A wedding and an open House

Jeff got married in November in Washington DC the week before Thanksgiving so we stayed back East and enjoyed Thanksgiving in Boston. We ate out several times. I always thought it was just the waiters at Durgin Park in Fanueil Hall that were rude and/or blunt with customers, but we discovered some other places in Boston that recruit from the same waiters school apparently. I also discovered that the majority of the cab drivers come from Haiti. We had a number of them from Haiti while we were there. I asked one why someone from Haiti would come to live in Boston; the summers I can understand because it is hot and humid, but the winters? He could give me no good explanation although he started with a "my brother's cousin's friend" sort of explanation which seemed reasonable. But why did his brother's cousin's friend go there in the first place?

We got home and began preparing for an open house at our house for Jeff. The first part was a reunion of the three amigas who bake cakes, torts, and other desserts: Sydney, Dallas, and Bebe. The house began to fill up with the fruits of their efforts, filling the refrigerator, the garage refriegerator (yes we have two of them), and the freezer. I was trying to make the backyard look good but we had some setbacks. We were visited by raccoons several nights who dug up large portions of the lawn. One night after they visited, it looked like someone had played a bad round of golf and left a lot of divots scattered throughout the fairway. One end actually looked like it had been roto-tilled. We made repairs as best we could but were uncertain about what to do with the 35 sf or so of thoroughly tilled ground. We were thinking a plywood board but that seemed tacky. I went to Home Depot a few days before the event for plywood thinking astro turf might look ok in the evening light. I discovered some cheap sod that was less expensive than either plywood or asto turf and bought it instead. I put it in the next day which was the day of the open house. After I was done, I asked Jeff what he thought, and he said, "It looks like a bad haircut, Dad." Frankly, I thought it looked more like a cheap toupee.

We rented these tables and associated umbrellas and chairs and $500 of heaters so we could put people outside knowing the inside of the house was of modest capacity. We bought four or five dozen candles for the tables and center decorations. The day before it was raining; in fact the morning of the event it was raining lightly. The delivery truck with the lawn equipment arrived as did the moment of decision - tables or no tables? If you keep them, you pay full price. If you send them back, you pay half but you don't have them to use. We settled on a scaled down version. As it turns out, it rained right up until the event started and five or six people went outside. I estimate the cost of tables, chairs, heaters, and decorations at about $200 per guest who actually used them.

The bride and groom decided to go out during the afternoon while we were approaching the event which was fine. Except 45 minutes before it was scheduled to start they were still gone. I called and they were at a fast food place. They got home about 15 minutes before the open house was to start with no concerns whatsoever. Of course, one of the reasons they had no concerns was because they were wearing yellow tennis shoes under the wedding dress and below the tuxedo. Would you be concerned if you were willing to wear yellow tennis shoes to an event like this? Yellow patent leather I might be able to understand, but yellow tennis shoes told me I was not on the same page as they were. However, they were happy and they were married.

The people came, they brought gifts, they ate our cake, they drank our punch, they lingered, and there was enough room in the house. They weren't concerned about the tables outside, they didn't see the cheap grass toupee, and they thought it was a nice event. So now that that is over, what am I going to do about the raccoons?

If I can handle wealthy clients, I can certainly handle grandchildren

We agreed to watch our two grandchildren while their parents went out to dinner to celebrate a birthday. We would have sweet little Catherine for a few hours and her infant brother Jack. Having raised five children from start to finish, well mostly from start, I thought we could handle this. We’d had each of them before, and we are experienced.

Sydney got Jack to go to sleep and she laid him down in the playpen in our downstairs bedroom while Catherine was playing with toys in the family room. I was working on some other projects coming and going through the downstairs area. It went well for twenty minutes, and I thought we’d have a reasonably quiet evening while rendering service to the family. Then I saw Catherine slip out of the downstairs bedroom and I heard Jack stirring. Mischief was afoot.

I went into the bedroom and Jack was not happy, but his lungs hadn’t warmed up, yet. Someone had pulled the pacifier out of his mouth and the evidence was lying on the floor. I put it in his mouth. There was a moment of chewing and sucking, a look of dissatisfaction, and out it came. I picked him up and began to rock him but he was not buying it. I went to my chair in the family room and sat down and tried patting and rocking. Catherine came over to see what was happening and suddenly grabbed the pacifier out of his mouth. I asked her to give it back and she threw it at me! I told her to pick it up and hand it to me and she threw it at me again! I gave her one last chance and fixing her with the steely gaze of the dominant male of the household, I asked her to give it to me and she let me have it – on the fly.

