funny – Page 2 – doreenslife.com

Andrea and the Snake

After a second divorce, I found a 150 year old brick home, on 7 acres, and bought it for a very reasonable price. It was the home of my dreams. All it needed was the white picket fence in front. It was so cool! It had a fireplace in the basement that was part of the original log cabin, with a swing arm for cooking in it.

The yard had only been mowed around the house, and the lawn between the house and the pond was allowed to grow up. There were big stalks from where big weeds had grown. I didn’t think much about it, till summer came and I started mowing it.

Being a single mom, I got a push mower and started mowing on Sunday, then and hour or so around work schedules and children’s schedules, every day all week to get the whole thing mowed, down to the pond. Then start back at the top again on Sunday.

The first day, while mowing, there was a 3 foot cream and brown snake between me and my mower. I jumped and started yelling, “Snake, snake”, only to be there standing by myself wondering who was going to kill the snake. So, I had to get braver and started wearing my work boots and carrying a hoe along the handle of the mower.

That summer, there were nine different colors of snakes that I encountered between the mower and me. Most were under the two foot range, if bigger, too big for under the mower. I “put out of their misery”, over 30 snakes that summer. I guess they had moved in where the grass had been high. It wasn’t like that any summer after that. I kept it mowed, thank goodness.

My daughter, Andrea, was just about a teenager. I was on afternoon shift at the factory where I worked, and had asked her to take the compost to the garden while I finished getting ready for work. She came in about two minutes later and was white as a sheet. She said, “Mom, I just stepped on a snake in my bare feet”. So, I’m thinking, a six inch snake. “Let’s go see”, I said taking the hoe with me. Also in my bare feet. We got to the back steps where she said she stepped off of and onto the coiled snake. I thought it was so small that we couldn’t see it in the grass.

Then something caught my eye to my right and there was a four foot snake “running” for the woods. I ran with my hoe and swung. It was hard to hit a big moving “S” shape. I got it about a foot behind the head and it came at me with mouth wide open. Andrea, of course, was supporting me from way behind. Out of big fear, I started swinging the hoe and chopping a lot. It finally quit trying to get me and went to snake heaven. If there is one. Which I doubt.

I was probably white as a sheet by the time the battle was done. My theory is if I let it go, it will come back bigger the next time. That was one day I was glad to go to work. If something would have touched my leg in the car, I probably would have wrecked it.

In the Patch

Aww, they’re back! Those luscious, lip-smacking, little jewels of sweetness! Also, known as black raspberries. My friend Stephanie and I rode the 4-wheelers out back and searched the parameters of the tree lines. Quick stops when we see a patch of red and black.

We found a big pile of poo in the patch. I always ask my husband if it is bear poo, because they have been seen in our county. He always says no, it’s raccoon poo. I think he tells me that so I will keep going out in the woods.

I left my key in the on position on my 4-wheeler and when I got back, the battery was dead. Or so I thought. So, we rode together on one machine the last hour of our picking. When Tom went out with me to get it, he said you probably forgot to get it out of gear before shutting it off. And sure enough, I had. Ooops! At least we didn’t have to tow it back to the house.

I should have enough raspberries after another picking to make a batch of jam. I can hardly wait. Maybe I’ll add some jalapenos…

The Good Sore

Thornless blackberries my brother, Rusty, gave me 2 summers ago.

Banana Split – can you believe the size of this? I ate his cherries because he doesn’t like them. 🙂

Ok, how does this last picture fit in with the rest? Reward baby!

I’ve been concentrating on getting the garden going and looked over at the fruit garden and herb bed and went WOW! How did those weeds get that tall? It seems that weeds grow about 50 times faster then any other living thing.

So, the weed patches were 2 feet tall in among my fruit bushes and vines. I bought this Earth Mat because it looks like it may work. It’s not plastic, kind of more canvas and thicker. I tried a kind of landscape cloth about 15 years ago and it looked like I planted a blanket of grass there. Didn’t stop any weeds. I think it had a bunch in it. I’ve used plastic with newspapers on top with mulch and it lasts about 3 or 4 years then needs replaced, so I don’t use mulch anymore. For me, it has seemed to encourage the growth of weeds after the first year as the mowing throws a myriad of seeds into the mulch. So, I’ll give this a try and see how it works for me. My friend Pam stopped mulching her flower beds a few years ago and just takes a hoe to the weeds. Sounded like a good idea to me too, so I tried it last year when the last of my mulch had turned into fine dirt. Works pretty good.

The highbush cranberries are something that my grandparents in Maine always had when I went to visit them. They made the most amazing cranberry jelly that you can imagine. It’s for toast, not the kind you have at Thanksgiving. I’ve tried making it out of the cranberries from the store, and it is pretty good, but not as good as these.

