The Opossum of Optimism

The idea of struggling families not being able to provide Christmas for their children was weighing heavily on my mind. I remembered what it felt like.

I knew that it was not something that any one person could accomplish on her own, so I threw it out into the community via  a local 'Helping Hands' site, just to test the water 

It just seemed to me that there are two extremes here in my community: the people who are weeding out their kids' toys  in preparation for the influx of new toys and the people who would be pleased to be able to put those things under their tree for their own children. I wondered if anyone else would be interested in trying to make that happen.

My modest expectations were blown right out of the water when the post got 161 likes, and 80 people volunteering donations. I really could not believe it.

The first thing was to find a venue. It is such a busy time of the year. While churches were my first thought, my phone calls to them went unreturned. To be fair, some are providing community meals for those facing food insecurity and are just too busy. Others are busy preparing for Christmas celebrations. I imagine some just do not have the space to donate to an endeavor like this. But no one got back to me.

This weekend was a tough one. I felt terrible that I might have whipped up such enthusiasm for such a terrific project only to be unable to even get it off the ground. It didn't help that my cold had morphed into a sinus infection. The thought that came to mind was 'when it rains, it pours'. Except that instead of rain, we got yet another lake effect snowstorm which dumped 8 inches of snow on us again.

I just felt bad about disappointing people. 

I received a message today, from someone who saw the post. She and her organization were completely willing to provide the venue. Staff it. One day of donation drop offs, with doors opening for pickup on the following day. They told me their two available days. 'Would that work?' she asked.

'Yes,' I typed back.

It needs to be brought before the board at tomorrow's meeting for final approval from the director, a formality, she assured me, since everyone who has heard the idea is as excited as she is. Then we can begin to put the word out into the community.

When that conversation was done, I made one call and sent two messages giving an unofficial heads up.

Everything unfolded so quickly that I still can't quite believe it. I cried.

LATE EDIT: I really want to make it clear that I only had an idea. What is making it happen is a community. It is truly a miracle to me to be reminded of the good people with good hearts that live all around me. 

Maybe...

 These are hard times, but when you live in a county that is poor to begin with, the hard times hit even harder. I could not stop thinking about the holidays coming.

Being poor is humiliating. I have been poor. There was always someone trying to assure you that it was all your own fault that you were poor. Everyone felt qualified to opine on why you were struggling. I had three children. I wanted the best for them. But I felt like the biggest failure ever.

And I just had this idea rolling around in my head. I threw it out into the community, expecting to be ridiculed.

But I wasn't. People seized on it. Offers of donations, volunteers. Venue suggestions. I have a call into a church right now, but have not heard back. People want to involve their kids even. 

And it is a beautiful, beautiful reminder that for all the ugliness in the world, there is still goodness. There are scores of people ready to jump up and try  to make a miracle, just waiting for their chance to be a part of something positive.

I am afraid to jinx it, so I am keeping my tiny little flame close for right now, but oh if only it can happen!

Ordinary

There are things that I love about this house. The tile floor in the bathroom is above the heating stove in the basement. That tile absorbs the heat and feels wonderful on bare feet.

On the other hand the tin roof....yesterday, in the still house, reading with a purring cat on my lap, the snow falling outside, suddenly, snow slid from the roof. The cat exploded, leaping from my lap, upsetting my coffee cup on the carpet  in his mad bolt for the basement. Adding to the chaos, a suncatcher fell to the floor and shattered. So that was not so wonderful. We will have to look into some sort of baffle system.

Today, we drove an hour and change to have lunch with Tim's family. Cousins. One of his brothers. One of his sisters. It was nice to see everyone. A notebook went around of genealogy notes. Much of the discussion was on the subject of their grandfather. Tim and five of his cousins were born in 1957. They are the oldest of that generation, and their grandfather died when they were all 3 year olds. 

So they were sharing their memories of him and stories they'd heard of him. One of the things was about his great love of horses.