At this point, Sydney could see (and hear) that I was not succeeding with Jack so she came and took him. She had been preparing a bottle for him and began to feed him. As she was settling in with him, Catherine jumped on her back and decided it was time to play with Grandma. I came to her rescue by taking Catherine under my arm, all limbs moving at the same time (hers not mine), and we went upstairs to seek adventure.

One of the things I look forward to at Christmas is getting a toy, and Sydney indulges me. Some of my family think this is an adolescent affectation, but I know young children and there is no better therapy than playing with a toy. Actually, one of the toys is a rubber dart gun and it can provide protection from small grandchildren as well as entertainment, that is, entertainment for them.

We went to the bedroom and got flashlights and turned out the lights and lay on the floor while we shined them on the ceiling. My flashlight spot chased her flashlight spot and visa versa all about the ceiling. We played a game of tag with the lights for quite a while. Then we got the dartgun and shot the rubber foam darts at the ceiling while we lay on the landing. The ceiling is fairly high and we were trying to see if after hitting the ceiling they came back down and landed on us.

By this time, the baby was back asleep and Catherine was at a point where it was time to put her down. We got her in her sleeping clothes and put her in bed, but I kept watch for a little while outside her bedroom to make sure she didn't make a break for freedom. However, she stayed in bed where she slept like a little innocent.

Michael and Lori retrieved them late in the evening and asked if there were any problems. "None whatsoever," we replied. If I can handle wealthy egocentric clients, I can handle small children.

Of Mice and Rocks

We just got off our annual week on the houseboat on Lake Powell. The most impressive statistics of the week: four propellers and five mice. I'll get to them in a moment. The family and friends came together in Page, AZ on Saturday night the 20th from different parts of the country: Boston, New York City, Florida, Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, Virginia, and Playa Del Rey. We went to Walmart for supplies and five or six grocery carts later we were ready for the lake. It's hard to imagine you can go through a grocery cart of drinks for 13 people and be running low four days later, but we were. There was an immense amount of sugar in those grocery carts as well.

We spend the first night on the houseboat in the boatyard on supports. Since we have power and water from landlines, it's like being in a nice motel in which you have an ownership interest, or like a boat that's run aground and you're pretending otherwise. The next day they pull you to the lake and put you in and you cruise up the lake with the powerboat being towed behind. Standing at the wheel as you move, you feel like you are on a small cruise ship, or the African Queen.

The first night this year we spent in Padre Bay. We put in four anchors to make sure if a wind came up we would be held fast to the beach. We don't just put them out, we dig a hole, we pound them in with a sledgehammer, and we make sure the anchor lines are properly tight because slack tends to allow the boat to swing in a wind. Well, a wind came up but I knew we were secure until one of the anchors started pulling out at which point all the men went into action in a manner that can only be described as similar to the accelerated animation in an early silent movie. Think Keystone Cops. Except it was blowing and thundering while we did it.

Several nights out we were looking for a new beach and it was getting late. We attempted to anchor in one spot, but the ground was bad for digging anchor holets and the boat was uncomfortably close to rocks. We decided to move to another spot in the fading light, and with great skill we got the boat out and underway, and with less skill we didn't notice a shallow rock on the way and went over it damaging both props. Because we left the earlier spot in a hurry, we left the small boat to pick up one of the anchors and part of the crew. They followed us ten minutes later and crossed the same rock we hit (prop 3). Two days later while reconnoitering for a new beach down the lake, we got to close to a rocky beach and ding we damaged anothe prop on the small boat. It was a record! We had never damaged more than one in a trip and it was a few years since we damaged one.

While sitting on the beach the night we destroyed three props, we had a serious storm but all the anchors held. I question whether they would have in the location we moved from. The same night or the next we discovered a stowaway - a mouse. We put out some traps and in a short time we caught the mouse, except his brother showed up elsewhere after he was caught. We caught the brother, then his cousin showed up and we caught him. Then his uncle wandered out and we caught him. We sent five of them off to the great beyond before we were done. Incidentally, peanut butter works just fine in mousetraps.

