Let there be -- TEA!

Many years ago, when Hubby was young and strong, he built a stereo cabinet for our house. Remember stereos? Record players, tuners, speakers -- we even had a reel-to-reel. He built the cabinet to contain all his "equipment" which, after five years of living together, he decided was safe to bring into "our" house.

Many people feel we have the best of all worlds -- Hubby kept his own house after we bought the little bungalow we share. For a while his adopted mother lived there. Then it stood empty after she died. Eventually he rented the house. Then a tenant who was on the wrong side of the law got in trouble with his drug-running buddies and they tried to burn the house down in retaliation. Actually, only the garage and back part of the house burned but because of water and smoke damage, the entire house had to be rehabbed. So we gave up on tenants and turned the house into an office . . . and Hubby, who must always be busy, keeps his tools and workshop there and runs little business ventures out of it. Actually, the current venture isn't so little, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, back to the stereo cabinet. Hubby built a floor to ceiling (10 feet?) wood cabinet with spaces measured to fill all his equipment AND records. This cabinet is SO huge and heavy that it takes up half a wall and requires a team of men to move (it's made of wood, remember?). But then stereo equipment began to shrink. The reel-to-reel was the first to go. Then the cassette players. Finally we boxed up the records and sent them to Hubby's house along with the record player. Now we have the CD that plays multiple discs, a tuner, and hundreds of CDs which need racks to hold them, not shelves.

I began to turn the huge wooden stereo cabinet into display shelves. I collected those Christmas houses for a while. The top three shelves held them. I collected tea pots and the bottom two shelves held them.

And then I quit keeping house. Hubby, who had never kept house, didn't seem to notice. Clearly the dogs didn't care. The dishwasher broke and we didn't replace it for seven long years and during that time, I just didn't go into the living room. Well, I dusted it maybe once a year. And then I kind of stopped even doing that. The room was filled with blue glass and flowers and art work and winter houses and tea pots - and the job just became too massive to tackle without a dishwasher for the glass. Oh - did I say there was a baby grand piano in the room, loaded with art glass and expensive statuary?

Only Fritzy ever really visited the living room. And his purposes were less than altruistic. He made it his job to water the tea pots and tea cups on the bottom shelving. Whenever I'd actually go into the living room, I had to clear off the bottom shelf and empty the tea cups of his pee. You might want to re-think if I ever invite you over and offer you a fine porcelain cup filled with fresh brewed tea. I didn't clear off the shelves to stop him because I actually had no place to store the things displayed there. This house is crammed full to the rafters. Just when I'd think I finally had Fritzy trained not to pee on the bottom shelf of the cabinet, I'd find that he has sneakily discovered a new way to hide his activity.

Getting the CD player working this past weekend made me re-evaluate the stereo cabinet. Hubby has offered to remove it. I've thought about it, but he made it -- for us. It was a labor of love -- and trust (Hubby loves his music probably better than anything in his life, even now, when he no longer makes music -- I imagine he would trade me in to get his voice back - and I don't begrudge him that thought - if I had a talent like that I'd do anything in my power to keep it -- time and age are ugly masters). Anyway, I'm keeping the stereo cabinet.

My grad course this summer is about UDL -- Universal Design Learning -- which means making everything, including learning, accessible to EVERY one. This got me thinking about making our living room, once again, accessible to the family. The one thing I would like to do and can't, is replace the wall-t0-wall carpeting with that fake wood flooring you can wipe down in a jiffy. Old dogs, sick dogs -- we've had them. And frankly, carpeting with incontinent dogs is less than attractive. You just never get rid of the smell, especially to new dogs, when the sick dogs have gone on to better rewards. The guests might not know, but the new dog can tell immediately where the favorite pee spot was for the old dog. Consequently, under the baby grand is where every sick dog (young or old) goes to have accidents. And this old body of mine is less than agile in getting under there now. But the piano and the wood stereo cabinet are simply too big for us to move out if carpet is to be replaced. Hubby, not yet ready to concede that he can't fix this problem for us himself, has at least had the seed planted. The carpeting must go -- if not this year, in the near future.

