Planting Dandelions

"They were here!"

I knew it.  I knew they'd been in my house while I was gone.

Little cars here, milk messes there, dino findings under the couch, evidences of an ouchie, and from-home-toys left behind, all proclaim the truth about the toddlers previous presence, "They were here."

And I'm sure being little toddlers tied to their car seats,  it was a long destination for Jayden and Miss Lilly, to arrive at our house, after all, they can't see anything out those windows except passing telephone poles and a few billboards.

Remember those maps on the wall of the visitor centers where you stopped for a rest along the interstate during a long drive to your vacation's destination?  The buildings were usually of brick, and the wall map always had a pin to draw your eyes with "You are here!" written in big red letters.

Well, my eyes are drawn to last nights ravages; little evidences of little people, "They were here!"

***
In case you don't know how my house is laid out, I can stand in the kitchen, look over the pony wall, across the family room to see whoever is standing at the sliding glass doors on the deck outside.  Well, adults I can see.  Children and pets I can not see unless I reposition myself.

One day, "Knock, knock, knock" I hear, and it's a quick happy knock but not adult-loud.  At first I thought, "What is that?"  Brain kicks into gear,  "Sounds like knocking on glass."
So I step from behind the pony wall looking to all the doors to see if I can catch a glimpse of something or someone, when I spy little 3 y.o. Jayden.  He's grinning happily, clutching his jacket slung over his arm, face pressed against the glass trying to see in, and pecking at the glass with his other hand.

I opened the door and he says, "Hi.  It's me!"  I'm laughing now because I sure do know him.  He's still talking, "Pa-em?  I love you."

Ah, my heart gets all soggy sweet.

***

Just the other day when Jayden came to visit he brought nothing except his jacket.  So out came the toys.  First the red trike.  While I cleared a path, he took off.  "Pa-em", he called.  And, let me tell you I don't know how he says my name.  It starts out sounding like Pam, but it ends up sounding like pen as in ink pen, it seems like 2 syllables but he says 'em snappy together as one, really fast, something like "Pa-em."

"I found white ball.  I need a hole."
So I get the bulb planter and make a hole.  Jayden gets pouty, points to the cement pad under his feet, and insists, "Right here."  I had to laugh at his thinking I could dig a hole in concrete.  He's so innocent.

While I put the bulb planter back in the garage, he spies a red handled tool and scuttles out of the garage into the fenced yard, plops on the ground and starts digging.   WITH A SCREWDRIVER he digs!!!!  Many holes!  I tell you, he dug a bunch of holes.  I just kept my eye on that screwdriver.  If I didn't, hard telling when and where I'd find it next.  I know this.  Six boys later it's something I know.

This Jayden works hard.  After triking, playing with the kitties, swinging a golf club at the white ball 20 times, swinging in the tree, building towers out of buckets, and digging holes, I knew he worked hard.  In the end, he plucked two gossamer dandelions and planted them both into one hole.  "Look, Pa-em, look!"

The world needs more dandelions, right?
Well, it does need more innocent dandelion planters.

If for no other reason than to say "I was here."

"Can't walk" with The Pirate

“I can’t walk,” said Jay.

“Come on, Jay.”  I said as we got out of the truck.  I trudged through a ridge of snow formed on Mary’s sidewalk. 

He replied, “I can’t walk.”

I looked back and he was doing okay, carrying his hat and gloves, wearing snowsuit and snow boots. He was following happily like a trailing puppy.

“You’re doing fine, just follow my foot prints.”

It was noon, time to take Jay to Mary Ann’s house.  We’d babysat this 3 y.o. foster child of Rusty’s all morning, so at noon we’d planned to take him next door.   Here in Indiana we’d just suffered negative degree weather with power outages, and there was lots of snow piled around.  Jay was struggling but managing all right.

Next thing I knew, Jay called, “Mar-ry.”

I said, “She can’t hear you, honey.  She’s inside her house.”

I just had to laugh ‘cause this little tyke was funny, he informed me with a nodding head,   “I vwery woud.” then raised his voice, A LOT, and YELLED, at the top of his lungs,  “MAR-REEEEE!”  

I chuckled.  Earlier he had me laughing, too.

“Pirates!” I heard Jay’s upset voice. 

“There’s a pirate,” he said adamantly to me.