At the end of the week, we arrived back at the landing having survived/enjoyed another week of houseboating on Lake Powell.

Miscellaneous Things I am discovering along the way

I've been the Young Men's president for a while. I've learned a few things from that. One is that no matter how bad for you the food is, if it has sugar or fat or both, the young men will eat it. We were putting icing on cookies one Christmas so we could deliver them to some of the house bound members of the ward. Because it was all guys, one of the leaders bought the icing in tubes like a large toothpaste tube or tube of caulking. As we finished icing the cookies, I noticed one boy squirting the tube directly into his mouth until the entire tube was empty. I looked at him as he finished the tube, and he smiled at me and then squeezed the last bit into his mouth. Try eating a bowl of icing and tell me how you like it.

Sydney made a sheetcake for the young men on one occasion. Even if we only had four or five boys, they could eat all of it - it only took four or five pieces per boy to do that. The same thing with donuts. The unwritten rule with donuts is they must be eaten. All of them.

Catherine Anna Tanner stayed with us for a few days while her parents (Michael and Lori) were out of town. Sydney calls her a little angel, but she is more like a wood sprite except when she is in the bathtub when she is a water sprite. Playing, running, dancing a jig while she waits for something to start or to stop. She is an echo chamber as well - I'll say, "we're going to eat dinner" She'll say, "We're going to eat dinner?" "Let's read a book." "Read a book?" "Would you like some cheese?" "Some cheese?" She is also a little drama queen when she wants. One evening after a full day, Sydney bathed her then read to her until she finally settled in to sleep. About fifteen minutes later, I peeked into her room to make sure she was ok for the night (not sleeping perched on the edge of the bed ready to fall out), and in the slight illumination from outside her room I saw her slowly turn her head toward me and say, "I am soooooooo tired," before turning back and closing her eyes. From exactly what gene does this stuff come from to a two and a half year old?

I was watching the PGA Golf Tournament this week and was impressed by the level of play. I saw some of the pros hit balls in the water, and in the sand, and in the trees, and I thought to my self, "I can play like that." So I grabbed my clubs and went to the golf course and played just like that. I hit the ball into the trees and into the sand and into the weeds. If the pros can do it, so can I.

Home Repairs

For someone who works with their mind for a living, I have had a fascination for home repairs for many years. When I say I had, I say it in the same sense an alcoholic says he used to drink. I used to do home repairs, but I have been dry for some time and with any luck I will stay that way.
When you are newly married and poor, you believe you can do any repair. Some of the repairs I went looking for, while others were thrust upon me - there was the time I asked Sydney what the bulge in the ceiling drywall was in the entry area of our old home. The roof was old and it had just rained heavily. How much water could be trapped there anyway? So I poked a hole in the drywall with a screwdriver to let the water out, and voila! The ceiling collapsed dumping a lot of water and drywall on the floor and creating a ceiling and roofing project for me.
Recently, I put some new fixtures in our upstairs bathroom shower. New handles, downspout, shower fixture, and drain. A simple procedure. You take off the old hardware, put on the new, and there you are. The following weekend we had some young women guests as part of a youth conference, and they used the bathroom for showers. A perfect stress test of my work. I went into the garage while they were showering, and discovered we could have saved water by having one of them take a shower under the garage ceiling using the water that poured from the ceiling. It would have already been soapy for them. How could changing the drain do that? I was going to tear open the ceiling but called a plumber instead. He checked the bathtub drain and said the “shoe” was askew. Who knew a bathtub had shoes? I removed one drain and put another in and the bathtub threw a shoe like some frisky horse?
We had a kitchen faucet that was leaky so instead of doing the rational thing and calling a plumber, I decide to fix it myself. Unfortunately, to remove the valve, you had to crawl under the sink and disconnect several pipes then disassemble the valve so you could remove it from the sink so you could pull it apart to get to the interior piece that was the likely source of the mischief. I took it to the plumbing supply house where they were kind enough to sell me the new piece for the valve, and then the clerk said in a by the way you probably already knew this tone of voice, “You unscrew the top of the valve and pull the old stem out and insert the new one then screw the top back on.” The top of the valve! You mean the top unscrews? You mean you don’t have to take apart everything underneath the sink lying on your back with water dripping in your face trying to unscrew a fitting with one hand and holding a flashlight with the other. What made them think I didn’t know that?
Of course, if you’re not bright enough to manage plumbing, there is always drywall. I’ve done drywall. I’ve done it because my sons learned how to put holes in it early in their lives. I’ve stepped through dry wall ceilings while putting boxes in the attic. Don’t let anyone tell you insulation in the attic covers anything substantial. It only covers drywall, and that is not substantial, at least not compared to the weight of a person resting on one foot on the drywall. It surprised me and it surprised everyone in the room below. Well, you cut the drywall around the damaged area, then you cut a new piece of drywall to fit the hole, you nail it to the nearest piece of wood behind the hole, then you cover the gaps around the edge of the patch with drywall compound or tape it with drywall tape first, paint it, and it’s fixed. The final step is to hang a picture over it to avoid awkward questions. That's why ceilings are more difficult - you can't hang a picture.
I once put about a half dozen holes in the ceiling of our dining room in search of a leak that had come down through the chandelier over the dining room table. I needed to make the holes to get a good look at where the leak was coming from since the wet spot may be the end point of a stream of water from elsewhere (see entry ceiling discussion above). It looked for a while like we had had a particularly wild frat party in that room. Eventually, we discovered the leak was coming from one of the valve handles in the shower above and down through the wall. Why would someone replace the gasket on that valve and fail to put the proper washer in it before tightening it down? I was pretty upset about that until I thought about who did it.

