Challenge accepted...

 Yesterday evening, while we were working on our 2000 piece puzzle on the big table in the basement, my spouse pointed out to me a medium size plastic bin on a shelf across the room that he said was full of my stuff.  He asked me, nicely, if I would like to clear it out.  

Since he had boxed up lots of my stuff when we married and I moved here from my apartment, it seemed reasonable to me that the contents of the bin could be mine.  So this morning after breakfast we went down to the basement and he lifted the bin in question off the shelf (it was very heavy) and carried it over to a table.  I opened the bin and found that it was filled to the brim with family pictures from back in the day when pictures were taken with a camera, not a phone, and developed at a photo shop.  Yes we are that old.

The surprise to both of us was that they were his pictures, not mine, so it was up to him to sort through them and decide which ones to keep.

While he was sorting through those pictures, I decided that it would be a good time for me to sort through a large box of "precious" things that I had taped shut and moved with me every time I moved as an adult. 

I was delighted to discover, among little albums of high school friends and other nick nacks that I knew would be there, my original baptism certificate that I had never seen before and a fat file of letters that my mother and, after she died, my father had written to me while I was in college and during my first three years of teaching.  There was also a file of letters and cards that my first husband had mailed to me before we were married.  I have not yet taken the time to reread these letters but I will. 

But thinking about all these surviving letters, I realized that I don't write very many letters these days.  Occasionally I will write to a grandchild in college or one friend who doesn't use a computer but more often (daily in many cases) I text.  I text to my brother and my daughter and my son daily and my grandchildren often but not quite so frequently.  

After my discoveries today, it saddens me to think that they will not have a huge stack of letters to rediscover someday.  On the other hand they will not have to meet the challenge of deciding what to keep and what to throw away.  

I found these two letters from my west coast brother among the other treasures.  I am ten years older than him.  These were mailed to me when I was in college.  He would have been eight or nine years old.

Even way back then he was providing me with things to blog about.

April foolishness...

 Today is April 1, often referred to as April Fools' Day.  Mother Nature seemed to be doling out a heavy dose of foolishness today.  Or perhaps she had her months wrong.  March is the month that is supposed to come in like a lion, but last night March made its exit with lion like roars of thunder and a heavy downpour.  So heavy that we now have a damp spot in our basement where we never had one before. 

But now it is April and,while it continued raining steadily all day, I consoled myself with the thought that April showers do bring May flowers.  I pondered this happy thought during a visit to the dentist (always so much fun) and a lengthy stay in the waiting room at my car dealership while they changed the oil in my faithful Fiat.  It would be, they had assured me when I brought my car in, about a 45 minute job.  Two hours later I realized that they had estimated the time using football minutes.

While I texted with my west coast brother to pass the time (and because I enjoy texting with him) he shared this joke with me "Chemists aren't good at April Fools jokes because they lack the element of surprise."

That reminded me of my favorite April joke "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring??"  "Pilgrims!!"

My brother passed along one more bit of April lore.  It seems that April 1 is "Edible Books Day."  Of course I had to look that up and it's true.  There are books for toddlers that are safe to chew on and even ingest, but I couldn't find any claims that they make a child smarter. 

But thinking about books that are almost good enough to eat, I just finished a yummy book that I highly recommend. It's "The Crime Brulee Bake Off" by Rebecca Connolly.  If you've ever watched British or American baking competitions, I assure you that you will enjoy this book.  And that's no April Fool joke.

Just an ordinary day....

 ...until the fire.  Every second Tuesday our cleaning lady (who we have used with never a problem for several years) comes in the morning to clean our whole house.  While she is here we typically leave for a few hours to stay out of her way.  Today was no different.  

First my spouse and I went to Klem's  for breakfast, then on to do some shopping.  After a stop at DeBrands for a couple of Easter gifts and a drive into the country to A Taste of Tradition, our favorite bakery, to stock up on bread and other goodies, we were starting home when we got a call from our cleaning lady.  She was rather upset because our microwave had burst into flames soon after she finished cleaning it. 

She got the flames out by putting a wet wash cloth over them and then unplugged the microwave.  Good thinking on her part.  We got home as quickly as we could and surveyed the damage.  The fire had burned a hole on the inside of the door, outherwise the inside didn't look too bad.  Our cleaning lady was very apologetic even though none of us could see how this could possibly have been her fault.  She had used the same cleaner (Dawn soap) that she always uses on all our kitchen surfaces.  She assured us that she has insurance that probably would cover the repair or replacement, but we decided to see how else we might deal with the problem first.

This microwave had been installed when we remodeled our kitchen in February, 2025, making it one year and one month old and, you guessed it, out of warranty.  My wonder spouse spent quite a lot of time phoning the manufacturer, the store where we bought it, and anyone else he could think of, to try to figure out what went wrong and what recourse we might have.  MIcrowaves are supposed to cook food, they are not supposed to burst into flames.

The fire is out, as I said, and the only burn now is the slow burn my wonder spouse is doing.  He will continue his quest for answers tomorrow.  To be continued...

