Clutter

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

Today I gave in to the urge and started spring cleaning.  To be absolutely truthful, I lost one of my hearing aids in the pile on the table next to my chair and decided that it was time to tackle the clutter.  When I didn't find the aid after clearing off the table, I was ready to expand the search area to the vacuum cleaner bag in case I had sucked it up in a brief cleaning frenzy.  Fortunately the spouse found it under the coffee table.  Whew!   The pair of hearing aids was $6,000.00!!!  I don't have an extra $3,000.00  around to replace a lost one.  Tragedy averted! 

So, I had one small clutter-free area in my living room and I was encouraged to continue.  Right next to my chair sits a basket that holds my reading material.

It's a big basket.  I hadn't gotten around to reading that Oprah magazine on top of the pile.  Notice the banner that reads, "De-Clutter Your Life 2014!"  In fact, I hadn't read most of the magazines in that basket.  I filled a tote bag with magazines to drop off at the library's recycle reading box; some of them were from 2011.  I still have a full basket, but all this month I'll take at least one tote bag a week to the library.  I'm going to work my way through the bookcases this evening as I watch The Voice.  Books I recycle through paperbackswap.com.  

The dust bunnies are gone and even the baseboards have been cleaned.  Now there is one relatively clutter-free zone in this house.  Tomorrow I'm going to declutter the utility room and pantry.  I'll probably have to slay some spiders in there.  

...and the spouse will start putting up the sheetrock in the bathroom and fill the house with dust.

Bathroom Renovation

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

The closest the spouse and I ever got to divorce involved plumbing.  That's why, when the spouse said, "It's time to redo the bathroom,"  I thought it was a good time to leave town.  I spent spring break in Texas with the grandchildren.  We took walks to the park and went shopping for shoes.  We went out to eat and did craft projects.  We went to Dallas and learned about history (the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy knoll,) explored the Perot Science Museum, and visited the Fort Worth Zoo.  I came home after 10 days and the bathroom was completely gutted...not remodeled, gutted!  Here's what it looks like now:

 

Believe it or not, this is progress!   This bathroom is tiny, the size of a small walk-in closet.  The new shower walls are framed in and the plumbing is hooked up.  New sub-flooring has been installed and is ready to be tiled.  Most of the minutes on my cell phone have been used this month for plumbing.  No, I haven't been calling the plumbing supply company ordering parts.  I stand in the bathroom with my phone while the spouse, out in the pump house, turns on the water.  My job is to monitor for leaks so he can turn off the water before there's a flood!  

I love watching those remodeling and renovating shows on TV.  They can renovate an entire house in a half hour show.  I have noticed, however, that they never have to run back and forth to Home Depot for missing parts and supplies.  That's probably why we're into month two of this project, but, we haven't called the divorce lawyer yet.

All Of A Sudden...

All this month I will be participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Every day, except Sundays, I will be writing a new post starting with the letter A on April first and finishing up the month with the letter Z.  Let me know if you have suggestions for topics.

All of a Sudden it's spring.  The sun has returned.  Our yard has gone from brown and barren to green and blooming overnight.  The daffodils are in full bloom and the tulips won't be far behind.  The tulips are still short stalks with tight  green bulges at the top, but soon the yard will explode with their color.

These are last year's tulips

All of a sudden it's April. I signed up for the A to Z challenge at the beginning of the year, and had plenty of time to plan and prepare.  Now it's April and I have done no planning and haven't written a word.  I haven't even posted the A to Z Challenge banner on my sidebar (because I can't remember how to do it!)

Why did I think this year would be any different?  I know I like to work under pressure.  I've done some of my best work when the clock was ticking down to a deadline.  I would like to be one of those people who gets everything done early, but that's just not my nature.  Heck, I've still got 15 days to get started on my taxes...

WTF Wednesday: Mike's Market

WTF Wednesday is a semi-regular feature of this blog. It documents the things that have made me pause, slap my forehead and say, "What the f**k!"  Well, that and I just like saying WTF. I'm retired. I don't have to watch what I say anymore. I'm not any one's role model.

They know me at Mike's Market.  I'm a regular.  Every day, rain or shine, I get my fix of Diet Coke for just a dollar.  At the beginning of the school year when I was working, I was there early in the morning.  Now that I'm on a more relaxed schedule, I roll in sometime after 10:00.   I fill my giant Big Gulp mug with ice and Diet Coke, and if the lottery is over a hundred million, I might spring for one ticket.  The Diet Coke will last me all day.  It's 9:00 p.m. as I write this and I'm still sipping on the one I bought this morning.  Those Big Gulp mugs are well insulated.

This morning I was filling my mug when the clerk asked me, "Are you working today?"

"No," I responded. "Why?"

"Well," she said. "You're all dressed up."

"I'm wearing sweat pants and a fleece pullover."

"Yeah," she says "but you match." 

WTF???  Maybe it's time for me to upgrade my retirement wardrobe.

Adventures On The High Sea

Update:  Pictures included.

I write this from the library of the Veendam as we cruise off the coast of Mexico, heading toward Puerto Vallarta.  There are photos that go with this post, but the wireless on the ship is way too slow to load pictures.  There are a few clouds in the sky, but the sun is shining.  I am enjoying it even more knowing that Oregon is buried in snow!

We left home last Wednesday at 4:15 am and it was 13 degrees.   By the time it started to snow in Hermiston, we were safely basking in the sun in San Diego.

On Friday my brother, Leigh, had arranged for us to go sailing with his friend Lou, who has a 38-foot sailboat.  It had rained overnight in San Diego, but we left Oceanside Marina in sunshine with a light breeze.  We were ready for a day of whale watching.  We saw lots of pelicans and a seal or two, but no whales.  About a mile offshore the spouse spotted something floating on the water.  What was it?  After determining that it wasn’t a bird or a seal, and definitely not a whale, we cruised past it and saw it was a black plastic package wrapped in twine. 

