Reflections on the Eleventh Week of Fall – Swimming Irritations

    Forget the apple. Swimming three times a week keeps arthritis away.

    To swim at the Meadville YMCA, I established a smooth, two hour and forty-five minute routine. Pack, drive, change, swim, shower, dress, drive, and deal with wet gear.

    Then, two weeks ago, Monday came.

    A sign that said, “Pool Closed Today,” greeted me at the check-in desk. My face must have registered disappointment because Tess's welcoming smile turned to a frown. “I'm sorry. The regulator went crazy over the weekend and dumped extra chlorine into the pool. The malfunction should be fixed tomorrow.”

    I sighed, stuffed my gear in a locker, and walked to exercise room behind the check-in desk. Mounting a stationary bike, I peddled through Paris via a video of crowded streets and views of Notre Dame Cathedral, Eiffel Tower, and Arc de Triomphe. My knees gave out before the video ended.

    Tuesday, Tess kept her welcoming smile. “The pool's fixed. You can swim today.”

    Three regulars, Leeann, Mike, and Eva, were already exercising when I toed off my pool shoes and walked down the steps into the water. Odor of chlorine assaulted my nostrils. Yuck.

   I had sixty lengths or two thirds of a mile to swim.

    I dove under and came up pulling my arms into a breast stroke. I pulled, breathed, thrust and kicked.

    My lips numbed.

    Weird.

    Fifty-two lengths to go.

   I switched to a side stroke. With my right hand, I cupped water, swished it back to my left hand, then scissor kicked. I glimpsed Jackie, another regular swimmer, standing in street clothes on the deck and talking to the life guard.

   Why wasn't Jackie in her suit?

   Forty-two lengths to go. 

    Staring at the ceiling tiles and tucking my feet toward my butt, I drew my hands up my torso then flung my arms to the side. Kicking and forcing my arms to my thighs, I splashed my face and zipped through the water. The insides of my mouth and nose were as parched as desert sand. Thank goodness I hadn't forgotten my goggles.

    Thirty lengths to go.

    I pulled, breathed, and thrust forward. The others weren't putting their heads under the water. Leeann, who marches and swishes Styrofoam barbells, and Mike, who only swims side stroke since his back operation, never do, but Eva usually varies freestyle and backstroke. Today she doggy paddled. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

    Eighteen lengths to go.

    The room quieted letting splashes from my elementary backstroke echo off the walls. I stopped at the shallow end and surveyed the pool. Everyone had left. Forget the last sixteen lengths. I'd settle for a half mile today.

    I grabbed the edge of the pool, moved my left leg back and set my heel on the bottom. While I stretched, I stared at the gurgling fountain.

    Was it circulating the maximum amount of chlorine, or had the regulator malfunctioned again?

   When I returned home, I dumped my gear into the wash tub. Suit, shoes, bathing cap, and goggles reeked as if I'd poured a gallon of bleach over them. Sheesh.

    On Thursday, Tess greeted me with an even wider, welcoming smile. “The pool's fixed. You'll have a lovely swim.”

    But she'd said the pool was fixed Tuesday.

    “Great,” I said exchanging my car keys for a lock to secure a locker. “The last swim was bleachy.”

    Her smile switched to a pursed lip pout.

    I changed and zoomed through the smooth, odorless water as if it were liquid silk. But when I swam between Eva and Jackie, snippets of their conversation bothered me. “. . . such a headache . . . my fillings felt like they were coming out . . .”

    In the locker room, I fastened the hooks of my bra and asked Jackie. “Were you talking to Eva about the chlorine Tuesday? Is that why you didn't swim?”

    “Yes. It was too high. They closed the pool Tuesday afternoon.”

    Yikes. Right after I'd left. “How high was it?”

    “You don't want to know.”

    “Yes, I do.”

    “No. You don't.”

    Pulling my turtleneck over my head I said, “Tell me.”

    “They read the indicator wrong. They thought it was six, but it was really twelve.”

    What did the numbers mean?

    I drove home and searched Google for pool chlorine levels.  Two to three parts per million is recommended. More than three will emit an odor and cause irritation.

    Swimming on that fated Tuesday kept more than arthritis away. I bet I'm still germ free from my swim in bleach.

