And we keep working and working and ...

Apparently when people renovate their trailers they also give them names.

I suggested to King we paint "Love Shack" on the back of our trailer. He didn't go for it. "How about Carmen," I suggested. King was watching COPS and gave me a sideways glance that said, "You must be some kind of crazy," but all he said was, "We are not going to name the trailer."

Ok. I can live with calling it "The Trailer." I may even paint "The Trailer" on the back somewhere, inconspicuously, of course, right next to the rainbow colored peace symbol.

This week we got the floors repaired and fixed the gaping space in the back where the side seam meets the back seam. I have to admit, I was pretty proud of our work. King is not a carpenter. The work involved taxed his talents. But it looks pretty good. I just have to learn to leave him alone when he is working on projects. While my father preferred we stand around waiting for him to ask for a hammer or nails, King wants to be left alone. If I hide in the house it suits him just fine.

Anyway, King fixed the structure part of the trailer and it was my job to seal the seam.

After watching countless YouTube videos on how to seal seams I chose to follow one that I thought I might be able to imitate. It required the purchase of a special tape that joins the two sides of the trailer, forming a watertight seam which is then closed with a regular trailer seal. I ordered the tape a few weeks ago

King wanted to know why I ordered the tape long before we needed it. He makes me crazy that way.

"Because I will have it on hand when we need it," I told him. I received another eye roll and sideways glance for my effort. But today, when he decided the seam was ready to be sealed I had the equipment I needed to do it. Who is rolling their eyes now?

This is the finished seal (waiting for the butyl tape) on the back of the trailer. The gaping seam was so bad I never took a "before" photo for fear someone would say, "What were  you thinking when you bought this thing." Oh, wait. Someone did.

This is the front of the trailer that still needs to have the seam repaired. It was the lesser of the repair work needed.

I am also making him crazy looking for a floor covering.

"We are weeks away from that point," King argued. "We need to do the wiring, we need to fix the front seams, we need to get new tires, we need to insulate, THEN we can worry about paint and floors."

Fine. I get it. But I'm ready to get to the fun stuff now. Can't hurt to look.

In the meantime, the gardens still need to be tended. This is the first year I put down shade cloth in the garden. I still have to weed every week, but it is not nearly so time consuming.

Our tomato/green bean/broccoli garden.

Several years ago the gentleman we work for on the hobby farm ordered several cases of lilies. We planted and planted and planted and we still had several boxes of bulbs leftover. In desperation,  I finally planted a bunch around the perimeter of the tomato garden. They have been going strong for years now.

Is this discrimination?

Not sure if this is humiliating or just plain stupid.

After three hours at my new job I was let go. Before coming in I was told to to purchase specific clothes to wear at work. I was told to bring ID and a social security card (preferably my own I would surmise) I was told I was to come in and job shadow/train for a few days. And then, after three hours, I was told I was not going to make it at their store. How does one fail at job shadowing/training?  Seriously. How does one manage that?

Obviously we were not a good fit. It happens. Sometimes people simply do not click.

I wrote about what was to be my next adventure in my last blog: a job at the gourmet food shop in the tourist town where King and I currently live. I mentioned how the operations manager didn't want to hire me (because I am a former reporter and might sell their trade secrets to the highest bidder) but that she told the store manager to "do whatever you want."

After that warm welcome I knew going in I would have a lot to prove. I realized on my first (and only) day when I saw I was scheduled to work just one day that week that things were pretty much predestined.My name was not even on the following week's schedule. Additional staff was not scheduled for my training time, and according to the store manager, that was done purposefully by the operations manager so I would not have the undivided attention of the manager. I didn't know I would have less than three hours to prove myself.

I watched as the manager spoke with customers. I learned how to "suggestive" sell different products. I learned how to take inventory and stock shelves. I helped put parking cones out in the employee parking lot. I re-stocked crackers for samples. I made small-talk to a few customers. However, three hours in I was told I was not going to work out. Apparently the operations manager could tell this by watching me job shadow via a closed circuit camera from a remote location.

To be honest, I am relieved. Who wants to have to prove themselves over and over and over again?

Three hours in and I am glad I escaped with only wounded pride. I am obviously not cut out for gourmet food espionage. I do wish I had drained several bottles of olive oil on the floor and yelled, "Mazola Party!" at some point during my short tenure. It would have been a better reason for being canned.