Probably 20 years ago, Tim's mother loved our big old house in town. She gave me a photograph of a man in a fedora standing by his horse. She told me it was something that she had picked up at a yard sale. She thought it suited our house. I hung it on our wall with an old keywound clock topped by a rearing horse.

Tim liked the picture too. He thought it looked like his grandfather. He was surprised when I told him what his mother had said, but he had no reason to doubt her.

But as this man was discussed, it just began to remind me of that picture. I said, "would anyone here recognize him in a pictuŕe?" and someone actually had a picture of him. Looks like the same man in the same hat standing alongside a different horse. 

There was quite a bit of excitement about our picture as well as curiosity about how it came to be that Tim's mother failed to recognize her own father. Was her mind beginning to fail even then? I have an idea she was losing her vision. She was blind by the time she died.

But it is a nice discovery. Now that we know what it is, it needs to be brought to the new house. Copies made and shared.

I had a Reuben sandwich at luncĥ today. I never had one and always meant to try one. It was very nice. 

We drove home along country roads that Tim has driven all his life. A bald eagle swept down and hovered about six feet over the hood of the car. We marveled at the sight while it decided which way it needed to go, and then powerfully veered off to the right.

It has warmed up considerably outside tonight. It is now pouring rain. By tomorrow morning when we get out of bed, all the snow will be gone.

'Tis the season

 I was worn out when I went to bed last night. I hadn't had a full night sleep for a couple of nights. 

The first night was due to a coughing, grumpy husband

The second night was cats. They meowed to go out at 5:30:am, as usual. When I shuffled down the hall to let them out, they looked at the snow on the porch, a light dusting, but enough to cause them both to paws and rethink. They decided no. 

I relocked the door and went back to bed. Minutes later, they were both at it again. This time they were meowing at the other door, hoping, I suppose that the weather would be more to their liking out that door. I opened the door. They peered out and once again, they backed away. 

At that point, I just did not bother to go back to bed. I did not want to disturb him. 

So yesterday was a long day. I filled it with making chili and watching the snow and daydreaming about my moonscape. 

Tim finally got his bow back from the repair shop. He was out hunting all afternoon, so it was a quiet day, much of it spent opening and closing doors so two cats could consider whather or not they actually wanted out. (Spoiler: they didn't.)

So I went to bed early last night, all Vicks-ed up. I pulled the drapes and I slept soundly until 7:30, something that was really disorienting. Two cats should have woke me up already. And why did it seem so quiet and darker than usual? 

We had received more than the predicted inch of snow. More like 8 inches. The cats didn't even bother to ask to go out at all. 

 This van slid on the curve, crossed over, missing the beginning of the guard rail (luckily), going outside it to pass through our swamp before being bogged down. That old house in the back is the old house that we used to stockpile the things for the new house.

Slow down, everyone. 'Tis the season.

in my head

Boud always is up to some creative endeavor with her textiles. I enjoy reading about her projects, but what I love best is that she seems so joyous. 

Anyway, one of her mantras is 'anything can be a loom' and today she talked about using a saw blade. The first thought I thunk was 'how on earth does that woman come up with her ideas?!!!' Which was followed by 'I wonder what you could do with that woven circle?'

And just that quickly the moon popped into my head. I could make a moon. And if I wove a mat of varying shades of black, gray and blue, I could lay that moon on it. 

As i worked chopping onions and peppers for my pot of chili, my mind kept whirring away. Small silvery beads would make great stars randomly woven into the sky. I could use a branch for the top of the sky scene. If i trimmed off all off the down facing branches and did the first couple rows of weaving loose enough, i could rotate the branch so that the upward facing branches were pointing downward, giving the effect of viewing a night sky through the branches of a bare winter tree.

I sautéed the meat, peppers, and onions, stirred in some adobo paste,  garlic, and salt as my mind whirred away. 

Remember those glittery sweaters from the 80s? Lurex? That would be a very cool thing to make my moon out of, a cream colored sweater all shot through with glittery silver threads!

It all came together in my mind so very quickly. I knew how it should be. Exactly. 

