Gee, since Mother learned to make homemade ice cream from my grandmother who was born in 1881, I figure this recipe has got some know-how behind it. I think she wrote it out for me, but, alas, making and churning and icing and salting is a team effort and when you’re too old to lick the paddles, it just isn’t the same.
However, you might be wondering, you people who are optimistic and cheerful and like to have a good time with rock salt and ice and tiring muscles, so:
At the beginning of August, for my granddaughter’s birthday, I purchased a number of helium balloons – five of which were Elmos. All this time later, only one was left and he had gone to the floor and then out the door to the concrete floor of the garage.
I just couldn’t bear it, so I decided I would get another Elmo and let them both go free to Heaven. And they wound up in a tree. I’m sorry guys; I could just cry.
I’ve been writing about the Apple Festival, but even though it has been around for three decades, this is really the time of the year when Corn School is held in LaGrange County. My mother was born on this day in 1926 and it was during Corn School. Her sister was 18 years older and came home to find her new sibling swaddled up and sleeping on the old Morris chair. I assume they had it pushed up against something so no one would/could sit on her. It was that sister, Lucile Boehmer, whom I would always call “Auntie” who gave Mother the nickname Toots.
Six years ago today, yes on her birthday, she had a CAT scan that revealed what she had been hiding for approximately a year – she was full of cancer. She died nine days later. She died here in this house on a sofa out on the old North Porch; Daddy died in this house in February, 2000 up in the big, big room over the garage with all the windows. And while we’re on this line of memory, Shane died suddenly almost a year ago on the same North Porch.
Mother would have been 89 today. I don’t think she would have been that happy about it – she wasn’t one who could grow old easily. Already by the time she died at age 83, she was worried that she would have a stroke and not be able to take care of herself, let alone use a hammer for some project or keep a real fire going in the cast iron stove in the kitchen.
And Corn School? This is its 110th year. Gee, it would have been around for about two decades when Mother was born. Kind of ironic – I wonder what the Apple Festival will be like in 80 years or so.
Old pictures of Corn School HERE
I have been packing things up and prioritizing where I put them; translated, that means, I am trying to minimize the amount of digging I will need to do when it suddenly occurs to me that I must have my paws on something.
This morning I came upon a Red Hots box that had been a gift:
I like to stash things in these types of boxes – metal tins and wooden cigar boxes and whatever – and I wondered what was in this one. It didn’t rattle, but it had weight. And I opened it:
A package of Busy Bones for Shane; he could smell them through the wrapping so I put one pack in a tin box. And there it has stayed. And then I cried.
Shane’s sudden death – it has latched onto so many other deep feelings. I have no real idea why, but there it is. Maybe Shane gathered the spirits of loved ones in his heart.
It is less than a week until the year’s marking of his passing. I am not the only one mentioning it. Maybe we need to have an old-fashioned wake.
Well, I didn’t fall through the hole in the kitchen floor; it really was way too little. I didn’t trip in it because it was pretty close to the wall and I put a tile over it. But I will tell you: Freeing up that hole from the relatively heavy exhaust mechanism of the Jenn-Aire and then being stuck up in the joists where the pipes were joined together for venting was, okay, repetitive pun coming – exhausting. That last part was while leaning off a ladder while bracing against a wall. Not bad for 67, but you know it left me with a few sore muscles.
Even my little fingers were inflamed from working with gunky screws and bolts that didn’t exactly want to turn easily or were not in a very accessible position. Oh, excuses, excuses. Actually, I haven’t been at the computer because I have been guarding the oven, which looks so beautiful – much more impressive than in this picture.
More painting, with primer . . . and more and more fence. Is my fence a rabbit family wearing the cloak of a fence? Alien rabbits, or, oh dear, just aliens that breed fast and expand? Slimy things. I really don’t want to follow this line of speculation any more at all. I’ve probably spooked myself. And, of course, the fence is grey: and what color are the traditional movie aliens? Now, I’ve gone and done it. The next thing you know is that I will paint myself grey and claim to have been abducted. Or it could be worse; I could be actually abducted into the fence – God knows my chest has always been flat as a board – and just stand there mute while people investigate my disappearance. Maybe Rose will speak at a little service for me.
Say, I wonder if I have been sniffing too much paint?
The Grommet, a site that introduces new devices, sent me an email about a teeth cleaning twig. Yes, TWIG. Perhaps there is a lot of paint sniffing going around.
In this house on North Riley Street, I have WAY too much stuff; Glenda* is correct in her assessment of people having too much stuff. I emptied out about six wooden boxes that had “treasures” in them and now I have two small plastic containers marked “Mother” and “Possible Christmas” – and I also have a cardboard box full of cute little empty wooden boxes. Being the sentimentalist that I am, I couldn’t bring myself to scrawl TRASH or NO KEEP on the cardboard flap; I wrote practically a whole sentence about them being okay, but not necessary. Oh, it is going to take a lot of 12-step meetings to help me.
Maybe I should post pictures of stuff and write, “You want it, you got it.” I even have an idea for the use of some of the boxes – put presents to people in them. Add a bow and, hey, they will think you are creative and then they can either use or toss the box. It won’t be my problem, or yours.
Of course, I suppose I could toss them in the fireplace come winter. I know, I’ll do it on a gloomy day and put a sad movie on TV and watch them slowly char and then go up in flames and cry tears that will fit the day, the movie and my incredible ability to attach memories to inanimate objects.
You probably don’t believe how crazy I can be. Well, try this on for size: I have the teaspoon that my father used right before he died AND THE APPLESAUCE IS STILL ON IT. I know, Daddy, I shouldn’t let people know about this quirk, but it may be the only way I can get help.
*Glenda – Wise first cousin who actually has uncluttered horizontal surfaces in her house. Oh, but she lives on a farm with outbuildings. Glenda, you don’t have a hidden stash of old Woodrow/Grismore things, do you? Do you still have the first saddle Logan put on a horse, the first band-aid from when she fell off?