The ring, the box, and a found medicine bottle with dropper.

In a January post about Eric’s grandmother Jane, I mentioned her wedding ring quilt that we brought home with us from Topeka.  I also mentioned that my mother had pointed out to me how serendipitous it was that we were given that particular quilt by Eric's parents, what with it being a wedding ring design.  What I was hinting at in that post was that there was recent news of an engagement.  Ours.   On New Year’s Day, Kansas Slim presented me a six-sided wooden box (six-sided to represent our six years of partnership, crafted clandestinely in our terribly cold workshop just weeks before), therein nestled an eternity band.  He asked of me a question, to which I replied, “Yes I said yes I will yes!”  There may have been some tears.  And I'm pretty sure that I squealed.  Because that's what's supposed to happen when you get engaged.

We are to be married this autumn.

Slow Food

From an email I sent on January 18, 2010, but still the gospel.

"I would consider myself and most of my friends unofficial members of the "slow food" movement. For us, it’s less about getting the food quickly into the belly (although there are those moments), and more about the experience of cooking, eating and sharing the food with each other. We all know that home cooked food far exceeds the taste and quality of fast food. But if we stop to think about it, home cooking our food also provides the opportunity for us to slow down, enjoy the way food is prepared, enjoy the taste of the food, and enjoy the communion of sharing the food with family and friends. Food is far too important to us as a culture (continentally, regionally, etc.) to waste all of our calories on the emptiness of a Value Meal. Give me those hours in the backyard of a friend’s house, digging a pit in which to roast a pig (not to mention the hours of roasting after basting, spice rubbing and wrapping the pig)! Give me even more hours sitting knee to knee at a small dining room table eating food that was cooked as part of a local Iron Chef Cajun contest, swapping stories about Lord-knows-what at a dinner party that will end at who-knows-what hour! Give me those moments of staging drive-by-dinner attacks on each other, using made-up recipes that rely heavily upon the cleaning out of the freezer. And give me those moments at friends’ houses, late in the evening when kids are safely tucked away, and the adults are sitting at the dining room table (or the kid’s table, depending upon whose house I’m remembering), testing out a bottle of someone’s homebrew or eating home-brined olives…Yep, food should be slow, not fast."

Breaker, Breaker

On Tuesday, our electrician upgraded the service to The Bungalow.  He also upgraded The Bungalow from fuses to breaker boxes and fixed some wiring that had been worrying him since he had laid eyes it two weeks before during the consult.  We like our electrician.  He is a fellow Panther from Southside High and I graduated with his sister.  GO PANTHERS!  This was just Phase I in The Electric Bungalow Project.  Phase II will begin in a couple of weeks and will be referred to from this point forward as Phase II:  Electric Bungalew.  Sorry.  I would take it back, but it is already out there.

In less than five hours, went from this, this and this:

To this, this, and this:

The Better To Walk On

A little over a month ago, we decided to bite the bullet and use the Quikrete Walkmaker to build a sidewalk between the gate/back steps and the old garage.  The ground is uneven.  And mostly in shade.  Little lives there except for moss...and mud.  Perfect spot for a raised path.

These are the pavers that we had temporarily put down four years ago.

I took up the old pavers and leveled the ground as best I could.

After several weeks and much snow, Eric and I were finally able to get the bulk of the sidewalk made.  We used many 80lb. bags of Quikrete, a wheel barrow, a shovel and two hand trowels.  Back breaking.

And after about a week, we located enough Sakrete jointing sand to fill the joints.

I transplanted several hydrangeas into the area beside the fence, and filled in the bed with erosion-controlling pine straw that I collected from the roadside at mom and dad's place.  I like free landscaping materials. 

Eric and I are pretty pleased with the results.  So is Booker.  Now, to clean and finish out the front of the garage.  Then, to paint.

