It’s “Hey Rene J” Today!

The last time I was in Amish country was for a wedding a year ago. They obviously did laundry on Saturdays…their labors strung on lines high above the houses and on traversing poles. Their laundry was waving above for all to see. I was impressed. I wouldn’t want some of my wares visible.

This brings me to a memory. When my sister, “Pindy,” and I shared a room with our baby sis, we strung a line between two beds, probably a socially acceptable six feet apart as the room was tiny. We sent messages back and forth in whatever the carrier object was…I think a bucket? Easter basket? Who knows? We would send dumb stuff back and forth on a cord, keeping us awake longer than we should have been. It was a great way to be connected, even when we were sharing the same room, which we did for our entire lives until college.

Thankfully my spouse and my neighbor’s husband are stringing up a tri-laundry-bucket-traversing line tomorrow. We will be able to send supplies back and forth within our little neighborhood triad, with the poles being super tall and the lines being easily manipulated to send messages or supplies.

Now wouldn’t that be fun?

Yesterday I enlisted my little white Bichon as a rescue dog. I tied an hermetically-sealed bag to his collar and sent him to the neighbor’s house to deliver a handmade face mask to use in the Covid 19 battle. He is such a good listener and followed my commands as he loped over hills and snowbanks. He promptly returned, exhausted from his mission. (I was hoping a bottle of wine would come back under his neck.)

The only part of the above paragraph which is true is that I did make five colorful face masks with my scrap fabric. I really would have sent the dog to my neighbor’s, but he doesn’t listen. He just followed me across the yard hoping for a treat from the indulgent friend. The Zip-loc baggie probably had some air in it, too.

He got his carrots, and I got spinach and strawberries in the trade, definitely healthier than a bottle of grapes. Ye olde bartering system worketh well.

The video conference room worked last night with the four novitiates. Downloading and setting the parameters of the “Zoom” app was a little time-consuming Sunday evening. I thought this was going to be an easy app to download and put into play, but it wasn’t as friendly as I had hoped. I even had my husband on the job! The goal was to connect with the neighbors.

So, basically, if you don’t pay for the privilege of Zoom, you get 30 free minutes to chat together. (I wasn’t paying for any more privilege.) However, they fail to inform you that the first 20 minutes will quite possibly be spent on getting the whole thing up and running with your participants. (Not pointing fingers at any family members!) I have to play with the settings again as I screwed up a few things with our first tele-conference.

However before our first Zoom meeting, my sister and I were chatting with my mother on the old fashioned telephone. She informed us that she was able to live-stream her Saturday 5 pm Mass, as well as print out the church bulletin this past weekend. She rather enjoyed the ease of that. I asked how she watched Mass, and if she knew what program they used.

“Oh, we used Zoom.”

Yes, as I awoke with one eye open to the clock, I felt like Bill Murray in the film, “Groundhog Day.” Here we go again!

Just as Murray gets to repeat the same day and date over and over until he gets it right, I feel like that it what we get to do! So with renewed vigor, I go to my cleaning list and correspondence list and whatever list I have laying around!

And even though Bill Murray tried to change the day in the movie as it kept repeating, I know the date has changed! Bonus points!

”Pinterest Poking.” I came across two apt humorous notes for today’s entertainment.

The first one: “If you see me talking to myself, we’re having a staff meeting.” And you know what happens when there is a puzzle in the room – we have a staff meeting with all of the pieces!

The second: “Remember, when you follow the masses, sometimes the “M” is silent.”

And with that in mind, I shall prepare to finish a puzzle today and avoid the hoopla on the tube.

Bribery works, not just for little ones. I don’t remember having reward charts for my children when they were being toilet trained, or learning to make their beds, do chores, or any of that. I just flat-out bribed, I’m sure.

For me – no putting the tantalizing Ravensburger puzzle together until that closet was cleaned. No binging on the History Channel until my homework was done. Today – no holds barred, because it’s Saturday! We have to celebrate the weekend in some fashion – just so that we remember it is the weekend, right?

