Forty Dollar Toast

The toaster my mom and dad had when we were kids was the same one that they got for a wedding gift. It lasted forever. It was a silver toaster with black trim – kind of like this retro looking one I just got in May.

This is the first toaster I have purchased. Our wedding gift toaster (almost thirty-two years ago from my brother and sister-in-law) lasted about twelve years. The four or more subsequent toasters that I received from my kids for Christmas each had a useful life of about four years each. (Yes, I always ask for toasters for Christmas – it makes their shopping so easy – and you can get them almost anywhere, cheap!)

Back to the subject. Now if you do the math, you will realize that it doesn’t compute.

Yes, I’ve tricked you! I said “useful life”. Each of my toasters also had at least a year of “un-useful life” as well.

You’ve probably done it too. Pushing the lever down several times to make it stay down, cranking the darkness knob up more and more each time you used it to get the toast the color you wanted, or letting the toaster cool down between slices so it wouldn’t pop up right away again while the bread wasn’t even warm yet.

My new toaster was expensive in my books. It cost forty bucks. It has four push buttons for reheat, defrost, bagel and on/off. Although I don’t know what I would ever use the first two buttons for, the bagel button caught my eye. I quickly put the toaster in my cart before letting myself second-guess this expensive purchase.

The box and its directions (who needs directions for a toaster?) went unread and in the trash can and my new toaster found its home on the counter next to the refrigerator. I set the darkness dial in the middle and tried it out. Perfect!!

By now, Mickey has moved the darkness dial up and down from the center mark and I haven’t noticed. Until I hear my toast pop up and see with disgust just how dark it got. I put two more slices in and try again, this time moving the darkness dial a little towards the way I think it should go to make it lighter. The toast pops up and again I am disgusted! Still too dark. I am convinced that this toaster is a lemon.

Unless maybe I’m not reading the darkness dial right. Hmmm……

The little darkness dial has no words, just pictures. Two pictures, one of a piece of bread filled in with solid white, and one of a piece of bread outlined with white. With the directions long gone I decide to test my toaster.

I started with a piece of bread and the darkness dial all the way to the solid white. After almost four minutes, I smell burning toast. I pop it up and toss it.

Making sure to let the toaster cool down, I wait about twenty minutes and then try another piece of bread – this time with the darkness dial all the way to the outlined white. It pops up in less than two minutes with just barely warmed bread.

People always ask me what I am doing this summer since I have taken time off from work. I tell them I am working on my book and tearing my kitchen walls down for remodeling.

Now I can add wasting time playing with my new toaster to the list.

It sure is a nice toaster, though.

Direction

It’s not about going right or left. It’s not about going north or south.

It’s about guiding your children in their decision-making. It’s about asking“What do you think you should do?” instead of saying, “I think you should do this.”

But, instinct tells us to protect them and take care of them. So saying the latter is much harder – especially when you can see disaster coming.

For instance, relationship issues sure can tug at a mother’s heart. We see them happy in relationships and it warms our heart. While at the same time, we remember from our own youth just how devastating relationships can be when things go south. We mothers may even ending up gaining or losing a new found friend out of the deal whom we hold dear in our hearts as well.

The whole picture-

It’s so easy to get caught up in our children’s lives that we often forget that being a parent is about helping them see the whole picture so that they can make a good decision on their own. Or maybe a bad decision – in which case, would be one to learn from.

We need to ask questions like, “How does that make you feel?”, or “What do you think will happen if you do that?” And once in a while (if you have a grown boy, for instance) you might need to be pretty specific and say, “Here it is from a female perspective”, just to remind them that girls often think quite differently.

And in the end, we are always there to help pick up the pieces, get them back on their feet, brush themselves off and continue on with life – their own life. Hopefully – a bit wiser the next time around.

Hey, did you figure out that the "we" in this story might really be "me"?

Just For A Little Bit

The old woman sits in her chair by the window, waiting. Waiting and hoping that someone will visit today. Just for a little bit.

Each day is filled with routine. The nurse helps her use the bathroom. She gets dressed for breakfast. They wheel her down the hall to the dining area, where she waits patiently by her table for the tray. Will today’s tray be filled with something different from yesterday’s tray? Small talk is made at the table by those who can talk. “How are you today?” “Fine, thank you.” The lady next to her is cordial, but after a minute begins spreading grape jelly on her toast. This lady continues to spread the jelly, compulsively scraping every smidgen of it from the serving container. She spreads it back and forth, up and down, and back and forth again, never actually taking a bite.

