A week off, and back again

We arrived in Wisconsin a week too early for Christmas.

Laura helped at the kennel,

 made cookies,

and made supper every day.

This is Sawyer, one of Pat and Ann's dogs.

Sawyer is a dropout from cadaver school.

Too easily distracted. 

No cookie dough will fall, but that's not what he thinks.

Waiting for Santa.

Pat is Santa; Laura has another hat.

This is Seamus. He has old, old bones. He's about 12.

He and a sibling ran away from home. Pat returned them.

Seamus was back on the doorstep every time Pat returned him,

until the original human said, "Guess he's yours."

And another of the rescues. 

I've lost track of the number of dogs in the house all week.

When we left, there was one less bed to sleep on, every night.

Sigh. A dog's life.

The cat prevailed

Vacation plans for Toby were firm, but fluid. He was boarding at a local kennel. And the kennel must be quite tired of me by now. Last week I made his reservation for Saturday, on. But the weekend forecast came up quite ugly, and I changed his reservation to Monday.

The polar vortex shifted, the weather moved a little north, and travel along two Great Lake shores to Wisconsin looked probable for today. I changed Toby’s reservation to this morning. I confess that all those times I called and listened to the times the kennel is open to take in and discharge pets, I never picked up on the crucial one. Though they are open twice a day throughout the week, on the weekend they are open Saturday morning and Sunday evening.

He Who, on a summer day.

I called yesterday to change Toby’s reservation to this morning, and the recording finally penetrated. I left a desperate message, but the call was not returned. Late in the afternoon I called Ann. She does run a kennel, and the cats have their own room, with sunning perches and everything. “Sure, bring him along.” Listening to him moan for several hours would not be pleasant, but perhaps Pride and Prejudice or Harry Potter would lull him to sleep.

Laura and I worked through yesterday with the resolve of vacationers leaving nothing to chance. The car is packed. Suitcases are open on the floor, and packed. All the last minute items are listed, and bags to tote them are open on the table. We are as determined as two people who’ve had no vacation in three years.

I’d been in bed a short time, and half asleep, when I became aware of muffled plopping noises. “Why are kids out in the street with fire crackers, in this rain?” I wondered. Eventually I got up and looked out the window onto the street. Fat raindrops, landing solidly. I went back to bed.

We are encased in ice this morning. I looked at the weather maps. Lake Erie and Lake Michigan are wreathed in purple and blue—freezing rain and freezing cold. I texted Ann, It’s No Go. Toby will be keeping his Monday reservation after all.

The front garden bench, through ice.

Wisconsin drive-by

I came home Friday last, greeted my cat, went through the mail and turned the calendar page.  I am slammed by August; it will be one wild ride. Laura is in her band camp all week; Emily has marching band practice two nights, and we are visiting two colleges this week. Next week is equally crazy, including a day and a half trip with Linda for each of us to purchase weaving supplies. Then school starts—the upside of this craziness is the children will be out of school by the end of May.

Long ago I had a friend, an engineer, a Polish native. He and his wife emigrated via a trip over the Berlin Wall.  He loved the vastness of this country and delighted in showing the sights to visiting friends. He included the entire country in a week. The Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and back to Ohio via Baton Rouge. “We saw them,” he said. I called it the Stan Dombrowsky school of driving: “Go like hell until you come up on the guy ahead of you, pass him, do it over again.”  

The wind blew lightly all week, and all the crops moved in the wind.

Hay harvesting.

So my drive-by account of my Wisconsin visit to Ann is we drove over half of Wisconsin to visit old friends I’ve come to know in the twenty years Ann has lived there. The scenery was beautiful, the harvest is starting to come in. We visited new restaurants for lunch, and one old haunt. 

This is Perc Place in Hartford.

It is women owned and operated.

It has grown too big for its britches and is moving to a new accommodation next week.

Not to worry; it's just two doors down on Main Street.

It reminds me of another favorite restaurant, Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville, Kentucky.

All the fittings seem to come from you grandmother's house.

