CH-CH-CHANGES............

Today, the humbugs of the hurricane are over. The electricity and phone are restored. The new school year begins with a two hour delay in  my school district due to storm difficulties, but it begins nonetheless. It is a monumental beginning in this family. Since the end of the last school year, all of the children have had major changes in their lives, and of course we have too.  Kevin is now in upstate New York, John is in Harrisburg, and Karen is teaching in a Camden charter school and living in Philadelphia....but the big story on Action News is the addition of Brian to the graduation wall.  Today I begin the final of 22 years as a school-age parent.  The final search for a fitting college, the final high school commencement, and the start of the dreaded empty nest syndrome.  Lots of adjectives to describe how I feel today:  Happy that I have this graduation wall, melancholy that time passes so quickly, proud of my children's accomplishments, disappointed in mine,  lucky for what I have, content with what I don't. All in all it's a great life, and I'm ready for this new chapter! 

My Love-Hate Relationship With Computers...Phase 2...Shipping

By now I hope you know that I am a little frustrated because my netbook computer needs to be sent to Texas to be reformatted.  To refresh your memory, when I turn the thing on, it tells me to insert a boot disc and press enter.  I don't have a boot disc, and there is no place for inserting such a thing.   I won't divulge the name of the manufacturer (Acer), but I was told to ship the item using UPS or Fed Ex, not the US Postal Service.  Well, If I was going to keep a log of the cost and aggravation of fixing this thing to see if it's worth the trouble and expense, here's what today's entry would look like:  Today I went to the UPS store about two miles from home.  I had the computer in a little box that was an appropriate size, but not compatible with regulations regarding the logos and such on the outside of the box.  Okay, I had to have them package it for me.  The computer manufacturer, which will still remain nameless (Acer), recommended insurance for the item.  There's a fuel surcharge.  Of course, there's always sales tax.  This cheapskate...um...frugal guy can't handle it.  The end result...UPS can have it in Texas at the repair center of the manufacturer (Acer) by next Wednesday, and it only cost me $30.20 .  I hope Hurricane Irene doesn't swoop down and alter its path while it's on its way to Texas.  When I get the machine back, it will be as if it was just taken out of the box for the first time.  All I can say is, "Thank goodness for my external hard drive!"  Who knows?...Maybe after they're done inserting the boot disc and doing whatever it is they do after it's inserted, they won't charge me to return the computer to me, and all will be well. We'll wait and see!

My Love-Hate Relationship With Computers........

My six month old netbook computer can't be booted up.  It says I need to insert something into the drive and do something else.  I have nothing to insert and it has no place to insert anything and I don't know how to do anything else!!  I called the tech department of the manufacturer.  Now I have to send it to Texas for someone else to insert whatever it is that I don't have into the place to insert things because they know how to do stuff.  The computer's still under warranty, thank Goodness.  Fortunately, I remember all the passwords to get into the works of the computer.  If I didn't remember them, I'd have to cough up $100 for the powers that be at that danged manufacturer to reset them.  Now I'll have to go back to waking up an hour earlier than everyone else just to compete for computer time and say hi to my Words With Friends cohorts.  I'll be only skimming email and Facebook.  I'll have to keep any blogging ideas in my brain just a little longer.  Oh, yeah, that'll work!!  I can't even remember what I've written in this blog! By the time the dang computer comes back, I'll have forgotten that I even had a computer...and a blog...and Facebook.  I wonder if the earthquake of August 23rd had something to do with this!! 

Yesterday and Today

     There have been so many good moments this summer.  Just last week, we spent three glorious days at the beach.  The weather couldn’t have been more perfect:  sunny and breezy with low humidity by day and brisk and calm by night.  It was the first time in decades I spent five hours at one time on the sand.   I had my Sudoku puzzles in hand and my IPod dock shuffling all my favorite songs.   At dinnertime there was good food and there was always good company. 

     During the last week in July, my son Brian got to show off his stage presence once again with a comedic role in Thoroughly Modern Millie.  He has also begun voice and piano lessons and is constantly roaming the house demonstrating the new techniques he has learned…because he’s good and because he can!

     The three older children each took a step further with their independence and have moved to new locations with new challenges and adventures.  We are proud, worried, enjoying the quiet, missing the noise, enjoying the space vacated by ‘stuff’, missing the space taken up by their bodies. 