 

Reflections on the Tenth Week of Fall – Thanksgiving Calm

    Friday, our daughter Ellen walked in the door, accepted my hug, and dropped her suitcase by the kitchen table. She scrunched her eyebrows and, with her right index finger extended, pivoted left then right. “Are we having Thanksgiving dinner tonight?”

    “Yes,” I said feeling guilty.

    “But there's no chaos in the kitchen.” Ellen looked from her husband Chris lugging in another suitcase to her dad, her brother Spencer Charles, and back at me. “Everyone's calm.”

    Spencer Charles chuckled. “The chaos happened yesterday.”

    Her dad nodded.

    Actually the injure-myself hustle had started Wednesday. Between games of Ticket to Ride with Spencer Charles, I roasted a homegrown pumpkin and mashed it through the food mill. Not till evening, when I cut celery, onions, and bread cubes to assemble into stuffing Thursday morning, did I slice a quarter inch chunk of skin off my thumb. A bandage kept blood out of the pumpkin pie I baked before bed.

    Thursday, I jumped up from the breakfast table and fetched apples from the fridge. With an apple pie and stuffing baking in the oven, I set the timer and played backgammon with Spencer Charles at the kitchen table. Periodically I pulled the stuffing out of the oven and called both Spencers over to look. “Is it done yet?”

    Spencer Charles shrugged.

    Spence said, “It's done when you think its done.”

    Sigh.

    I stuck the stuffing back into the oven and waited for the bing of the pie timer to pull out both pie and stuffing. Next I roasted the turkey along with an experiment–two Jack-Be-Little pumpkins filled with applesauce made from Wells Wood apples.

    Avoiding my hustle, Spence waited till I flopped in the Adirondack chair to catch my breath before making his mashed potatoes and gravy.

    At a cozy three person dinner, I pronounced the experiment a successful failure. The Jack Be Littles' rich, nutty-squash flavor blended perfectly with the applesauce, but scraping the squash from the inside of the shell was too much mess and work for guests.

    Thursday's food tasted great but didn't invoke a celebrating Thanksgiving feeling. 

   Friday I'd only baked a double batch of pumpkin cookies to keep calm for Ellen and Chris' arrival.

    Giving Chris a welcoming hug when he set his suitcase beside Ellen's, I said, “I cooked ahead so I could enjoy your company. I hope you don't mind warmed up leftovers.”

    “Fine with me,” said Chris.

    Ellen pursed her lips.

    I gave Ellen another hug before pulling two containers and a covered platter from the refrigerator. With a minimum of hustle, I heated leftovers one by one in the microwave then put it in the oven to stay warm.

    While Spence cooked fresh gravy and heated frozen Wells Wood asparagus and purple green beans on the stove top, aromas of poultry seasoning, mashed potatoes then turkey floated from the closed oven. I set the table with the new log cabin place mats I'd sewed with a yellow center symbolizing welcome.

    All five of us sitting together and sharing stories over the meal filled my stomach and nourished my soul.

    It doesn't have to be chaotic to be Thanksgiving.

 

Reflections on the Ninth Week of Fall – With a Vengeance

 

Annette’s fourth Zoe Chambers mystery engaged me. Like her three preceding 

novels, Annette switches POV between Zoe. a paramedic plus assistant coroner, 

and Pete, a police chief. The murders targets first responders—firemen, police 

officers, and paramedics. Zoe and Pete are in the crosshairs.

The time span would have been appropriate for a short story, but Annette applies

maximum tension, reveals in depth personalities, and weave subplots. Her red 

herrings worked well. I didn’t guess the villain until he caught Zoe. Amazingly, in

the tense, morbid scenes, she adds humor. A master writer.

I’m looking forward to the fifth Zoe Chambers mystery, though if her publisher 

would let her, she could dub them the Zoe and Pete mysteries.

Reflections on the Eighth Week of Fall – Whack-Crack 

    With morning temperatures in the twenties twice this week, garden work slowed giving Spence time to cut firewood for the winter of 2017-2018. “I need to keep my baby Janet warm,” he said. Saturday afternoon, in yellow waders, a tattered red sweatshirt, and a red baseball cap, he loaded his tools in the tractor bucket and rode to the maple with three trunks that had fallen across Deer Creek.

    The rumble of the tractor motor diminished, and I bit my fingernails. Would he blow up his shoulder again?