Wounded pride or not, life goes on and I will pick myself up and dust myself off. I have already picked up a few more applications but it's a small town and once word is out that I am a spy who will sell her soul to the highest bidder, my odds are slim to none that someone will hire me.

And that is a shame because I am the employee who will work extra hours. I am the employee who will take shifts no one else wants. I am the employee who, after years of interviewing people, can make small talk with almost anyone. I am the employee who knows how to make people feel at ease.

But when all is said and done and I take time to step back and review the events of my gourmet food shop tenure, I have to ask myself: Is this what it feels like to be discriminated against?  For the simple fact that I worked as a reporter I am suspect?  Think about it. Think long and hard about it.

Yes, today I am hurt and bitter. Today I want to press my face against their plate glass windows and blow raspberries all over them (the windows, not the employees). But I am a grownup. I am a better person than the operations manager. I will move on. I will wish them well. Because frankly, they are not worth the effort for anything else. I also realize I don't need to work for a company that is so negative. Rather than dwell on the fact that I could have been a food spy, they could have thought, "Hey, someone with training to write our press releases."

P.S. I learned today the operations manager is blaming the store manager and denying ever having concerns over my previous job. And the store manager already did blame the operations manager. Denial and blame. Kind of like politics.

But I escaped with my life.

Life goes on and rather than participate in gourmet food espionage
I went back to work in my gardens. This is the tomato/broccoli/green bean garden.
 I've never done the weed cover before, I think I'm going to like it.

Cucumber plants. I keep experimenting with dill
pickle recipes.

First time we've been able to get cherries. In the past, when
I worked at the newspaper (where I was NOT a gourmet food spy),
I never got to them in time and the
birds always had a feast.

Young pepper plants.

Raised bed with lettuce.

I love infusing olive oil and vinegar
with basil.

Be careful for what you wish

I start a new part-time job on Tuesday. Hmmmm. Be careful for what you wish.

In my last post I said I would take a part-time job (maybe) if one were offered to me. Well, believe it or not, one was offered.

Earlier this spring I had applied for a job at a gourmet food shop in our little tourist town. I even had an interview/coffee with the store manager at the coffee shop across the street from the food shop. The manager seemed genuinely interested and said they were looking for someone to start before the Memorial holiday weekend. ... And then I never heard from her again.

"Oh well," I said to King. "Guess I'm too old, my reference phone numbers were wrong, or maybe they just went with someone else."

I suppose I could have made more of an effort, but having been in a managerial role many times before it really bothered me when people were annoyingly persistent. So I dropped it. The bulldog reporter in me disappeared with retirement.

Yesterday my cousin and I were shopping in town and she wanted to visit that same little gourmet food shop. The manager recognized me immediately and said she really had wanted to  hire me. Really? Uh huh, sure.

"Our production manager didn't want to hire you because you are a reporter and she thought you might sell our secrets to someone. We had a store just like ours open in South Carolina and our owner had to sue them."

I am flattered. I am offended.

Here is the reality folks: I worked hard to earn the reputation of being a reputable writer. I have won awards that I earned, not by selling myself to the highest bidder, but by working for those awards and reputation. Besides, I cook a little bit. I can go into your shop, look at the ingredient list on your wares and pretty much figure out how to copy what you have. Anyone can. It does not take a special talent. And I do not have the wherewithal  for espionage.  That Dutch Reformed guilt would kill me.

Anyway, the manager said she still wanted to hire me and the production manager happened to be there at that very moment and maybe I could talk to her? Um, no, I am here shopping with my cousin.

"Just let me bring her out here to meet you."

Okay. My honest face is going to win her over, right?

So I met the production manager who shook my hand, turned, and as she walked away said to the manager, "Do whatever you want."

And with that warm welcome I have a job that starts on Tuesday. Yea?

Hey, it's a seasonal job. In my original interview I was up-front and said I would be leaving in December for parts unknown. I was told January through March were slow times, so it worked well with their schedule.

I can now pay for our trailer renovation with cash instead of credit. That works.

A brand new beginning

After my sister passed away in April my focus began to change.

The night before she went into the hospital I stayed with Donna at her apartment. She was in a lot of pain, but we had  opportunity to talk. She knew her prognosis was not good. Two things she said have stayed with me. The first was: I should have had a colonoscopy. (Mine is scheduled for a few days from now). The second was: I should have retired last year.