As I said above, I have given up home repairs for the most part. I can do a toilet float valve in my sleep, and I’m still pretty good with lightbulbs and such, but no more plumbing and I think drywall and painting are finished, also. I would volunteer to help my children as they work on their residences, but I don’t want to destroy any relationships, so I think I’ll just supervise.

The Cat and I

Mimshky is gone. She died this last weekend and we laid her to rest in a corner of the backyard. She lies undisturbed beneath an Iris plant or a lilly plant, or whatever the plant was that we dug up so we could bury her.

When Sydney and I got married I understood she had had cats and liked them but I really didn’t know what that meant. My experience with cats left me thinking they were tyrannical, arrogant, lazy, ungovernable creatures, and that describes the nice ones. After we had been married for a while, I learned she would enjoy having a cat but she was kind enough to consider my desires on the matter. I held off for a while but for her birthday or for Christmas about twenty years ago, I agreed we could have a cat with some conditions.

Those conditions were that the cat could not sit on my chair or my bed, certainly not in it, could not claw the furniture or make annoying noises at night, and would be banished for alienation of affection. O foolish man! To think I understood so little of cats as to think they could or would ever abide by or could be trained to or coerced into abiding such conditions. Or that their women would either. So we got a cat.

The children loved her as a kitten. She was black except for white paws and a white chest that stretched up under her chin and down to her belly. Someone told me that was called a tuxedo pattern. She was fawned upon by the women in the household and even some of the boys occasionally which only encouraged her naturally lazy and territorial instincts. The women called her Muffy or Mimshky or some such; I called her other names. We tolerated each other over the years; I had my territory and she had hers. If she got on my chair or my bed, I removed her and kept removing her until she understood the Lord of the Manor was not to be trifled with. As a young cat, she could stay outside much of the time and that helped.

Occasionally, we had run ins like the time she wanted chicken from my plate. I had put it on the table as she sat on the bench seat adjacent to the table eyeing the plate. I was not giving her chicken. Sydney at the other end of the table would have, but cats are not bright, stubborn yes, but not bright. We knelt for family prayer as she lay on the bench, I with a protective hand up by my plate because I knew what was on her mind. It’s hard to be spiritual during prayer when you are trying to guard your chicken with your eyes closed and head bowed. Instead of going for the chicken, she hit me in the head with her paw. A civil relationship had degenerated into war. For the rest of her life, I dare not leave a plate unattended at my end of the table if it had chicken and she was in the vicinity.

She got older, I got older, and the children left. Somehow I got the responsibility to feed her in the morning and put her in the garage at night. She couldn’t be left in the house at night because her nocturnal activity kept us awake. She also spent more time in the house because she was less mobile and more vulnerable to other creatures outside including other cats in the neighborhood. This is when trouble began to brew.

