Category: Uncategorized (Page 45 of 48)

Less than a year ago, we purchased new carpeting for our family room and hall. We hadn’t replaced the original carpeting in at least 15 years, and it had been tracked on by us, our child, his friends (most of whom were burly high school football players), a variety of family members, and many pets. It was in sad shape.

            So I was thrilled that, now that our son was an adult and had moved out, we could get new carpeting for the most-used room in our house. The hallway runs parallel to the family room and goes to the mudroom. On the other side of the hallway, also parallel, is our kitchen. It is sort of a “great” room, with a wide entrance from the kitchen, through the hall and into the family room, but the hall itself is about 3 feet wide and 15 feet long.

            Less than a year. Which is why I was so mad at myself in March when I took a bag of kitchen trash to the back door to put in out in the trashcan. I walked through the kitchen and down the hall and when I got to the back door, I noticed something dripping onto my foot. Some kind of nasty, awful, thick grease was leaking out of my “leakproof” kitchen trash bag!  It had drizzled all through the kitchen (which thankfully has a ceramic and easily cleaned floor) and all through the hallway in a lazy “S” pattern. Grease.

            My mom would have said, “I just can’t have nice things.” And I had done this myself. I raced the bag to the trash can, cleaned up the mudroom (linoleum) and kitchen floors, and grabbed the spray bottle of stain remover and a large rag. It’s a name-brand, supposedly effective stain remover and I squirted and scrubbed and squirted and scrubbed all the way down the path of that grease in the hall.

            The stain laughed. I tried another brand of stain remover, one guaranteed to remove any and all stains. Scrubbing and scrubbing left me a small patch at the very beginning of the stain that appeared to be gone.

            It was back the next day.

            We borrowed a carpet cleaner from friends and cleaned the entire area, even the family room. The carpet looked brand new. I went over the stained portion about seven times and the stain was gone!  It looked wonderful.

            It was back the next day, chortling at me with malicious glee.

            Meanwhile, the pandemic had hit hard and I was staying at home with that evil stain, running the length of my hall and mocking me every day.

            Then, the solution appeared – as if by magic – on my Amazon page. I was searching for vacuum cleaner filter replacements, when a “recommendation” came up for a little throw rug. Aha!  Inspiration struck.

            Just days later, I received my 2’ 7” wide, 12’ long carpet runner. It fits nicely in the hall, as though we had planned it that way from the beginning. And it’s just wide enough to cover the wandering stain fully.

            Who’s laughing now, greasepot?

               There was a time in my life when I was an expert at multi-tasking. I could read a book while watching television and keep both stories straight!  I could work a jigsaw puzzle, cook dinner, and carry on a conversation that made sense – all at the same time.

               Sadly, I fear those days are waning. In fact, I don’t so much multi-task now, as I multi-risk. If I try to do two things at once, it is very likely that both are at risk for being completely messed up. It’s dangerous to add a third task, for certain. I know this because of a day I had last week.

               I was cooking dinner while doing the laundry. That seems like a normal “dual-task” situation, and a situation I’ve completed successfully thousands of times.  I felt like everything was proceeding fairly normally. Then I received a text from our niece, asking me if I had received a letter from an agency at which she had used me as a reference. Just as I was answering her, I got a second text. This one was from a friend, asking if we were free on Wednesday evening. Now, I know that when you read a new text, you have to close it out before you go back to the any other text. But while I know that, I was trying to pull clothes out of the dryer and also listen for the timer on the microwave.

               So I quickly texted that I had, indeed been asked for a reference and had already submitted it. Then, I opened the other text and responded that, due to the pandemic, our schedule was generally pretty clear. What did she have in mind?

               While I was removing the item from the microwave, my phone dinged twice with two more texts. My niece wanted to know what our open schedule had to do with her reference and what she had in mind was getting a job. My friend wanted to know who had been asking about her.

               Clearly, I had responded to the wrong people with the right information. Or was it the right people with the wrong information? While I was straightening out this mess of my own making, the pan on the stove bubbled over.  I dropped the phone on the counter and picked up the pan very quickly. In my haste, I knocked a baggie holding some ingredients for dinner onto the stove top. I set down the pan as fast as I could and scooped the baggie off the stove. Or what was left of the baggie. Most of the plastic had adhered to the stove top.

               I researched on the internet and found that rubbing alcohol will remove this disaster. I checked my cabinet and we had this item, but the bottle had about a teaspoon left in it. I tore off my flannel shirt and grabbed a sweater from the laundry room. Pulling it over my head, and snagging a mask from the desk, I dashed to the car and went to the store to get more rubbing alcohol.

                The sweater had just been delivered the day before from my trusty on-line delivery service. It was in the laundry room so that I could remove the tags and wash it. I remembered that – only when I found those tags all over me while standing in the checkout line. 

Meanwhile, all my delicate shirts were undoubtedly crumpled in the bottom of the dryer, developing permanent wrinkles that would require either ironing or another spin with a wet towel through the dryer.

               Multi-risking is my new skill, apparently.