The piano will probably go first. It was his piano; he acquired it for $50 and kept it in his living room during his bachelor days. When I first saw it, he had dirty underwear and a handgun laying inside the lid. We had it restored, refinished, and for 25 years it has been our prize possession, but now no one plays it. Hubby doesn't play and twelve years of piano lessons only gave me the ability to read sheet music - not to really MAKE music. My back is so destroyed with arthritis now that I can't sit at the backless bench for more than ten minutes or so at a time -- and consequently, the automatic knowledge that once made my fingers play specific notes is pretty well lost. We've talked about selling the piano -- but can't bring ourselves to advertise it. Lately we've talked about giving it to someone who will love it as we once did. Now, it sits in grand, dusty splendor, taking up most of our living room, untouched, untuned, and only the dogs visit it for nefarious purposes.

So . . . the winter houses are going to be mostly put away. The stereo shelves are so deep that I can leave a few for height interest. I found that the ugly plastic CD holders, if turned sideways, will fit in the spaces originally intended for the reel-t0-reel and cassette players. The cabinet is once again holding music as it was intended.

That leaves the tea pots. I found the last saucer yesterday that was still yellow from Fritzy's pee. It made me sad when I put it in the dishwasher. Poor little, stubborn Fritzy who died so young (okay, he was 10 -- but that's young now-a-days) from kidney failure. He had spent all eight years of his time with us filling up those tea cups. The new dogs don't water the tea cups anymore. They sniff them inquiringly (because clearly I hadn't cleaned up all that pee from last summer) but they don't add their own scent. Luie only visits the living room to leave a little something under the piano. Gus only visits if he's sick.

I'm putting the tea pots back on the shelves, only this time higher up. They will now go where the winter houses have sat. No dogs will get to pee on them. Holding each tea pot brought me a measure of joy I haven't felt in household things in some time which is why I'm leaving them out. The ones that didn't (only two, actually) were stored away with the houses (I found a couple of boxes -- Hubby can figure out where to put them in the garage after I have them filled.

Slowly, the stereo cabinet is cleaning up. The dust has been wiped away. The CDs are organized. The player works. The tea pots are slowly being washed, dried, and admired. At least one corner of the living room will be clean come July. Another era of our lives has passed, though. It's all bitter - sweet.

A picture from several years ago (not the stereo cabinet) showing how packed out little house is with stuff. The blue glass was mostly stored away ten years ago.

Let there be -- MUSIC!

I am so excited! So very thrilled! There is once again music in my house.

The savage beast in me needs music, beautiful classical music, lyric tenors, sopranos who screech even, basses of the profundo variety, an alto here and there (Jesse Norman! yeah!) and a few "easy listening" CD's thrown in for variety -- a little Celine, a little Barbra and some Josh.

For the last four years the CD player has sat silent. Hubby got one I couldn't make play easily -- six slots and I'd push buttons and nothing would happened. I don't like complicated appliances. I want them to go automatically with little to no help on my part. After Hubby also hooked up the player so it would play in both the computer room and the living room and I had to decide between A & B buttons, I was truly lost. I had a CD player at the construction trailer so I used that as my outlet. At home I watched TV or played on the computer. Then I started teaching three years ago and going to grad school at night, so there was no time for music. If I wasn't working on classwork, I was studying, and if not that I was trying to keep up with the laundry and get some sleep (another story all together). Music was relegated to church activities. Then those, too, stopped.

Hubby had the aneurysm and music went clean out of our lives. He no longer sings. The man who always made music is silent. The CD player with all the speakers arranged around the house collected dust. Only at Christmas, when we were traveling on the road, did we drag out the CD's to play driving in Oklahoma (ever try to find a decent classical music station in Oklahoma?).

All through this spring I looked at the assorted CD's scattered all over our house, CD's that had been pulled from their cabinets, taken out of the their cases, stacked up here and there on various corners, just collecting dust and never being played. Like a good book that needs to be read, good music simply needs to be heard. I decided that my one of my summer chores would be to gather the CD's, put them in cases, resort them, and store them in all the respective CD holders (floor and table-top) around the living room (and in the garage).

