New Tricks, No Treat

My family members have learned a few new tricks to save themselves a bit of energy.  They have over-bought into the energy saving revolution, I think.  The problem is, their energy saving tricks have meant more energy usage for me. 

For instance, the plastic drinking cups in the cupboard kept disappearing.  They weren't in the dishwasher...not in the sink waiting to be put into the dishwasher...not in the cupboard waiting to be used.  Hmmm...Then suddenly, they appeared on the kitchen counter.  Some of them empty, some of them with various amounts of liquid in them.  I was surprised and slightly creeped out.  One moment I had my back to the counter putting dishes in the dishwasher the next moment I turn around and there is a whole batch of cups that WEREN'T there when I started to fill the dishwasher.  They didn't make a sound!

It was a few days later I learned that my daughter had been taking glasses of water to her room at night and not bringing the cups back up the next morning.  She would hoard them until there was about a half dozen then bring them all up at once.  She would leave them on the counter and silently slip away...leaving them for me to empty and put in the dishwasher.  She had great timing.

Then there is my son who brings his lunch box in from work, opens it and deposits the contents on the counter, leaves the lunch box on one of the stools then slips off down the hall saying he'll be right back.  An hour later it is all still there so I put it away and put the lunch box where it belongs...out of my way.  When I see him later and tell him I finally put it all away he gives me that puzzled look and says, "oh, I thought I put it away." Perhaps the act of taking it out of the lunch box equals 'put it away' in his mind.  I'm thinking not.

Now I can move on to my husband.  He is the master.  He will cook up something he wants for lunch or breakfast and leave a bit in the pans on the stove then tell me, "I left some for you."  It usually is something he knows I won't eat but by leaving some for me, he then feels that he has done the equivalent of 'tag, you're it' and it is now MY mess to clean up....and I do.  *sigh*  He does the same thing with his cooler when he gets home from a trip. He puts it on the counter and announces, "I brought you back some goodies!"  I know it is just snack bars, cookie packets, and any sodas he didn't drink.  I empty it out, put it away, and set the cooler by the back door waiting to go back into the garage.  It gets there eventually...when I manage to catch him going out the door to smoke a cigarette...cuz he never seems to notice that he is tripping over it in order to open the door.

I guess it is just natural that I should use more energy anyway...after all, I am the oldest, most outdated model in the house.

The Joys of Home Ownership

I have talked about painting the trim and doors on the house a different color for 3 years now...since we bought and moved into this place.  The brick is a sort of white with tiny gray stones that run through the center of each brick.  The last owners of this house had a brown shingle roof put on, with a beige front door, brown gutters, brown trim, brown shutters, brown garage door...you get the picture.  It all created an optical illusion...that the brick was beige.  The house looked rather dismal to me.  So, with a thank you nod to God, many high wind storms and hail storms created just enough damage to our roof that the insurance would pay to have it replaced.  Here was my chance!  I talked Sr. into having gray shingles put on...we got the new mold/mildew resistant kind and they were rated for this area with its high wind storms and hail so they should not fracture or rip off so easily. 

While Sr. was away in Tucson for some company computer gadget training (that's what I call it anyway) I got a gallon of paint in the greenish color I liked and painted the front door...and the garage door...and the trim around the garage door.  I took the shutters down.  I will return to THAT story in a moment.

I was nervous about picking Sr. up at the airport and bringing him home since I had not told him about the painting I was going to do.  We pulled around the corner and into the driveway just as I hit the garage door opener button...and he went, "what the...???  WHAT DID YOU DO?  WHY NOW?  You don't have enought warm days until winter to paint it ALL green!  Those brown gutters with that green door look like **it!" 

sigh

"I am going to paint the gutters and facia a dark grey..but it will have to wait until spring."

"In the meantime it will look like **it"   "I thought we had discussed doing this as a project when I was here."

"I don't recall those words ever entering into it.  You said you did not look forward to having to paint it and I told you that you wouldn't have to, I would take care of it and that was the last I heard about it from you."

He was at a loss for words...for quite a while.  Then he turned nice.  He made dinner, did the dishes, baked a cake from scratch (yes...REALLY!)