     With each thought of what the summer has been comes an undeniable moment of melancholy.  It’s been two months this week since Mom passed on.  It seems like two years with all that had to be done and with yet another of my conversation buddies being gone.  With all the melancholy, though, stories to be shared and enjoyed come to the surface.  They make us laugh, cry,  get goose bumps, and are very therapeutic.  There were two stories that came to me today:  one from my childhood that is a family favorite and was, in fact, used in the sermon at Mom’s funeral, and the other from just a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, there are good feelings and smiles even in grief.

YESTERDAY……

     The first anecdote took place when I was around eight or nine.  I was a pretty good kid who didn’t get into too much mischief, and tried to please my parents whenever I could.  My way of getting under my Mother’s skin was by making noises.  I had quite a repertoire of sound effects and every one of them made her cringe.  Finally one night after dinner, Mom had enough of my annoying antics and said, “If you make one more noise, you’re gonna get it!”  I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I did it anyway…I made one of the noises.  The next thing I knew, Mom was coming toward me to swat me, so I took off.  I ran around the living room and dining room and up the stairs to my bedroom, with Mom chasing me every step of the way!  I was screaming at this point.  My three sisters were scared to death, and were sure I was getting smacked silly.  My room was dark and I jumped on my bed screaming my head off.  Mom entered the room and flicked the light switch, but the light was turned off from the lamp and wouldn’t go on.  She started swinging at me in the dark, and I continued to scream.  My sisters were sure I wasn’t going to make it through this one.  Before long, I was screaming and Mom began laughing.  Soon I began to laugh.  The girls were still scared because the laughter from upstairs sounded similar to the screaming.  When we had finally stopped laughing and went downstairs and joined Dad and the girls, they were kind of angry that they had worried so much about my safety, only to find Mom and I exhausted from laughter.  I’m lucky they didn’t swat me at that point!  The story still makes me giggle and smile, and made the congregation at the funeral do the same.

TODAY……..

     Emptying Mom’s apartment has been a difficult task, as anyone who has had to go through a deceased loved one’s belongings will attest to.  The hardest part was finding new homes for her furniture.  My surviving sisters and I have all been married for quite some time and have our houses furnished for the most part.  The grandchildren took most of it, and some of it was donated to charity.  There was just one piece of furniture without a taker in the end…my mother’s china closet.  It was quite beautiful and in top condition, so I figured I’d be able to get someone to take it.  It was much too bulky for me to take to a charity drop off site, so I began to call used furniture stores, auctioneers, charities, consignment shops, and even salvage shops.  The piece was either too old, too new, too heavy…or the places didn’t pick up furniture or had several breakfronts and had no room for any more.  The place where Mom lived would take the furniture and dispose of it for a fee.  I was reluctantly getting ready to settle for this option as our end of the month deadline was a day away.  It was a Saturday night, and I was going to see Thoroughly Modern Millie, and the contents of the apartment had been absorbed by their new owners, but alas, what remained was the china cabinet.  I was sitting next to Jackie’s cousin at the show and telling her how I hated to throw such a beautiful piece out, but had no choice.  I told her of all the attempts I made to give it away to no avail.  With that, a woman sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I own a thrift shop and we have a guy that picks up furniture, and we take dining room furniture!”  Within a couple of days the piece had a new home and its sale would raise funds for the underprivileged in the community the store was in. 

     Some call incidents like this one coincidence, and some call them divine intervention. I have always had a difficult time believing what I could not see, but I truly believe at this point that the part of Mom that remains in our souls is definitely intervening.

     After my Dad and my sister Janet passed away, Mom would call me and tell me she found a dime, and then call again and tell me she found another one, and another one, and another one.  She took it as a symbol that her loved ones were with her in spirit.  I listened.  I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t see it, so I had my doubts.  I supported her desire to believe it was more than coincidence because she was so at peace with it and content when she talked about it.  Now that she’s gone, I’ve been finding dimes…in the back of a U-Haul truck that my daughter Karen rented, on the car seat when I am about to sit in my seat, on the floor in the basement, in the dryer, on the ground.  The fact that I am finding coins is insignificant.  The irony that they always seem to be dimes at this point is giving me that same peaceful safe feeling my Mother would have when she shared her discovery. 