All morning and afternoon today I worked on them. Hubby, having a summer cold, napped and peeked out at me every now and them while I sweated my way through hundreds (yes, hundreds) of CD's. I'm still not through, but I have all the Christmas CD's now in traveling cases for Houston (there are at least 150 of these). All the divas and tenors are back in their respective slots next to the CD player been turned on in over three years -- because when you pushed buttons nothing happened.

Finally, Hubby dragged out of bed and wandered into the living room. He pulled a wire here and then one there and determined the player wasn't plugged in -- the problem with finding where the plug was missing was difficult because of all the speakers hooked into the machinery. But 40 minutes of grappling on the floor with various chords, I suddenly heard music. Oh! Bliss! Seems one of the "dogs" had managed to unplug the machinery.

I still don't exactly know how to make the CD player work. When this set of six CD's is finished, I may not be able to change them - but then, I like what's playing. Kiri Te Kanawa (oh, my god! what a wonderful voice) is singing Berlin. Brightman will be thrilling Andrew Lloyd Webber (don't judge -- I like most of his stuff). Donny Osmond (okay, you may judge but he has a very nice voice and his adult stuff is really, really good) is singing Broadway. Il Divo is cued for my tenor needs -- if one tenor is good, four are fantastic. And, of course, Andre is in the mix. Who couldn't listen to all that again if I can't change out the CD's?

My entire being is relaxing just hearing the beautiful music wafting through my house. How I've missed it!

Getting Ready for Christmas

We do not spend Christmas at home any more. It's kind of nice. I don't have to decorate the house -- which IS fun -- or take down and store decorations -- which is NOT. My only decorating gets done at school -- and even though we're supposed to be all PC about Christmas itself and celebrate winter or the changing of the seasons or the first snowfall (and last year we had NO snowfall of significant amount), in my urban core classroom we celebrate . . . um, Holidaymas? Anyway, we put up a tree and accompanying Santa Claus and reindeer, have gifts, exchange cards and have a feast right before Christmas vacation. Frankly that's all the energy I wish to expend for creating a Christmas celebration.

In our defense, in making the sister-in-law do all the decorating, we do rent the car (always over $400 -- but cheaper than flying two adults and two doggies to Houston) and we drive a combined 1600+ miles to go and come back. That's two full days on the road. We don't have to clean the house to get ready for guests but Hubby usually does most of the cooking while we're there. And lately we've been helping sister-in-law do some holiday entertaining with her friends -- it's always helpful to have some willing hands to plan, create, and cleanup from a party; and frequently Hubby is the actual entertainment at the festivities. So we do our share, I think -- probably not enough, but because we all love each other very much, we wouldn't have much of Christmas if we did it separately, so it comes out in the wash (I hope).

We used to do massive gift exchanges, but supposedly we've cut down on those. Except for the last three years Hubby has felt the need to Christmas shop for during the month of December and so we spend our weekends finding gifts for the Houston crowd (sister-in-law plus a friend or two). Sister-in-law put her foot down and said she wasn't buying gifts anymore, and last year she pretty much stuck to her word but somehow we still had a bountiful gift exchange. Hubby has never, ever agreed to fewer gifts.

So this summer I've been going garage sale gift hunting with him. I'm hoping to curtail some of the last minute December gift hunting. The thing is, he likes to garage sale his way. He drives all over the city finding sales, letting me out of the car in the broiling summer heat, to paw through the junk at the sale and if I find a winner, then asking him to come "see what's here and make a bargain." I can only take about three hours of this on a hot Saturday, but for the last five Saturday's we've collected quite a little treasure trove. We have entertainment gifts, collectibles, housewares, and theme presents (and because sister-in-law will occasionally drop in on this site that's the best I can do in explanation).

The next problem, in our tiny and jammed-packed house, is to figure out where to store the gifts so I won't forget we bought them. Since I no longer have stacks and stacks of shoes, I cleaned off the shoe shelves of the junk that had accumulated there over the years and have piled-up the gifts. While I "computer" in the back room I can keep my eye on the growing stacks.