This is what the inside of the the microwave door looks like.         Not a pretty sight. 

more about birds

 Things are getting very colorful in our back yard.  This morning my spouse and I spotted a brilliant red cardinal, a dazzling blue bird and two bright yellow goldfinches, and, of course, some cheery little sparrows at our bird feeders.  

It didn't happen this morning, but, from time to time a falcon will fly through our yard.  Needless to say the smaller birds scatter and disappear when that happens.  Peregrine Falcons were brought to downtown Fort Wayne about ten years ago to help control the pigeon population and they have been very effective at that.  

In reading about the falcons, I learned that they are the fastest animals on earth.  They can stoop (dive to catch their prey) at up to 200 MPH. The top recorded speed 242 MPH. I think that's astonishing, but one of the things that caught my attention was the use of the word 'stoop' to mean a dive.  I've heard of the word stoop used to refer to a small porch or to mean to bend over or lean down but I had never heard it used to describe a bird's dive.  So now you can add a new use for an old familiar word to your vocabulary,

More info about birds (posssibly more than you ever wanted to know).  Falcons are not a kind of hawk.  They are a completely different bird. I checked because my very favorite bird is the hawk.  If I had a totem it would be a hawk.  I love to watch them fly.  They will work hard, flapping their wings to get high in the air, then spread their wings and soar, letting the wind carry them along.  I've always thought of that as a metaphor for my life - work hard when you need to, then soar when you can.  Happily, retirement allows for a lot of soaring.

wave those palms

 Today is Palm Sunday, celebrating when Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey.  At our church that means that large palm fronds are handed out to every person and we gather outside in front of the church to start the worship service, then process into the sanctuary. It's a very lovely experience, especially when the weather cooperates.  Last year it was nasty cold outside and we did not linger long but today the temperature was in the low 60s, the sun was shining and it was all quite lovely. The palms that we waved symbolize victory, peace, eternal life, and triumph according to Google.  I think they've got it right.

When I taught in a Catholic school many years ago one of the nuns I worked with showed me how to make a cross from two leaves of a palm frond.  I had one of those crosses hanging on my apartment wall for many years.  Today I made one and gave it to my 90 year old cousin who was not able to go to church.  She seemed to appreciate it and I enjoyed passing on a tradition.

One more interesting fact, the dried palm fronds left after today's celebration will be burnt and the ashes will be saved and used on Ash Wednesday next year.  

I hope you all have had a blessed Palm Sunday. 

to be expected...

My west coast brother has informed me that today is "Respect Your Cat Day."  I think it's pretty obvious that this day was dreamed up by a human.  Any cat I've ever known has assumed that every day is 'respect your cat' day.  What's not to respect?

Cats obviously assume that they are worthy of respect, if not adoration.  As I read somewhere recently "Cats were once worshipped as gods and they've never forgotten it." 

When I told my brother that, he responded with his own wise cat saying "Dogs think they are human, cats think humans are stupid cats with food."  Never forget the 'with food' part.  That's very important. Having digested all this I decided to see what other cat related sayings are out there.  Here are some of my favorites, enjoy:

Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us. (Mine usually from the top of the refrigerator.)

 Yes I know I got fur all over the house.  It's called FURniture, isn't it?

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.

Domestic cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens that whatever you say to them they always purr.

One cat just leads to another. (I know this one is true.)

"Its not that I'm anti-social, I'm just not user friendly."

A cat is there when you call her, if she doesn't have anything better to do.

I was doodling...

 My west coast brother has informed me that today is "National Scribble Day" not to be confused with "Scrabble Day" which is coming up on April 13, not too far away.  

These days I almost always type or text my messages because my handwriting looks a little too much like scribbling. unless I write very slowly and carefully, which I can do if necessary.  My seventh and eighth grade teacher was big on penmanship.  I'm not that old but he did have us practice cursive using a pen dipped into a little bottle of ink.  Luckily, our desks really were so old that they had a hole in the front right corner just the right size to hold an ink bottle. I'm not sure how my lefty wonder spouse would have dealt with that arrangement.

But back to doodling, That same teacher scolded me once for scribbling (I say I was doodling not scribbling - if you're doodling you're drawing pictures and designs) in all the margins of my catechism. This was a Lutheran school and we spent a good deal of time in seventh and eight grades memorizing the contents of Luther's Small Catechism. This could become rather boring sometimes and so I doodled.  I was being very quiet, not disrupting class at all, and listening just enough to answer questions when I was called on.  When my teacher spotted the doodling I had been doing and called me on it, I pointed out that I owned the book.  I would never have defaced a school book that didn't belong to me.  I think he secretly sympathized.  He was quite a good artist himself.

This same teacher was the one who said that when we memorized a hymn, scripture verse or Q&A from the catechism we should know it so well that, if we fell out of bed in the middle of the night, we could recite it backwards.  Happily, I never had to put that to the test.  Interestingly, all that memorizing made it easy for me to memorize my lines during my years on stage in local productions.  

Thank you, Mr. Zimmerschiedt.