bathroom, and a third going in the living room. Before she outgrew them, Megan had a pretty substantial collection of The Baby Sitters series.  Those were just pot-boilers, but she began to gravitate toward quality literature.  Actually, she put me to shame with her reading habits.

When my grandchildren were born, my daughter and I--and their daddy and his parents--all read to those babies all the time.  Both of them grew up with excellent grammar skills and huge vocabularies.  I'd been teaching English for many decades by that time, but since my influence was secondary, I could sit back, relax, and watch their developing language skills with utter fascination.  I've come to understand that learning language is simply magic, and it starts early.  The learning curve in those early years is enormous.  I have intelligent grandchildren, but I'm going to take some credit for giving them a healthy start in the language/literature world.

RIGHT THING #3:

I breastfed my child.  

PLEASE don't anyone take this as a condemnation of those who can't/don't/won't.  I was just in a position to do it in the early months, so I did.  Aside from being what the "experts" said was best for babies, I was happy for the convenience.  Of course, it is limiting.  For it to work, mom has to be where the kid is when the kid gets hungry; but to provide food didn't require a refrigerator or a stove...or sterilized nipples, bottles, etc.  I could bring the baby into bed with me, lean on my side, and let her nurse on that side while I dozed and she fell back to sleep.  Easy-peasy.  Out in public?  Find a place to sit, throw a baby blanket lightly over the shoulder on the side to be nursed and no one is the wiser.  

Why do I think that experience was "right"?  Well....I'll tell you: I don't know!  I nursed until Megan was 11 months old.  At that point, I'm not sure she was getting much milk from me, nor needing it.  When I stopped, my breasts did not engorge in anticipation.  Guess that meant it was time to wean.  Besides, my child was at the top of the growth charts at the pediatrician's office.  Time to move on!  (We already had moved to spoon/finger food, but I was still just topping off her tank with a shot or two from Mom before we gave up entirely.) 

There is scientific evidence that nursing mothers are somewhat protected from breast cancer later in life.  That's a plus.  I just considered that breastfeeding was a cheaper and more bonding way to feed my baby. and because I was in a position to do it, I just did.  And you know what?  She hasn't missed a meal since!

It remains to be seen if I ever did anything else right.  I still seek absolution...and credit!