FIREWORKS!!!!

 No.  Not THAT kind....      

                                                              

   THESE fireworks were of my own making!

I was busy working around the house when I heard the air conditioner turn on.  Uh oh!  I needed to close the windows--and quickly--before we were trying to cool the super temps outside.  Already 85 degrees by 10 AM.

Before I ran upstairs to close the remaining windows and grab some stuff I needed out of one of the closets, I thought I would just pop into the microwave a little baggie with a couple of pieces of left over cornbread I had put into the freezer a couple of weeks prior to that after our Sunday dinner.  TIME:  1 minute.  POWER LEVEL:  #3.  That would make the cornbread a delicious treat just warm enough to melt some butter.  YUM!  I could already taste it.

But in the couple of minutes I was upstairs , I began to smell something burning.  Didn't occur to me that I  was the person who had made that happen.  I ran down the stairs in record time to the kitchen.  Through air that was already black and acrid with the smell of burned food and burning plastic, I could see my tasty breakfast was shooting fire inside the microwave.

I won't bore with the gory details of opening the door to the microwave and having a huge billow of smelly smoke come rushing out.  Is all I wanted to do was get rid of that burning mess as quickly as I could.  By then the plastic baggie was melting everything I tried to use to pick up the offending lump of carbon.  Finally I was able to secure it in a bigger bag and streak it out to the garage to the garbage.  

When I came back into the house, I was shocked by the dark smoke AND bad smell I had created because I thought I would just have a quick snack to keep me going for the rest of the morning.  WRONG!!!  

The microwave display showed another 5 plus minutes on DEFROST!  That means my little treat had been in the microwave almost five minutes!  No wonder it caught on fire and caused so much grief for me. I couldn't belive that I had pushed the Defrost button instead of the #3 button right above it which WAS the correct button if I just wanted to have a nice warm snack.

Well that little mistake cost me, that's for sure!  I spent hours airing out the house in 90 degree weather, scrubbing the waxy residue off the microwave, the stove, anything in close poximity to the microwave.  And, I had to do it again the very next day again as by then I could see parts of that residue I had missed the fist time around while trying to clean the mess.

Aftermath is that the kitchen still STINKS!  And that odor lingers in the air as you walk into the back door through the garage or into the front door.  I would imagine that is going to be around for some time.  The smell permeated the curtains, blinds, walls, furniture.  In short--everything!

Bottom line--again...DON'T GET OLD!!!!

A HAPPY DISCOVERY....

 Back in April I wrote that the tiny little succulent plants--the mini $2.00 treasures I like so much--never arrived at WalMart this year.  I missed them.  Especially after I put the two cacti dish gardens I brought in for the winter back outside the middle of May when it had finally warmed up.  Unfortunately that must have been too early for plants because it turned out the temps were still too cold at night.  Most of the cacti just folded up and died within the space of a couple of days.  BOO HOO!  When I tried to find replacements--there were none.  Not at any WalMart stores around me.  Not even Home Depot had the bigger 2.5 inch cactus plants.

Then when I was shopping for some bedding plants a couple of weeks ago, there was a brand new rack of those tiny treasures!  There were only three or four varieties this year, but enough for me to supplement  the few cacti that survived those cold May nights with a little dash of new ones here and there in the dish garden.  The label on each container is different, so it looks like perhaps these plants were supplied by an alternate grower.  I don't care.  That they arrived at all made me soooo happy!

And, true to the way I over-compensate, I have purchased at least one or two every time I have gone to ANY WalMart since I first saw them as all the WalMart stores have them!  And they are going fast.  Thanks to me, I'm sure.  HAHAHA!

But I am happy once again to see the dish gardens filled-in and thriving.

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT....

SPRING CLEANING

I wrote this little essay for the April 2006 issue of the Nichols Family Newsletter.  But, I  have edited it here so it is for all readers...not just the Nichols Kids.  Even though I am even worse about regular housecleaning now at age 75 than I was 15 years ago (let's face it, I pretty much gave up the quest to have every part of the house clean all at the same time), I still love looking at what I have persevered to clean.  And I clearly can recall the memories of seasonal housecleaning with my mother.  They still make me shudder!

