I’ve spent much of today trying to bring order out of the chaos that is my downstairs. It used to be relatively organized, but then very strange things started happening with my work life and with my home life all at the same time, and I’ve never really recovered.
See, about two or three years ago, I was working for BellSouth at our Executive Park office, and BellSouth began building a new “head end” for our television service (a head end is where the signals are encoded and sent out to subscribers). It was determined that the Executive Park office, which was acting as the head end, was going to be emptied of actual people, except for one or two who monitored our equipment. Since I wasn’t one of those people, I proceeded to pack my office into a bunch of boxes.
But I was never told to leave Executive Park. So I continued to work there, slowly taking things that I actually had to use out of the boxes, but leaving a lot of stuff in the boxes. Eventually, I got to a point where I had 5 or six (fairly large) boxes of stuff that I never used – so I took it home and put it in my garage.
Not long after that, I took in my first renter, Maria, who had boxes of her own and a motorcycle, and I couldn’t store my stuff in the garage anymore. So I moved it into my other guestroom closet and forgot about it.
Maria moved out. Dennis and Keith moved in – and I had to clean out the guestroom closet. So the boxes came downstairs and ended up in my music room, where they have remained until today. Today, I started going through the boxes and throwing stuff out left and right. I also found a lot of pretty neat stuff., which I’ve stored in a box. In 5 years, I’ll probably go through that box and throw everything out. But for now, it’s made the cut and can stay in a box. What I’m going to do with the box, I don’t know.
I also mopped the kitchen floor today and made some pumpkin soup, which was REALLY good. If you’re interested, you make it like this: melt a half a stick of butter in a pan and throw in one chopped-up onion. Sautee it until it’s nice and soft. Pour in about 4 cups of chicken stock and some salt and pepper and bring everything to a boil. Dump in a can (15-16 oz) of pumpkin, mix it up really well, lower the heat, and simmer it for about 45 minutes. Then pour in about a half a cup of heavy cream, stir everything, and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Serve hot. Parmesan cheese on top makes it great.
I spent several hours on Christmas (two days ago) in Greenville. Got to see Mom, Dad, Dianne, Greg, Lisa, Zack, Nathan, Riley and Tad. If I missed anybody in that list, I apologize. Dianne brought some ham to the house, I showed up with mac and cheese, and we had some vegetables or something. After lunch (just Dianne, Zack, the ‘rents and me – Greg et al showed up shortly thereafter), we went downstairs and chatted about nothing for an hour or two until Mom got very tired and went to take a nap, and everyone else sort of scattered. I’m told that Larry and his family showed up yesterday, which is nice. Next family gathering should be around the 8th or 9th, when we’ll descend on the parents’ domicile to celebrate Dad’s birthday. Cy should be coming to that one, but I’m not sure about “T.”
Betsy Jones and I are planning to visit Andersonville Cemetery tomorrow. I’m a big Civil War buff, as most of you know. From what I understand, everyone else in Betsy’s family is also interested in the war (she is not particularly – at least not like I am – but she does like history). I’m looking forward to spending 5 or 6 hours there, soaking up the history and maybe getting some decent pictures.
My dentist has been trying to get me to put an operating system on one of his old laptops for the last couple of weeks, but we can never get our schedules to jibe. Maybe later this week I can get to him.
A few entries ago, I’d mentioned that I was going to put down “Mom Memories” here, and one that’s been stuck in my brain for several weeks now is of the night she fainted (hey – I didn’t say they’d all make her out to be some sort of saint, did I?).
This occurred in probably 1989, and I’m thinking that it must have been on a Wednesday night because it was early evening and Dad wasn’t home and I was grabbing a bite to eat at the kitchen table before I went out to play darts. I’m not sure if league night was on Wednesday or not; but if Dad wasn’t home he must have been at a choir rehearsal or something. Let’s just say that it was Wednesday, but that’s really not important.
At any rate, I’m sitting at the kitchen table reading something and eating something (cheese sammich, perhaps?), and Mom was doing something near the kitchen sink. Making coffee or watering a plant or … I don’t know what she was doing. We were just both in the kitchen, not paying attention to each other.
All of a sudden, there was a tremendous THUMP and the floor shook. I think I said “What the…” before I glanced over and saw Mom lying on the floor. I remember quite clearly that my next word was, “Mom!” – I can hear myself saying it in my head. But, being a great boy scout and being on the safety squad at 3M and all that other good garbage, I knew exactly what to do.
Okay, that’s a lie. I didn’t have a clue what to do. So what I did was checked to make sure she had a pulse (I swear I couldn’t feel the damned thing in her wrist OR in her neck, but by that time she was awake and asking me what had happened). Then I helped her get up, walked her up to her little television room, got her under a blanket in her recliner, gave her a couple of aspirin, and went to play darts.
I make myself sound more callous in the telling that I actually was. She thanked me and told me I had a great bedside manner, as I recall. And I *was* concerned – but I had obligations to the league and she seemed to be fine, except for the fact that she had no pulse.
TWD