Ahhh regrets. We all have them. The coulda, shoulda, woulda game. It gets us nowhere.

So King and I are moving forward and making changes. Some may be good. Some may be bad. But it seems to be better than doing nothing and maintaining the status quo.

Our decision to make changes started long before Donna was diagnosed with cancer. Sometime this winter King and I decided enough was enough and I left my job.

I had been working as a page designer at a newspaper hub. (For the uninformed, a newspaper hub is a place where many newspapers are designed and laid out. For example, a newspaper in Marion, Indiana is actually put together in St. Joseph, Michigan. It saves money and makes the bottom line look good. Personally, I think it is a bad idea. But I should not say much because for three years it paid our extra bills. And it seems to be the way things are going in the newspaper industry. Today very few newspapers are actually put together by the reporters and editors who covered the meetings, attended the sporting events or took the photos of the house fire).

Although newspaper hubs are Satan's spawn, it was not a bad job. It was simply a job. I took it because after working years as a reporter and editor we needed to move to the west side of the state to be near my parents. It was very much an entry level position. I knew going in I would miss reporting. But it was a job. In the newspaper industry. The people I worked with, for the most part, were a fun group. I truly had no complaints.

But I am not a copy editor. I am a writer. The two are not necessarily related. I don't see type-os ... at least not until they are in print. I am not technologically savvy. I am not a page designer. I don't have an eye for layout. I don't know how to make fancy illustrations. I can barely Photoshop a photo. I am a writer. Period.The reality is just because one can write does not mean one can design newspapers or edit other people's copy, or turn 40 word headlines into succinct five word headlines. I was a warm body in a chair with an extensive newspaper background. That is why I was hired. Experience. Just not the right kind. The young, recent graduates I worked with could out-design me on my best day.

I am also grandmother. Because of work I missed out on countless soccer games, family picnics, choir concerts, dance recitals, t-ball games and Christmas gathering. Newspapers don't take holidays. Readers don't care if someone has to work Thanksgiving, Mother's Day and Easter. They simply want their newspapers delivered to their doorstep. (And as an old reporter, I can attest even THAT is changing).

Through no fault of the company or the people I worked with, I was miserable. It was simply a job because we thought we needed the extra income. In reality, we have been broke most of our marriage. We make do. We adjust. So when King suggested I retire in February rather than the following December I jumped at the opportunity. It was time to go. I was already counting down the days. The journalism I embraced in 1974 as a stary-eyed college Freshman is long gone. I am old(er) and change is difficult. Besides, King was tired of my whining and bitchiness.

If a part-time job were to fall into my lap, I might take it. Maybe.

So it is on to a new chapter in our lives. And this blog is taking a new turn.

In early June King and I purchased an old... very old... travel trailer. It needs a tremendous amount of work. But when one pays only slightly north of $500 for a trailer, one should expect a lot renovations.  And oh my goodness is there a lot of work to be done -- and a slightly large learning curve to go with it. With the help of Google and You Tube we will figure it out. So far we are taking the selective learning route. If there is something that seems to be inordinately difficult we pretend it does not need to be done. I am certain there will be do-overs. And I am certain any savvy renovators out there who are reading this are rolling their eyes.

For us, there is nothing like diving in without testing the water. No regrets.

Our 1978 Shasta travel trailer. Built the year our second oldest son was born. It will need new
tires. The frame is good. We will either remove the awning or replace it.
I'm thinking I'd rather have a separate screen house than an awning.

Our dining room before. You can see some of the water damage on the ceiling.

Our living room before.

Our dining room during demolition. There is quite a bit of wood that needs to be replaced.

We removed the peel and stick tiles to see how much
damage there was to the floor. A lot.
Notice the cardboard in the upper left corner? The previous owner
said he had replaced the back panel. We neglected to ask what type of material
he used. Ahhh. Live and learn.

This is the back of the trailer where the living room was. That is a water tank that was under
the bench. After we pull it out to replace the floor we will see if it can be salvaged
or if we need to replace it. As it is, the only thing keeping that
tank from falling through the floor is somebody's imagination.
Obviously more wood framing needs to be replaced.

Another heartbreaking goodbye

Last month our family said our final goodbye to one of our sisters. I seldom put real names into my blog, but today I will.