•    makes me feel weak at the mention of it
•    brings back memories of a lot of hard work
•    when finished gives a great deal of satisfaction

 

I used to hate coming home from school and seeing all the house plants on the kitchen table or in the bathtub.  I knew we were in for a housecleaning session that was going to be major.  My mother came from the old school where everything was cleared out when good weather came, and the house cleaned from top to bottom.  That included washing walls and ceilings (leftover from the days when coal burning furnaces left dark soot); taking down all the curtains, washing them, stretching them on the wooden frames called “curtain stretchers”, and re-hanging them after we had washed the windows; removing all books from the bookcases and dusting each one separately; cleaning cupboards by washing ALL the dishes (by hand, remember there were no dishwashers when I was young); cleaning personal drawers and closets by designating which clothes could be “handed down” and which underwear was beyond anything but the rag bag.  From the junk drawer in the kitchen we tossed a year’s accumulation of rubber bands, pencils, and stray screws plus anything else that had landed there because we didn’t know what to do with it.  Lastly, we took up all the carpets (we didn’t have wall to wall carpeting then) and the wooden floors were mopped, polished, and buffed before replacing the rugs which had been beat outside to remove the dust and dirt. Along the way we cleaned light fixtures, kitchen appliances, polished the furniture, and waxed the kitchen floor.  Wheeeeeeeew!!

 When all my sisters were still pretty much at home, I guess it wasn’t such a bad job.  “Many hands make light work.”  But by the time I was 10 years old, I was basically an only child.  A lot of that crappy work fell to me as my mother’s helper.  Basically, I was a lazy child anyway.  My mother had to beg, plead, wheedle, and coax me to get with the program.  Procrastinating only made it that much harder, she would remind me.  She was right.

 I did like the feeling of accomplishment when we were FINALLY finished—several days later.  It was such a pleasure to look around the rooms and see things shiny and clean.  We usually re-arranged the furniture, too, so it seemed like all was new as well as clean.  Everything sparkled through windows that were spotless and let in the bright sunshine after the grime of winter had clouded them over.  And there was definitely a clean smell that accompanied it all.

 One year when we were cleaning the front rooms (living and dining rooms) my mother sent me into the kitchen to put some potatoes on the stove to boil for supper.  Later as we were putting the finishing touches to those two rooms, we looked at each other and remarked that the room seemed hazy and dark.  By then there was also the distinct smell of something burning.  We dismissed it as one of the neighbors burning some trash outside.

 When we went into the kitchen, however, we discovered that the boiled potatoes we were supposed to have for supper were actually “roasted” potatoes.  I had put them into a very thin aluminum pan (not the regular one my mother usually used—for whatever reason I didn't, I don't know now). The water had boiled dry because I never turned the heat down and covered the pan with a lid after the water came to a boil.  So, the glowing coil of the electric stove had burned right through the aluminum and kept on cooking those potatoes until they were charred lumps.   It was a miracle they didn’t burst into flames and catch the kitchen on fire!

Well, you can imagine what happened after that.  The cleaning began all over again!  We had to remove the dark soot and smoke from the walls, ceiling, furniture—everything.  If I hated housecleaning the first time around, you can be sure I REALLY hated it the second time.

As I matured, thankfully, I saw that I had better change my ways about procrastinating the aspect of housework, or I would be buried.  So, to overcome my laziness, I had to establish routines that became compulsive or else I would just end up doing nothing all day long.  Now that I am past 60, I seem to have gone full circle.  I am pretty lazy again about house work, and procrastinate doing even the simplest jobs.  Every now and then I get motivated to dust or scrub the bathrooms, and usually end up doing a lot more because I like looking at the house when it is “pristine”.  This is when I really enjoy coming home from work-work.  As I open the door and see everything in its place without a layer of dust, etc., there is great satisfaction in my efforts and a feeling of connectedness to my home.  Truman Capote said it this way,   "If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married.  That house is yours.”   

