Uncategorized

Note: I am entering the time of year where I work during the day and make home visits to students during the evenings. These ‘Memories’ posts are part of a system to keep me sane. Enjoy these silly stories.

A long time ago, way, way back in the early 90’s, Lloyd and I worked together up in Minnesota for Oetting’s Detasseling during the summers. Actually, Lloyd and Brad had worked for them since the 80’s, but they both had the yucky job of actually detasseling in the fields.

‘What is detassleling?’, you ask? Well, it’s basically corn castration. Big companies that grow seed corn (corn grown to sell as seed) like to make mutant hybrid versions. So they plant a field with a pattern of four rows of one kind of corn followed by one row of another kind of corn. Slaves strong, young, well-paid workers walk through the fields and pull off the tippy-top of the corn plant – the tassel – off the four rows so that the tassels from the one row will fertilize all the plants. Here endeth the lesson.

I am not up for that kind of hard labor. Those kids got up at four in the morning so they could be in the fields before the harsh sun showed its face and burned them all alive. Nope, I landed myself a cushy office job. I had the pleasure of letting which crews know where they’d be sweating that day, then fielding phone calls from angry mothers asking if I knew how hard their child was working. “Builds character,” I would reply between mouthfuls of bon-bons.

I also got to use the fax machine – the premier technology of the day.. I liked to make my own cover sheets when requesting items from the home office back in Nebraska.

Whew. I really sweated making that one. I should have had my mom call me to complain.

There is a nail behind the door to the upstairs that usually holds the flyswatter and my back scratcher. (If you don’t have a back scratcher, get one.) This summer that nail was reassigned to hold up the Record Of Awesomeness.

Actually, it was the Record of Funny (which in my book is the same the thing). We decided that a point would be awarded when somebody said the absolute funniest thing that could be said in a given situation.

We were pretty good at keeping the record straight for the first few, but then I just wound up giving myself a whole bunch, trusting that I would be funny sometime in the future.

Well, Brad is gone,so there was no reason to keep my ‘winning’ record up. (They knew where the marker was.) Now that nail is helping to solve a completely different problem.

Lloyd really likes Special K Red Berries but he only eats it once in a blue moon, so I wind up finishing the box. Without fail then next day he wants some cereal.

Today, we bought two boxes. One for the cereal cupboard, and one for the nail.

Um, I fell asleep at 7:30 last night in front of the t.v. and never wrote a post.

So, to make up for my transgression, tell us what you ate for breakfast. I’m having bacon and eggs – a Saturday staple. You?

So I was getting some ice from the freezer and Lloyd was headed down to the basement. A wicked, mean ice cube fell down and smashed my innocent toe.

Me: “Aaaarrrrggggllllle!”

Lloyd (from the stairs): “You ok?”

Me: “Gggggggaaarrmmm…”

Lloyd (faintly, because he is now all the way in the basement, not rushing to my aid): “There, there.”

Brad and Mark brought up Little House on the Prairie and my deep love of it for the rest of my life as a child.

Oh, how I loved that show! And the books! And the books about the show! I loved everything about it – the clothes, the lanterns, the churning of butter and such. (Have you read Farmer Boy? You will never read better descriptions of food. ever.) I blame Garth Williams and his crazy addictive drawings. The drawings, words (and the t.v. show) whisked me away to a rich, rich inner world of imagination.

During my kindergarten/first grade years I had a long dress with flowers and lace ribbons that I wanted to wear every moment of every day, and also as a nightgown. Where is that dress? I should have it made into a pillow.

I have a hazy memory of going to some magical place with my family one summer (Silver Dollar City?) and buying a bonnet. Are you hearing me, people? A genuine bonnet! I also believe that this is where one of my two lanterns was purchased. Y’know, I don’t know what the deal was with my parents, but I was never allowed to put fuel in those. I think they started my pyromania by not allowing me to set things on fire as a child. That makes sense, right?

Oh, to be a child again and long to live in a wood cabin – the mind of youth blissfully unaware that there is no way that cabin is air-conditioned. *sigh*

For the past week or so we’ve been in the process of ‘transitioning dishwashers’. That fancy talkin’ means we bought a new dishwasher, tore the old one out, and have left the new dishwasher sitting in the middle of the kitchen until we get around to installing it.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing dishes by hand. This is a bit of a novelty since I actually have a cool dish drainer from IKEA that I hardly ever get to use. Usually it hangs on a nail in the basement, but this week it has been called to duty.

Put an ugly stained cookie sheet underneath the drainer to catch water and we are good to go. (My mom has one of those absorb-y mats and loves it.)

We could live like this for weeks, and probably will.