“He has a sword.”  And he nodded his head for emphasize.

“I don’t like sword.”  It took me a minute to figure out what on earth he was talking about, when I did figure it out, I reassured him that yes, it was a pirate, but it was just a figurine, like some of his toys.

He had pointed to the top of the 6 foot tall cabinet in the bathroom where John’s 10-inch ceramic pirate stands proudly on a wooden peg leg, with a hand on his hip, a sword stabbed into the ground, and a black tricorn hat set crookedly to show his black patched eye.

“I don’t like pirates.”

I said soothingly, “But he’s a good pirate.”

Evidently  he didn’t think I was taking him seriously enough. He just wasn’t getting through to me. He left and went to the kitchen and told John all about it, “He’s a BAD pirate!”   “He a monster!  BAD!”

Well, really, you can’t dispute that.  I made him walk and Pirates make ya walk, too.  “Walk the plank, m’heartie!”  Someone’s always making you walk when you can’t.  “Monster! Bad!”

SASSY SPRING

It's raining!  Since it's still March (can I yell that to Mother Nature?  IT'S STILL MARCH!), and I repeat, since it's still March does that mean April Showers Bring May Flowers has started early?  Seems that way.  But then again we live in Indiana where any-weather goes!

On St. Patrick's Day we had sneaky snow.  I saw one flake but it didn't seem the weather for snow so I thought "ash from the chimney" or maybe "white silk from the dogwood tree" or even an aphid or whitefly, but never did I think snow.  That is, I didn't think snow until I looked at my silver truck which was covered in the white fluffy stuff!

SPRING!  I'm ready for SPRING!  Bring on SPRING!  SPRING, come to me!

Mary called last evening.  She said,  "I've bought tiger Lillies.  It's time for us to plant some bulbs."  Actually, we do this in remembrance of Mitch who passed away on St. Patty's Day.  So, today, I need to buy bulbs.  I was putting it off because of the rain...I mean snow, LOL.

What do you look forward to in the Spring?  The smell of hyacinths, so sweet, earthy, and pungent?  The sound of newborns, kids bleating on the farm, or mother birds chirping to the call of their young?  The feel of pussy willows or roses, soft and rough at the same time?  The taste of sassafras, much like a strong root beer or some root beer barrel candy?  

Ah, the sights and sounds of Spring, almost makes me bounce out of my seat to do a cartwheel!  NOT!  Never have I been able to do a cartwheel.  At this age, I'm lucky to bend at the hips without saying, "Ouch!"  

But, I can take a walk.  My foot is almost completely healed, thank the Good Lord.  And yesterday Calvin and I took a walk for a few blocks near his house while watching the neighbors white dog bounce and pounce behind his master who was heading to his little beige shed.  We saw true green daffodils poking their first buds out of the ground; they were stuck amongst the un-raked leaves left to decompose from autumn's fall.  And we heard the joyous voices of kids playing in the school's east playground. 

Then once we got to the town of Pendleton, we walked again -- all along Main Street. We checked out Three Monkeys, a child's clothes consignment shop.  Isn't that a fun name, Three Monkeys?  Makes ya think of rambunctiousness and shenanigans.  We passed Quack Daddy's Donut Shop (boo-hoo, sadness that we passed, I love donuts) to visit B'Dazzeled Boutique where we were on the hunt for a garment for daughter-in-law who's expecting again, our second grand baby, yay!  And finally reaching our walking destination Treasures Old and New, a large meandering shop full of antiques, artwork, old fashioned candy, and nostalgia.

Calvin had never seen candy cigarettes before, so he purchased some with which to tease his coworkers.  The store had rock candy on a stick, Buns in maple flavor, cow tales, and many vintage sweets.  

The sight of old candies takes me back to root beer, back to sassafras, back to spring.  Dad used to go into the woods in the spring then come back with pieces of sassafras root and then he'd boil it, offering up sassafras tea to all who came around.  After he passed, we found he had a great big piece of root, as big as a step stool, in the barn.  It's my own treasure of old.  I'm sure to break off some each year to boil for tea.  

Some year I'll share my old treasure with my new treasure, the future grand baby.  

We'll clip some redbuds for our hair and have a sassy tea party in the Spring!  After the rain, of course! 

"Slow, Nothing To Report!"