Lynn's, sadly, is no longer in business.

The food is nice--wraps, panini, hummus, cucumber cream cheese--all the millennial stuff.

The hall to the ladies and gents has not changed in all these years

Alice down the rabbit hole (?) on one side,

Ladies gowns and hats on the other.

And on the inside:

Yes, that's my cane.

I wanted a peek in the gent's, but Ann would not stand guard.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Emily from band camp. I borrowed this picture of them arriving at Allegheny College in Meadville directly from the band's Facebook page. This is Emily's last year at band camp, next year is Laura's first. 

Caroline and Laura back from horse camp. Astride their trusty mounts this morning, displaying their riding skills for Aunt Beth. Note the dust on their boots and the horse drool.

As the girls sat shoulder to shoulder and boots to boots on my sofa this afternoon, Toby appeared, full of joy at the reappearance of the last of the missing household members. He commenced sniffing Caroline's jean leg, then Laura's. When he reached the boots he was ecstatic. 

The debris on their boots, the dust, the horse drool, and, as the girls delightedly squealed, the horse pee, was better than the best catnip he's ever been offered. He rubbed and rolled, clasping their ankles for leverage, until the boots looked close to brand new.

Caroline

Laura

And Grandma, back from Wisconsin, which looked like this for the entire week.

Pictures later.

Sweetheart soap and other pleasant things

I took Emily and Laura to work with me this morning because no one would be home. Laura slipped into the front seat. As we were backing out of the garage, I sniffed a couple of times and finally said, “You smell nice.” This is not like “You look nice,” which would have elicited a smile. It embarrassed her and she looked away.

As I turned the car around and the nice smell wafted on the breezes from the open windows, it struck me. “You smell like Sweetheart soap.” I stopped the car to for a minute for a couple more inhales. Laura was so embarrassed, she looked away. All the way up our street I rhapsodized about Sweetheart soap at my great grandma’s house. She did not look at me all the way to work.

Look at that bar of soap. That’s exactly how my great grandma’s bathroom looked. The bathroom was huge, converted from a bedroom when indoor plumbing came along at the turn of the previous century. Big claw foot tub with a wire soap hanger over the edge. A porcelain sink big enough to bathe a baby. Nickle plated fixtures, the hot and cold handles with little ceramic labels inside captain wheel taps. The rubber sink stopper on a chain. And, the Sweetheart soap, there on the right, in another wire holder.

Grandma's Cox's sink was a huge oval. I couldn't find one, so think big on this.

From the time I could step on the stool and wash my own hands, I knew that soap was the smell of goodness. It smelled like Grandma Cox, and I could take it away on my hands. Not like that brown stuff, Camay, my mom had at home. I boarded with Grandma Cox the first year I was in college, so I have a long history with that soap. I have no idea what Laura uses in the shower, but I may track down a bar of Sweetheart soap for her for Christmas.

In other nice things, Laura, Emily and I are all leaving town next week. Emily is going to band camp, Laura is going to horse camp with Cousin Caroline, who is an old hand at horse camp and champing to show Laura what it’s all about. And, I’m taking my camera and going to Wisconsin. After an extremely intense and unhappy executive session at the township this week, the trustees wished me a good trip, and one trustee wistfully said, “I’ve always wanted one of those cheese head hats.” We all looked and he mumbled, “I just think they’re cool.”

He is the director of our library and runs a great children's program. He came to another very important board meeting this week in his best batman tee shirt. It was the children’s talent program day at the library. We just let all the VIP’s in the meeting conclude for themselves this trustee knows his township business, too. I’ll bring him the hat, and he will say, “Holy cheese head hat, Robin.”

Last look

Back to reality today, with a crash. I find the mean spirits have transcended to ludicrous, which I find preferable. But sorting out my pictures into coherent bits to spread over the week isn't a good idea, so stand back, here they are:

The weather was perfect. Two magnificent overnight storms, lightening, crashing thunder, rain pelting. It was still raining one morning for a couple of hours, so of course we went shopping.

