September 6, 2016 · 2:11 pm

No room at the inn…

It was a strange bathroom. I groped my way inside the extremely tiny space and found the toilet. I made the mistake of sitting down before I reached over and turned on the light switch. And found a bug….no two bugs…no three bugs on the floor. Of course, the third bug might not count because he was dead.

It doesn’t happen very often because Roy and I are both paranoid about making sure we have good motel rooms when we travel, but occasionally, we get stymied. We decided on the spur of the moment to take a little trip over the weekend. Except, it was Labor Day weekend and we soon discovered that EVERYBODY books rooms over the long Labor Day weekend and we were just a little late. Like Mary and Joseph, we discovered there was no room at the inn…at least, any of the inns we normally frequent.

At last, however, in a small town outside of the immediate area of our destination, we were able to book a room at one of those non-chain, smaller venues. It was alright, though, because when we got to the motel, there was a long line of people also checking in. Must be a great place, right? Except we soon discovered in talking to people in line that we were about the only ones who had made any kind of reservation. The rest of them were traveling impromptu as well and were stopping here as a last resort, hoping for an open room. We were all standing in line praying for a good experience.

The girl at the counter spoke so softly that even those of us not hearing impaired had to hang over the counter to hear her. The fellow working with her made up for that however. He indicated that he was ready for the next customer by pounding on the counter and bellowing, “Next!” We all jumped and flinched like frightened recruits on Army induction day.

It was finally our turn and when we had filled out the necessary paperwork with the soft-spoken girl, the loud drill sergeant reached into a box behind him and handed Roy an unusual, metal-looking object.

“What is that?” I asked Roy as we left the office.

“It’s a key,” he answered, wonder in his voice.

“That didn’t look like a key card to me,” I said skeptically.

“It’s not a key card; it’s an actual KEY,” he said and held it up, glinting in the late afternoon sun. Now, it’s not that I like those key cards; it’s just that they suggest a little bit more up-to-date facilities than the old-fashioned keys. However, beggars quite definitely can’t be choosers.

As we walked down the hall, we passed a table containing a coffee pot and some individually packaged, dry-looking granola bars. I indicated the table with a jerk of my head as I told Roy, “If that’s the continental breakfast, we’re going to need to find a Perkins somewhere instead, tomorrow morning.”  It was and we did.

We unlocked the door of our room with the actual KEY and were cautiously surprised to find a fairly modern looking room before us. Of course, it packed two beds, a night table and a luggage rack in a mighty small space, but by using the sink as a desk for our computer, phone and camera to recharge on, it worked pretty well. I was feeling pretty good about it until I went into the bathroom and encountered the refuge from Raid convention.

“There’s a bug in here,” I called to Roy, “in fact, there’s several.”

“Well, kill them,” he returned, “I’m busy with a couple of wall crawlers out here.” His shoe hit the wall for emphasis and I knew we were one cricket less.

I returned to the main room when I had finished the bug stomping party in the bathroom. “I’d like to sit on these extremely hard beds and watch some television, but I see there isn’t a television.”

“Look up,” he replied and sure enough, there was a nice, not flat-screened television, hanging from a holder on the wall.  “Which of the three stations it gets would you like to watch?”

We made it through the night and we reminded ourselves a number of times that we had been lucky to get the room at this place, or we would have been forced to spend the night in our car, so when we thought about it that way, it didn’t seem so bad. However, the next time this Mary and Joseph go traveling, they are going to be sure they have booked their accommodations far in advance!

 

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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August 29, 2016 · 7:14 pm

School Communication in the New Year..

We’ve all been through it. The child comes to school and says to the teacher, “So, what are we doin’ today? Nothin’, right?” The teacher then spends at least an hour demonstrating that instead of “doin’ nothin’” as the student wishes, they will indeed study Shakepeare, hone their writing skills and improve their vocabulary—for instance, ‘nothing’ instead of ‘nothin’.

The child will then return home to the eager parent, who is hoping for a good educational experience for their child and the parent will ask, “So, what did you do in school today?” The child’s inevitable reply? “Nothin’.”