"I'm going back upstairs.  I can't take it," I'm laughing with tears in my eyes.

Let's back up.  I'll set the scene.

3:17 in the morning and I can't sleep.  Lights are off.  DH, darling hubby, is whirring.  He doesn't quite snore yet, and the night is silent, but he's quietly whirring.  So, I go downstairs, make a mug o' hot tea and turn on the computer to mindlessly play Candy Crush until the sweet black drink is gone.

Sitting in the veritable dark, it's not long until DH comes moseying down the stairs I'd just traversed.  Time for him to rustle around and get ready for work.

He's in that "morning fog".  Some people have it  (he, and several of my sons, and a good friend up north do, too) and some people don't.  I don't.  I don't understand it 'cause I don't experience it.  I just believe.  I've seen it in action.  Well, in non-action, chuckle.

Anyway. he turns on the news on channel 59 FoxTV.  I know this because the tv is now loudly telling me so.  I don't tolerate noise first thing of a morning and he doesn't tolerate light first thing of a morning.  Sadly, we don't mesh that way.  So, the announcer, to me, is yelling at me, commanding.

DH shuffles to the kitchen and makes a cup o' joe.  Excuse me here a minute while I take a last sip of my tea.

Anyway, the nice gentleman anchor on the screen says, (and friends, I don't quote verbatim, I do the best I can but don't expect perfection), he says, "We have a shooting on the East Side to report but we have little, if anything, to report at this time.  We are taking you to (beautiful attractive woman) a reporter who is right now on the scene."

Beautiful attractive woman reporter puts her lips to the microphone, the background is the dark of night, very appropriate for gloom and doom, and she says, "We are here on the East Side to bring you the latest development on a shooting here.  We don't know who has been shot.  They are taking the victim to the hospital at this time, we don't know to which hospital he was taken.  We don't know how many times he was shot.  And we don't know who did the shooting.  The police have bagged up his clothes and are investigating."

Okay, I'm thinking, so the police are doing their job, that's good, but she didn't really tell us much of anything.

And then ... (Lord, help me) she recaps!

"As I said, we are here on the East Side, don't know who was shot, or who did the shooting.  We don't know where the victim was shot, or where on his body he was shot.  But we do know there has definitely been a shooting."

What?????

Did she go outside, pull out a pistol, shoot into the air, then tell Mr. Anchorman, "We have a shooting on the East Side, but we don't know who was shot!"

Oh, my lands!  I'm busting a gut laughing.  And I'm laughing.  I'm not laughing at the poor man who was shot, I'm laughing at the silliness of reporting for 3 minutes of  "nothing."  NOTHING!  Cut it short, or wait until you know something.

I'm laughing at the inaneness of it all!  My night was pointless in the first place being up at 3 a.m. -- this just adds to the pointlessness of it all.  Chortle, the reporters just takes the cake!

Did you get that "nothing" was reported 3 times???????

So, I'm now upstairs, because I realize I forgot my reading glasses, and I go back downstairs to get them.

DH is still in a fog, TV is still blaring, it's still dark out, it's still quiet outside with no traffic on the highway to hear, yet I hear.  I hear Mr Anchorman say, "I just like the plain kind.  Ripples are my favorite."

Oh good golly Miss Molly, I'm laughing so hard I have to hold my stomach, they have so little to report they're now discussing potato chips!

Wait for it.

You have to hear what DH says, it's priceless, a piece of cake, the fitting end to my little interlude.

Like Eeyore of Winnie the Pooh, with a slow negative shake of his head, coming out of his fog a bit, DH murmurs,

"It's a slow news day they have nothing to report."

"Quack Daddy"

"Quack Daddy!"

LOL, that's not one of the kids asking dad to act like a duck.  Nope, it's the name of a donut shop in Pendleton where Spen lives and where we love to visit.

At its website I checked out their hours, but it says, "Donut Worry, Be Happy".

"Donut Worry"  that was funny, too.  So was the artwork on their wall, "Donut make you want to dance.  Donut make you want to smile."

Sitting in Annie's living room, she and Spen are discussing whether or not they've ever visited Quack Daddy Donuts and how many times and how recently and what kind of donuts they ate.

