Grandma’s in the House – Supervisor

By late spring, I took a second job.  It was a part-time, afternoon shift job, sorting mail.  The garden suffered, in that the weeds grew pretty good that year.

When I had a day that I wasn’t working, I would head outside.  It’s my favorite place to be.  (My mom said I used to throw myself on the ground and cry and cry when she would bring me inside, when I was a very small child even).  Back to the story…So, I would hear the door squeak open and see Grandma peak her head out and look for me.  I figured she was making sure I was okay.

There was an old corn crib on the property that Tom converted into a chicken coop for me.  I was painting the outside of it.  I heard the door squeaking open and shut frequently, but didn’t think anything about it.  Then, when Tom got home from work, I heard her telling him that I    wasn’t working today (meaning at the house, not the job).  She said I was napping in that building down there.  That’s when I realized I had a      supervisor.

I was working in the garden when I heard the back door squeak open and close, and I knew she would be coming to the front door next.  That was one time in my life I was glad that the doors squeaked.  The weeds along the edge of the garden were about three foot high by then and I dove down behind them.  This was repeated whenever I heard the back door open.  She always went there first and I had time before she got to the front door.  The report that night was that I was goofing off somewhere, that I wasn’t working.

Grandma asked me one day, why I had so many coffee mugs.  She said you need only three.  One for each of us. (There were 4 of us living here, us three, plus our daughter, Andrea who Gma called “that girl that lives with you”.)  I told her that we got mugs when we go on vacation somewhere, and also that I like pottery (LOVE is a better word for it).  The next day, a mug “fell out” of the cupboard and broke.  Hmmm….

On days that my mother and me went grocery shopping, Gma would tell Tom that we were off sitting and drinking in bars all day.  That’s kind of funny, being that my mother is a preacher’s wife and the trunk load of groceries that I brought home.  And I never had alcohol breath.  Did not know where she got that story.

Also, with her being 90 years old, had some “bathroom issues”.  She was always telling me that it was because of my cooking.  I said that was strange, because no one else had that problem.  So, sometimes when my husband is having stomach issues, he’ll look at me and say, “It’s because of your cooking”.  He thinks he’s funny.