    Last November, pains had shot through his left shoulder, arm, and wrist. He applied Ben Gay, slept with a blanket bunched under the shoulder, and swallowed my arthritis-acetaminophen pills. Like a knucklehead, he endured the pain for two months before checking with Dr. Moore, his general practitioner.

    She diagnosed a muscle strain or bruise and prescribed a muscle relaxer. That didn't help. The pain was worst at night making it hard for Spence to sleep. On a second visit, Dr. Moore said the symptoms sounded like a torn rotator cup and ordered an MRI.

    In March Spence checked with Dr. Anderson, an orthopedist. After studying the MRI results, he said Spence definitely had a torn rotator cup. Surgery was possible but not recommended.

    Recalling the pain and agony stories of a friend who'd undergone that surgery, Spence agreed.

The orthopedist gave Spence a cortisone shot and told him to come back any time he needed another shot.

    Spence had one question. “Can I still split wood?”

    “If you don't want to be in pain,” Dr. Anderson said, “buy a wood splitter.”

    He probably wasn't recommending a hand tool.

    This September, Spence ordered a light weight Fiskars X27 Super SplittingAxe. When the Amazon shipping carton arrived, he pulled the axe out, reverently unsnapped the blade cover, and held the axe toward me. “Look, it has wings.”

    I didn't see any wings. “Where?”

    He fingered the axe head where it flared into a slight wedge. “Wings turn an axe into a splitting axe. Wood splits with one stroke.”

    Saturday morning, he invited me to the end of the south field. Beside the wood pallet, maple logs lay scattered across the grass. He balanced a log on end, raised his axe, swung, and whack-crack, the log split in two. Amazing. He repeated the balance, whack-crack miracle again and again until his Tom-Sawyer act got me.

    “Let me try,” I said reaching for the axe.

    He stacked the cut logs on the pallet.

    I set a six inch diameter log on end, swung, and whack-crack–the log split. No jarring or shoulder pain. A miracle. I swung three times and split three logs. I should have stopped then.

    On successive tries, logs wobbled. I missed my target, and the blade dug into sod releasing a moist-soil fragrance. I also bounced the axe off some dense maple logs and jarred my shoulders. After no success with particularity hard maple log, I handed the axe to Spence.

    He swung at the stubborn log.

    The splitting axe stuck in the dense wood.

    He hammered in a wedge to free the axe. The wedge stuck too.

    I lost count somewhere around fifty of how many hammer strokes it took to free the axe then the wedge, and finally split the log. I wasn't disappointed I hadn't split that gnarled log with one stroke but wondered about the shoulder Spence had blown up.

    Later, after a lunch break, Spence drove the tractor with his tools in the bucket to the maple with three trunks that had fallen across Deer Creek.

    Fingernails bitten short, I scuffed dry leaves and followed with my camera.

    He splashed across the creek, revved his chain saw, and cut through maple branches. Saw dust flew, and aroma of maple reached me on the other bank.

    He tossed thin branches into a brush pile and threw cut logs to the island. When he had enough cut off, he climbed down the bank into the creek and pulled the ten foot maple branch onto the island. He cut more logs. Panting, he stacked the logs on a fallen maple trunk, ducked under, transferred the logs to the next trunk, stepped over, and carried the logs to the tractor bucket.

    “Why don't you stop for a water break?” I didn't want him to aggravate his rotator cup. “You could use a rest.”

    “I am resting,” he said. “Carrying logs is resting from the heavy work.”

    Had he blown up his shoulder again?

    “It aches,” he said Sunday morning. “But it always aches.”

Reflections on the Seventh Week of Fall – Uncle Jim

    Uncle Jim, the last of my dad's generation, died at age ninety-three on Monday. An empty sadness distracted me Tuesday morning while adding toppings to my breakfast oatmeal. Thoughts of how he valued people, loved his family, and smiled when he listened to whatever I had to say, swirled in my foggy mind, and I searched in vain for the walnuts in the cupboard. Thursday, recalling snippets of Uncle Jim fixing motors, riding tractors, and admiring nature, I reached for the almond milk in the fridge and picked up the misplaced, chilled walnuts.

    During the unfocused week, my mind kept settling on two Uncle Jim boat stories and a question. Was Uncle Jim really buck naked in Presque Isle Bay?

