The Games People Play

Ms. SpoolTeacher's friend, who cannot hear a thing, ever, (especially when she hears a noise in the engine), said, "You have to change that oil. That noise, can't you hear that noise? That's the noise of thin oil", he said.

Of course, it was just about three months or so ago that she had the oil changed at one of those places where "Boys" work and while they were bringing it down off the rack, the oil they had just put in all fell out and they had to "adjust a few things" that they were not transparent at all to her about ...
"Am I going to be safe to drive home. I just had the engine rebuilt. Are you sure this has been done right now? Are you SURE!?"

Her friend offered to change the oil for her to get rid of that thin oil sound and she said, "I just had it changed, I'm not changing it now."
But he nagged and nagged and nagged and nagged. So finally she caved in and bought the oil and agreed to pay him with dinner or something....
But then he couldn't budge the plug that the Boys had secured and he got mad at that again and told her she should take it back and demand, and demand...
And she said, "I'm not taking it back. I just will never go there again."
"You have to get that oil changed", he nagged again. You have to get that oil changed again and again and again he nagged...
So she agreed, but only if he would do it for free...
"That'll get him quiet", she thought..
Think again...nag, nag, nag...

 "See how bad that plug was, see how it should look?"
Nag, nag...

So while Mr. Friend was doing his manly man thing..she waltzed around his yard seeing what she could see...

His pecans were doing what pecans do, bursting all over they were...

If she had wanted to climb to the top she could, but she decided to keep on waltzing...

He's never answered why he doesn't water the birds, but he will occasionally water the pecans but not the cacti...???







 

...and why does he keep them like that????

Several years they have been there now...

Not long ago she trimmed the oleander bushes for him and sprayed the aphids with soap suds and they are starting to bush out again...

as well as the Cat's Claw tree...
but that she didn't spray, or trim.

It was a beautiful day that pretended to rain. Clouds grouped up and floated by and got gray and dropped a few, just a tiny few drops and suddenly the oil was changed...
"There ya go", he said in a not so naggy tone as though he was happy now that she had finally let him have his way, even if he did have to pay...
"I'll get even with you later", and she surely would, she said as she drove away...
The Games People Play, the games people play,
It wouldn't be fun any other way.

She Can't Control Her Licker

No appointments for housekeeping, no pants to hem, and the weather a wonderful perfect temperature and atmosphere; (degrees you ask...that is a guy thing, she just knew it was a perfect day), it was a wonderful day to do yard work...
The "south forty" has been being neglected and is really the better spot to set up more raised beds.
Ms. SpoolTeacher has visions of an organic food haven, even though the Southwest challenges are great, she loves a good challenge.

For several years now, she has been corralling all of her fallen leaves. So by now she has a variety of stages of leaf mold occurring.

The clump in the first picture is from this pile. She had pulled the wire round off of the heap, moved the empty wire round to a clearing beside where it had been and was distributing the contents to pull out the driest parts to load in the bottom and then put the more decomposed contents on top of those. She is hoping to plant the rounds with vegetables now; she thinks they are ready to grow.
As you can tell from the first picture, life was forming deep in the depths of the pile, which was about 3 feet high. All through the interior, growth was occurring. 

She managed to get three wire rounds ready to grow, grow, grow....
And soil rich with decomposed leaf mold still left to toss under the pomegranate tree and more for the plum she'll do tomorrow.

And more leaves to start another heap.
The great thing about fall is leaves. The great thing about leaves is leaf mold.
She is still learning how to do it right but there aren't very many ways to do it too awfully wrong.
We'll see. She'll be planting them soon and hopefully will remember to take progress shots...

Here are the tomato babes out for a "hardening off" experience.

Here's the yard work she did the day before, raking leaves for the leaf pile farther in the back, leaf piles everywhere, everywhere a tree or wind blown crevice...

And Little Ms. Red-Haired Girl whirling circles around her feet trying to get her attention that, "It's four o'clock already, dinner, dinner, dinner. Come on already you've been doing this all day!"
Me, me, me. Such a demanding Little Red-Haired Girl. What little hair she has left.
"Warning: Spoiled rotten Little Red-Haired Girl Lives here and she can't control her licker!"