I worked about 6 hours on this bed, pulling weeds, jumping when the cat grabs me from under the bushes, crawling under plants, wrestling with the poison ivy plants (thank goodness for lye soap), fighting giant wolf spiders (ugh), rolling around with 50 foot long pieces of matting, lugging rocks to hold down the matting, picking sticks out of my hair and hoping to goodness to not find a tick on me later. The next day, I had a hard time getting up and around because of using so many muscles that I normally don’t. If I would follow my 18 month old granddaughter around and do everything she does, I would be in great shape. My husband says that round is a shape (I hope he’s talking about himself).

The good sore is when I can look and see all the good that I’ve done for the day. I can see progress and some control in that wild kingdom out there. Yes, I may moan and groan for a day or two, and maybe even get a “good job, honey”.

And that’s where the giant banana split comes in. Rewarding myself for all the hard work. The great thing is, I’m only two-thirds of the way done with that bed. Then I turned around and looked over my shoulder at the flower beds. Yikes! More weeds…

An add on, January 2019 – The Earth Mat that I put on has not allowed ANY weeds to grow up through it. I am amazed and buy now for flower beds too. You can order from Berlin Seeds in Millersburg, Ohio. It is Amish owned, so you can call and get a catalog to order. 330.893.2091, or Bing it for the address.

Grandma’s in the House – Naps

Grandma likes her naps. She would go to sleep at 8:30 in the evening and set her alarm to wake up at 5:30 am. I thought that was a lot of sleep for someone her age, but then she also takes about six naps a day.

I had wrote down television channels that she liked and could punch the number in to go to that channel, instead of trying to operate the remote. She had it so messed up we had to have a technician straighten it out. She liked mostly westerns and the Catholic channel.

So, every half hour, she would turn the television on to a show she liked, doze off for a 10 minute nap or so. Wake up, turn the television back off and say she doesn’t watch it, but she knows what time all of her programs come on…

Sometimes she would watch a show for a whole half hour before turning it off. And yes, we did have to replace the bulb in the television because all that on and off, blew it out. That’s what the technician said. (smirk)

Even at night, when we would sit down to watch some television, she would fall asleep through the evening. She says she never naps.

However, when she would see my husband, Tom, in his easy chair with his feet up, starting to snore, she would bump his feet and say, “Don’t you have some work to do?” We didn’t nap, that’s for sure.

Tom said when he was little, Grandma would be outside for a while giving orders to the family what to do around their dairy farm. He said when he would go into the house for something, she was always napping in a chair. Hmmm…I think Grandma has always liked her naps.

Grandma’s in the House – The Catssss

Grandma had six cats when she was going to move in with us. She was going to have them put down (to put it nicely), and we told her to bring them here. They got ahold of 4 of them to put in cat carriers and brought them to our house. The grandson who lived next door, kept the other two. After trying to tear the cages apart, they made it down here. We put butter on their feet so they couldn’t find their way back where they had come from, and they all scattered from the nice warm barn we gave them to sleep and live in.

They were back that evening and still here the next day, which I was glad of at the time.

Gma came with two 20 pound bags of cat food, different kinds, that we were to mix together, because the cats like it that way. They are too fussy to eat only one kind of food at a time. However, whenever they get in the garage where my cats are, they woof down my singular kind of cat food, like there’s no tomorrow. Gma buys the expensive stuff, I buy Dad’s cat food.

Two of those cats do everything they can to get into the garage. These cats came with enough blankets and rugs to wrap a sheik in comfort. They are nicely sprawled over soft mounds of straw so they can sleep in softness like a kitty cloud. Yet, they try to dig under the doors to get into my garage, where there are no such comforts. They follow me over and wait at the door until I come out, then try to out-maneuver me to get in.

Oh yeah, and when I go down to feed the precious darlings in the morning, Gma hands me two wet PAPER TOWELS to clean out their precious dishes so they can eat, because cats don’t like to eat or drink in a dirty pan. I think that’s funny, because after I clean and pour fresh water, they always go out and drink out of the mud puddles…

Grandma’s in the House – The Doorbell

Grandma has hearing aids in both ears. She can hear somewhat good; things like the telephone, conversations when you’re looking at her, etc. What she has a hard time with is someone knocking on the door and the doorbell.

We’ll be sitting and watching television when I hear the doorbell ring. I’ll get up and go let whoever in. They walk in and she will look at me and say, “How did you know they were here?” Same goes when they knock. “How did you know they were here?”

One day, we had a guy coming to lay out the forms for some concrete under our back awning. Gma was watching for him, because we were all working. My mom brought over some corn on the cob and rang the doorbell. Gma had been looking outside (another story, another time), and saw them, so she opened the door. Somehow the doorbell got stuck in the “ring” position and the doorbell was going off every little bit.