I agree!

Spring cleaning is WORK!  It’s hard WORK!  But having a clean house is really worth the effort it takes to make the family feel at peace with their surroundings. 

I still believe that is true in 2021.  It's all about attitude toward the job.  Only now I have the option of stringing it out a little bit at a time so Spring cleaning is not so exhausting.

Or, am I just kidding myself?  HAHAHA!

THANK YOU, MOM....

 

A few years ago, more than likely when I was out walking while on a layover for my work as a flight attendant with United Airlines, I purchased a small hardback volume titled, THANK YOU, MOM by Gregory E. Lang.  And I’m pretty sure I probably purchased it from a bargain table at a bookstore, as I would never have paid the $11.95 price embedded right into the cover of the book.  But the book was short.  An easy read. The pithy little statements of thanks—all preceded with the same “Thank you, Mom”—reflected what Mr. Lang wrote in the introduction of this little tome. 

He said, among other things, that as the years have gone by, he has increasingly begun to realize that the opportunities and support his mother gave to him made it so he could have the fulfilling life he has now.  He confessed that even though he “now recognize[s] the countless things” his mother did for him, he did not often show appreciation for all the things she did at the time.  Hence, the reason he decided to write this book.  Thankfully, he wrote in the introduction, that even though it was late, his mother was still alive so he could tell her—and have no regrets later that he never did.

This kind of stuff really resonates with me.  So, while I was reading the book, I began to think of some of the things my mother taught me and gave to me that I am pretty sure I didn’t express any thanks to her before her death in 1984.

At the time I discovered this little book, I was publishing a monthly newsletter for my children with articles about their growing up years and some insight into my own history now and then with little blips about personal experiences.  Over the previous few months, I had included some of my mother’s journal entries (all on little scraps of paper instead of written in the bound journals with empty pages which were in the same box).  My kids liked that and wanted more. This surprising book was a prompt to share with my children some of the wonderful legacy my mother left to me through her constant care.

My little adventure expressing a posthumous thank you to my mother lasted several months from the February 2012 through the December 2012 issues of The Nichols Family News.  Not that this was an exhaustive list.  It was just some of the things which my mother had taught me that I didn’t have to think too long and hard about.  They had merely become an ingrained part of my life experiences.

“Thank you, Mom, for keeping a youthful spirit; it made you fun to be around and made your appearance and demeanor youthful, too.”

 Here’s another one with explanation so you can understand what my mother meant as “inequality”:

Thank you, Mom, for teaching me that not everything is created equal.  Even if something has the same utility, it doesn’t necessarily mean that item is interchangeable with a similar piece.  You taught me that it was important to pair the job at hand with the appropriate items.  Not only for facility of use, but also to make for pleasing the eye. (Examples: small pan for small cooking on the small burner. Serving spoons for food at the table instead of the wooden spoon used to stir the pot on the stove.  Or NOT to sit down at the table in June and have a red satin Christmas cloth, layered with pink and white quilted Easter placements and brown dishes.  NO! NO! NO! to that kind of combo!  Just because we needed a cloth and some dishes on the table, that didn’t mean to use the first thing that came out of the cupboard!)

There were other thank you sentiments, too, which I included in those newsletter articles..

… for preparing me to leave home.

… for your example of remembering others on their special occasions with a small gift.

…for being someone I could look up to.

…for pushing me to do the things I didn’t want to do but needed to do.

…for taking the time to play with me and have fun together.

…for teaching me there CAN be too much of a good thing.

…for teaching me about frugality.

…for teaching me about hospitality.

…for teaching me about the “Spirit of Christmas” in our yearly celebration of Christ’s birth.”

What a wealth my mother bestowed upon me!

So, for this Mother's Day 37 years after she died...

THANK YOU, MOM!