Last weekend we went to a church "rummage" sale in a neighboring state and though I didn't buy anything for gift-exchanging in Houston, I did buy up all the packs of assorted Christmas cards that had been priced at fifty cents a bag. Because I was there on the last day of the sale everything was half price. I usually buy my cards at the after Christmas sales, but after selecting five boxes of cards last year, Hubby demanded I quit "stocking up" -- though what he didn't realize is that really cool Christmas cards now come in boxes of 10 or 12 and not 25. The bags of cards I bought at the church sale had 30 to 50 cards each, with the accompanying envelopes with them. Even if I only use them for gift tags, it was a great purchase.

We have not just been buying for Christmas during our Saturday forays, but also for Hubby's new adventure and my classroom, so we're acquired a lot of books and tapes and school supplies. But mostly, we shop for that unique, impressive, and "cheap" Christmas present. I think the Houston crowd may be in for some surprises this year!

Changing Channels

For the past three years or so, every week night from 6 until 8 p.m., Hubby tuned in to the Hallmark channel showing of Walker, Texas Ranger. How I grew to hate that show! I don't dislike Chuck Norris, I think he makes wholesome family entertainment. He also always made good use of varied ethnic casting of which I approve whole-heartedly. I do dislike Norris' conservative politics but except on the gun-control issue, he doesn't really inject his views into his movies and TV shows. However, ten hours of Walker weekly for three years proved very cloying. After six months, I adjourned to the computer room or read magazines and books and left Hubby alone to watch the TV. He claimed Walker relaxed him -- and I guess he was right, because usually after 15 minutes he'd be sound asleep, unless, of course, I'd think I could sneak in and change the channel on him. Then he pop right up and growl. I learned to just leave Walker on for two hours and peace reigned in the household.

And then disaster struck Hubby. Hallmark phased out Walker. It took about three months of moving the show around, interrupting the weekly night casts, and finally Walker was off the air. Hubby has now switched his napping to the two hours before the nightly news. He watches and sleeps through all the Judge shows on TV, culminating in the aggressively sarcastic and evil Judge Judy. But usually when these shows come on I'm busy around the house, recovering from the school day, or doing graduate studies homework.

This has left a void in our TV viewing. After the nightly news we didn't have anything we actually wanted to watch. Hubby has switched his 6 - 8 p.m. activities to playing computer games, leaving me in charge of the remote control. And this is when I discovered that USA was showing marathon rounds of NCIS, a show I had never watched during the prime season run.

When I was 18 and in my senior year in high school I fell passionately and head-over-heels in love with David McCallum who played Illya Kuryakin on Man from U.N.C.L.E. I watched every episode for the next two years and then somehow real life took over, the show went on and I moved on. I look back now and wonder at how immature I was at the time -- and what the heck was I thinking, lusting after such a pale, small, delicate man?

Sometime in the 1980's I saw a couple of movies with Mark Harmon in them. When People magazine selected him as sexiest man alive I wondered how that could be . . . but People has their own standards and I'm too old to get very concerned about them.

In discovering the reruns of NCIS, I found a show that usually has a decent plot, is not all that bloody, has recreated good characterizations for its cast, and has David McCallum, much older (78 I think -- he MUST have had a lot of work done to look this good at 78!) and suddenly very attractive to me again. Even Mark Harmon look darned good. I think this might be a need to relive my youth just a bit on the McCallum thing, but the show is quite diverting.

So I've recorded hours and hours of it -- almost all my TV watching is now done by DVR because I can no longer stomach commercial interruptions -- and I'm slowly moving my way though all the episodes from 2003 to today. The thing about recording them from USA is that they don't show in sequence so you get an episode from 2004 and then one from 2007 that has new or added cast members. Interestingly, the women change a lot more often on the show than the men.

I still have 30 some hours of shows on my DVR player after the USA Memorial Day NCIS marathon. I think I've eliminated all the ones that I've seen already. Mixed in with NCIS are a few other good TV shows like Numbers, but basically most of my stored watching hours are of NCIS.

Because I've watched so many hours on USA, I'm now also tuning into Burn Notice and Royal Pains. And yes, I've discovered that USA does show Walker on Thursday nights -- and I've offered to record it for Hubby. Seems he's moved on from his addiction while I'm just starting one of my own.

School Days (Daze?)