And I felt a little foolish. I have never done anything like this, but suddenly I wanted to.

 I am not sure what talents I have. It might not be as easy as I have it envisioned in my head. 

Maybe I will discover  something about myself that I never knew.

Sunday

There is a lot of fingerpointing about the shutdown. One woman I know is afraid for her grandchildren. "We can't let them go without food!" And I understood her anguish. I did. She wants the shutdown resolved. 

(So do I, don't get me wrong.)

But, you know, I am encouraged by churches stepping up to the plate, offering food. Free meals. Not every church is full of MAGA evangelical crazy pants, though it easy to forget that fact.

Ordinary people are stepping up too.

Here in my town, people post their address on Facebook, telling people that they have food on their porch for anyone who needs it. Offers to deliver it if needed. 

The local Aldi has an offer up for a $40 Thanksgiving that will feed 10 people. 

Everywhere you look, you see people and organizations stepping into the breach. It is beautiful to see. Hopeful.

How long will this shutdown last? I don't know. But I think that we need to hold the line. We can feed each other. We cannot provide health care for each other. Simple statement of fact. 

So.

That's my thoughts on it. 

Our friend came back for cheesy cream of potato soup. I cooked up his squash for him, and another batch of cornbread. My daughter and new son in law and William were coming, so I did up a batch of rolls to go with as well. 

No time to whip up a dessert today. I overslept. Tim has a cold and once again it has settled in his chest. He was coughing so hard that he could not sleep. He got up, grumpy and cross, yelling at cats and generally making it impossible for me to sleep. 

This coughing stuff always makes me feel sickish inside. It was a stubborn cough that started the chain of events which led to Tim's stroke a couple years ago. Even worse, that cold happened about this time of the year, too. So his coughing makes me anxious. Not a lot of sleeping by anybody last night.

But I had the soup going in the crock pot before I went to bed. All I needed to do this morning was make and add the cheese sauce. I had also made the bread dough last night, so all I needed to do with that was pull the bowl out of the fridge and punch the dough down and let it come to room temperature. I roasted squash, grabbed a shower, and slapped the cornbread together. While the breads baked, I skinned the squash, added butter, brown sugar and a bit of cream and let the mixer do its magic. 

Lunch was on the table right on time, and it was a nice afternoon of visiting.

Of course, the big news was the weather. First snow of the season. Maybe. No accumulations expected until suddenly things changed and there was talk of lake effect snow. What was going to happen? The answer varied depending on who you listened to.

(The unattractive thing in the foreground is my small tarped off 'pumpkin patch', set apart from everything because pumpkin vines tend to grow at such an amazing rate.)

That stinks

 Tim has been working away on his truck. He has been installing the $800 part and it has been raining like crazy so he has the truck partially pulled into the garage so that he can stay dry as he works. 

Last night, he came in for supper (ham and spinach quiche, a new recipe, yummo). When he was done, he strapped a headlamp on and headed back down to the garage. He was nearly done and wanted to work a little more. 

I was cleaning up supper, when the door opened just moments later and he walked back in. "I am done for a while." 

Remember that skunk I saw a while back? He was at the catfood dish. In the dim, I thought we had a new cat. He spun around and waddled off.

Since then, we have noticed he has returned from time to time by his faint but distinctive scent. We haven't actually seen him. We pondered what to do about it. Since skunks are nocturnal, we feed the cats in the morning now and just give them a smaller meal at night. 

I had just fed them that meal just before it got dark while our own supper was cooling. When Tim walked down, there was the skunk having himself a small smackeral with the cats. He looked completely at ease, and made no move to leave. 

Tim stood there a bit surprised, taking the scene by the light of his headlamp. After a shocked moment, he decided that he should make the move to leave.

Moreover, when he opened the house door later, he said "There's a possum on the porch!"

I said, "Possum the cat?"

"No," he said. "Possum the possum." 

And lo, the man whose great joy is watching the deer and turkeys out of the front window sounded very grumpy.