Half of a Snowman

Poem written in March for my friend
who died in prison with leukemia April 20

A cold, cold day, and time for a walk.
Tiny patches of snow hold on to the brown grass.
The only sign of life in the neighborhood
Lies still, quietly proving its existence.
Two halves of a snowman that's forgotten but not gone.
His head vanished some time ago.
His two-snowball body remains, separated,
Occupying two spaces in his family's yard.
No children are playing with him.
No abandoned scarf or mittens lie nearby in half-frozen heaps.
He's just there. Both of him.
Chopped in two by the sun's melting glow -
Destined.
Don't worry, Mr. Snowman,
You know you'll be traveling soon,
Because snow becomes water becomes vapor.
I wink at him and walk on
Toward home.

The Cat House

We yawn, turn out the lights, and drift off to never-never-land. Then the toys come to life! It's the other world. The Cat World. We don't know exactly what goes on during the cat's nocturnal escapades, but sometimes there's a clue. A large painting tilts at a 40 degree angle. A bed coverlet is pulled back to one side. A toothbrush is in the sink. Tufts of deep pile carpet lie on wood floors. Window blinds hang askew. A cracker box sits on the kitchen floor.
The cat sleeps all day. On those rare occasions when he gets playful in the daytime, he runs through the kitchen, skids into a half-stop-half-flip when he sees you coming and tears through the house in the other direction, sounding like a drum solo gone haywire. Or he jumps over your feet when you walk upstairs, hides around the corner, jumps out at you, and runs. The cat does like to play. But soon he's tired of you, so he disappears. You might find him lying in a soft chair somewhere sleeping as his body busily sheds its hair. He might lift his head to yawn, then he's out again, dreaming up his next adventure when the house belongs totally to him again.

Bulletin Boards

I have been appointed Grand-Master-in-Charge-of-Bulletin-Boards at our church. Big church, lots of boards! It all began one peaceful evening in a normal run-of-the-mill committee meeting. Someone mentioned that the bulletin boards were getting sloppy (or words to that effect) and that they'd like some help with figuring out what to do about it. I thought to myself, "I am on this committee, and I don't do my part. This will make me look good without much work." So I volunteered. Then they dropped the bomb. Said boards should have a "monthly change of backgrounds/themes" to keep them fresh and appealing.

I panicked. MONTHLY CHANGE?! I don't know which word scared me most - "monthly" or "change." Did this mean ALL of the bulletin boards (roughly a baker's dozen)? I had visions of me carrying a mess of supplies from one building to another, stapling cutesy borders around the bulletin boards and measuring, cutting, and inserting colorful backgrounds, then repeating those steps EVERY MONTH to put up bunnies or valentines or jack-o-lanterns.

But that's not the case. Whew! I just have five of them in three buildings. I'll spiff them up (one time only) and keep them current (not decorated). As of today, I have photographed, listed, measured, and reported on them. Next I guess I'll be repairing them.

As for the ones I don't have to work on, they belong to other groups in the church. I'm actually lucky (we call it "blessed" at church) because if I had all of them, it would have been six buildings!

11:30 PM Blues

I wrote this a few months back. Reading over it, I see why I retired! …

It’s 11:30 pm, and we just got home from the shop and settled into our easy chairs. My hair is sticking out in all directions because I was too impatient to wait my turn for a haircut. I rub my stressed neck and realize I forgot to put on my earrings this morning. This morning! When was that? It seems like a week ago. I’ve managed to fill up 15 hours and feel busier than before.

I tried to smile all day. I tried to be patient. I am fortunate to be working with my children. After all, who else could I count on to tell me I’m acting stressed and affecting our shop's environment in a negative way?
But I'm not one to give up. I have decided to become smiley and light-hearted, to enjoy taking lunch breaks, and to laugh at e-mail jokes. I will be an encourager – an uplifting beam of light in an otherwise dull environment. But then, who'll recognize me?

Band-Aids

A band-aid is supposed to have two pull tabs. Right? You pull one off and it reveals a sticky side, which you place on your skin. Then you pull the other off, press it down on your skin, and that's all there is to it!

I bought a box of waterproof band-aids. They're different. Each bandaid has four tabs - two on top and two on bottom. First, I tried to pull off all four tabs and place the band-aid without them. Didn't work. It was like cling wrap.

Next band-aid. I peeled off one of the bottom tabs, stuck it to my toe, peeled the top off and tried to wrap it around my toe. It balled up like a spider egg.

Next band-aid. I tried the same thing and got the same result. (What's the definition of an idiot?)

Next band-aid. I pulled the tab off the bottom of one side, placed it on the toe, pulled tab off bottom of other side, placed on toe. Oops. It stuck to the top of the first top tab.

