by Kathy Brasby | Jul 14, 2015 | Stories
I have a friend who claims to love doing laundry. She’s still my friend, which, I hope, reveals a ton about my tolerance level.
My children were all instructed in the operation of our washing machine so that, by the time they could climb, they could do their own laundry.
A result of teaching the kids to do their own laundry is that they now can use their bedroom dresser drawers for books and computer programs because those drawers never see clothes. They draw clean clothes from the laundry baskets.
At least that’s the theory. Sometimes clean and dirty co-mingle on the floor.
I did mention I’m tolerant, right?
I cannot blame my upbringing for this laundry tolerance. My mother was a Type-A laundrist. A laundrist is someone who takes the chore of laundry seriously. Even to the point of folding and stashing clothes on the same day they were washed.
I’ve resisted such nonsense.
One day my husband came home with a story about the wife of one of his customers who ironed all her husband’s underwear. It wasn’t a hint. My husband has no illusions about my laundry abilities.
I don’t even fold my own underwear. Why would I iron his?
But recently our washing machine went belly up and my husband decided he wanted a front-loading set, those new energy-efficient machines that should save water and electricity.
So we have a new set with portholes facing into our laundry room. My husband is bummed that the dryer doesn’t fold the clothes, but he’s adjusting. I’m bummed the clothes don’t come out on hangers. I’m adjusting, too.
But I do have one concern. Our grandson, at 18 months, now likes to stand at the glass windows and watch the clothes tumble.
And I’m worried that this might be planting the seeds of a whole new generation of laundrists.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 7, 2015 | Stories
If it wasn’t for Jeff Huddlestern, I might think my calendar was absolutely perfect.
I am not one of those people who alphabetizes their to-do list and writes down the content of their chest freezer.
But I do keep a meticulous calendar.
Finding a calendar that synched between my computer, my phone, and my tablet was perfect because I have a tendency to lose those cute paper calendars that fit in your purse or pocket. Apparently, those climb on some shelf in my office and then flatten themselves under a stack of books for about four years when they leap onto the top of my desk to announce that I’ve forgotten that dentist appointment in 2012.
My ears still sting from the piano teacher who reamed me after the fourth time in three months that I forgot to take the kids to lessons.
I’m not bitter. I’m desperate.
But these days you’d be so proud. I can log in my next lunch appointment on my smartphone while sitting at the table with my friend and I can send her an email reminder before we pay the check. When I get home, my computer calendar already knows about the next lunch date.
And here’s the best part: I can set alarms to kick me out the door for an appointment. Think military boot kicks.
So I’ve been sashaying around doing the “yeeeesssss” dance just like the football guys after a touchdown. I may not be organized but I had this.
Until Jeff Huddlestern showed up on my calendar.
And Simon Jettison and Terry Montgomery.
Who are these people?
Exactly my point. I do not know.
Why would these unknown people plant their birthdays on my calendar? I think they joined me when Corpus Christi popped up on my calendar.
But I can cope. The alerts still work. My lunch appointment is still logged in. I didn’t lose the family birthdays.
My calendar system is good but I’ve quit doing the victory sashay.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 30, 2015 | Stories
My rich uncle in Nigeria – the one who wanted to help me inherit the million bucks – appears to have abandoned me. So has the thoughtful lady who emailed me stating that my resume is so impressive that she’ll send me money just for laundering hers.
That’s an impressive resume, but I digress.
Recently I got an email from my sweet employer informing me that I am eligible to get some of my pay in advance. “We know it has been a difficult month for everyone, so this is to make life that little bit easier.”
And who hasn’t had a difficult month? Wow, I mean I dropped an old glass in the kitchen and had to sweep up the broken pieces. Plus the mailman was late one day and I had to go to the mailbox twice. And, as the final straw, the last lightbulb went out above our dining room table.
I needed this.
My boss also included a link that contained “goldbar.” Who would question that?
I only had to verify that this was my account. I glanced to the top of the email, where I was clearly identified as “Hello.“ And there was the link again, with the gold bar buried in between a menagerie of letters and numbers.
Dollar signs were doing the cha-cha before my eyes.
Just for clicking that link, I would receive over $2,890 with the rest transferred at the end of the month as normal. Heh, heh, my boss had obviously forgotten that the last time I’d gotten a check for over $2,890 it was for the quarter, not the month.
But this was my account and this was my thoughtful employer. And there was the gold bar.
All I had to do was click a link.