My bribe chart is really that “to do” list. I’ve only stricken two jobs off of the list this past week though. Thus, I was thinking I do need a reward chart. I might be willing to work more for a sticker or M&M?

Since we were sheltered in with a blizzard outside, the best way to get exercise yesterday was to strip the closet of its contents, clean and dust, and return only what was needed. That proved to be the difficult part.

It seems most of my closet is a costume/prop room. 15 hat boxes with two to three hats in each. (One box is a Bonwit Teller at least 30 years old!) Funky shoes, animal furs, skirts that will probably come in handy one day, just because they are black or white and go with everything. Hey! One friend knew exactly where to come for her fortune teller costume. And I have had every costume possible for every single school PTO auction theme, just out of my little half a closet.

I do have my normal clothes in there, though what that is defies description.

My dessert called for frosting, and I didn’t want to make it from scratch. I didn’t want to go to the store either. The solution? Good old fashioned bartering! I traded a friend her pantry frosting for a roll of paper towels. As a matter of fact, I think we will be doing more bartering as this pandemic continues.

That is why I am in full-tilt gnome production. Who wouldn’t want a gnome for perhaps, a couple of eggs? Maybe we make furtive trades using our mailboxes or porches. I could get my husband to start building milk-box style wooden containers for these transactions. (They would be fun to embellish…but I might have to make another craft store run incognito. I think they’re on to me over at JoAnn’s.)

The same friend who had the frosting, we like to call her, ”Parbara,” sent me a tactic for preserving toilet paper, in case you need to hold a roll in reserve for the bartering system. (or otherwise.) Ah – how I wish I would have learned to crochet and knit back in 4-H!

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Chatting with the local farmer’s wives, aka some friends at a socially acceptable six-foot distance, we spoke briefly on the riveting topic of buttons. Having used my new glue a mere six hours after purchase to apply button noses to some gnomes just yesterday, I began reflecting on the buttons of my childhood.

My mother had a jar – well two jars of buttons. One jar was for the white buttons, the other for the colored buttons. It sounds racist, but there were always white buttons on shirts so we had a ton of them. It was acceptable to separate them for ease of sorting. And sorting is what my sister and I would do while Mom sewed in her room.

We would dump those buttons out and separate them, trade them, fight over the one that had a rhinestone in it, make up games with them, create button families. Cheap entertainment, and yet I can place myself right back there on the floor of her sewing room doing it.

Today I have my own button jars, segregated in a similar fashion. And I still can’t throw a button away when I get an extra one sewn on a shirt or skirt or coat. I’ve even cut them off of clothing that ends up in the rag bin! They just pile up, waiting for a project to need them. Maybe that project will come to light during this home-bound time?

Okay…yesterday’s finest writing did not quite meet the standards of the computer world. My son informed me that because I had titled it with a certain title – it was recognized as computer code and the server didn’t know what to do with it. (Is that a correct interpretation, son?) So if you got a rather “nasty” response – oops. I really didn’t know what I was doing. (Even though I usually don’t know, I pretend I do.) (No comments, please.)

Thus….the wonderful and amazing insights of today – lost. Gone forever.

But basically what I said was that my glue gun broke. 30 years and it was done. I was upset, because I stuck a new glue stick in it and didn’t get to use it! 20 cents down the drain. The first thing I thought of was burying it. This brought me to a memory which I confirmed with my son.

Years ago, the “glow-in-the-dark” basketball we had was deflated, beyond pumping. So, as you would do with any ten-year old, you hold a burial and find a nice spot in the backyard for a treasured item. I was thinking I would put my glue gun with it because I know exactly where we entombed the equipment.

Tonight my son informed me that not only did I use an incorrect title for my blog, but I also forgot that we disinterred the basketball and it was no longer in the ground.

Now I don’t know what to do with the glue gun.