Next band-aid please. I placed one side, removed the top tab. It balled up again. Don't ask me what I expected!

Next band-aid. I got the first side placed and the tab removed from the top of it. Then I removed the top tab from the other side. Oh no. I was supposed to remove the bottom first. (Are you following this?) Now the first side's coming unglued anyway. (Me too!)

Now I'm ripping the band-aids as I jerk them out of the box. I almost got one right before I finished up the box.





(BTW - For those of you who read my last blog, those steaks were GREAT!)

Grill Fever

My husband has been on a quest for the perfect grill 40 years now. Yesterday, we bought another one.

We had planned to go to the shop yesterday. But I emailed them this message:

Not sure if we'll make it today. Your dad NEEDS his grill RIGHT NOW! :) It will take him one or two hours to pick it out. :(

We went to Lowe's and carefully scrutinized about twelve gas grills, as I recall. Yes, gas! I like it when he fires up the charcoal and we sit outside a couple of hours drinking our favorite beverages and smelling the aroma of charcoal - not gas. However, he wants a gas grill, and it's his turn to win.

There's a new invention that came on the market last year. It's a "heat radiating element and drippings shield for gas-fired barbecues." It's supposed to make the grate hotter so you can sear a steak. I wanted that one. I told him not to get it just because I wanted it because if it's no good, I'll hear about it for a long, long time. Maybe until the rapture!

We did get that one. We planned to get the work van and pick it up tomorrow because of the rain today. I was all settled to get some writing done when the rain stopped and I heard, "Call them and see if it's assembled yet!" I did, and it was. I called the shop to see if our son could bring the van home after work today instead of tomorrow to get the grill, because it was going to turn into a pumpkin or something if it had to sit at Lowe's overnight. He was out getting coffee but would call back.

Ten minutes later - "How long does it take to get a cup of coffee?!!"

Then the phone rang. My husband who never answers the phone answered it. Whoopee! We will get the grill today! I'll let you know tomorrow if it really cooks a good steak!

Water Bowl

We have inherited Mojo. He’s our daughter’s cat, and he knows us and loves us. (I think. You never know with a cat.) My point is – he is grown and already had his habits before he moved in, and we are learning what they are.

For several nights, after the house got quiet and I was almost asleep, I heard something like a cat collar clinking against Mojo’s water bowl or food bowl. Mojo doesn’t have a collar, though, so I lay awake wondering what he is doing. There’s no use getting out of bed and going to the kitchen to observe, because he’ll scamper. After all, he IS a cat.

Could kitty cat food pellets sound like a metal collar dinging against a ceramic bowl? Not likely. Maybe one bowl’s moving when he’s eating, hitting against the other bowl. But the bowls are heavy enough that they don't slide when he eats. So that's not likely either.

Then he finally did it while I was in the kitchen one morning. Mojo was batting at the water bowl and running his paw around the rim, shaking the bowl and jostling the water. I guess he was trying to see where the surface of the water was before sticking his nose down in the bowl. He kept doing it, like he didn’t get it the first time.

Oh well. He IS a cat!

THE LINOTYPE

So you wondered what Hugh Mouse has been spending his time writing lately? Glad you asked! He's not really a mouse, you know. He's Maggie's alter ego. Maggie (me) has been writing memories from the 50s and 60s of the activities in the shop of the Duplin Times, a small town weekly newspaper. This one's about the linotype. If you like it, make a comment about it and I'll throw in another one…………

The linotype was a big metal machine that melted bars of lead and molded them into lines of metal type. Before getting to the linotype, the bars had to be made. The pressmen, Mose and Amos, melted the lead in a concrete and cinder block closet-size room. I avoided that room. Very hot in there! Melted lead didn’t smell so good, either. Then they poured it into bar-shaped molds they had lying around on the concrete floor next to the room. The molds were about two feet long, I guess. I was a kid, and I surely never measured them. The lead solidified into a bar with a hole in the top so that it could be hung from a chain on the Linotype, where it slowly descended and melted and was cast into millions of letters on little lead strips. The strips dropped steadily into a tray that was at just about my eye level. For some reason, watching this was hypnotic. My sister and I, in two different generations, both found this mesmerizing and would watch it for hours.

The linotype operator's hands seemed to wave across the keyboard as he typed – not like my mom’s fingers bouncing on typewriter keys. He could pick up those hot pieces of metal type and toss them out if he made a typing mistake. Then he went on typing, and when the correct piece of metal fell into the tray, he picked it out and put it in the right place. He could read the metal type really fast, which amazed me because it was like reading in a mirror. Then the raised metal type went to the tables and the newpaper printing process was under way. (To be continued. Maybe)

Facebook Newby

I'm 61 years old and have never used Facebook. (Don't laugh. If you were born in l948, you wouldn't have a technology gene either.) Since I didn't want to be left in the dust, I joined Facebook. ("Joined"? There's another word for it. Somewhere.)