“Marijuana,” Leigh said,  “I bet it’s pot.” 

Lou turned the boat around and we circled the package.  Someone said, “Let’s go get it.”  We were all excited to find out what was in the package.  Then I remembered that Dexter disposed of all his victims in the ocean.  “I hope it’s not body parts,” I said. 

Lou maneuvered the boat alongside the package and the spouse and Leigh used a grappling hook to pull the bundle alongside the boat.   It was too heavy for them to pull out of the water, but in the process of hooking the package they had torn a small hole and they could see and smell the bricks of marijuana.  They used the winch to pull the bundle out of the water.

My brother, Leigh, got on the phone and called the Harbor Patrol to report our find, and then we noticed a white boat speeding toward us.  The Harbor Patrol was answered by a machine.  We notice that the white boat was still headed toward us.  Leigh called 911 and they asked if we could retrieve the package.  Leigh said we could and then the 911 operator asked if we would bring it in to port.  Leigh told them that it wasn’t really convenient for us to do that since we were on our way out for the day and asked for them to send a boat out to pick it up.

The white boat was making us nervous.  We’ve all watched too much TV.  What if it was the drug runners coming to retrieve their contraband? They would be equipped with AK47’s and could mow us down.  “We’ve got a boat headed right toward us,” Leigh tells the 911 operator, “Would you send that boat right out?”

We take pictures of the white boat.  In the back of my mind I think that when the Coast Guard recovers my bloodied corpse, they will also find the pictures, clues to start tracking down my killers…Yeah, way too much TV!

The white boat speeds right by us headed out to sea.  We are alone with a hundred pound bundle of high-grade marijuana hanging from the stern.

“How much do you think it’s worth?” someone asks.  None of us is knowledgeable of the current street value of marijuana and our estimate of $35,000. to $40,000., we find out later, is way under value.

A rescue boat from the harbor patrol reaches us and, after some maneuvering, hauls our bundle onto his boat.

With that excitement over, we begin searching for whales…but can’t help but look for more pot.  We don’t find either, but every once in a while someone would say something like, “If we had decided to keep it, how would we have gotten it off the boat?”  “How would we have gotten rid of 100 pounds of marijuana?  It’s not like we could turn our kids into pot vendors.”  …although a few of them would have been willing.

Returning to harbor we see a police vehicle driving along the beach and then we sail by the Oceanside Police Station as we enter the harbor.  We all agree that if we were trying to smuggle in the pot, we would be crazy with paranoia at the sight of so many police.  But, by this time, we had come up with a good plan for removing a large bundle off the boat unnoticed!

Later that evening we recounted our adventures to younger family members who all said the same thing, “Why did you call the police?  Why didn’t you bring at least some of it home?”  Our conversations continued to explore “What if…,” especially after we discovered that our bundle was worth somewhere between $400,000. and $500,000.  But really, to whom would I sell it? I don’t picture myself as the world’s oldest pot dealer.  I’m destined to live out my golden years living on my pension.

A Challenge for April

Last year I participated in the A to Z Challenge.  Every day for the month of April (except on Sundays), I wrote a post.  The idea was to use a different letter of the alphabet as a writing prompt, starting with the letter A and working my way through the alphabet.  There were a couple of letters that were challenging, but it was a good writing exercise, and I enjoyed seeing how other participants met the challenge.  

Each participant in the A to Z committed to visiting at least five other participating blogs each day and leaving comments.  I have a blogging neighborhood and I tend to stay within my little community.  The A to Z Challenge was like taking a vacation to a new country...there was a lot that was familiar, but I also was introduced to new ideas, new styles, and (frankly) the outright odd.

I just signed up to participate in the A to Z for 2014. Once again we will be working our way through the alphabet, starting with "A" on April 1st.   Last year there were several hundred participants, and this year there are already over 200 signed up!   If you are a blogger, I encourage you to participate.   Click here to read more about it and sign up.

Woolworth's and One Man's Legacy to America

I saw a posting on Facebook this morning that one of the "Greensboro Four" had died.  Franklin McCain died last Thursday after a brief illness.  I wouldn't have recognized his name, or even remembered "The Greensboro Four," if the posting hadn't included the iconic photo above.  In 1960 four African-American college freshmen sat down at a Woolworth's "whites-only" lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina and asked for service.  Their request was refused and they were asked to leave.  They remained in their seats and thus started a sit-in movement that changed American history.  This non-violent protest touched off six months of sit-ins and economic boycotts and paved the way for many other protests of racists policies.

In February of 1960 I was 9 years old, yet I remember so much of the civil rights movement because it was brought into my middle class living room every day.  On the evening news we watched police attack peaceful protesters.  Life magazine arrived by mail every Friday with vivid photos of the struggle for civil rights.  Even though I lived thousands of miles from the south, I knew the songs and the chants of protests from television.  Our inhumanity was recorded and broadcast to the world.  And eventually our culture began to change.

We owe a debt to those brave individuals who stood up to change the status quo. As we look back in our history it is difficult to believe that there was a time where, not only did discrimination exist (because it stills exists now), but that such blatant discrimination was not recognized as wrong.  


The Woolworth's chain went out of business in 1997, but that lunch counter from the Greensboro Woolworth's lives on at the Smithsonian American History Museum.  It was one of my favorite exhibits to visit when I was in Washington D.C. because it reminded me of the power of a few individuals to make lasting change.  One of these days I will take my granddaughters to the museum.  It's important that we remember.

Rest in Peace, Franklin McCain.