Another school year has begun and speaking as a person who has been on the parent and the teacher side, I can tell you that despite all the efforts of parents and teachers, there is a serious communication gap, because the channel used for communication between parents and teachers is a child. I would love to be able to clear some of this communication problem, but, unfortunately, we are still, to this day,  using the child as a communication tool.

“Mom, my teacher said we will have an overnight campout and make whores.” A mother, not sure whether to laugh or cry, told me this story once. When the mother, slightly alarmed, finally contacted the teacher, she discovered that her 7-year-old child had replaced “sm” with “wh” as she described what they would make at the camp.

It always makes me wonder what messages go home from my classroom. When I tell students my usual grammar jokes, do they go home and tell their parents the teacher didn’t teach them, she just did a stand-up routine? And judging from their faces in the classroom, I’m guessing they don’t say I did a funny stand-up routine, either.

High school students are as likely as elementary children to get the wrong message across. “My teacher took a picture of me in journalism class,” a student reported to a friend of mine one day.

“Really?” the mother was busy preparing supper. “What were you doing that she took a picture of?”

“I was going to the bathroom,” the teenager returned casually.

My friend said she held off on her first impulse, which was to run to the school and demand to know why they were allowing pervert teachers to take pictures of students at the urinals. Instead, she asked some rather sharp questions of the teenager, who, alerted by her excitable attitude, was able to clear up that the teacher took a picture of him in the hallway as he was headed TO the bathroom.

Dates of special events are particularly difficult to communicate. Of course, most schools issue a public calendar so parents always know what is going on and where and when. However, students can really mess that up. “Mom, I have to be at the school on the 26th at 6:30 for the concert.”

“6:30? On the 26th? Are you sure? That’s today,” Mom then piles the child in the car, instructs them in how to change as they go and somehow manages to put two curly pony tails into the child’s hair without driving the car into a wall. They arrive at the school at 6:35 p.m. and no one is there. Why is no one there, you may ask? Because the date was actually the 29th and the child has a little trouble with 6’s and 9’s. Perhaps that’s something the teacher and the mom might work on communicating about!

I have said so many times that we teachers love our students. We hector them, we nag them, we scold them, we stretch them and challenge them and guide them. And along the way, they cease to be our students and become the children of our hearts. I love each and every one of them, but as this school year begins, I will make a deal with the parents: Do not take what the child says for the absolute facts—they may have gotten a few important things wrong. And if you do that, I’ll give you the same courtesy when they come to school and say, “My parents split up this morning,” and I find out it means you went in opposite directions to work that day!

Everyone have a great…and effectively communicated…school year!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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August 23, 2016 · 1:58 pm

I put it right over…where?

It was both frustrating and puzzling. I looked three times in the bread box, twice in the refrigerator and several times in the bathroom, but I could not find that partial loaf of bread anywhere.

I knew I had put it on the counter. The trouble is, I have found things that I knew I had set on the counter in such places as the bedroom dresser, behind the television in the living room and inside the dryer(don’t ask). I know it is possible for me to hold something in my hand that I intended to put in a particular place and have it never reach that spot. Instead it will end up in some bizarre place and I can’t begin to explain why I put it there.

I know what you’re thinking by now, “Oh, the poor woman, she’s developing Alzheimer’s Disease.” (I hope I spelled that right…I can never remember how to spell the disease that describes losing the memory). You might be right, except that means I have been developing this disease since I was very young.

I honestly believe that instead of suffering with this heartbreaking memory loss, I am suffering from something that I like to call “I put it where it belongs, but the darn Gremlins keep moving it.” When my daughters were young, I used to be able to blame them when the newspaper ended up in the silverware drawer or the roll of toilet paper I intended to put on the holder ended up stashed in the pan cupboard.

Now, my daughters are grown and the only time I can blame someone else for moving things is when my grandsons come to visit.  They aren’t too bad, but the little stinkers are always leaving their coffee cups in some weird place.

Okay, okay, so it’s my fault that things are misplaced. It’s not REALLY my fault though. Can I be blamed when I am set to pour myself a glass of milk and suddenly the phone rings and when I finished listening to the riveting canned tirade by some candidate, I’ve completely forgotten the milk? So as I wander away, contemplating the political ruin of our nation, I have not a thought for the slowly curdling dairy product on the counter. More than one container of milk has hit the trash as a stinking, chunky mess in just such an encounter.

