An excellent hero

This morning, I baked cookies to take to a memorial service for one of my heroes. I know I have mentioned her before, but some things are simply worth repeating. John and I had the privilege of being invited into Forrest and Faye’s home on several occasions. Our first visit was on a sunny Sunday when we were invited, along with a young man and his little boy, to help harvest their corn crop.

As the wheelbarrows of corn were delivered from the well-tended garden, we husked them and removed the silky strings as best we could. The readied crop was then put into boxes to go to the church building for an “all you can eat” corn and melon fundraiser. Within a few weeks, her husband (Forrest) would make a trip of about 100 miles to buy boxes of fresh apples to be sold for another fundraiser. Then, a month later, items she had been making and collecting for the big “Holiday Fair” would be gathered. Often, I felt she may have paid more for what she sold than her asking price . Her focus was to raise money for Columbia Christian Schools and College.

The very first step I took into her lovely house, she warned me, “Don’t disturb the dust; I’m collecting.” At that moment, she became my hero. She often came up with surprising quips. She went to California once to stay with her grandkids while their parents took a trip, and one of the boys got the worst case of chicken pox I have ever seen. She shared photos of that experience.

One summer, a young couple asked if they could have their wedding in our back yard, and we said, “Certainly!” It seems the bride left town for a vacation with her parents a little over one week before the wedding, and the groom knew nothing about plans for their special day. The day before the wedding the bride returned to discuss with us seating, food, speaker system, parking, etc. John had worked all summer to keep our lawn green and to make the setting lovely. The morning of the wedding came and food was delivered. When Faye and Forrest arrived fashionably early, she asked who was helping in the kitchen. That’s when I learned the young bride had not even considered that little detail. Faye put on an apron and commandeered my kitchen for the entire wedding. Since then, the bride has apologized numerous times; she did not realize how labor intensive a wedding can be.

Faye was competent, confident, and gracious, capable, generous, and kind and so very thoughtful of others.

Planned obsolecence

Yesterday, I wore out the sponge on my mop. Naturally, either entropy or Murphy’s Law (or maybe both) had something to do with it because I had just completed the Spic n Span layer. When I went to the basin to get the rinse water, the sponge split and became unusable. “No problem,” I says to myself. “I’ll just take that one off and buy a new one.”

Since we are only 1.5 miles from the nearest WalMart, I decided to shop for the replacement there. I got a parking spot really close to the door leading to the housewares section of the store. After some 10 minutes of winding back and forth on every aisle of that section, I finally asked a worker where the mops might be. She sent me to aisle 10 in the grocery section of the store. “Now why didn’t I think of that?” I wondered.

After that 1/2-mile hike, I was relieved to see an employee stocking that very shelf. She really wanted me to take the yellow sponges, but I knew exactly which one was needed to complete the task. When I arrived home, I went straight to the laundry room to install the new sponge only to discover the new one had two protrusions the old one was missing. Thinking maybe we could get some good metal cutters and make it workable, I went to ask the resident expert on the subject.

He pointed out to me that the old sponge had a threaded screw that was missing in the new one. So, I set that activity aside until tomorrow, which is now today. The refund was easily obtained; they did not even want to know why I was returning my purchase, And, sure enough, there was nothing that even came close to being the right piece. And now we know that Target also does not carry the item. I could buy a completely new mop for only $2 more than the cost of a refill, but what does one do with a perfectly good plastic stick? Even Goodwill will not take that donation.

My hubby thinks we can find exactly what we need by checking every store that could possibly carry mops. Meanwhile, our shoes stick to the floor reminding us of the urgent need to solve this problem. It’s a good thing I have a good collection of rags.

Waking Up

So…you thought I had disappeared off the face of this earth? I may as well have when it came to blogging. I made the horrible mistake of taking my one-and-only list of passwords on a trip and losing it. Then, too, I could not recall my user name for blogging; and no matter what I tried, I could not gain entrance to my own blogsite. Well, finally John stuck with the problem long enough to help me out of the mess I created. Now I am onto other pursuits.

My last blog was April 25th. There has certainly been a lot of water under the proverbial bridge since then. If I could have blogged, I would have written about the following:

Of greatest importance was the exciting news of the birth of grandson #2 – Lucas JOHN Wyatt. He traveled here with his parents and big brother Eli to see us. I had the privilege of holding him every morning from 5 til 8 a.m. What bliss! It did not look like David and Geoffrey would be able to get together during that visit, but David surprised everyone.

For our 46th anniversary, John took me out to dinner and to experience the Broadway play The Lion King. Awesome!

Our one-and-only trip this summer was an annual campout with all of our Washington-resident family. This was our third time to meet at Ohanapecosh Forest Camp near Mount Rainier for a funfilled weekend.

I also volunteered my body to three new studies on Parkinson’s disease. Now, PeDee and I are back and ready to share some of our adventures.

Just to let you know, I was not completely idle through this dry spell. I did write about each of the mentioned activities; but I think I will begin blogging from a clean slate. Stay tuned.