Donna passed away at the end of April after being diagnosed with colon cancer three weeks prior to her passing. Although the original prognosis was "treatable but not curable," no one thought she leave us so quickly.

Donna was a good and kind and generous soul. She was probably one of the most loving persons I know. She will be missed more than words can express.

It was so sudden. She went into the hospital for a cancer-related surgery. The news was grim, but we were still planning her release from the hospital. We were getting things in order for Hospice care one day and the very next day we were holding her hands as she died. There are so many things one thinks they will say as they watch death approach but those words will not come and one watches helplessly and prays her pain will end soon.


We all knew her time was limited. Her son and our older sister were flying in to stay with her, but she started slipping away before they could arrive and my younger sister and I held the phone to her ear as she told them she love them one last time.

"Don't cry," she said to her son. "It is what it is. I love you."

Donna, who had watched far too many John Wayne death scenes, remained with us to the very end. She did not simply slip into a coma and fade away. Her last words were "Hold my hands." And then she  spoke some more words of wisdom known only to her. Her hands grew cold and then she was gone.

Donna's instructions for her funeral were fairly straightforward ... there was to be none. The night before she went into the the hospital she gave me specific instructions. I think she knew she would not be coming home. "I want to be cremated. No funeral. No visitation. No memorial service. Call Digger O'Dell for the arrangements. And call Social Security right away... I should have retired last year."

That was Donna. Very pragmatic. Very succinct. Very anal retentive. She had her ducks in a row and from a final arrangement standpoint things were easy.

But they are not easy. The realization she is gone hits at the most inappropriate moments. Some silly little thing will happen during the day and I will think to myself, "I will have to tell Donna about that." And the memories come flooding in and the tears start to flow.

King has been very supportive through all of this. He doesn't tell me to "snap out of it" when I mope around the house. We go for walks together. He watches as I pace restlessly, looking for something, someone, or some solace.

The other night he and I were lying together in bed and the tears started again.

"No one wants to get cancer," he said. "She didn't deserve to go that fast. But she DID have cancer and if she hadn't died in the hospital she would be lying in a hospital bed in her apartment right now. I don't think anyone would have wanted that. Least of all her."

We will always miss our sister. There will always be that empty space that will no longer be filled by Donna. But King, in his infuriating pragmatic way, is absolutely right. One can not change the past. One should not wonder what might have been (if only she had had the colonoscopy the doctor told her over and over again she needed) as it does no good. We can only move on. Miss her incredibly. Celebrate her life. And learn this life lesson...Life is too short to not do the things we want to do.

Nothing says love like something from the kitchen

There is a Dutch law that says when one visits the home of another person a good host or hostess will serve coffee and some type of baked good.

I do not know where this law is written, but it is a law nonetheless and I never knew our Mother to break this law.

No one, not ever, could pop into our parents' home without Mom turning on the coffee pot and finding some type of baked good to serve them. She often had a supply of something stashed in the freezer for an unexpected visitor. Mom even served coffee and cookies to people who came to purchase our horses.

I am surprised she did not insist the milkman (yes, we had our milk delivered to our home twice a week) stop in for coffee. I know she served coffee and cookies to the dry cleaner delivery person. (And yes, the local dry cleaners would deliver to homes).

Mom had a "go to" list of recipes that she would use for baking. The list changed over the years as she experimented and food fads changed. She went through a phase of "health food" when I was in grade school. In the 1960s "health food" meant cookies filled with dates and nuts. It was not met with much enthusiasm from the family.

I never truly appreciated how much work went into baking until I had to do it myself. I did not feel the need to follow the Dutch law to the letter and slowly the law faded into oblivion in our household.
But it it did leave its mark on my sisters and me.

Even after Mom moved into the nursing home our visits with her usually ended with our either taking her out for coffee or later -- when it became impossible to get her in and out of a car safely -- a trip to the lounge area where a coffee pot and cookies were available for residents and their guests.

When we were dividing up Mom's things I ended up with Mom's cookbooks. Or some of them at least. There were several from the local churches Mom and Dad attended -- recipes contributed by members and compiled into a cookbook. It was easy to find Mom's favorites, they were the ones with grease and chocolate stains on the pages. Mom also loved to look at recipes in magazines and newspapers, cutting out her favorites and making a file of things she wanted to try.