Now, what got me started on this line of thought? Oh, yes, I remember. Back to the missing bread. Now, the one thing you must know is that once I start looking for the lost, misplaced or forgotten item, I always find it. I have to get pretty creative sometimes in figuring out where it is, and I have a whole list of unlikely places to search, but I always get it back. Not so the bread.

I began looking in some VERY unlikely places. I inspected the inside of my footstool in the living room—sometimes I hide things from the dog there. I checked the car in the garage, because I had taken some things out there for school. In complete desperation I checked under the bed in the spare bedroom—it would take too long to explain why I chose to look there. However, suffice it to say there was no bread there, but when I remember it again, I’m going to need to take a dust mop to that incredibly dirty floor!

I was in despair. It wasn’t even that I wanted some bread, it was just that I KNEW I had put that bread on the counter and now it was gone. My lucky knack of finding things that I mislaid had finally let me down. Roy walked into the kitchen while I was standing in the middle of the floor, looking dejected.

“What’s the problem?” he wanted to know.

“I think I’m really losing it,” I answered sadly. “I had a partial loaf of bread; I was sure I put it on the counter and now I can’t find what I did with it.”

“Oh, that bread that was on the counter?” he waved a hand carelessly, “I thought that was spoiled, so I threw it in the garbage.”

The garbage. Great, now I have a new unlikely place to look when I’m missing something!

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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August 15, 2016 · 3:47 pm

The art of medical worry…

I have mentioned before that I am a skilled professional when it comes to worry. Let me give you a small sample of how well I can worry. If you saw the first of the new Star Trek movies (and I’m a big fan), Chris Pine as a young James T. Kirk, arrives at the induction center for Star Fleet on a motorcycle. A passing worker admires the bike and so “Kirk” tosses him the keys and says, “It’s yours.” Really nice, right? Well, I have been worrying for years since that came out: how in the world did that worker ever drive that motorcycle when he didn’t have the title to it? I mean, did he just store it in the garage and admire it or did he run the risk of being caught on a motorcycle with no clear title? These things worry me.

That being the case, it’s a sure bet that any type of medical exam can put my worrying meter into overdrive. Especially since medical personnel, whether they are for the body, the teeth or even the eyes, feel compelled to explain what they are about to do…in worrisome detail.

I was thinking about this during an eye exam this week. The young assistant held up a wicked-looking device that kind of resembled a pipe wrench and announced, “Now, I need you to hold open your eye as wide as you can so I can tap the eyeball with the machine.”

My first reaction to that announcement was to take off my glasses, squeeze my eyes shut as tight as I could and cover them with my hand! The term “tap the eyeball” is not a good one for a woman like me who doesn’t wear contacts because I can’t touch my eye to put them in. Although I tried to hold my eye open, my eyelid was quicker than their machine every time. So the doctor decided they would try it a different way. “Now, I’m going to use a light to measure that eye pressure,” he told me. “But I need to put in these eye drops. Please hold your eye wide open so I can drop them in.”DSCN3081

A dentist is nearly as bad. They want to check those teeth and the wider you can open your mouth, the better. “I’m going to tilt the chair up so I can work on the underside of that tooth,” he will announce. What he doesn’t realize is that I have a problem with being upside down. I’m holding on to the chair, hanging my head down, trying to remember to hold my mouth open while he is saying things like, “I’m just going to give this tooth you say is sore a little tap. Tell me when it hurts.” Would snapping my jaws shut on his fingers be enough of an indication, do you think?

And of course, both the dentist and the doctor are masters of the shot. “I’m just going to thrust this needle up your nose and give you a shot. There will be a little sting.” Having a baby was a “little sting” compared to a shot up the nose!

By far the worst physical exam for a worrier like me is the colonoscopy. What a great procedure. “In preparation for this procedure, we would like you to drink this vile-tasting laxative in about a gallon of Gatorade. This will ‘cleanse the colon.” You know what they mean by that? They mean that you will defecate so much and so violently in so short a time that it will eventually drain from you in a liquid form which is unstoppable and will cause you to live on the toilet.

