Wednesday, we might have lift off?

     Mom was feeling better yesterday, she certainly sounded better on the phone.  My youngest brother was in town and he took her to the police station to file a restraining order on the boys.  Bless his heart.  There are still problems as the order will only last for 20 days and mom will be gone by the court date.  Mom also feel like she is being forced into this and she is so to speak.  She wanted to put all this off until January and allow the boys to live at the house while she is in St. Louis and D.C. for the next 6 weeks.  I see this as a ploy to put it off yet again.  When she got home it would have been dead winter and she would have used that as an excuse to put it off again.  She is a master manipulator and enabler.  It is still a sad situation.  I can't believe how fast this all happened as we have been trying to get my brother removed from that house for 10 years.

     As usual we are all playing our separate roles in the situation. I am the ramrod, Sissie has to write the check, lil sis is the sympathizer, and baby bro picks up the pieces.  We are the quintessential dysfunctional family.  Unfortunately our problems do not solve them selves in a 1/2 hour sitcom.

  Came home from teaching last night and hubby was sitting under the master bathroom heat blower next to his shower.  He was reading a book.  I asked him what he was doing and he said he was cold.  He had worked in the woods and had gotten wet and cold so he wanted to really dry out and warm up.  What a goof.  He is going to be 63 soon and the cold gets to him.  How about changing clothes and putting on dry ones?  To each his own.

     I paid most of the bills yesterday still do not have enough for the house payment and will have to figure that out.  Having mom here was not good for my bottom line.  But I have until Friday and we will scrape enough together to get 'er done.  Then it is just the car and the little bills as I call them.  I feel sometimes that I live my life for my bills.  This is what debt does to you.  They are going down and that is so nice.

cont:

     Mom taught school at several one room school houses in the Dakota, Minnesota area around Fargo.  She was a beloved teacher.  One of her schools had a family that had an old farm house that was not being lived in.  They offered it to mom at a very reduced rent to keep it lived in.  Houses that are not lived in tend to be broken into and just ruined.  It was a grand old house.  It did not have indoor plumbing, and there was an old fashioned pump in the kitchen to pump water.  There were 3 stories plus a basement.  Houses in the Dakotas are almost always built with a wind block. These people knew how to build a wind block.

     Trees and low growing shrubs were planted around a house on three sides to form a square.  The house was protected from the wind most of the time.  The closest shrubs to the house were usually flowering.  We were surrounded on three sides by Lilacs.  I have always loved lilac.  I remember this big fence of lilacs and the smell.  I knew there were other trees that were bigger outside the lilacs, we were not allowed to go beyond the lilacs.  Sis and I called it the forest and made many tales up about what was out in the forest.  I suspect my love of trees came from my childhood love of the forest and I married a forester.  Who knew?
There must have been oak trees, because when dad was home he would take us out for walks and we would pick up acorns.  He would draw little faces on the acorns and they would be elves with little hats.  We played many games under the lilacs with our elves.

     Sis and I did not like the Cow potty as we called it.  In the front of the house there was a pasture that held cows behind a barbwire fence.  Anyone who knows cows knows that they walk the fence line once a day.  The outdoor toilet smelled bad and was scary.  We would only use it when mom was with us.  We must have had a potty chair on the back lean to porch, but I don't remember.  I think my mom was very happy on the farm.  I know sis and I loved it.  The rooms to me were huge.  Old linoleum floors in bright colors nailed all the way around with tacks.  It had a big old screen porch.  I loved the huge kitchen with it's big stove.  There was a narrow stair case that led up to the upper bedrooms.  It was dark and then you came into a light hall.  My parents had a room with a servants room off the side.  I remember the big bed covered in a white chenille spread and mom and dad's bedroom suite.  I love chenille bedspreads and someday I will have one.  Lil sis must have been born as she had a room across the hall.  I do not remember her at all except she was called baby and had this funny changing table that turned into a bathtub.  Mom would hall water up the stairs from the stove and put it in this rubber liner under the changing table.  She would bath the baby and then a long rubber hose would drain out into a bucket and she would empty it.

     What a stupid contraption now that I think of it.  Why not just bath the bay downstairs?  Everyone had one of these baby bath tables.  It must have been the must have item at that time.  Sis and I had a room at the end of the hall.  It had out twin beds and our dressers.  I remember rock wood maple furniture.  I still have a my dresser it has been painted and repainted and finally stripped by me and the drawers rebuilt.  It now sits in my grandsons room.  My favorite room upstairs was the piano room.  Mom's baby grand piano with the mirrored keys sat in that room.  I do not remember this, but the farmer took out the window frame on that side of the house and lifted the piano in with a crane. Mom had her piano and we had music.

     The house was very bare and plain, I loved it.  Mom would practice the piano and we would watch her fingers go up and down the keys.  I had to stand on tip toe to see her fingers so we had to have been very small. We took a nap every afternoon and I hated naps.  Mom would let us try on her wedding veil that she kept hanging on the side of her dresser mirror.  We put is on our heads and would  walk across the chenille bed spread. Step, touch, step, touch slowly like a bride.  I would watch sis and she would watch me. Then we would have to go down to our room and nap.  One day when mom thought we were sleeping we crept from room to room and poked holes in all the plastic curtains that were hanging in every room.  When you could not afford drapes you could buy these long thin plastic curtains much like a shower curtain.  They came in different patterns and colors.  Sis and I had a grand old time shredding the bottoms of every curtain upstairs.  We took a beating for that one.  Mom had to cut every curtain shorter than the window.  I am sure I did not do it, that is was all sis's fault.  I got spanked anyway.

     Mom would play music while we napped.  She would ask each of us for our favorite song.  I remember her calling from the piano room.  We would call back and she would play.  I would go to sleep to her music.  It was so peaceful.  Sometimes I would stare at the flowered linoleum floor and count the pattern, my eyes would grow heavy.  Mom did a lot of needle work back then and I have a needle point she did in my front room, that has a piece of the linoleum from that house as its back.  People saved bits and scraps of that kind of thing for patching and mom must have found it in the basement.

     cont:

     I am growing sleepy with all this nap talk and I have work to do.  The shop has been very busy this morning.

Out My Window:  Wet, rainy and cool. Typical fall day.

Have a great and productive day!

Kim