As for the shutters, I was afraid to take those down.  Heaven knows when the last time was that they had been taken down and cleaned and the brick cleaned behind them.  I was afraid of disturbing some bats. 

I carefully took out the screws that secured them to the brick and peeked behind.  Mostly spider webs and muddauber nests.  At least the first set.  The next two sets had spiders behind them that I could have hitched to a plow and put in a couple acres of corn.  I THREW them out into the yard.  Luckily I am not a squeamish type when it comes to spiders or the neighbors would have been heading for their basements thinking the tornado siren had gone off.  Once they realized it was not that siren but something else, they would have looked out their windows and thought that maybe I was practicing a dance for flashmob.

I got the hose rolled out and turned the nozzle to 'JET'.  Then I blasted the spiders out into some other part of the yard.  By the looks of the mess on the shutters I was guessing they were storing up their winter provisions.  As I blasted it I could have sworn I freed a Hobbit.  There was a flash of what I perceived to be 'Sting' (the blade, not the musician) and,sadly, something else that looked like half of a fairy...which would make this sound like a fractured fairy tale!

Anyhows...I next scrubbed them down with a scrub brush and they are still stored in the garage awaiting their coat of paint...which I am hoping to get on them this Friday so they will be ready for hanging on Saturday.  I also had to blast the brick.  Who knew spiders could create such a horrible mess?  I will have to spray the brick with Fantastic before I hang the shutters back up.  Why?  Because wasps, bees, spiders, and most other bugs hate it.  It will actually kill ants and bees on contact!  Gotta love it!

When I say anything about taking down the shutters and cleaning them, at least 50% of listeners have responded with, "shutters have to be cleaned?"  *shrug*  My parents have done it every couple of years for as long as I can remember.  Why not?  The shutters hang around outside collecting the dust and dirt (and spider crap) and after while, it piles up.  My youngest sister and her husband powerwash their brick house every year!  My bricks didn't get power washed.  I am the Pig Pen of the family I guess.

Tangled

This is birthday month around our house.  My daughter turns 16, my son turns 21 and I step right over the line into the 50's (51).  It doesn't scare me!  HA!  My daughter however told me that she has been 16 for a year since a birthday actually marks the END of a certain year and the day after her 16th birthday she will be embarking on her 17th year of life.  At her age that matters to be older.  At my age not so much.  Once you hit 40 it never matters again. *sigh*

I have found out that my son is actually learning something in college.  He has learned how Donkey Kong got its name and why Mario is named Mario and why he is a plumber.  He also laughingly told me that his first writing assignment for his Tech Writing class is to describe a penny.  This being funny becuz my favorite writing assignment in a graduate class for teachers to get published was to describe a penny in 500 words or less.  :/  I told him that most of the 'writers' in my class did just that...described what the penny looked like, literally.  I told him that if his instructor wanted something more than technical (never mind the name of the course) then he should do as I did...concentrate on the significance/insignificance placed on the value of the penny/how its appearance differs from our other coins we use/the significance of the profile on it/the significance of the words and other information it has on it.  He just nodded.  He is a really imaginitive and fluent writer.  My daughter is too.  They both struggle with their math, though.  They didn't used to but somewhere along the way, one side of the brain took over and squelched the other side of the brain. 

As I relayed to a friend today, it has taken me a very long time to understand something that had I understood it a decade and a half ago, it might have made married life a bit easier. 

I was able to understand my kids having severe anxiety problems and what it does to them...how they react...what they do to cope.  But I listened to my husband and believed him when he said he didn't have such problems. 

He does.  He just doesn't want to admit to it.  If I had just really thought about things he told me about his life growing up/things he did/how he reacted in certain situations I would have understood. 

He bugs me when he wants to try and control everything...he goes into a micro-management kinda mood.  He tells me what I should do and how I should do...and I want to whump him.  But I finally realized that he is only at his 'worst' when he is anxious about something...and that something usually has to do with his job.  It makes it easier to take it when he is trying to give me 'orders' or a list of things to do, etc.  I find it preferable to him trying to dull his anxiety with drugs.  

Life isn't such a big tangle unless you ignore the fact that things are twisting in the wind.