Now, when you’re done “cleansing the colon,” that is when the fun really begins. “We are now going to take this tiny camera on a stick and shove it up the bottom to look inside your colon.” I’ve been through this procedure. As horrible as the camera sounds, I can tell you that the preoperative poop fest is actually worse. And of course, when it’s over, they want to show you photos of the inside of your colon. I have never been curious as to what that looks like!

So maybe when I think about it, the whole “tapping the eyeball” really doesn’t sound that bad. It’s certainly a lot less worrisome than a camera which goes where no camera has been before. And that reminds me,  I still can’t stop worrying about what that Star Fleet worker is doing with the bike for which he has no title. It’s a stressful world!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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August 8, 2016 · 1:05 pm

It isn’t exactly like Jason Bourne…

I just got home from the latest Jason Bourne movie and as usual, I loved it! Those movies have all been packed with fast-paced action, intrigue, danger and mystery. I can’t decide why they appeal to me so much; perhaps it’s the quality acting of Matt Damon or maybe it’s the wonderful story lines. Or maybe, in just a small little part of me, I wish I was more like Jason Bourne.

That’s not so impossible, is it? I mean, think about some of the things Jason Bourne does. They are very similar to things that happen in my own life.

Take tonight’s movie. Jason Bourne was on the run from the bad guys and suddenly, he disappeared. The next thing you know, he jumps out and with two punches, lands both of the bad guys on the ground, completely knocked out. Now me? I sat in a chair where two flies were really bugging me. I got up with purpose, got out the flyswatter and absolutely squashed one of those flies. At least, he seemed to be dead, but after a while he got up and left. Pretty much the same, right?

One of the things I like about Jason Bourne is the way he is always traveling, without a hitch, from country to country, around the world. I’m pretty much like that as well. I plane and train hop everywhere myself. Except that Jason Bourne just walks up to the gate and hops on to the plane. I drag my purse, carry-on baggage, liquids I have properly placed in plastic bags, shoes taken off in the “imaging chamber”, and with my hair in my eyes and my boarding pass in my teeth, I huff and puff my way through a line three miles long. I’m not sure how Jason does it his way, but mine is almost as thrilling…except for the little pieces of boarding pass that I spit out during the whole flight.

Jason Bourne is always doing cool things on the computer. He can download, copy, break into encrypted files, etc. You name it and he has it down. Me? I can turn my computer on and sometimes if I’m lucky, I can send an e-mail.

Phones are another thing Bourne has got down perfectly. He can code them, message with them, call the bad guys to gloat about not being caught. I can unlock mine…sometimes….when I can remember the code. Once I have unlocked it, I can even call someone on it…sometimes…when I can remember their number.

Okay, so maybe Bourne is having more fun than I am. He drives cars through trash and debris with precision. I manage to carry trash and debris out of my house to the garbage can and only miss rarely. Bourne is always on the alert and always one step ahead of the bad guys. I am frequently caught napping and I’m never a step ahead of anyone.

Now that I think about it, maybe I don’t want to be like Jason Bourne anyway. After all, he has to figure out how to get from one place to another without being killed. My biggest problem this week was how to clean the sticky stuff out of the grout in my kitchen. He lives by the gun, I live by the sponge, broom and mop.

Still, I’d like to have something in common with the famous Jason Bourne. He is the Bourne Identity while I am the Fauth Misnomer. But….I’ve got it! Both of us have a first name the starts with the letter J! I knew that I  was like Jason Bourne somehow. He’s an international hired assassin who has reformed his ways and I am a Midwestern housewife who can’t even refold a map. The comparison is there, however; I have found my connection to the great Jason Bourne. We share the letter J. Pathetic, isn’t it?

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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July 25, 2016 · 3:59 pm

A new look…but the same old body

I believe I have mentioned that I’m not exactly a clothes horse when it comes to high fashion. I have always gone with the theory that what I’m going to wear depends on what I have in the closet. I don’t care about matching or coordinates or what colors are most fashionable. I’m okay with all this. Those who have to look at me, however, have a bit of a different opinion.

