Life in My World--This, That and the Other

We are going over to the big, big, big city on the other side of the mountain today. I could be The Little Engine That Could as I just can’t go to the other side of the mountain without taking a load. (Last time I took a big box of green beans. What was I thinking? Ray and Cali can’t eat a bushel of green beans.) Today we’re taking a big box, but it has doesn’t have green beans, it has cucumbers, beets, potatoes, peppers, squash, tomatoes, onions and carrots from the garden. And Cali’s shoes.

I’ve written about the shoes before. When Cali lived at home we had a matching pair of shoes a half size apart. Mine wore out first and Cali got tired of hers so she asked me if I wanted her pair. I did, but a half size too small is a half size too small no matter how optimistic you may try to be, so after one day of wearing them I said, “Never mind, but thank you anyway” and put them in her closet. She said they were my responsibility to dispose of because she gave them to me. She would not take them back. I kept putting the shoes in her closet and she kept putting them back in mine. Since that debate, we’ve had at least a dozen trips to drop stuff off at Goodwill, but the shoes never go. Why? Because it would dam our game, or more likely the better answer is that one of us would have to give in. You see, I quietly hide the pair of shoes in her belongings and then when she finds them she quietly hides them somewhere in mine. One day I opened my temple bag and there were the shoes, right and proper and out of place. Another time when she unpacked her sleeping bag, there were the shoes stuffed in the bottom. Back and forth, back and forth the shoes have gone. We lost track of them a few months ago and couldn’t remember who hid them last or where. But last week when company came I had to add extra leaves to the table and there were the shoes, hidden under my bed between the table leaves. When I told Cali that I had finally found them and planned to bring them over to her house next time, she wailed into the phone, “Nooooo faaaiiiir. I’ll never find them in this house; there are too many places to hide them.” Exactly.

I shared a recipe in the newsletter today that Laurie had given me. Several years ago Calvin was going back to West Point and Laurie wanted to send her son, Nathaniel, who was also a cadet at West Point, a loaf of his favorite bread. We couldn’t coordinate a dropping off point and still have fresh bread, so Laurie sent me the recipe and I made it for her. This morning Grace and I made a few loaves to take to Nathaniel and his brothers. Grace also arranged a mixed bouquet of sunflowers and lilies for the funeral. I told Laurie once that she reminded me of a sunflower.

In other news, I have to take a class to graduate that I already teach. Oh ho. I’ve never felt as smart in my life as I do on the days I take the tests. It is a stupid requirement really and I begged them to waive the class, but they wouldn’t so I feel faux intelligent.