Wednesday, moving a long.

     I have been trying to catch up in the shop and I think it is a worthless cause.  I am grateful for the work, and I keep wondering when it will slow down.  Just piles and piles of sewing every where I look.  My goal is to get the shop cleaned up, but that may be impossible.

     Hubby just got home from doctor.  He needs to have his eyelids tucked as they are pushing his lashes down and he can't see his instruments.  His esophagus is re-closing so he also will repeat that surgery.  Getting old is so fun and expensive.

     Talked to mom yesterday and she seems to be fine.  She will be leaving for my younger sisters house tomorrow and will stay there for about 3 weeks and then will go on to Sis's until after Christmas.  Her house will be locked and checked regularly by neighbors.  She will be leaving her car at a cousins house.  She has not seen my brother.

     I started to crochet a new table cloth for an antique library table I have upstairs.  It is oval and hard to find a good fit.  So I am going to make one.  I thought I could work on the cloth a little bit every night.  Well that is not working as I am sewing until midnight.  I thought perhaps I could have it done by Christmas.  Now just add 2020 to that date at this rate.  I am using tatting thread so it is very lacy.

     Cont:

     Now mom's life became very difficult.  Sis and I were taken to the pre school, Lil sis was taken to Lou's and bro was taken to another day care that took infants.  We remained in the upper apartment next to the Dormitories.  It seemed like this place was always full of people.  Aunts and Uncles, neighbors, cousins.  Mom was plucking chickens, or hanging out the wash.  Canning, and cleaning fish, putting away food in the basement storage.  Basements were important in the Dakotas, as everyone had a tornado cellar that could be accessed form inside and outside.  We would play on the tornado cellar doors.  It was fun jumping up and down and making them rattle.  I don't remember any tornadoes in this house.  The apartment was too small for a family of 6 so we moved down to the end of the block to another house that was larger.  We now had the main floor and the basement and a double detached garage.

     It was a funny move.  Mom would fill a wagon with things and sis and I would pull it down to the new house.  Mom always said it was the easiest move she ever made.  She moved one wagon load and one armload at a time and put it away.  By the time people arrived to move the big furniture that was all that was left.  This house had room for a piano!  We had a large old upright piano.  Sis and I had a room and lil sis had her own room off of ours.  We also had the basement.  Mom had put really old overstuffed horse hair furniture down stairs with and old braid rug.  This was our play area.  We also had a huge food storage area and the wash machine. This is where sis and I learned to iron.  We started out with handkerchiefs and pillow cases.  When we would burn our fingers we would open up the freezer and put them on some frozen meat.  Mom would not let us touch the ringer wash machine, which seemed to come alive and walk itself across the floor.  I was rather scared of that machine.

     It is in this house that I really start to remember Sis and I developing different personalities.  We were close but Sis's temperament was much stronger than mine.  She was just more dominant. I know Mom and Dad were not getting on well and they had terrible fights.  I just think that it would have been better for all of us kids if they had split at this time.  Dad was just too immature to be a father and Mom resented always having to hold things together.  As sis and I grew older we had more responsibility.  Chores became part of our life and I hated chores.  We had a full time nanny and housekeeper most of the time during these years.  I know that helped mom a lot.  Sis and I entered kindergarten.

   We were not in the same room at school and I don't remember this bothering me.  I loved my kindergarten teacher.  I only got into trouble when I was messy.  I seemed to be messier than other students at my table.  My paste was all over and I would scrape it onto the edge of the table.  I just was not neat about my work.  Sis and I were often dropped off late for school.  We would walk hand in had into the building and sis would take me to my room first, we were usually dressed alike and this would cause a big stir.  These two identical figures walking into a class room.  We liked the attention and after doing this a few times sis was told sternly by my teacher that she was to go directly to her room and not stop by mine.  Darn the show was over!

     Sis and I walked home together everyday and during the winter it was so cold.  No matter how well we were dressed I would be in tears by the time I hit the honeysuckle hedge by the neighbors house.  I just could not stand the pain in my feet for one more second.  I would rush up the front steps into the foyer of the house where we hung our coats and hats and took off our boots.  Mom would take her finger and pull a frozen tear off each of our faces tell us to quit crying we were home.  This always made me laugh  I don't know if I cried from relief or pain.

     Every fall mom would buy a huge skein of black wool and navy blue wool.  She would knit mittens.  Each skein would make 21 mittens.  People would ask her why she would knit just one extra mitten out of each color and mom would say with 4 kids we were always losing a mitten and by the end of winter we were in miss matched mittens and eventually there would not be enough to go around.  We usually took two pairs as wool got wet and you had a dry pair in your pocket.  The front entry way always smelled like wet wool.  Sis and I learned to knit in kindergarten and we had to help knit mittens.  It was fun at first, but soon became a chore.  Knit 2, purl 2  repeat.  Mom always did the thumbs and if our work was not good she would pull it out.  I soon learned to be fast a thorough about my knitting.  We had a community play center about 2 blocks from our house.  It had a big ice rink and a warming house.  We spent a lot of time skating.  It was so fun.  I loved it when Mom and Dad would come down with us.  Dad came more than mom and sis and I would have races.  We did most of our skating at night under bright lights.  When you got cold you went into the warming house and sat around a big old stove.  I think we skated almost every night.

     There was a big apartment building behind our house.  It was a three story stucco building with a full basement and cellar.  It had garages behind.  We became friends with many of the people in this building.  Dad had erected a large swing set behind our house and he also put in a large sand box for bro. This became the neighborhood headquarters for play unless you went down to the park.  The old warming house became a recreation center in the summer.  It was this summer between kindergarten and first grade that sis and I would separate a bit.

cont:

     Well I have so much to do.Tomorrow I have to pay the rest of the months bills and I can post my totals for the month.

Have a great and productive day. 

Kim