I try always to sneak out and buy my clothes on my own. I might snag an unimaginative pair of black trousers on the sly or a new blouse of lovely shades of…tan, maybe. Usually I look at bargain racks only when I shop alone because I like to think that bargain racks are just what someone not of my size and taste in clothes left behind for me to buy! After all, someone has to buy the blouse with the peculiarly shaped violet flowers and the odd pleats in the back, don’t they?

So I should have seriously known better than to go shopping with two of my cousins who DO have some fashion sense…but I didn’t. Kristi and Gail both voiced the intention of doing a little clothes shopping, so I went along.

Kristi started it. I was busily perusing a rack in one corner featuring bland blouses and tepid trousers, all marked down, when she walked up.

“Look at this beautiful shirt,” she was holding up a frothy white blouse with beautiful blue trimmings in it.

“That’s beautiful,” I agreed. “But it’s much too large for you. That’s not your size.”

“No,” she responded, taking me by the arm and walking me towards the dressing room, “It’s YOUR size.”

Very well. I could try on the blouse just to make her happy. I wouldn’t have to actually buy it, right? I got into the fitting booth and did you know those things have an open top? I had never really appreciated that before, but I did on that day.

I noticed because before I had a chance to try on the first blouse, Gail had knocked on the fitting room door. “I found this really cute top on the bargain rack,” she announced and the blouse came flying over the door.

From then on, it was as though clothes were snowing in on my fitting room, blowing in over the top of the door. I was trying on more clothes than I could possibly afford or ever find the time to wear. I kept thinking the clerk would announce that we could only have so many shirts in the fitting room at a time, but when she finally knocked on the door it was to say, “Ma’am, your cousins sent me in with these zipper shirts; would you like black, blue or red or maybe all three?”

Watching them when I walked out to model anything was pretty entertaining. If they reared back, nodding slightly with a rather smug look on their faces, I knew that meant, “Oh, yeah, I was right. She can wear red without spontaneously combusting.”

If they were to purse up their lips and twist their facial features, I would be able to interpret that too. They were thinking, “Okay, that one looks like something she would choose. It has to go.”

At the end of the shopping excursion after having tried on enough clothing to cover the poor in a small country, I finally found a selection of clothes that only set me back about two weeks’ worth of groceries.

As we were leaving, I looked over the top of my many packages at my cousins. “What do you guys buy?” I wanted to know.

“Oh, we’ll go back later to get ours,” they said, avoiding each other’s guilty looks.

“Right,” I said. It’s okay, though; I’ll get even. When I get home, I’m going to dye all these colorful clothes tan!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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July 18, 2016 · 2:23 pm

The Secret Lives of Deadbeats…

I love that new animated movie “The Secret Lives of Pets.” I wanted to see it so desperately that I made my husband take me…without any kids for cover. He wanted to rent a couple of fresh faced kiddos to make it look like we weren’t just going to that movie ourselves, but I made him go without an age escort.

It may have been an error, though. Because now I think he’s beginning to wonder what I do all day long on my summer break. He leaves the house for work each day just like the owners of the pets in the movies and then the pets get into all kinds of trouble all day instead of accomplishing anything.

Since we went to the movie, he’s been questioning me rather closely on my activities during the day. Now, this is bad, because not all of my activities in a day could be termed as “useful.”

He went to work one morning, inviting me to have a good day and adding, “There are some clothes that need washing and a couple of things to be straightened up in the family room. I presume you’re getting up now?”

“You bet,” I say, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow on the bed. “Anytime now.”

He has no choice but to leave it at that…after all, he can’t be late for work. But I know the inquisition as to what I have been doing will come when he gets home. I must in some fashion be ready for that.

That night, sure enough, the first thing he did when he came in the door was to ask, “Did you get those clothes washed?”

“Well, I started to, but I was interrupted and never got back to it,” I answered reluctantly.

“What interrupted you?”

“Well, I sat down for a few minutes and went to sleep,” I told him, “but I was just so tired from all the cleaning I did.”

“Oh, you did some cleaning?” he said, sounding more impressed.

“Yes, I cleaned the floor,” I said. “It was all sticky from the pop I spilled.”

“How did you spill pop on the floor?” he was suspicious again.

“I spilled it while chasing the dog,” I tried to explain.

“And why were you chasing the dog?”