Some errors we make ourselves, while some are thrust upon us. For example, back in my youth, I had a freak accident while driving. I had the accident – but it was not my fault. It happened like this:

               I was driving down a two-lane highway in the evening, alongside the beautiful Ohio River. It was dark, but my headlights illuminated the roadway ahead of me quite nicely. Way in front of me I could just make out the outline of a large dump truck. Behind me, at a nice distance, was a pair of headlights. The moon was shining on the river, and my boyfriend (at the time) was in the back seat, while my mom was in the front passenger seat.

               My headlights suddenly caught a rolling object in the cross hairs. It was rolling fast and coming right down the middle of my lane. The car that had been at a distance behind me was just passing me. The road to my right had a sharp incline down to the river. I had three choices – sideswipe the car next to me at 50 mph, steer into the river, or hit the object head on.

               In the second I had to decide, the object – which turned out to be a tire – hit me.  Well, it hit the car, right in the middle of the grill, bounced up and hit the windshield, and then flew over the top of the car. I began to slow down, of course, and in my rearview mirror I saw the tire make a bounce, and continue rolling down the road.

               The car next to us pulled over, right in front of me. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured, although I did get a black eye from hitting the steering wheel upon impact.

               This accident was was so freakish that it was almost comedic. It turned out the dump truck was carrying a load of tires and thankfully the one that fell off and rolled had no hub cab or metal in it!

               Some errors of a freakish nature are those we make ourselves. Right before Easter this year, I was creating a basket for our adult son. This tradition is one that I enjoy, and since I now pack the basket with interesting things to cook and money/gift cards instead of toys and candy, I think he likes it, too. The pandemic caused me to get most of the items via the internet this year, but I wanted to tuck some little sweet item in the basket (which nowadays is a bag). Anyway, I was getting some meat at the butcher shop and spotted some cool looking cookies at the checkout. A bunny and a carrot cookies went into the bag.

               It was several days later when my son called me to say that the cookies seemed to be granola rather than actual cookies. I asked him to read me the label and it turned out they were neither cookies, nor granola. They were dog treats!  Ack!  It pays to read the labels closely!

               Then there are those events caused by nature, God, or just dumb bad luck. Last week, I was sitting on our patio, enjoying a glass of wine, when something plopped on my head. It was a tree frog!  The nearest tree was many feet away, and the frog had to jump up and under the umbrella to achieve this scary feat.

               When my screaming subsided, my husband rescued the frog and placed him back out by the tree. This is small comfort to me, because I believe the frog now knows how to leap onto my head. But, like the rolling tire, at least this freak accident was not my fault! 

This year, the only county fairs Ohio will have are “junior” fairs. I’m glad the 4H kiddos get to show their animals and experience the annual fair event, even though it will be strange and not totally fair-like. For me, the annual county fair is an amazing and must-attend event, so I will personally miss it very much. I have a history with our county fair, a big one.

               Thirty-seven years ago, my husband took me to a county fair in a neighboring county in July. I hadn’t been to a fair since I was a girl, so I loved the whole experience. We ate greasy food, played silly games, and rode every ride, including the Scrambler and the double Ferris Wheel.

               Three weeks later, our own county fair opened and we went on Sunday of fair week.  I didn’t know it at the time, but he had slipped the fair worker a 5-dollar bill to stop the single Ferris Wheel at the top, so he could propose. How romantic!

               Or it would have been.  What Matt didn’t know is that the double Ferris Wheel experience had left me with nightmares and I had vowed to never ride such a thing again. So no amount of wheedling or cajoling was getting me on that Ferris Wheel.  (Let me digress to say that I have not found out in the ensuing 37 years if he retrieved his five dollars, or not. The story on that is unclear.)

               But, we enjoyed the rest of the fair. We had pork chops from the Grange grill.  We enjoyed milkshakes and fried pickles. I began my life-long love affair with elephant ears. We went to all the animal barns and looked at the all the displays. We watched a couple horse races.  And in a show of dexterity and skill, Matt won me a carnival cane.

               He didn’t get to propose at the fair, but as we left the fairgrounds, he suggested a detour to the levee.  There, we sat on a swing and watched the river and he asked me to be his wife.  So while I didn’t get the Ferris Wheel proposal, I did get the man of my dreams.

               Every year since then, we’ve celebrated the Sunday of fair week by attending the fair, eating an elephant ear, enjoying a pork chop, and Matt wins me another carnival cane.

               Later on, we took our son, his cousin, or various friends of his to the fair to watch them on the rides, enjoy cotton candy, and watch horse races.

               By the time our son was an adult, we still went on Sunday, although we avoided the more fried foods, split an elephant ear, and only went to the non-animal barns to look at displays (allergies). I began to enter photographs in the annual contest (I’ve even won a few ribbons).

               But regardless of other changes, I’ve never left the county fair without a cane in my hand; a cane won by my husband for me to commemorate a very happy day in our lives.

               This year, there will be no elephant ear, no Tilt-a-Whirl, and no horse races.  But we went to an antique store and bought a cane. It likely cost the same amount as it would if he’d played the game, though it required no dexterity or skill. We picked a color I’ve never had before so we’d always remember the 2020 “fair” cane.

               I’m sorry we aren’t getting a full-fledged “normal” fair this year.  I know many people are upset and sorry about it. But if missing the fair saves even one life, then I’ll gladly pass on the elephant ear, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the milkshake. Plus, I got my 37^th cane!