Breakfast is done and the old woman is wheeled back to her room. The nurse helps her brush her teeth and she lay back in her bed, takes her medication and falls asleep for a nap. She awakens to the sound of the nurse in the room. After getting out of bed to use the bathroom, the old woman sits in her chair for a while. She hears children in the hall. They are here to visit someone. But not her.

The old woman tries to make small talk with her roommate. “What is your husband’s name?” “Where do you live?” Each of them has forgotten that they had this same conversation yesterday.

She chooses to eat lunch in her room today. The nurse brings in her tray and she sits up in bed to eat. It’s just easier than getting up and getting out. After lunch and help using the bathroom, the old woman again lays down to rest. The clock ticks, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, until the afternoon is long gone.

Supper is eaten and she goes back to her room.

The old woman sits in her chair by the window, waiting. Waiting and hoping that someone will visit today. Just for a little bit.

Having my mom stay at the nursing home for the last ten days for rehabilitation has given me a new perspective on aging. I wish I would have visited my Grandma more, but I was too busy. Go visit someone who is lonely today. Just for a little bit.

The Game of Risk

The game of risk. We play it every day.

The rows sustain our very lives and the hills that are the backdrop for these rows is our reward for the labor and the worry, the stress and the strain.

In winter’s snow and cold, we retreat to our house. As we sit by the fire, we watch the snow gradually cover last year’s rows – eventually to melt with spring’s rain, saturating the soil below. The soil will stockpile the moisture – hopefully long enough to sustain the rows through the hot summer months.

Spring brings with it the readying time, where much thought and energy is put into planning each and every row. The weather must cooperate for the rows to sprout and flourish. We must have sun to warm the soil, and rain to hydrate the seeds in the ground.

With the hot sun of July comes the threat of unwanted predators which may jeopardize the rows, and the lack of rain, which causes the rows to curl and burn while every bit of moisture reserve from the soil is evaporated.

We pray for rain. But not too much. It can rain on our picnic, we don’t care. Because we know that without rain, the rows will die and the hills will no longer belong to us. We pray for others in times of their misfortune – too much rain which drowns the rows – because we know that they are just as vulnerable as we are – and that they also have hills they are fighting to protect.

Finally fall harvest comes – it is an ending time, when we will at last determine the success of the rows and see our fate. As the evening comes more quickly, and the cool autumn air sends a welcome chill through us, we wash the soil of the rows from our hands until next spring.

When we will do it all over again.

The risk never goes away. It is there every day of the year – but the hills that are the backdrop for the rows remain – an ever beautiful sign of just why we take the risk again and again.

Does My Mascara Look Okay?

Two years ago, my husband and I were in town. The tire on our car looked low to him, so he had me pull over into the gas station to the air compressor. Being the manly man he is, he got out to put air in the tire. I’m tuning in the radio or something when all of a sudden I hear a knock on the window.

“Come here. I need you to look at the tire pressure tester and tell me what it says. I can’t see the numbers.” I got out, read the tester and told him just what I saw.

A year later, we’re in the pharmacy department looking for cold medicine or something. Perusing through the many brands to choose from on the shelves, we each pick up a package and turn them over to read the label. Neither of us can make out the writing. We put them down, I pushed the cart over to the reading glasses, and we picked out a pair that we could share.

In a few months we both realize that one pair isn’t enough. I pick up a pair to keep at my computer, while he gets some to keep in the kitchen where he sits to read the paper. By Christmas, I have purchased another pair for my desk at work and he gets some to keep in his truck.

It isn’t long and the power isn’t strong enough. We both need to up the magnification, with him needing just a tad more than I.

By now, I’ve added a pair in my purse, plus a magnifying mirror in the bathroom so I don’t go to work looking like I missed my eyelashes with the mascara.

Last week, we were working on the kitchen remodel, trying to read a tape measure, mark cut lines and run the table saw. Each of us wore our glasses, I flipped them up on my head when I had to walk from room to room so I didn’t trip, then back down again to measure and cut. Sometimes I’m too lazy to take them off, then I just get dizzy.

