The guest room closet re-do

We’re remodeling the two upstairs bathrooms which has meant rearranging everything in the closets.  The guest room closet will now just hold out of season coats, the Christmas boxes, and some storage.  For the storage, I’ve purchased matching green boxes, the same color as the the guest bath walls.  Now, I’m repacking things into them.

Repacking the boxes of cards and letters saved over 50 years—now that’s a job.  I’ve done this before, and sent back to the writer, many letters.  But there are many notes and letters inside these cards.  For some reason I was writing little notes to my husband back in the 70s. I don't know the dates or situations (some sounded serious). I did find this written on the back of an envelope.

A young mother was trying to comfort her daughter when her pet kitten died, saying, "Remember, dear, Fluffy is up in heaven now with God." "But Mommy," the girl sobbed, "What in the world would God want with a dead cat?"

Our garage

I'm not bragging. It's a fact. We live in one of the prettiest condo complexes in all of metropolitan Columbus, with beautiful vistas no matter where we look. And we work hard keeping it that way with a very involved community board, landscape committee and maintenance company. Unless of course, you're driving through our NORC (naturally occurring retirement community) and notice the Bruce's garage. Something, and we aren't sure what, causes the bottom panel on the garage door to rot and peel. We've been here 8 years and have replaced it once already and now it's worse than when we replaced it the first time. Then within the last 2 weeks, a bird has pecked a huge hole and a small hole in the decorative door (not sure what it's called, but it doesn't go anywhere) above the garage door. I assumed in that space there are baby birds.

Filling in

Today I made broccoli soup for lunch. But I didn't quite have enough broccoli to satisfy my tastes, so I dug around in the veggy drawer and there was about a quarter of a head of limp cabbage, so I chopped it up and tossed it into the chicken broth with the onions and potatoes. Tasted fine--maybe even better than usual. We had home made blueberry pie with that. And that's another filling in story.

Yesterday I was taking one of my barefoot walks and noticed a group of people, adults and children, down by the creek on the east side of our property. And I use the term "our" loosely since we live in a gorgeous grove of trees surrounded by a sweet little creek owned by an association of 30 residental condominiums in five buildings. If this community were to be built today instead of 1977, the builder would have tried to cram 60 units or more in the same space. When I got to this group, I saw they were building a bridge across the creek. I asked what they were doing, and the man told me building a bridge for the children to cross the creek. "Maybe you should check with our association before you continue," I said. "This is our property and if your children get hurt playing here, we'd be held responsible." The little boy, maybe 10 years old, said, "Oh we cross here all the time; it would be safer to have the bridge." "Maybe you could play on your side of the creek," I observed (their home and property could buy and sell mine several times). "Why don't you talk to our condo president," I said to dad, and I gave him his name. I returned to our unit and called him; the family continued building the bridge (and I use that term loosely--it was two timbers stuck inside four cement blocks wedged into the ground with short planks between the timbers).

Later I looked out and two couples (one the president) were standing down there. Apparently, they'd come to an agreement with the family not to proceed until it could be brought to the association meeting this month. We had missed our Friday night date, so I invited the two couples to go to the Rusty Bucket with us and to stop by after the restaurant for blueberry pie which I'd just taken out of the oven after my walk.

When I made the pie I was using the first decently priced blueberries I'd seen this spring--2 pints for $4.00. But you do get what you pay for and they were a bit scrawny and I must have pulled off 20-30 stems and thrown out some squished berries. So when I sprinkled them with Splenda, flour and cinnamon, they looked a bit shy of a full pie. So I looked in the frig and found some strawberries about a week past prime, sliced them up and tossed them in with the blueberries, although not sure how that would turn out. Actually, if I hadn't announced to my four guests last night that there were strawberries in the blueberry pie, they would have never known, because they just turned purple and blended right in. So if you're ever a little short, think cabbage with the broccoli and strawberries with the blueberries.

About that little law suit attraction--the bridge. I really hope the bridge idea gets voted down. You hate to ruin a little guy's fun, but there's a good reason why by age 13, little girls outnumber little boys (boys start life with a numerical advantage of about 106 to our 100). Boys/men are risk takers. I raised a son, and had many trips to the ER. This moves them way out in front in law, politics, economics, science and inventions of all types and fills up our prisons, but it shortens their lives. When we get a big rain, that sleepy little creek becomes a raging torrent, up over the banks by about 6 feet. Not only would the water sweep children off that flimsy bridge who snuck out of the house to get a closer look, but it would act as a dam stopping everything that Turkey Run Creek would pick up as it moved through the golf course, and roared under Kenny Road onto our property, further flooding our lawn, and possibly the lower level of the units. Many serious floods in Ohio have been nothing more than sleepy creeks that got dammed up during storms by building debris floating down from construction sites, couches from someone's yard back in the hills, and a few tires from the farmers' fields.

Our no renters policy

Our condo association has an owner-occupied-only policy. Unfortunately, some owners who are quite wealthy, spend half the year in warmer climes. Then there was the career mom who travelled a lot and left her college age daughter in charge of the high school daughter. My oh my--the parties we were privy to.

So the condo is turned over to the "children" (adults behaving badly). Eight or ten cars (expensive) may be parked haphazardly on our narrow street on a week-end, the garage door left up, lights on all night, beer cans strewn around the lawn.

If they weren't low class they'd have no class at all.