Fabric Tsunami Hits Ms. SpoolTeacher's House

"Warning, When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple"

Storm Warning: A fabric tsunami hits Ms. SpoolTeacher's house in a little town in South Eastern Arizona. Look out, it may be coming to your house soon. She's not taking special orders. One of a kind, what ya see's is what's ya gitz! (in other words, no more trying to read people's minds)

Three or four or five years or so ago, she got the brilliant idea to open her own Custom Window Coverings/Design Studio in a little Podunk town in Arizona where no one wants anything on their windows. But, if'n they do, there is so much competition that she could never come up with a price that someone wouldn't come up with one lower...after they'd used her samples to chose the choice and all her brilliant advice.
So, the silver or blue or yellow or green or purple lining is... lots and lots and lots and lots of fabric sample books.
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
She actually thinks that is why she opened the Custom Window Coverings/Design Studio in the first place.

She has this wonderful little pattern of this wonderful little pouffy pouch and has individually cut out numerous intuitively custom pattern placed leaflets and intuitively "married" them to each other in a way that she was inspired to do...

She altered the pattern first and made a bigger size and after making the bigger sized one, decided that the smaller might be cuter.

So as with a lot of other things, she didn't bother to finish the first bigger one before she got carried away with the smaller ones....

So now she's thinkin' about the linings...

Silver, yellow, blue, orange?
As linings go, she has always thought that when she becomes an old woman, she will sit in a rocking chair on the front porch and eat as many chocolates as the box could hold and wouldn't worry about gaining an ounce. But the trouble with that is that she has finally realized that she is allergic to chocolate.
Imagine that. So purple it will be.

...When she gets old.

"Did I have dinner already?"

"Well, can I have a cookie dookie then?"

"How about I go out and get some kitty poo?"

Good night bobbins, good night spools of thread.
I'll see you again tomorrow.

God willing.

Sundays And Easters Gone By

We must have come from church this day. We're all dressed up in dresses.

Usually our mother was behind the camera. If she wasn't behind the camera, she was behind a sewing machine. All of the clothes on the three of us were hand-made by her. The dress she is wearing, I don't recognize.

Either before or after the camera shop, we would most definitely have been or going to the House of Fabrics, fabric store. She would stop at the See's Candy shop and get us each a lollipop and then sit us down at the pattern table while she picked through the remnant bins for pieces of matching fabric big enough to make each of us something new. It was her favorite thing to do.

We were two, three and four here. I'm not sure who was taking the picture. I suppose it could have been our father. I can't quite remember all the times of his comings and goings. He was a military man and often off on a detail somewhere, somewhere we couldn't go.

Here we are as always, dresses all alike. Poor little sister got the dresses handed down twice.

This looks like the same day but the pictures have different months on them. Don't know how we managed to keep our hairs the same for that long of a stretch?

I can hear the woman behind the camera saying, "Smile and do something cute".

It must have been just about Easter time and we were all going to or coming from church.

I can' imagine why our father would be this dressed up unless he was headed to church with us. And at that, it must have been Easter again.
He loved to dress and he was quite good at it. Handsome, boy he was.
Looks like he was somewhere else though, as usually he truly was.

It was this time last year that I lost my Stevie Weevie. I like to remember her like this; on a trip with me to my sister's house, sleeping with me and my niece.
She was such a great dog. I just hope she was resurrected as well.

Thank you Jesus.

She Looks A Little Naked

Little Red-Haired Girl was clipped with scissors not long ago with the ultimate goal to bathe her and run the electric sheers through what was left of her hair.

So, here she is as a ragamuffin, pre-bath/sheers. In her groove, she is.
She finally got a bath and I decided not to traumatize her right away with the sheers so waited another week.
Finally, I thought she could handle it.
I stood her up on the table out on the front patio and she behaved just like a little trouper...she even rolled over on her side for me when I needed her too, (without growling).

The sheers on the other hand, behaved as though they were purchased at Wally World.