     I accept having to carry on without my parents and sister, for I have so much to be thankful for, but I hate the fact that they’re gone.  It seems like something will always be triggering those melancholy moments, but I am thankful for little signs like dimes in my path and the furniture rescuers to bring back the peace and contentment………

COFF IT UP!

Just an everyday observation:  I am making the coffee and I am coming to the end of the can, working my hardest to scrape those grounds into that coffee scoop.  I have come to the day when the can will be empty and it will be time to open a new one.  As if the shrinking can size over the last couple of years isn't enough, there is a rim around the top of the can.  Being as cheap...um...frugal as I am, I don't waste one ground, so I hold and gently shake the can to get the last grounds into the filter...and the countertop...and the sink...and the floor....etc.  Is a rim that wide really necessary?  I think that the powers that be just want me to start that new smaller can of coffee sooner!!  Agree?  Disagree?

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

See this car? It’s a 1959 Chevrolet Impala. As a child, I was enamored by its unique tail fins and teardrop shaped tail lights and front turn signals, as well as the long sleek body with the metal stripe on the side. A car in the late 1950’s would have been released in September of the year before the year of the car, so a 1959 Chevy would have come to be in September of 1958. I was just a year and a half old then, and don’t remember that time in my life. I do, however, remember the early '60's, and having the Matchbox miniature of my favorite automobile (the blue one on the bottom right of the picture on the left...huff...puff), and we were inseparable. ­

By the early sixties, the weekly Sunday car rides to my grandparents in Philadelphia became a scavenger hunt for '59 Chevies. I would begin counting as we left the street we lived on, and by the time we arrived in South Philadelphia some 25 minutes later, at least a hundred of these beauties came into view. I would play with the Matchbox version for hours in a day, and never grow tired of it.

I'm going to bring my Mom into yet another of my stories.  I hope you never get tired of hearing of her antics, because I never get tired of relaying them.  You see, Mom was cheap...uh...frugal like me.  Let me rephrase that...Mom made me look like the last of the big spenders!  She was so thrifty that the grocery stores paid her to shop in their stores.  She shopped the buy one-get one free sales all the time, and had a coupon which could be doubled, and if it was Wednesday she could get her senior citizen's discount on top of that.  You could never, no matter how hard you tried, get a better price on anything than Josephine could...and I say that with all due love and respect.

So, I went into a local department store whose prices are out of my range.  My wife Jackie and I went into the store about a month ago and I came upon this shirt with a '59 Chevy that I wanted so badly (See the second picture).  It had several other classic cars, but the ol' '59 was right on the front and in the center.  I looked at the price tag and then walked away with my head hung low, just like I would if I couldn't get a new Matchbox car at the store when I was a boy.  It was a crime that a tee shirt, even one with a '59 Chevy on it, would cost $26.00!

I think what followed was a gift from Josephine....

Early this week, a $10.00 gift card arrived from the store that sold the tee shirt.  We needed to go to the shopping center for something else, so I decided to stop in and look into seeing if their were any bargains to be found.  Lo and behold, the tee shirt I liked so much was on sale for $14.99!  I had my $10.00 gift card with me, which reduced the cost to $4.99!  The icing on the cake was when I realized that it was Tuesday, and the store in question gave old codgers like me that are over 50 a special discount.  The result:  $3.99 for the $26.00 tee shirt.  Thanks to the department store in question...and more than that, thanks Mom.  You've both taught and treated me well!!

My Garden.............

It's been a bad year for gardening.  In May, the spring flowers illuminated the garden in the front of my house.  The beast called winter was a distant memory.  Where there was once snow, there was now color and life.  From May 31st, 2011 until today, the weeding, planting of annual flowers, and creating hanging baskets justifiably were placed on the back burner as my family and I cared for, said goodbye to, and paid homage to our Matriarch.  I was out bright and early on this gorgeous August morning and began picking weeds and cropping dead stalks from the perennials that had finished their cycles for this year.  Upon that clearing, I came upon this stone, which has been in the garden for years.  It signifies everything I am feeling today.  Mom loved going outside and weeding her garden while she was still living in the old house.  When she came to my house, she admired the lilies, the lamb's ear, the azaleas, and all that provided the color explosion.  Then this stone would come into view, and no matter how many times she saw it, she laughed out loud.  I think it brought her more joy than the flowers!  It brought me joy and did a little more to help me put things into perspective today.  I hope it brings a smile to your face as well.......have a great day!