The eye doctor had no sympathy for me – he simply told me, “I can’t do anything about your age.” Gee thanks.

Years ago, my dad would buy reading glasses from the drug store – a whole display card at a time, about a dozen of them. Each pair was different, some were ladies styles, some men’s styles, some were fashionable and some were ugly. I never really understood, just tried not to laugh when he was wearing purple glasses with gold and diamonds on them. Until now.

Bargaining With the Tooth Fairy

Mickey had two permanent teeth pulled today to make room for some more. She is a real trooper – at age thirteen, she knew she would not enjoy it, but knew she had to do it. Seeing those huge teeth come home in a box as a souvenir of today’s braveness, my thoughts wandered …

She lost her first tooth back in 2002, in first grade. Sitting there deep in thought and not even aware of what she was doing, she would take her tongue and push the little tooth back and forth. While she was watching tv, she would take her fingers and manipulate the tooth even more. All the wiggling finally paid off – eventually causing the tooth to just hang there – as if by a thread.

“Mickey, you need to try and get that tooth to come out,” I said. “Come into the bathroom.”

Perched on a stool in front of the mirror, I handed her a dry wash cloth and showed her how to wrap the cloth around the tooth. I told her to pull on it and try to get it to come out.

After a few foiled attempts, I asked her to let me touch it. A quick vision of my dad telling me “just let me touch it” ran through my head. Because he touched it alright, he pulled it right out! It happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize it. And now, thirty-five years later, I found myself in those same shoes.

The tooth came out almost effortlessly; after all, it was hanging there by its very tiny baby sort of a root. There was a spot of blood, but biting on a cold, wet wash cloth soothed her little jaw in an instant. The tooth was ready to be put under the pillow, where it would anxiously await the Tooth Fairy’s arrival.

I tucked Mickey in that night, we said our prayers, and I thought about the tooth laying there under her pillow. I remember when she got that tooth. It was July. With the temperature well over 90° that day, along with unbearable humidity, I sat in my un-air conditioned house rocking a very fussy sixth month old baby. No matter which way I rocked her, or jiggled her on my lap, she was not happy. No matter which lullaby I sang to her, or which book I read to her, she was not happy. She was just plain crabby, crabby, crabby. Until the tooth finally erupted from her swollen gum.

I bargained with the Tooth Fairy that night to let me keep her first tooth, because as I looked at it, I realized that this was a part of her that I would never see again. A part of her life that she and I experienced together – as we sat in the rocking chair together on that hot July day … when she needed her mom to comfort her.

Just like she did today.

Attempting Green

Fifteen years ago I had a huge clothesline in the back yard. Dairy farming at the time, we generated a lot of dirty laundry! I remember one Saturday afternoon, after washing continuously all day, counting thirty-five t-shirts hanging on the line – plus fifteen pairs of jeans, twenty-five pairs of socks and a dozen towels.

Eventually the cows were sold, the boys grew up and moved away, and my huge clothesline was usually empty. Mickey told me, “I don’t like the smell of the clothes after you take them off the line. They smell like air.” My husband said, “My clothes are too stiff and scratchy when they come off the line.” I simply thought, “are they crazy, or what?”

But, after getting tired of avoiding the clothesline with the lawnmower and trimming with the weed eater around its frame, I eventually found a new home for it. A woman I work with, who lived on a dairy farm with her husband and her three boys took it ever so graciously out of my yard. The clothesline was finally gone … until this spring.

That’s when I decided I wanted to go green, but with a smaller version of the clothesline.

After much thought, I bought a little umbrella-style portable clothesline that I could fold up and put aside when I wasn’t using it. Eager to install it, but dismayed when the directions told me that I needed a bag of quick setting cement for the post, I had to wait until I went back to town. A week later, armed and ready, I finally convinced my husband to dig a hole for me. Three days later, he actually dug the nice, neat hole, and we added the cement. It set up quickly and I knew that the next morning I would be able finally use my clothesline!

Early Saturday morning I threw a load of jeans into the washer. As soon as they were done washing, I grabbed them and went out to the line. Oops, I realized that I forgot one important thing – clothes pins! I flopped the jeans over the line anyway.

An hour later … it started raining … and rained off and on all day.

I took them back off the line, and put them on again - twice.

Finally, I brought the jeans in and threw them into the dryer.