A SPRINGTME TRADITION

 A few years ago I discovered a really great way to have my kitchen windowsill filled with cheerful little green plants that didn't suffer the ravages a lack of water can cause because of my multi-day trips away from home with United Airlines. Prior to this discovery, each trip would result in some kind of casualty.  Just before leaving the house, I would glance backwards before I slipped into the garage.  It was always a pleasure to see everything in order, the house clean, and the whole place inviting to the glance, partly because of a plethora of houseplants which made everything look welcoming and alive.

Now imagine walking into the house a few days later and finding that my happy little pots of miniature plants were no longer standing at attention.  They were drooping....big time.  Sometimes when that happened, I could immerse them into a sinkful of water and wait a few hours for the stems to straighten themselves and look lively again.  If that happened too many times, though, the plant was ruined and would certainly die sooner or later.

Then during one winter layover in Bozeman, Montana, I ventured out to find something to eat.  It was toward the end of a multi-day trip, and I was either sick to death of the limited food stores left in my bag, or I might have been in the mood for something fresh.  At any rate there just happened to be a very big WalMart store right across the highway from our hotel in Bozeman.  I had gone there a few times on other layovers to achieve my 10,000 steps quota for the day by marching up and down the aisles in relative warmth and convenience.

This particular day as I was walking through the store, I found myself in the garden department.  An attractive end cap caught my eye.  That was the first time I had seen those tiny two-dollar treasures I wrote about a few years ago.  Mini little cactus plants in a HUGE variety of  species lined about three shelves!  I loved those miniature little potted cacti!  Here I was hundreds of miles from home...with some more flights scheduled before I actually got home.  But I WANTED some of those little two-dollar treats!  Is all I could think about was how lucky I was to be on a layover there that day--and motivated to venture out of my hotel room  into Montana's cold winter weather.  And I WAS going to purchase some because I had sadly learned over the years that not all WalMart stores have the same merchandise.  There were a few times I saw something in Virginia or Florida or Texas thinking that instead of lugging that something around on the plane with me, I would just go to my local WalMart and get the same thing.  Wrong!

So, after delighting in my find and determining that I would purchase some of the little plants, I narrowed my selection to only three pots.  I figued I could safely tuck them into my bag if I did some rearranging.  Maybe I could even put some soft articles into the emergency backpack I kept in my bag to accomodate unplanned purchases while I was on a trip.  Then for sure I would have room in my suitcase where they would be much safer.

When I got home, I could hardly wait to display them on the windowsill.  They looked so cheerful--three little plants in a clay pot dish big enough for all three.

Sure enough, those miniature cactus plants could survive  multi-day trips that were just too long for the regular small plants on the windowsill to be without water.  And thus began my quest for MORE little succulent plants.  My determination coincided with the rest of the country, too.  Because all of a sudden lots of stores like Home Depot and the grocery stores were selling small cacti, as well.  But it was the mini two dollar treats that were show-cased only at WalMart.

But this year there were none.  I have checked several different WalMarts in the surrounding towns, as well as other areas of Denver and the suburbs when Louis and I have gone places on little day trips.  Nothing.  Oh, now all the stores are getting classy and offering succulent dish gardens or larger singular cacti in fancy planters.  Yet not one tiny treasure.  

Is this another casualty of COVID?  The plethora of house plants that usually arrive in the stores in January didn't show up either.  I began wondering if the greenhouse in California which distributed the miniature cactus plants had to close or cut their work force or something.

Tiny Treasures from Montana

Whatever the reason, I have sorely missed those happy little plants that used to line up on the kitchen window sill in the sun--and still remain lush and green no matter how long I have to be gone somewhere.  

Guess it's "Goodbye" to yet another aspect of our lives that will probably only remain a memory from now on.

Bottom line....I'm going to miss my Springtime tradition!

OH HAPPY DAY !

antarctica

My friend and walking buddy Natasha gave me a lovely gift for my 75th birthday last year.  It is a guided journal to celebrate all the joy in my world, titled "Oh Happy Day!"

As she gave it to me she said, "When I saw this at the bookstore I mused, I can't think of anyone who could make better use of this little journal than you.  I know you kept a journal for years, so I hope you enjoy this different take on recording some of your thoughts." 