    Jim never told stories about fixing motors on navy ships in WWII, but Dad, the older brother, told the story of them rowing across Presque Isle Bay. Their boat swamped. Dad wore swim trunks, but Uncle Jim wore clothes. With much chuckling, Dad said Jim stripped and jumped into the water buck naked. They treaded water till a neighbor came along and pulled them into his boat.

    “But Dad,” I'd said. “Did Uncle Jim have to walk home naked?”

    Smiling indulgently, Dad shook his head. “The neighbor had extra clothes.”

    After Dad died, I wanted to hear Jim's version of the story to decide if Dad had just been teasing me or if Jim had really treaded water buck naked. I got my chance one Sunday afternoon when Jim sat on my front porch. I asked, “When the rowboat swamped and dumped you and Dad into the bay, were you really buck naked?”

    Uncle Jim's lips twitched. He chuckled softly, gazed into the woods, but didn't answer my question. Instead he said, “That isn't the best boat story.”

    Jim told the story of taking his grandsons Russell and Nate, aged nine and seven at the time, fishing on Canadohta Lake in a motor boat. The outboard motor stalled. When it restarted, the boat jerked, and Jim flew overboard. He surfaced. The boat whipped around in tight circles. Jim waited for the boat to come around, grabbed the side, and wondered if he'd have the strength to hang on until the gas tank emptied.

    At the funeral this week, I asked Russell and Nate, now forty and thirty-eight, about their wild boat ride with Uncle Jim.

    Nate beamed and smiled from ear to ear. “While he stood and started the motor,” Nate bent, pulled an imaginary cord, and continued, “he told me, 'Never stand and start the boat, Nate.'”

    Russell whirled his finger in tight circles. “We were terrified whirling in circles.”

    Because Jim hadn't told me the end of the story, I asked, “Did another boat come to your rescue?

    “No.” Russell grinned and shrugged. “Somehow he shut the motor off from under the boat.”

    Nate chuckled and sniffed back tears. “He was my superhero. I thought he could fix anything.” Nate paused to stifle a sob. “I've never been tempted to stand and start a motor. I learned that lesson from him.”

    Wiping my eyes while an American Legion soldier played “Taps” on his bugle, I wondered if my nieces and nephews will have learned lessons of humility, persistence, and dedication to family from me.

    I'll miss Uncle Jim.

    And I'll always wear presentable underwear when I'm in a boat.

 

Reflections on the Sixth Week of Fall – Halloween Transformed

    Halloween has changed.  

   When we'd lived in Cleveland Heights, I'd hung decorations in windows and set glowing jack-'o-lanterns on the front steps. Inside, we chuckled at one-liners from the Ghostbusters movie. Outside the patter of footsteps, swish of customs, and laughter of children echoed under glowing street lights. The doorbell rang, our cats peered from a safe distance, and Spence welcomed children. “Who do we have here? A ghost? A princess?” He dropped Reese's peanut butter cups and Scooby-Doo graham crackers into their bags. “Watch yourselves on the steps,” he said, and a sigh rose from the moms and dads hovering at the bottom of the driveway.

    Moving to rural Western Pennsylvania ended those traditions. Instead of carving pumpkins, we set out intact honey boat squashes and Jack Be Little pumpkins with plans to cook them later.

    I did buy Reese's peanut butter cups . . . but not for children.

    With houses spaced a quarter mile or more apart, no children traipsed down West Creek Road. Instead they attended Trunk or Treat. Families drove their cars to church parking lots, opened decorated trunks, and passed out treats to giggling, costumed youngsters.

    How could I celebrate without a ringing doorbell and “Trick or treat” shouts?

    Last year, Spence and I ambled through the Milledgeville graveyard and read headstones in day light. This year I invited neighbors Kathy and Tammy to the Homespun Treasurers Quilt Shoppe Halloween party and sale.

    Through a dark tunnel of trees, Kathy drove slowly to watch for running deer. We deposited the Reese's peanut butter cups in a plastic jack-'o-lantern by the door for 35% discount tickets on our purchases. Dressed in pajamas, slippers, and hair rollers, Joy, a friend from the quilt guild and volunteer at the quilt shoppe that night, helped me select fabrics. We matched the triangles I'd cut from my late mom's house coats with blue-green fabric for sashing to sew around quilt blocks formed with the triangles and dark green fabric for the back of Mom's memorial quilt. I sipped fresh apple cider and watched Tammy then Kathy win door prizes by stepping on the lucky number when a bell rang in the store. Girl-chatter filled the car on our drive home.