Last night was my first night in summer grad school. I'm taking Technology for the SPED Classroom. I liked the new professor -- have no idea what happened to the old one, but the reports from last summer's class filled the fall semester students with shudders for those of who had yet to take the course. So I'm glad there has been a switch in profs.

The class is large -- about 30 students. We did a minimum of interacting with each other -- just enough to get to know the folks around us. All-in-all, the evening was fairly entertaining; it's hard to be really inventive for three solid hours. Best of all, she let us go home to access our own computers and do the lab work assignment. I like when I'm treated like a professional and I'm trusted to actually complete the assignment without presenting proof I actually did it.

This morning I popped out of bed at 7 a.m. and started doing my homework. Because the class is every Tuesday and Thursday there is little time in-between to get assignments created. We had a short (X in the blank) survey to complete and then one that took me over an hour because I had to compose answers. The downloading and reading took another hour. The on-line media presentation was supposed to take 20 minutes, but I needed notes so it was more like 40 because I had to rewind a couple of times. Then I faced the miserable assignment because we had to use a free source tool called Bubbl.US to create a graphic organizer of all we had read and watched in the presentations. Awful tool. Looked easy to use -- but the reality was that it was too simple. You couldn't maneuver the text boxes, add notes or titles, and saving for use in another medium was difficult. It took me three hours to create a simple "organization" type chart that was readable. Bah! I had the chart created on paper in 10 minutes -- and then it was three full hours of futzing with the software to make the chart legible.


I hope that the other tools presented in the class are more manageable than this. The information presented during class though related directly to technology assistance that should be used in creating IEP's and I've never really had a lot of information about that, so all wasn't lost -- just the three hours using Bubbl.

ZZZZZZZ's

If you listen to old folks for a bit, one of our biggest complaints is that we no longer sleep through the night. The old bones won't stay without complaint in one position for more than two hours at the most before the pain kicks in. The legs get antsy and you begin to shuffle them all over the bed trying to find some spot that won't make the arthritic knees complain and will allow the calves to lay quiet without tingling. The arthritic shoulders get sore if you lay on your right OR your left side too long. The arthritic spine says don't lay on your back because the pressure points are are all wrong. The acid reflux says don't lay on your stomach or you'll wake coughing up bile. The bladder demands you get up and empty it at least twice a night. The allergies require two pillows but no more or the spine and neck start yelling. And most indignant of all, if you're a woman, you will have hot flashes at least twice a night so badly that you'll wake up throwing off the covers and wiping the sweat off your face, neck, and chest and swearing that somehow the temperature in the house has been set at 90 degrees and you are sweltering. Then, if you actually manage to get back to sleep, in an hour you'll wake up freezing because you've been so hot just 60 minutes ago that you threw all the covers on the floor.

If you have dogs (or cats I'm told) who like to sleep in bed with you -- and though you may promise yourself when you get that puppy that he will sleep in his own expensively acquired soft bed, you will eventually succumb to the soft pleading eyes and the little whines emanating from the floor-- you will also find that the dog(s) will sleep soundly through all your waking hours and most inconveniently also manage to sprawl right in the middle of the bed, leaving you with only a small strip at the far side of the mattress.

In May I turned 63. Thirty years ago I swore that was an age where you were definitely classified as old folks. Now I'm trying to tell myself that I'm only at the far, far end of middle age (yeah, right -- and Hubby who is 74 is still a whipper-snapper, himself). However, for the past five years I've been "old folks" when trying to get a good night's sleep. I find that each year brings me less and less satisfying nights in bed. I'm down to maybe four hours of sleep on an average night and quite often a lot less. Last night was a case in point.

I slept well from 11:15 until 1:35. Then I was up and wandering the house, reading magazines, organizing computer files, watching TV until just about 5:00 a.m.. As the early morning local news came on the TV I managed to doze, in and out of consciousness until 6:45. Because I had agreed to be at school for student scheduling, I forced myself to get up and take the morning meds, get dressed, and wander out the door by 7:45, bleary eyed and grumpy.