The premise in the forward of the book suggests that we focus so much on working towards happiness, that we don't realize it's within us all the time.  It then suggested the journaler could discover lots of ways to savor the simple things, appreciate others, and smile every day.  In short--enjoy the world around us!

And I have. Thanks to this little book, I have taken better notice of all my multitudinous blessings, even if I don't write every single one of them down in that great little journal.

One of the topics is "What are some small pleasures that came to you this week?"  Yesterday I sat  down and wrote this:

Several years ago, my nephew's wife Karen sent me the link to a You Tube video entitled Ultima Frontera which was posted on December 27, 2007.  This breathtaking slideshow of Antarctica is set to background music of an aria from the opera TOSCA.  It shows a stunning continent of majestic mountains, unbelievable ocean scenes, and the penguins and polar bears who live there.  I was enthralled and played it often just to hear it, even, while I was doing my work around the house,

A few weeks later Louis did one of his famous purges to get rid of "unnecessary stuff that clogs the computer".  There went my bookmarked video!  I searched and searched for it over a period of several weeks and could never find the right one.  (Believe me there are a LOT of videos with this same beautiful aria for background music!)

Then yesterday I was looking through some loose papers on my side of  the computer desk and found the card on which  I had originally written the pertinent information about this outstanding video. I tried again to search for it on the computer, writing the name of the aria--"Aria de Amor de Tosca" in the search line.  Bingo!  That same gorgeous video of the Antarctic  popped up first.  I couldn't believe my good luck after all these years to find it once again!  I savored it over and over the rest of the afternoon while I was doing some work at the computer.  The aria is played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and  conducted by a man named Luis Cabos, a Spanish composer, conductor, and musician born in 1948.  (A contemporary of mine!)

Here is the link on You Tube.  I hope you will take the time to look for the video and enjoy it as much as I have.  Search for this   www.bing.com/videos/search?q=aria+de+amor+de+tosca&docid    Then click on the video ULTIMA FRONTERA.  It is a delight for the senses.....

OH HAPPY DAY !

THE YOLK'S ON ME.....

 DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME....

I've always had this kind of interesting relationship with Daylight Savings Time.  It wasn't part of our summer landscape while I was growing up in south-central Wyoming.  So, it seemed kind of mysterious and the provenance of big cities on the East Coast. 

Colorado jumped on the band wagon sometime before I went to college because that first summer between school years I worked as a hostess at a local well-known restaurant along Highway 30.  There were a lot of tourists who had started out in Denver in the morning and were wanting lunch at 10:30 am at Adams Restaurant.  The cooks didn't begin preparing lunch items until 11:30, so we often had disgruntled patrons who had to wait for lunch--or  make do with a second breakfast if they were in a hurry on their cross-country journey.  I worked at that restaurant during the summer of 1965 BEFORE Daylight Savings Time.

Even though the idea of DST has been around since Benjamin Franklin, it was also proposed by someone pre-1900 who wanted more "bug-finding time on summer evenings".  It wasn't formally adopted until the First World War when Germany put it in place in 1916. Most of Europe followed with the United States joining in for a short period.

DST was reintroduced in the USA during he Second World War, but from 1945 to 1966 there were no uniform rules in this country. That caused wide-spread confusion, especially for trains, buses, and the broadcasting industry.  Shocker! The Uniform Time Act of 1966 was finally established granting US states the ability to opt out of DST if they wanted.  (Arizona, and Hawaii still do.)  At the time of the standardization of DST, the change took place on the last Sunday in April and changed back to regular time on the last Sunday in October.

Perhaps my next encounter with DST was the day my oldest son Harold was born. His birth day was the day of the time change back to standard time that year. His birth certificate says he was born at 5:36, October 26, 1969.  But at the minute he was born, the recording nurse wasn't sure if the clocks in the hospital had already been set back one hour, or if those clocks in the delivery room were still on daylight saving time.  I'm guessing Harold could be one hour older or one hour younger than that official time.  Doesn't matter now....

