Stop and smell the roses

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 1:49 pm (Writing by Ear)
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No wait. Nothing at the zoo smells like roses…

But it IS a great place to play hookie on a warm summer day, especially when it’s with a dear old friend in town on a visit.

You can see which families spend their summer going in different directions.

And which prefer to stick close together.

Who’s already pretty bored with it all.

And who’s looking for a little fun.

Who’s sticking to his diet.

And who needs to lay off the snacking…celery and lettuce notwithstanding.

Who’s perfecting their swimming strokes.

And who’s only in it to cool off.

And if you ever wondered what it would be like to swim underneath a polar bear, it would be something like this.

But even if the zoo’s not your thing, take a minute to stop and smell the roses (so to speak) in your own back yard. That’s what summer’s all about! (And, sure as shootin’, everyone and their brother you haven’t heard from in weeks will call or e-mail you, expecting you to be in your office working.)

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been
the two most beautiful words in the English language.
~ Henry James

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A win is a win?

Monday, July 19, 2010 at 12:08 pm (Cottage Industry)
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Say your dishwasher breaks.

Say you had started the dishwasher at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning while you were throwing food at the cats so they would leave you the heck alone and let you sleep.

Say you heave a big sigh at 1:00 p.m., when you just want to eat lunch and then realize you have to empty the dishwasher.

Say you pull out a bowl and find it’s still dirty.

Say you complain for the 47th time about that stupid dishwasher that just doesn’t clean the dishes very well, even though it’s all fancy and sleek and quiet (and your husband picked it out).

Say you pull out another bowl and find there’s actual MOLD growing on it!

Say your husband asks if you’re sure you ran it and you tell him in a most annoyed voice that OF COURSE you ran it because you even turned on the light at 4:00 a.m. so you could see what you were doing.

Say you check the dishwasher and find the detergent cup never opened.

Say you try running it again and hear the “Danger, danger Will Robinson” chimes after a couple minutes and see an error message LE flashing on the control panel.

Say you check the manual (while patting yourself on the back that you know exactly where the manual is), and find out what IE, OE, FE, E1, HE, and TE errors mean, but nothing about LE, which must mean LE is really, really bad.

Say you call the 800 customer service number, and amazingly, someone is there on a Saturday at 1:00 p.m.! Then, “Octavio” (heavy Spanish accent, rather than Indian) tells you that LE means “Locked Engine” and either the motor is shot or there’s a problem in the wiring from the control panel to the motor and it’s nothing that can be fixed over the phone, but here’s the name and number of your local authorized service dealer and is there anything else I can help you with today?

Say your husband simultaneously checks the Web and finds out the same information you did, along with a couple possible fixes and people saying there’s about a 50-50 chance it’s a shot motor or a broken wire.

Say you wash the disgusting dishes in the full-to-the-brim dishwasher by hand (in 6 batches because you don’t have a big drainer or anything because, well, you have a dishwasher).

Say you take the Web posters’ advice and dismantle the dishwasher door to reveal the wiring behind the shiny black cover.

Say you see about 25 colored wires running all throughout the door, one of which may be broken and causing the problem because (a) it got stuck in the black tar-like undercoating “they” sprayed all over the door during manufacturing that melted from the heat of the dishwasher or (b) it repeatedly got pinched under the door during opening/closing.

Say you find a really obvious broken black wire right off the bat, though the helpful folks online report finding breaks in gray, red, or blue wires, but it’s only one end of the black wire, so it seems like just a ground wire or something that was never connected.

Say you spend another hour running back and forth to the computer to check for service manuals and other comments online and painstakingly following the pretty colored wires.

Say you just about convince yourself that it is, in fact, a shot motor, that you can either pay someone a $120+ service call (plus parts) to fix, or you can buy the motor yourself (for $60) and try to install it yourself…which involves disconnecting the dishwasher and taking it out of it’s very tight home in the island and turning it upside down, to start.

Say your husband then notices a black wire melted into the black goo that you both missed seeing for the past hour.

Say your handy husband then splices the broken black wire back together, you reassemble the door, and hope for the best.

Say it now works!!!!!

Should you be happy it only took an hour or two to fix it (thanks to a talented husband and nice people who post fixes on the Web) or annoyed that a 3-year old dishwasher suddenly broke in the first place, delayed your lunch, and caused you a lot of anxiety on a Saturday thinking you were going to have to spend mega dollars to get a repairman out or watch your husband struggle with yet another difficult DIY project and have to do dishes by hand (in batches) in the meantime?

You say I should be happy? Thanks, I thought so.

Being an optimist after you’ve got everything you want doesn’t count.
~ Kin Hubbard

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Button, button, who’s got the…

Monday, July 12, 2010 at 9:18 pm (Writing by Ear)
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As I was getting ready the other morning, I noticed a loose thread on the button of my blouse. I pulled it, and just as I realized the button was unraveling completely, it fell off into the sink and down the drain. Bye-bye button.

Sigh.

As it was the critical “bra-hiding” button, I had to do something and didn’t feel like changing. Time to dive into that stash of button packets I’d been saving. You know, the kind that come attached to new clothes? After some thought, I remembered where I had squirreled them away: in the small chest of drawers in the vestibule, along with more candles than I’ll likely burn in my lifetime, and a dozen or so extension cords and extra-plug thingees (really useful at Christmas!).

All I needed was a simple white button with 4 holes. What I found was a tinful of memories.

Oh, that beautiful gray sweater. A gift from my best friend from high school. I wore it to death. Loved it; loved her. (Thanks, Annie.)


And that green silk two-piece dress — so pretty. Gave up trying to fit into it and gave it away some years ago.


That navy blue button-down sweater with the crest and the fancy buttons — I wore that a lot! Very nautical.

Of course, for every button or bit of thread I could identify, there were a half-dozen I couldn’t. And after all that, I still didn’t find a perfect match for my simple white button. So an ivory one (from something 100% silk according to the tag) had to do. I’m sure no one will ever notice.

But if I ever find myself needing crochet hooks or the hard contact lenses that were my high school graduation gift that I only wore briefly Freshman year before getting a weird eye infection and giving them up — I now know where to go.

Clearly, I have a thing for buttons. I remember playing endlessly with the buttons my mother collected in a few jelly jars. She told me “they” (she, my grandmother, my aunts) used to cut the buttons off clothes before discarding them. Since I can’t imagine them ever throwing anything away, the clothes must have been threadbare and beyond salvage. It was these same jars of buttons I berated my brother for throwing away a couple years ago when we were cleaning out the “junk room” at my mother’s…the same jars I dug through piles of trash waiting on her porch for garbage day to rescue. Sure, I was afraid she might miss them — we never know what odd thing she’ll pick to fixate on — but part of me also wanted to “inherit” them someday. (Those same jars are still sitting in yet another junk room at my mother’s…it’s a sickness, no, this hoarding gene I fight and win, most times.)

I also snagged a large Necco Wafer jar of buttons my mother-in-law had slated for donation when she and my father-in-law downsized and moved a few years ago. That (no doubt highly collectible) jar is living between the armoire and radiator in the living room.

I did, however, sort through them and put aside some favorites for some still-undetermined future project — those buttons are living in the armoire. 🙂

Seriously, though, clever people do such cute and creative things with buttons — embellishing sweet little pillows…dressing up lampshades…decorating picture frames. Someday I’ll do that too. Really.

In the meantime, if you feel like passing along any buttons you are physically able to live without, I’ll have a jar ready and waiting. And if you should need a button, you know who’s got it.

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.
~ Austin O’Malley

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