I went through them all and pulled out her favorites. Most of them were desserts. There were many pages that included appetizers and a surprising number of casserole dishes.

I would love to be able to keep all of her cookbooks but King and I will be moving on within the year and not everything can be taken into a travel trailer. So I pulled her favorites, scanned them, saved them to my computer and created a "Mom Cookbook."

There is another reason for my madness...

I have been asked -- often -- to turn my blog into a book. I am going to do that. And, because the publishing industry being what it is, (meaning the odds of my finding a publisher who will actually purchase my book are slim to none) I will be going the self-publishing route.

Amazon will publish books for free... printing books "on demand" as the requests come in and/or offering a digital version. However I need an editor. And editors are not free. So... I will be selling a pdf copy Mom's Cookbook for $2.50 each in the hope I will sell enough to hire an editor/proofreader. It will also be a test to see if there truly is enough interest in a book to warrant the work it is going to take to turn my blog into a book.

If you are interested in purchasing a digital copy of  Mom's high-fat, sugar laden recipes, you can send $2.50 via paypal.

The cookbook will be emailed as a pdf. You can save it to your computer or print it out. It's 47 pages of scanned in copies of Mom's recipes. It's not fancy. It's not pretty. It's a memento of Mom with some of her notations included, and little notes from me.

Hope to hear from some of you soon.

Retirement

As far as I am concerned I am officially retired. King thinks differently. That is okay. He may have his delusions.

My "retirement" was fairly unspectacular. I had been telling the "powers that be" at work for months I was going to be done at the end of 2016. I am not quite to social security age, but by the end of 2016 King will have reached that magical age and  his pension and social security would even things out. (Yeah, I know, if we were smart I would keep working until I reached official social security age, but we are impatient to get on with the next chapter in our lives). At any rate, life has a way of moving in strange ways and one day as I was leaving for work King looked at me and said, "Why don't you give your notice early?" And then added, "If we need extra money you can look for something part-time." I choose to ignore the part-time part.

I needed no further encouragement. I have been working since my first summer babysitting job in 1970. That's a lot of years to be working. King has a pension. I don't.We will be doing a lot of belt-tightening. I happen to like hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

Mom's retirement was as unspectacular as mine. Mom had been working in the lab at Dog Life, the dog food factory Dad managed, and both Mom and Dad decided it was time for her to be through working. I believe Mom had come to that decision many years before, but for some reason Dad didn't see it that way. Apparently she and Dad had discussed her retirement extensively and Dad told her he would begin looking for a replacement. I guess it was easier said than done. He brought her an inexpensive piece of jewelry one day -- a very large gold locket -- and told her he was sorry but it finding a replacement was more difficult than he imagined and she would have to work a little longer. Or at least that is the way Mom tells it. Dad probably would have had a different version.

At any rate at some point Mom did get to leave the job and the two of them moved into their "retirement" home along Lake Michigan. Dad continued to work for a few more years until he decided he, too, had had enough and he left. After 30-plus years working at the same place he came home with a cast-iron ashtray with a dog bone logo and a family portrait. The same portrait that someone pooped on when they broke into his office in the mid-1970s. And yes, we know who did it. It was the same modus operandi several other business owners had the pleasure of dealing with, but small towns being what they are no one ever call the police. Dad eventually gave the ashtray to King who has a propensity to smoke too many cigars, and when King decided he was going to cut back on cigars we passed it along to my sister who thinks no one knows she still smokes.

So now, for the first time in a long, long time, I find myself with a plethora of extra time and not a definitive way to spend it. Before there was this nagging, "I have to get xxxx done before I leave for work," and now project xxxx does not seem so pressing.

I am grateful for rainy days so I can postpone working on getting my garden beds ready. King and I have been caretakers on a hobby farm for the past five years so juggling gardening and employment was always a chore. Not so much now. I am still working on my tote bags to list in my Etsy shop, but even that can be done at a leisurely pace. Ahhhh the life of the unencumbered.

So King and I have started getting ready for our next chapter in life. At some point -- probably when he is eligible for social security in a few months -- we will be traveling cross country in a small, still-to-be-purchased travel trailer. That is a lot of togetherness.I will be encouraging the exploration of a lot of golf courses.He will be encouraging my exploring flora and fauna with camera in hand.

After 40 years together we know our limits and don't test them.