Quack Daddy's specializes in made to order, fast, and hot donuts.  You can pick the icing, and toppings, and order as many as you want.  Popular are combos of maple icing, bacon,  strawberry icing, and Cinnamon Swirl cereal.

With Conversation Hearts, Fruity Pebbles, and Sea Salt on the menu, you can see how it tickles not only the senses but the funny bone, too.

Spen:  Have you been to Quack Daddy's recently?
Annie:  In the last year?  Yes.

Spen:  I love their Maple Bacon!
Me:  Ew!
Annie:  No, it's good!
Me:  You've had 'em?  Yuk.

Spen:  I had a Chocolate Covered Bacon Donut!  It was really good !  I love 'em.

And I'm contemplating all that's wrong with that donut, excluding my personal aversion to that combination -- calories, caffeine, fat content.

Annie:  Did you have to ask for forgiveness?  Ha, ha, ha.
Spen:  No.  I ordered more!

Can't argue with a bacon lover.  But you can give him a cup of coffee.  Coffee always accompanies a donut, right?  They weren't actually eating donuts, but they were imbibing coffee.  From her Keurig cups Spen chose hazelnut.

Annie:  How's that coffee?  Any good?
Spen:  It's coffee!  Coffee's always good!

And we sat there dreaming of our favorite donuts that should've accompanied our coffee,
"Quack, Daddy!"

"Go Play, or Else!"

Life, I'd say, was more innocent and care free. In the 60's we weren't near so busy, and we didn't know everyone else's business in a worldwide way!  We'd just go outside and play. 

Some acquaintance said, "Would love to hear your experiences, and what you had to contend with; day to day life, meals, days out, what your day as young children was like."

My mind went zinging.  It went zinging right back in time to when my brother and I jumped off dad's homemade picnic table into a #2 tub of water.  Boy, we had to have been really little tykes to think it was full enough to dive into!

We weren't allowed to answer the phone, because it was dad's business phone. Before that it'd been a party line of what they called "3 old biddies" and he needed it free to get calls for his carpentry work housebuilding plans.  After he got the business phone we learned to always get a name and a phone number or "let someone else answer the phone!"

We made trails in the weeds, and tunnels in the hay bales stacked in the barn. We nailed boards to a tree for a ladder and then built a tree house. It always started with one of the boys getting a great idea, then we girls could play right along.

We pretended the pedal cars were real cars and would pass each other on that long sidewalk from the office to the house, and we'd parallel park along that sidewalk in the grass-free dirt.

We walked the sheep trails down over the hill along the river where we pretended to fish, and poked at minnows and crawdads until we heard a faint far in the distance call from mom to come home.

We didn't get t.v. until 1969! And even then it was black and white.
I was shocked at t.v.'s soap opera. Billy caused Peggy to have a baby out of wedlock? Some man stabbed a woman with scissors? Then there was the movie over which mother caught me crying. Bonnie and Clyde had been shot to death!  Horrors! We'd never seen such stuff!

Mom taught us every nursery rhyme you could think of, and we sang the radio songs right along with her,  "Hello, Dolly!"  They kept the record player going, too, popular tunes from Elvis and Tennessee Ernie Ford, gospel songs, kids sing-a-longs "Its a Very Good Habit" and polkas "She's Too Fat For Me".

Didn't know a thing about sex, or violence, or criminal acts.  The times were so uncomplicated that we fed a hobo a sandwich or two while he sat on that picnic table.

A #2 tub was a swimming pool.   A swingset was an amusement park. 
A blanket over the fence was a tent. Mayonnaise on bread was a sandwich.  An old shed from a remodel worksite of dad's was our playhouse, and yes, we made and ate mud-cakes.  And the outside brick structure of the fireplace was a stepping stone ladder to the roof!

We had to leave dad alone for a spell after work. Supper was on the table for him just in time. We drew his bath water and he taught us to shine his shoes.

If mom were sick, no matter any of our ages, WE cleaned house!

We were respectful to ANY ONE older than us -- ANY ONE, no matter their station in life.  

Swat to the butt, pop to the mouth, no book at bedtime, "You'd best take a nap", were quick corrections.

Neighbors trusted us with their fruit trees and their bull and their dogs and climbing their fences.  

We were taught music, encouraged to read, and learned common sense safety measures.