Of course, by 3 p.m. I was exhausted -- and here comes the real problem with not sleeping at night. I HAD to take a nap. My head was nodding, my eyes barely open, and I was worthless for any activity that required thinking -- or sitting (because now I can fall asleep sitting up I'm so tired). The conventional wisdom is that a 20 minute nap will revive you -- but I never manage to sleep just 20 minutes. It was 5 p.m. when I finally woke up, feeling groggy and mean and still very sleep deprived. And because of the nap I can guarantee that at 11:30 tonight I'll still be wide-awake, unable to fall asleep at a reasonable bedtime.

I've thought about taking some of those sleep medications advertised on TV but I know two people who actually do take them - and both of them require pills to also wake them up in the morning. And the medication itself says not to use it unless you are sure you can get eight hours of sleep at night.

So I've become sleep deprived. I honestly feel tired almost all the time -- bone weary tired. And the options to try and solve the problem -- naps, pills -- don't seem viable in my circumstances. The only thing that I think might help would be aging backward. I fondly remember that at 18 I could sleep fifteen hours with no problem at all. Sadly I doubt there's a Dorian Gray portrait in my future.

Saying Goodbye

Hubby and I got up, got dressed, and drove to our church this morning. We sat in the back, the folks farthest from the pulpit. Under 20 adults graced the pews. The "new" minister, probably on vacation, wasn't there. None of the "old folks" were there either, except for Hubby and me. We were the oldest ones in attendance.

With the advent of the new minister last year, the older members of the congregation have been relegated to the role of observer. The hymns are now often praise songs, sung at break neck pace, often without any music to follow. The lovely traditional Methodist hymns are mostly gone. The music ministry is often a solo sung to a taped recording. The organ is closed and shuttered. The choir loft is vacant.

The traditional altar decorations have been replaced with two odd wind sockets. I'm not sure what they represent, but they've been in place since Easter. Once a lovely wooden cross, Christ-size, would hang over the altar from Easter to Pentecost. Obviously, that tradition has been replaced.

The sanctuary is still beautiful, but with a sad decay emanating from it. The furnace has not been repaired from when it broke two years ago, so there is no air conditioning and even worse, no heat. During the winter we sit in a moldy, dank basement -- the Parish Hall. The hall is fine for pot-luck suppers but it is a basement -- and Christmas services there are sad-looking and feeling events. The temperature in the sanctuary on a warm winter day never gets above 50 degrees. Even on Easter Sunday this year, when we finally moved upstairs, the church was bone-chilling.

When we joined the church it was dying. Only ten to twelve adults attended on Sunday morning. Then we had a small resurgence (see the picture above -- around 2005), got a new minister who got us another new minister -- both retired gentlemen. We limped along for ten years and more, but when the last retired minister finally officially retired, we knew the time had come to either give up, or bite the bullet.

We bit, hired a full-time minister, and moved into this new world, where the traditional Methodists are phased out of the church and the old folks are sent to the back pews. The Methodist regulatory body did not let us interview pastors -- they assigned us one. Whether she was actually a good fit for our diminishing congregation in an urban core neighborhood is still up for debate. Some members think she's the answer to their prayers; others, especially the older members, shake their heads in despair.

At Easter I took my final communion in a church I have grown to love, but now found lacking in grace and fellowship. It was my goodbye. I told Hubby, who has refused to take communion in the church for the past year, it was my last gesture of love towards the church. Hubby had promised that he would attend the church through August, and so once or twice a month we have traveled the highway to our church, sat through services in the basement, listened to the strange new music and gritted out teeth, and tried to find something redeeming in the situation.
The other Sundays we attended neighborhood churches or visited services when our friends invited us. After ten plus years of attending church EVERY Sunday, we also enjoyed a lazy Sunday morning here and there. Sunday brunches are very nice. Sunday errand running means we have more time to ourselves on the weekends.

Today we sat in the back pews for 15 minutes. Then Hubby turned to me and said, "You want to go get breakfast?" and we quietly got up during the silent prayer and left. I don't think we'll go back. There's just nothing there for us any longer.

It's sad to say goodbye to something that was such a meaningful and wonderful part of our lives. But when your heart no longer finds joy and peace in the church, it's definitely time to look elsewhere.