Andrea, my daughter, worked afternoon shift and was sleeping. She heard the doorbell ringing, got up and checked the front and back doors and since no one was there, went back in. Gma was getting off of the couch and going to the door, looking out. Then she thought she heard the stove buzzer going off and couldn’t find out how to stop it (my stove didn’t have a buzzer). Andrea said that this was going on for 20 minutes. So, she went outside and found that the doorbell had gotten stuck. She unstuck it, thank goodness! Gma would have worn herself out going back and forth. She’s still not convinced it was the doorbell. She never hears the dryer buzzer either…

Grandma’s in the House – Paper Towels

Grandma was with us for four days and had gone through three jumbo rolls of paper towels. That may not seem like an unusual amount to you, but we use one jumbo roll in 3 or 4 weeks! Needless to say, I was stunned at the volume of paper towels she uses. When she moved in, she brought an economy pack the size of a grocery cart, with her. I thought she was being thrifty, but now I know that’s her weekly consumption of paper towels. She probably kills a tree a week.

Every time I look at her, she has a damp paper towel in one hand or the other. Sometimes both. My bag of stuff to burn fills up almost daily and it is extremely easy to light. Why? You guessed it, paper towels. She would dry dishes with them, if I would let her. She says they dry better. I’m thinking I need to start a lot of tree seedlings.

I’d like to get it on camera and then fast forward all the paper towel use in one day. It’s probably some kind of record. There is even a clean paper towel on top of the placemats I have on our dining room table. I guess they keep the placemats cleaner.

I’ve also noticed that the Kleenex and toilet tissue disappear with the speed of light. Maybe it has something to do with that generation. It was probably a new invention at some point in her life and she fell in love with the convenience and good drying qualities of paper products. Much better than rags.

Grandma’s in the House – Lard

We’ve gotten to experience a new taste sensation since Gma moved in. Yes, it’s lard. She kept a quart sized container in my refrigerator at all times. My daughter, Andrea, ate some potatoes that Gma had fried in this special substance. She said it tasted good, but her mouth felt and tasted funny the rest of the night. She had to gargle before bed to get the taste out of her mouth. When she laid down to sleep, the lard kept talking to her in her stomach. It hurt for quite a while.

I could tell she did something different with those potatoes, because my teeth felt furry the rest of the evening. My tongue felt like it was coated in wax, and I felt like I had a lead ball in my belly. When asking her the next day how she cooked it, she said “In lard, don’t you cook with lard?” No, I said. She tells her daughter that I cook funny. I spray the pan before I cook and don’t put any lard in it. Gma also says that the doctor says she has lived this long because of lard. Maybe it coats the inside of your body and it never ages in there.

She cooked hot dogs for my husband, Tom and his friend, when they were working on our deck one Saturday, while I was working. Yes, she fried hot dogs in lard. It’s a wonder they could pick up the buns with the heavy dogs in them. And that’s where the fried potatoes came in also. So if I look a little lethargic, it may be the lard. I wonder what cleans it out of your system. Hmmm, maybe vinegar…..

Grandma’s in the House – Breakfast

My husbands grandma came to live with us on April 8th, 2011. She turned 90 the next day. We’re the only ones in the family with a single story home that she can navigate easily around in. She didn’t use a cane and could get around pretty good.

I was working part time, at that time, so I am home or thereabouts, most of the time. From day one, I inherited a five foot shadow. I hear slippers shuffling about three feet behind me. They eventually go somewhere else, because I do many things that she does not understand or agree with. But they come back every 15 minutes to see if I am still doing that thing that she says I don’t have time to do. When that is the time I am doing it. Like balancing my checkbook on the computer. She thinks if I am sitting at the computer, I am taking away from cleaning the house.

My house is basically clean, sometimes a little disorderly. It’s called Life. If the floors are clean, furniture is dusted, beds made and the dishes done, I am a very happy camper. I usually go with the flow. My husband has always had a different work schedule. A lot of days have been different work hours for him and different days of the week so we don’t eat at regular times, or have set schedules. We wing it. This had worked well for our (almost) 14 years of marriage. I’ve learned that he doesn’t want any breakfast when it is a day that he works. But likes breakfast on the days he has off.

This being said, every morning since Grandma moved in, she asks him if he wants something to eat and some coffee. He kept saying “no”, but after three weeks, started taking some coffee with him in a mug, to stop her asking. The pot was ready every morning. I never heard if she stopped asking him if he wanted breakfast or not, but I doubt that she did.

For me, on the other hand, I would get up about 7:30 depending if I slept good or not the night before. When my foot steps outside the bedroom, I am asked (every morning) if I’m going to sleep all day. Then I make it to the kitchen to cook breakfast and make my own coffee. She has long ago thrown out any leftover coffee. She thinks if it sets more then 10 minutes it goes black and bitter. She has her breakfast over and the dishes washed.

She checks my progress every few minutes to see if there is a dish that I am done with that she can wash right away. Every spoon that gets laid in the sink gets a good squirt of dish soap, lots of hot water, scrubbed like there’s no tomorrow and dried and put right away. No resting for that spoon.