Breastfeeding and diaper changing were done behind closed doors. Speaking of closed doors, if you knocked on the parents bedroom door, you got swatted.  If you were locked out of the house, you'd better go play or else.  You never knew what the "or else" was.  Or that famous "I'll tie a knot in your tail."  Those were surely something terrible!

AND, no screaming unless there's blood! ROFL.

"Go play."  Remember being told to go play.  Wished someone would say that today,  "Young lady!  Go play!"

"One Frog To Go, Please!"

Phones are something else!  They used to hang around ringing on the walls never to be answered unless you were home, am I right?  These days our phones are truly amazing things!  Not only are they handheld but they can do the laundry, too!

When they first came out everyone was agog;  a phone you could carry in your hand with immediate access to anyone AND and it played music like a radio!  Fascinating.

Darling Hubby, aka DH, pokes around on his all the time.  There's an app for anything he wants, just press Play Store or Zedge.  Voila'!  An app to brush his teeth!

His cell phone has Waze.  His WAZE are not our ways, LOL.  His WAZE is W, A, Z, E, an app for how to drive from here to there with estimated times of arrival.  Careful.  These cell phones are so good they just might have an app to tell when the next granddaughter is estimated to arrive!

DH also uses Voice Search like Googling.  And he uses Alarm Clock and Weatherbug.  Part of his poking around is to decide on ring tones, and notification alert beeps, and alarm clock buzzers.  After listening for a half hour or more of things like Baby Shark, I'm A Gummy Bear, Cher's Gypsy Tramps & Thieves, Cotton Eye Joe, to meows, thunder clapping, and farts, he settled on an animal sound.

So, here we are at Bob Evans, more or less killing time.  The power's out, no electric at home, and we're hungry and cold.  The dear sweet waitress confirmed that we were welcome to stay and play some rummy until Duke Energy sends one of their own notification alerts that our power has been restored.

While DH, darling hubby, is ordering his Compound Omelette With a Side of Hurt My Heart Bacon, we all hear "Ribbit.  Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit."  Waitress's eyes shift left, then right, then at me, "I hear frog."

We all laughed!

We pointed to the phone and explained it was DH's ringtone.

This morning, on our third day of "no school due to negative degree weather", I'm in bed listening to DH's phone.  No, it's not ringing.  It's white noise.  Did you know there's a new thing now called pink noise?  Shoot, there's also blue noise and brown noise.  I digress.  We're listening to white noise, a nighttime sound to deepen sleep.  So, here we are lying in our now warm and comfy beds listening to this waterfall.

Imagine it, soft white streams of sparkling water cascading down the side of the hill to spill easily with a swoosh into the waters below.  Lazily stirring, not fully awake, still in the afterglow of a dream state, comes a sound, "Ribbit.  Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit."

How apropos!  Where else but in the waterfall of my mind would a frog be?  In my bedroom, that's where he be!

Even in sleep DH reaches out to make me laugh!

Miss Lilly makes me laugh, too.  Just like her papaw she loves frogs.

Last evening, while we played Euchre, she played with a bucket of miniature animals.  This green labeled bucket comes complete with a little plastic gray mountain, some thin fragile palm trees, a few dinosaurs like stegosaurus, triceratops, and pterodactyl, a sheep, and a frog.  Wait a minute!  A sheep?  Yep, he was a transfer from the Fisher Price farm barn.

She, though, spied the frog.  Frog got a loving "Awwwww".  I shuffled the deck.  Frog got pressed into her cantaloupe slice.  I dealt 5 cards to each of the 4 players, slide, snap, slide, snap, pick 'em up, fan 'em out.  Miss Lilly says, "Froggy in the wa. ter."  Miss Lilly is only 2, and she speaks in a high pitched "meow" kind of voice and each syllable is said like it's its own word.  I'm replaying what she said in the back of my mind.  "Froggy in the wa. ter."

Whoops!  She's headed out of the room!  She's going to the bathroom!  We'd just filled buckets of water for the power outage and I hadn't emptied them yet.  Some are still sitting in the tub.  And...she's gone!

So am I.   Like a burgeoning shot of water out of a garden hose, I had to arrive at the tub before she did.  And...I did!  Miss Lilly was still toddling to the door, holding Mr. Green Frog out in front of her leading the way, "Froggy in the wa. ter."

May I have one frog to go,  please!