It's a weird website. There are different places for typing comments. Where do they go? You can click on people's pictures and type messages to them and never find your way back to where you started from. It's like trying to learn how to drive somewhere when you're taken a different way every time. Of course in my case, I don't know where I'm going.

I get emails confirming that people got my messages and sent a message back. But I can't find them. If I click on someone's home page and scan down it, I can find where they accepted me as a friend. If I click on my own name, I get a different page than when I first logged in. I try to go back with the arrow button and that doesn't work. Page Expired! I cannot navigate the thing!

Potential friends pop up at random. You might know them. Or maybe not.

You can invite one of those pop-ups to be your friend. If they accept, they go onto your "friends" list. I had to email someone to ask how to find that list!

You can poke people - just because. And you can give people a "thumbs up" if you like something they said. You can click on someone's picture and you'll go to their homepage and see all their messages and pictures of their friends. Hey - no one claimed this thing was private!!

There are games to play and other mysterious links to explore. I've been told that there's somewhere you can get these game messages out of your space. I look forward to finding that!

My next challenge - You Tube!

Office Thermostat

Office Thermostat

It’s cold in the front and warm in the back. No, it’s warm in the front and --- you know the drill! There is one thermostat. I tell everyone to wear layers so they can respond to their perceived weather changes.
“I don’t have layers,” she insists, in her wool turtleneck sweater.
“Just deal with it!” he yells, sweating in his thin T-shirt.
I simply peel off my sweater, then my over-shirt, as I sweat through a hot flash. Then I put them back on. Heck. Thermostats are for wimps anyway!

I'm back!

My apologies to everyone for my long absence! I'm back in full living color! We had a family emergency for about 6 weeks, I had a job with the Census, and I had to write a story about the Duplin Times newspaper. I will be giving you bits and pieces of those stories as we go along, and also some stories told by my father-in-law that are wonderful!

For now, I'm glad to be back in the saddle!

Lovingly
HughMouse

Ball of String

(This is one of the stories my husband's dad told. He grew up in the 30s, and he had a lot of stories to tell about it!)

BALL OF STRING

I was in the dining room with Uncle Tom late one evening when he was on one of his binges. Aunt Annie had talked me into staying to eat supper because, generally, if he had supper, he'd get sleepy and go on to bed.

She had soup for supper that night. There wasn't a soul in the dining room while we were in there. They were just hoping he'd eat and go to bed.

He went to spooning that soup. I was sitting there looking at him eating, because I wanted to go home. Pretty soon, I saw something hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

He reached up and pulled down on it about three or four times. Then he reached up with the other hand and pulled down on it. He was pulling a string out of his mouth.

Back then they bought feed in feed sacks where the women could make dresses out of them, and the women saved that string and rolled it up in little balls. Aunt Annie had rolled up a small ball of it, about the size of a golf ball or a little smaller, and she had laid it up on the warming closet on top of the wood cook stove. Somehow or another, when she was making that pot of soup, that ball of string rolled off into the soup.

Well, with big chunks of tomato in the soup and all, that ball of string had got soaked, and Uncle Tom had eaten it just like it was tomatoes, and swallowed it. And it just happened that the end of that string was hanging out of his mouth.

I watched him, because I didn't know what was going on, and he didn't either. He pulled that string out four or five times and looked at it. Then he turned right up in the air, and he leaned back and squalled, "Annie! Come in here! I'm raveling out!" You could have heard him a half a mile. I just about busted my sides open laughing at him. He kept pulling until he unrolled that whole roll of string.

Work Van

I had to drive our work van. I opened the door and a blast of awful, disgusting, stale air almost knocked me down. What in the heck had the guys been doing in there? Then I saw it. In the cup holder sat a cup of cigarette butts in moldy water. Well, maybe it wasn’t old enough to be moldy, but I don’t even want to think about what was in it. Gagging, I gingerly removed the stink bomb and carried it to the nearest trash can.

This was not one of those days when I find a problem and quietly set about to figure out how to fix it. I pretty much went ballistic! Was that a stupid thing for an employer to do? Was I wrong to react so violently? After all, it’s just a van. (But it’s MY van!) And it’s only an odor. (But it’s going to SATURATE the upholstery!) Oh well, it’s not like they burned the van up or something. (But they COULD have!) And after all, isn’t a happy employee more important than a few dirty cigarettes? (SAY WHAT?!!)

Nope. I’ve thought this over carefully, and I’ve concluded that I’m RIGHT this time. NO SMOKING IN THE VAN, YOU GUYS!