“Because I had taken out my partial and when I looked down at her, she was wearing it in her teeth,” I answered. “And of course, after I cleaned the floor, it was necessary to spend a couple of hours sterilizing my partial.”

“So after that, you couldn’t get back to the laundry?”

“Absolutely, that’s just what I intended to do,” I hesitated.

“But?”

“Well, I was kind of tired after chasing the dog and cleaning the floor, so….”

“So you took another nap,” he shook his head as he walked away.

Now he’s a bigger believer in the secret life of deadbeats than ever before. And I’m so tired from trying to convince him otherwise, that I need another nap!

 

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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July 11, 2016 · 3:35 pm

Following the fashion…after a fashion.

Nothing is more depressing for me than to go shopping for clothes. It’s not just a matter of not having the body for the fashions…I also have no fashion sense. I just can’t visualize how something on a hanger is going to look on me. Hence, I have been known to make some…oh, let’s call them “fashion faux paux”

The first thing you will notice when you go clothes shopping today is that the small, petite and medium sizes are pretty cute, but the large, extra-large, and candidate-for-a-tent sizes never look all that attractive. If I’m already of a rather large size, why would I want bright orange flowers pasted across my belly or worse, my backend? Give me the delicate and dainty pink rosebuds you put on the small dress, please!

On a recent trip through the latest summer fashions, I noticed an alarming trend. I found a beautiful pattern of a dress and it even had larger sizes, but it left my back almost entirely open. I do not plan to show off my back…I have moles, skin tags and back acne which make it necessary to keep my back covered…so crowds of disgusted people don’t gather.

Moving along, I found some beautiful tops, several colors and mostly my size. They covered my back and left my shoulders completely uncovered. No can do: my shoulders belong in football pads and they are not enhanced by sticking out of the sides of my blouse. Another problem.

The prettiest pattern in the dresses was one that hung long on one side, but came up above the knee on the other side. Now, my legs are not a thing of beauty and putting me in a dress which shows them off at a slant might make the observer wonder if he had been drinking…or if he should start!

Next, I found some beautiful dresses and jackets. They fit well and they covered all the right spots. Good, I found something, you’re thinking? You would be wrong. While the dresses were a nice, sedate pattern, the jackets were bright tangerine. All I could think when I looked at these suits was that no one at sea would need a signal flag. They could see me for miles!

I sorted through pants with rips already in them (I make enough of my own, thank you), blouses with chains and beads for a neckline (ow), and beautiful prints that were much too small. And while I looked, I began to get a wonderful idea…what if I started to design my own line of clothes????? Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

Okay, so put your imagination in gear: I would design a dress that was slimming, but didn’t hug my multiple fat rolls, all colors would be tan, khaki or the ever-popular grey. The clothes would cover my neck (too many wrinkles), my shoulders, my back, and my legs. Oh, also, it would have to cover my arms, my wrists and my ankles. The picture this brings to my mind is a kind of a quiet, unimaginative, institution kind of garment that made have been popular at the end of the last century!

I suppose it’s too much to hope that this kind of garment exists anywhere in the stores, so there is only one solution. I will have to start sewing my own fashions. Yes, that is the answer. Now, does anyone know where I could locate a bathing suit pattern with skirts, bloomers and sleeves????

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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July 4, 2016 · 10:00 pm

Farmer Boys

Although my husband and I were both raised on a farm, we are the last generation in our immediate family to do so. My daughters were both raised in a small town and they have since moved on to the Twin Cities, so my grandsons are bona fide “city slickers” by farm standards.

While visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s house in a small town last month, the grandsons were then invited to visit at a small farm nearby. This is when the differences became painfully apparent.

The boys were greeted by two farm dogs when they arrived. The dogs were polite and friendly, checking them out as they arrived on their territory, but the boys were charmed by the fact that they didn’t knock them over like their grandpa’s hunting dog did. Then, the cat joined in, rubbing against their feet as they walked. They seriously wanted to take that friendly farm cat home—to their third floor apartment.

The best was yet to come, though. Standing and lying in the first fence were two cows. Those were bigger than anything those two boys had ever seen. With big eyes and cautious feet, they went around the large livestock with great respect and no interest in approaching them. They were invited to pet the lambs and they did so tentatively, but even these were a little awe-inspiring to a couple of boys who live in the city.