So, she still looks a little ragged. She gets the closest trim I can do because the sheers are so lousy, I don't want to put her or me through it any more than I have to.

She was very quick to get away and hide, once I let her on her way, tail a-flaggin'.

She seemed especially light on her feet paws when we went soon after for our walk, she seemed to be strutting, feeling free. She almost ran and didn't limp at all. She did look a little scalped and was shivering one unexpectedly cold morning after...
So I cut the top off of an old pair of panty hose and she is sporting the body-slimming outfit here.

Skinny Minnie.
I think she did loose a little weight this year; we've really been trying.
"What's for dinner" is her middle name.

And I managed to get the little tomato sprouts into larger pots today. Hope I didn't traumatize them. (I had to separate pairs as just about every seed sprouted, I had put two in each peat-pod) The were starting to look like they needed more space.
Wish me luck, I may need to open a grocery store if they all survive.
Crossing fingers.

Happy Birthday, Angie Boog...

My, how time does fly...

Here you are waiting in your Mama's tummy, Daddy eating a hamburger; we were all so looking forward to you.
It wasn't long before you arrived, much to our delight.
I babysat you one night not long after you'd arrived...I hovered over the crib all night, watching you breath, afraid you'd stop.
You looked like an angel.
Your Mama would buggy you over to my little house and we'd all sit and enjoy "our little girl baby".
I suppose you were a few months old when she left you with me there and I cleaned all my lower cupboards out so you could crawl through them, (there weren't any dividers). All the pots and pans were on the floor and you would sit among them and play for hours.

My friend and I would take you out to dinner and all you would eat is french fries and a coke and you would terrorize all the other diners by making a menace out of yourself; but I didn't know any better how to discipline you and I just wanted you to feel free...

As you grew up and started riding your little stingray bicycle, I can recall many, many times of driving up to your little house on the court and hear you exclaiming from afar, "Aunt Sahr!", That's how you said my name.
I loved it. I loved you. You'd come speeding up on your "motorcycle" and give me a giant hug.

I took you with me every chance I could, everywhere I went. Those were the days before seat belt laws and you would ride standing up right next to me. Sometimes we'd go all the way to the beach, just you and me.
I remember trying to get you to leave a shop but you were fascinated with something and I made the mistake of saying, "Okay, I'm leaving you here." You screamed and ran, but I felt just awful for doing it.

And do you remember the time you and I and one of your friends drove all the way from Tucson to California with the two of you in the bed of my truck dressed in your bathing suits, getting a suntan? Boy the truck drivers really were a honkin'! And then we broke down exactly at the desert "Camel Stop" mechanic shop and I had exactly the $18 dollars in my wallet needed to get whatever it was fixed.
Oh, the fun I have had with you.
And I love to see that your life has turned out so good and that you have become the wonderful woman that you are.

I found a few of these pictures that Gramma R had put in albums and left them to us after she died...

She put on the back of this one:
Angela's Birthday Slumber party 1983 9 yrs old Pomona
Rosie, Cindy, Angela, Cindy B, Missie
I think you guys all wore balloon boobies and marched around, quite proudly, laughing. (but not in this picture)

You and Melissa, you always a fashion plate...

Hugging Gramma.

Hugging Soo Soo. I think this Christmas, Soo Soo was taken out of moth balls for you, probably cleaned up and refreshed, "Here we go with Soo Soo". When you were just a toddler, you would hold his tail and one of us, usually Aunt Ms. SpoolTeacher, would hold his head and together we would travel all over Gramma's house singing the Soo Soo song.

Patchouli wasn't much younger than you. You'd known her most of your life. She was everywhere you were. Sweet little Chouli.

Once again, you as a fashion plate.

You and Gramma celebrating your birthdays together this year. I think Aunt Nennie was out.

Not long after the birthday celebration, brother Brett was born and you were the best-est ever sister.

My, how time does fly. We're twenty years apart and I can't believe we have seen so many years go by, together and apart. You're always, and forever will be, a huge big part of my heart.

Happy Birthday, Angie Boog. I love you to pieces.

Love,
Aunt Sahr