My mouse hovered. My mind spun. And then I remembered. I’m self-employed.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 23, 2015 | Stories
Our family has always dreamed of crafting those extravagant cakes like the Food Network highlights.
Some of the kids invested time on 4-H cake decorating units.
A 4-H project manual builds basic skills so unit one zeroes in a simple icing, a couple of tools, and a one-layer cake with the goal to exhibit the best project at the county fair.
The cake part proved to be a problem for daughter number one, who baked her show cake the afternoon before it had to be entered. When the edges of the cake wouldn’t release from the pan, she solved the problem by cutting away the edges.
Most of the cakes entered were 8” round but hers was more of a 5” lumpy. She slathered on icing but it was like trying to hide Mount Everest under an ice cream cone. No champion ribbon that year.
Daughter number two was the creative sort stifled by the rules for the unit. When she was required to form a mat of frosting stars, she didn’t understand why the cake couldn’t show through. It would be like hiding the tuba in the marching band.
No blue ribbon that year, either.
Our son, at age 10, signed up for cake decorating and even went to a workshop where he and 25 girls learned the fine art of placing stars of frosting on waxed paper. This, of course, made absolutely no sense to him except he licked clean the frosting after the workshop.
We found out later that he signed up so that he could be in charge of the family birthday cakes. He figured if he’d finished cake decorating, I’d let him do the cakes.
And lick the frosting, too.
His show cake came together on a hot summer day with frosting that needed a lot more sugar than he put in the bowl. Imagine a lava flow sliding across his design.
The lava-icing flow continued until he got the cake to the fairgrounds. His frosting border resembled the outline of Texas.
No blue ribbon that time either.
But he didn’t need any cake decorating classes to take over the birthday cake tradition in our family. I had once served crumbs molded like the foothills of Colorado with icing drizzled over the top. I had hoped for a puppy shape but that didn’t work out either.
So I had no cake decorating tradition to enforce.
I let him take care of the birthday cakes.
I was in charge of licking the bowl.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 16, 2015 | Stories
I know you know where chocolate milk comes from and that red cows don’t produce strawberry shakes.
But rural people often laugh at the misconceptions that non-rural people have. Some of the simpler wrong notions include the idea that black cows give chocolate milk or that bulls have horns and cows don’t.
And it is frustrating to hear people comment that we don’t need to have all those dairy cows because people can get their milk from Safeway instead.
I once had a college roommate mock me because I didn’t know that buttermilk came from melting butter into milk. The fact that I had seen buttermilk come from the actually making of butter in a churn didn’t impact her at all.
But one of my favorite stories came when a non-rural family came to visit.
“Can we come over this evening and watch you milk your goats?” This phone call came from our neighbor who had weekend guests wanting to experience some rural flavor.
So they came. The neighbor brought a dad with two teenage boys. The dad, Jim, had experienced a slice of farm life from his days visiting his grandparents on their farm. This was warm nostalgia for him.
Not so much for the teenage boys.
They were willing to wander around outside pestering the ducks before Dad ordered them into the milking room.
“This is cool,” he said. “Get in here and watch.”
So I milked and answered questions from Jim while the boys leaned against the far wall with their hands in their pockets. Then they all went home.
My neighbor called me the next morning. “Jim said thanks for letting them come over.” And she laughed. “And the boys came back here to announce that, after seeing where milk came from, they are never drinking milk again.”
“Whew,” I said. “Good thing they don’t know where eggs come from, then. They might never eat again.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 9, 2015 | Stories
The secretary and I were the only two women working in this shop. There’s something about rubbing elbows with a bunch of guys with oil stains on their hands that can give you willies at night.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. We’re talking leap-over-chairs-on-your-way-to-the-parking-lot kind of afraid. This was not a good thing to reveal to our crew but there it was.
I wasn’t overly fond of them myself but determined not to admit to it. But they still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t unusual and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner. The service manager threw his hands in the air.
“It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
I ignored Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
They didn’t harass me again. They were in search of more hysteria. But one day our secretary came back from lunch to find a brown lunch bag on her desk. Stapled shut. Shuddering with mystery.
She ran screaming to the break room, certain they had trapped a live mouse for her.
After shaking her hands and sobbing, she still refused to enter her office. So the service manager retrieved the bag from her office and brought it out, where he sliced off the top and set the trapped frog free.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum spent the afternoon freshening up the secretary’s desk before she’d return to work. Boss’s orders.
Something good did come out of it, though. Whenever the two guys got the idea to go in search of mice, they remembered four hours of scrubbing a desk and sat down until that idea passed.
Like this:
Like Loading...