She decided to sleep where I sat or worse where I ate. So she would sleep on the end of the breakfast table where I ate my meals. That might seem innocent, but I watched Sydney comb through her fur removing fleas on a daily basis. Even with a flea collar which didn’t last long, I knew she would go outside and collect a new set of fleas. Worse yet, I knew her feet were in the kitty litter box and occasionally she would get tired or bored and lay down in that box. Our kitty litter box does not flush; you have to shovel the cat bon bons and effluvia out of it. Those same feet and belly were the ones lying where I ate breakfast and dinner. She was an old cat but she was still wily. I removed her from the table and then she waited until my back was turned and made another attempt.

We did the same thing jockeying for position to sit on my favorite chair. When I was sitting on it, she approached warily waiting for me to get up to get something so she could take possession. Recently I was sitting on the front edge of the chair and she approached and I could see she was trying to decide how it difficult it would be to get in the chair and sit down behind me since she could see that half the chair was not being used. Cats are very sharing animals. Uninvited, they will share anything you have. The rest of the chairs in the room were empty.

And then there were the veterinarians she was taken to. They thought they could make her live forever, and of course, viewed her as an annuity which needed to be preserved. We spent $400 the last week so a vet could tell us she was dying. We knew that, and the cat knew that, but apparently the vet had to charge us $400 to make it official.

Toward the end of her life, I thought I was winning the conflict. She was so old she couldn’t jump on the table like she used to although she would still surprise me on occasion. She liked being outside when it was sunny because she could lay in the sun and warm her old bones. She would find a spot and stay there much of the day. When I put her in the garage at night, I had to set her down gently because if she’d been sitting for a long time, her legs had trouble supporting her until she could stretch them out. If I won the chair, I usually won it for as long as I wanted. She was a worthy opponent for many years and I will miss her.

Christmas Came and Went but it Left Some Wonderful Presents

Most of the children gathered at our home for Christmas this year although all but two of them were gone by the time the actual day occurred. We had the extended family at our home the Sunday before Christmas for the large Tanner family Christmas Party. The food and the company were good and the program was entertaining as usual. However, what made the evening memorable was what happened at the end of the party. After the singing and the talent display, Mom began passing out her poetry books which we had helped her to acquire to her grandchildren. She pulled them out of a pile close by her and signed them as any renowned author would for her grandchildren as they came forward to receive their copy. Dad told me later she had been looking forward to doing that for many days. She loves to be where her family is gathered and she loves her poetry. Dad did not feel well and would not have traveled to our home from Utah but for Mom's sake. He suffered for the week or more he was away from home, but he didn't complain

Both Mom and Dad are not in great health. Knowing that, the sons and sons in law in the family gathered at the end of the party as it quieted down, and we gave both of them blessings joined by the other grandchildren who held the Melchizedek Priesthood. It was a sweet moment for all of us to be able to do that for them.

Before Michael and Lori, and John and Sarah departed on the Wednesday before Christmas to spend the holiday with their other families, we gathered for breakfast at our home. In the course of the morning before we settled down to eat, something had happened to Catherine Tanner, our Tweadle, and she was very unhappy and expressed it in a plaintive way. As we ate, our attention turned to her because it looked like a matter that would need to go a doctor although Michael and Lori were scheduled to fly out in about four hours. I guess we had forgotten there was a doctor in our midst. John stood up and walked over to her and picking her up manipulated an arm that Sydney thought Tweadle had been favoring. He put her back down and said he thought she may have dislocated part of her arm and he had put it in place; he said if he was correct she would be fine in a few minutes. In a few minutes, she was once again ambling about the house walking with the gait of a small and curious Frankenstein.

It struck me how much our children were adults with adult capacities. John had rendered service as a doctor, Michael was with the family he was raising and supporting with his labor in the workplace, Dana is the de facto general manager of a small company, Biz is a librarian contemplating managing her own branch library, and Jeff is determinedly and studiously pursuing a college degree. And their companions are accomplishing the same kinds of things. And all of them are good people. What a wonderful Christmas present!

Well, I am getting maudlin, one of the first signs of old age, and as anyone who knows me well knows, I am getting younger every year! I'll write again when I think of something worthy of the effort.