Ann was out of bird seed and afraid her little friends had deserted her. Of course not; they even boosted her down the ladder. In addition to the nuthatch, the chickadees, and too many varieties of sparrow to note, I saw grosbeaks. We did not get an indigo bunting; they probably came the day I left.

This is wild geranium, and it has overtaken much of the yard and meadow. I took a turn on the mower (low gear and nothing requiring reverse, as I could not depress the brake enough to slow down enough to look down to find reverse!)

The swallows come out of the grainery when the mower starts, and accompany it on its rounds, dispensing with the bugs. Ann says they'll be leaving soon; among her first harbingers of winter.

A walk around the barn. Twenty years ago Pat intended to restore it. Ten years ago he planned to dismantle it and save the wood. Here is the silo, host to wild cucumber.

Look very close for light between the chinks of the last standing boards on the bank side of the barn.

This corner still stands, too.

An old souvenir.

The foundation.

Down on the lower end of the barn, a few uprights anticipating their fall.

At the grainery, Billy and Nanny consider getting up, but didn't.

A look at the creek on Ann's side of the road.

And on the other side. The creek is in one township on Ann's side, and another under the bridge and across the road.

The real front of Ann's house,

Waiting for Joe....

I read two books and gained two pounds

A wonderful week in Ann’s old German farmhouse. Sifting through my pictures I find I still have none of the length of the house, so here is a Google image to explain. I used this one before; it is her house sans front porch and the farm help quarters. My old guest room was behind the two upper front brick windows. Ann’s house has a “mirror” addition at the back that housed the farm hands, with a separate entrance, and accessible from the main house.

Ann’s house has been a work in process for twenty years, waiting for her husband, Pat, to put his hammer where his mouth is and start a restoration project. I've known and loved Pat for longer than I've known Ann. If she can put up with him, so can I.

When I visited, maybe three years ago, Ann met me at the door. There no longer was a downstairs washroom; Pat had torn it out to replace the toilet. Six months previously. When I left I mentioned to Pat I would see him again when there were no longer fifteen steps between me and a midmorning pee.

Toward Thanksgiving that year Ann said she was expecting twelve guests for Thanksgiving and still had one bathroom available. “What will you do?” I heard the smile in her voice. “I've found Joe.” She and Joe listen to Pat, and then go ahead. When I visited two years ago the downstairs washroom door opened to a country cottage loo; the window looking out on a meadow (the new septic—the new standards are a marvel to behold!). The guest quarters in the hired hands area was framed in.

This year I occupied the guest suite. Yes, my own bathroom. Beyond a doubt, I love Joe, too. He builds houses, goes hunting most of the winter, and is working his way though Ann’s house a section at a time. He has restored the balustrades up the back staircase, plastered the hall down to “the master’s room,” a large sitting area upstairs in the brick house. Oh, yes, and built the guest suite. Ann has worked behind him, painting, painting, painting.

I took two of my sister’s quilts to Ann. They never go amiss in her house. She immediately threw the yellow quilt over the bed in “my” old room. Its ante room, that she formerly used for guest overflow, has become “the library.” Two walls of books, a reading table between the windows, an old rocker, one of Linda’s rugs on the floor Ann painted last fall. When I looked in again, to return one book and select another, she had the other quilt on the reading table. Cozier and cozier.

Back in the new suite, the bathroom is behind this hall wall. The room beyond has windows on three walls, but the bath has no exterior light. Ann saved this leaded window from the front room. She watched the window shift and begin to fall two years ago. Pat wanted to wait and restore it. That’s when Ann found Joe, who installed a new window and quietly set the leaded panel aside.

Somehow I gained only two pounds (“there is little that is not improved by butter or cheese.” Or, butter and cheese.). I read The Mystery of Grace, a YA that another guest left for Ann to read. A trifle heavier than a bit of fluff.

Running my finger along the library’s book spines I found an old Of Human Bondage, and realized I've never read it. Phillip was trying through much of the book, but made his journey to the end. I do recommend him to you.