    Adjusting to their own new traditions, the cats assumed the role of trick-or-treaters.

    George played the Halloween prank. He padded through the corn starch Spence had accidentally spilled on the kitchen floor, walked out into the rain, and scratched on the sliding glass door to signal he wanted to come inside. His paws had streaked the glass as if defacing it with soap.

    Emma preferred treats. Because she had a dry cough, we'd driven her to the vet Tuesday afternoon. He gave her shots and two kinds of pills to take over the next eighteen days. I hid the medicine in Pill Pockets which she considered treats. For five days, she's swallowed the medicine inside the Pill Pockets, reared back on her hind legs, and mewed for more.

    One change I don't want this Halloween is for Emma to discover I'm giving her a trick not a treat.

 

Reflections on the Fifth Week of Fall – Garbage Deliberations

 

    After forty-eight years and five months of marriage, Spence and I sat in the great room to solve a new problem. Garbage.

    Tuesday the sale of our old house closed and ended Spence's routine of hauling garbage and recycling to the Cleveland Heights tree lawn.

    In rural communities, taxes don't include garbage removal. We had researched landfills within forty miles. None accepted occasional loads of garbage. For prices neighbors complained were exorbitant, landfills gave us two choices. First, buy pickup service which Spence vetoed because of their twice-the-speed-limit reckless driving and their habit of leaving animal-ripped messes on the berm. Second, rent a dumpster which made no sense since we only had a plastic grocery bag of garbage a week.

    Staring at Spence staring at me across the coffee table, I said, “We need to check what we can recycle.”

    He fetched the empty container bag, I grabbed the paper recycling, and the truck bounced us to Cochranton. In the high school parking lot, we studied the labels on recycle bins large enough to hold an ATV. Spence whipped out his note pad and wrote: Bottles, jugs, jars, cans, aluminum, tin, steel, and #1 & 2 plastics. Newspaper, magazines, and corrugated cardboard.

    I gently set glass bottles and rinsed food cans inside a bin. All the glossy junk mail and cardboard seltzer water cartons rode home with us.

    “Burnables,” Spence said.

    Our township allowed burning. After researching on line, I chose BurnRight's large, stainless steel, hi-temp burn barrel,  the most eco-friendly available. Off and on during the week Spence assembled the barrel and mumbled about inadequate directions. We'd burn the paper Cleveland Heights would have recycled.

    That left non-recyclable plastics and Styrofoam. Since the butcher shop closed in Sandy Lake, we'd bought meat at Giant Eagle in Meadville. Cuts came wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic–not paper.

    “Change to Malady's Meat Market?” I asked.

    Spence shook his head. “Their meat is pricey and just average. Maybe there's a meat market in Erie.”

    A two hour round trip to buy meat in paper wrappings? Not my first choice. “Does Giant Eagle recycle Styrofoam like Heinen's in Cleveland?”

    “No, and Heinen's stopped recycling,” he said. “I suspect no one takes Styrofoam anymore.”

“Giant Eagle has a garbage can outside. Why don't we take the meat trays back to them?”

    Basics decided, we reorganized garbage into seven containers.

1) compost

2) scrap paper fire starters

3) aluminum recycling

4) glass, metal, and plastic #1 and #2 recycling

5) newspaper, magazines, and corrugated cardboard recycling

6) glossy junk mail and food carton burnables

7) garbage

    The rest of the week, with a Styrofoam tray or an empty tooth paste tube in my hand, I'd open the old garbage container which now held burnables. Sigh. Besides the hide-and-seek-game of finding the right bin out of seven, using the new system generated questions. Are floor sweepings compost? I pulled out a sliver of plastic and emptied the dust into the compost bin. Are food scraps burnable? Duh. I'd burnt plenty meals. I dried the scraps and dumped them into burnables.

    I asked Spence harder questions. “What do I do with toe nail clippings?”

    “Compost, burnables, or garbage,” he said. “Only they'll take a long time to compost.

    One question I didn't have to ask. When quests say, “What can I bring,” I'll answer, “Nothing, but there is something you can take.”