The next big event in my life with DST was in 1973 during the oil embargo.  That was when Congress enacted a trial period of year-round DST beginning January 1974 and ending April 1975.  I LOVED IT!  I never minded getting up early  anyway, and that extra hour before the kids--toddlers Harold and Brice--got up meant I could clean the whole house (including vacuuming under their beds) while they were still asleep.  That lengthened out my day so I could march down into the basement to sew drapes even earlier.  Too bad that trial period didn't seem to bring about any cost savings.  It was scrapped.  I was sorry to see it end.

Fast forward a few years to our time living in Sweden.  No one told us--and we didn't think to ask--about daylight savings time.  Whoops!  We just assumed the whole world did it the same way we did it in the United States.  One Sunday morning when we arrived at church after we had moved there, one of the missionaries remarked that it was the first time the Nichols Family had been to Church on time.  

Turns out that most of Europe's DST at that time happened from September 15th to March 15th

Sadly that Elder's comment was probably more truth than a joke.  Getting ready for Church with a lot of kids in a foreign country with the chapel quite a distance from our house was like mating elephants...done on a grand scale with a lot of effort.  To be fair to the Nichols Family though, we often picked up ward members along the way which added an even more challenging dimension to arriving at Church on time.

We managed DST pretty well after that.  However, when I began flying for United Airlines, I came to really HATE that clock changeover if I were out on a trip.  I was always glad if I happened to be at home during the time switch.  That alleviated the possibility of getting myself to the airport too early or too late.  

There was one memorable experience in Chicago.  It was during the short period we also flew into Midway Airport.  It was there that my layover was very brief and my pick-up was early, early morning.  "O'dark hundred", as we used to say.  Before I set my alarm clock to go to bed, I called the front desk.  "Does the hotel change all the clocks over automatically, or should I set my clock ahead an hour myself?"  The desk clerk assured me it would be wise to set the clock myself.  I did.  And I was ready and waiting for the hotel van to take us back to the airport TWO hours early.  It seems that inspite of the reassurance given by the desk clerk, the hotel clocks were indeed automatically set according to the plan at 2 am.  Hence my hour ahead and the hotel's hour ahead!  Double Whammy!

After that--and if I were on a trip--I would make myself wake up in the wee hours to check my phone which I KNEW had an automatic update.  THEN I would set my alarm!

In the years since then, I have scrupulously changed ALL the clocks in the house BEFORE going to bed on the eve of the time change--winter or summer.  Never got in trouble with that.  And I didn't have to scramble to make up for that lost 60 minutes after I got up in the Spring when we jumped an hour ahead .

Until now...  

I went to bed last night forgetting to turn the clocks an hour ahead.  I woke with a start about 1:30 am and realized that it was really about 2:30 am.  I looked at my phone to make sure all was well with the time.  The screen's glow showed 1:37 am. But because it was before 2 am, I figured I was too early for that auto update.

At that point I set only my alarm clock ahead and went back to sleep.  The next time I opened my eyes, it was 6:23 am.  I had wanted to go on my walk before 6 am, so I was itrritated that I had been so forgetful and would have to stare at yesterday's time when I go home from my walk, then scramble to get ready for Church.

Only, when I went out into the kitchen, my phone said 5:23.  WHAT!?!?!  And then it dawned on me.  Not THIS week....NEXT week!  I felt foolish for my mistake.  

I had been telling myself the time change was this weekend, though nothing had been said about it online, or in our meeting last night for stake conference.  Still I was adamant I knew what was going on.  Imagine my relief when no one was privy to my stupid mistake--not even Louis.  So, I just pretended my heart hadn't been in my throat, that I hadn't forgotten to turn the clocks one hour ahead, and that I hadn't convinced myself it was time to spring forward without checking for truth.

Well, I have six months before I will be able to prove I can safely navigate the "difficult" DST routine once again.  But in the meantime, I have...

Egg on my face for sure because the yolk's on me.....