The Consolation

Two mornings ago, sidewalks slick with ice, I made my two-mile, pre-work walk after a week and a half of rain, sleet and snow...which equals no morning walk.  Not another soul in sight except the striking older woman in a red coat boldly power-walking in the middle of Turrentine Street.  This is her technique, as I've seen her walking before.  I am not so willing to brave the middle of the street, preferring to keep to the sidewalks, with their frost and root upheaved chunks of concrete.  She and I smile and greet each other.  Maybe one day I will be her.

The upside this morning is that the sun is visibly coming up earlier.  Spring, soon?

Snow at the Bungalow.

Or Bunga-snow.  Or Snow-galow.  Anyway, we had a snow event in Alabama yesterday.  A snow event that will, no doubt, last for at least another couple of days.  I know of folks who are still stranded out there...stranded since 2PM yesterday.  It is 6:30AM right now.  I feel for my southern brethren (and sistren).

Being a southerner, but also being a southerner who has lived outside of the south, I can see both sides of a snowy situation.  And I feel that the south always takes a beating (both literally and figuratively) when it comes to snow.  This morning I felt compelled to rant a little on Facebook.  For those of you who are not on Facebook:

"I just have to say this in defense of the south and how we deal (or don't deal) with snow.  We don't get snow very often.  I lived in upstate NY for a year and in Denver for six years.  I made it through two blizzards in both places (and also one here in Gadsden, the one in ’93).  So, I am familiar with driving in snow and ice.  But from my experience, what happens here in the south is quite different from what in either of those places.  When snow begins to fall in Denver or NY, the snow plows and salt trucks come out in force.  Ordinary people are always armed with ice scrapers/brushes, de-icers, blankets, snacks, flashlights and maybe even a bag of sand in their trunks.  And homeowners have roof rakes, snow shovels and snow blowers in their garages…because they get snow (a lot of it) every winter.  We do not.  So, when we do get snow, it requires that we get into our motor vehicles and try to navigate a situation that most of us are not in the practice of navigating.  And then people make fun of us trying to do the best that we are able to do considering the circumstances.  I think we do, and have done, alright.  There were lots of good people out there yesterday offering me rides when I was walking (by choice) to the Gadsden Times.  I saw so many folks in trucks, and some on foot, helping to push distressed drivers up hills or out of the roadway. I know many friends who opened their homes up to stranded families. And that is all that matters. 'Do unto others...' or, more accurately, 'There but for the grace of God...'"

Extraction of Teeth

A young friend of ours recently lost several of his baby teeth.  And seeing his smiling gap-toothed mug set my mind to reminiscing about the natural process of losing teeth.

As a child, I was not terribly afraid to loose a tooth, but I was more than happy to hold on to them as long as I possibly could.  The ability to rock a tooth back and forth with one's tongue for any willing audience was worth almost as much in attention as the money I was sure to gain in my piggy bank from the tooth fairy once the tenuous thread of skin holding the tooth in my head gave way.  No need to rush the process, I usually let nature take its course.

But I also can recall a more grim image of what I consider less-natural tooth extraction, one that involved my grandmother, my sister, a door knob and a piece of string.   It was a hot summer day.  We were at my grandmother's old farm in Kentucky (the farm built by my grandfather, Chester Padgett).  Sister had a loose tooth.  Gran had some string, one end of which she tied to Vicki's tooth, the other end to the knob of an open door.  Then, she slammed the door shut.  What resulted from THAT tooth extraction was less like a Saturday-Morning-Cartoon-tooth-pulling (which, as a child, was what I was expecting), and more like a Ralph Eugene Meatyard tableaux (this would be a black and white photograph of two girls, one with mouth and eyes open in shock, hands on cheeks, looking in disbelief at her sister.  The other with eyes wide, hands clapped tightly over her mouth, too late to save the tooth exiting her head, more likely keeping in a scream.  Both stand in front of a door moments ago slammed shut.  A door with a string hanging from its knob.  Dark stain upon the floor.).