The pigs were fascinating. They were having a nice mud bath when the boys got there and there was nothing they would have liked better than to have joined them. They loved the soft grunting noises and the older one had to be persuaded that these grunts were indeed the oinks that their “Old Macdonald” song had led them to expect.

Their reaction to the chickens was the best, however. They loved the fact that they had found an animal on the farm that was more afraid of them than they were of it. In addition, they were fascinated by the notion that this animal would lay eggs (yes, just like the ones they got from the store). Unfortunately, a quick check of the hen house revealed no eggs at that time, so they tended to look upon the whole egg-laying theory as a kind of an “urban myth” if you’ll forgive the expression.

The chickens proved to be a wild good time. The boys chased them all around the chicken coop and before they were done with the cackling, flapping birds, they had even shaken up the sheep until they joined the race and ended up squeezing themselves out of the henhouse and into the chicken yard via the chicken door flap. They were highly confused by this, but the boys were thrilled. Arthur stuck his head out the window of the chicken coop calling, “Here chicky, chicky, chicky,” with no regard to whether he was addressing chickens or sheep. In all fairness, I think the chickens and sheep were pretty confused too!

Arthur discovered that he could crawl under and climb over most of the fences, and when he was given a dozen eggs laid by the hens he was happy with his visit. He became hysterical when we got home, however, when he saw me crack one of the eggs and put it in food. “The chickens gave me those eggs and you broke it.”

Royce was somewhat quiet after we had come home. He didn’t say too much about the animals and when asked about it, he just said the farm was fine. When it came time for bed that night, however, he said, “Grandma, I don’t want you to be a teacher. I want you to be a farmer.”

“Really?” I replied, my mind obviously not following his.

“Yeah,” he said enthusiastically, “because then you would have all kinds of animals.”

That’s my little farmer boys!

 

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June 28, 2016 · 1:44 pm

Nothing Secure in my Security

I know I’ve spoken before about the topic of security. Mostly, it’s security at the airport, which is in itself, an extremely frightening affair. Those security people are only doing their jobs, I know, but it is terrifying anyway and I’m always afraid I will forget to take off my shoes or the machines will go off because I forgot to properly bag my toothpaste.

Once, at JFK airport in New York, my bag of souvenirs set off the alarms and four security officers were there, just like that. Because I was so shook, I couldn’t remember the combination lock on my case and it took me three tries before it finally opened. They were getting out a crowbar when I finally got it open and I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that they were going to use the crowbar on the suitcase…not me!

My bout with security this time came at a taping of the Stephen Colbert show in New York. Roy had been looking forward to going to the Stephen Colbert show at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York ever since we decided to go to New York this summer.

The first thing we learned was patience. We were forced to stand in a line on the street outside the theater for over an hour waiting for our tickets (which we had already reserved online.) About the time I thought my legs and feet would sue for separate maintenance, they finally got us in line and handed out…little slips of paper. They also stamped our hands with an obnoxious blue stain. The perky young worker at the theater cheerfully explained that we should come back with the stamps and slips of cheap paper in an hour and a half and we should eat before we came because we would be standing in line again. There were gentlemen wearing side arms standing there watching, so I didn’t say what I was thinking.

When we came back, we were again checked for the slips of paper, the stamps and our “government issued ID.” In the interest of security, I was wearing all my cards and license and my money in a pouch next to my skin and therefore, getting out my driver’s license was somewhat involved and required other people standing in line having to look at my fat belly.

It was then that I realized that we were also going to be fed through a metal detector inside the door. I couldn’t understand it. Why did Colbert need all this security? That’s when it finally hit me: Bernie Sanders was his guest tonight and Bernie Sanders is under the protection of the Secret Service. It wasn’t just some random ex-military guys trying to intimidate us. It was the United States Secret Service who were grim-facedly running people through the metal detector, patting them down and searching purses.

“Have your ID out, your purses open and all metal out of your pockets,” the terrifying man in the bullet-proof vest intoned humorlessly and I stuck my driver’s license in my teeth and made to remove the change from my pouch. Unfortunately, this proved to be a sticky business because the heartburn lozenges I had thoughtfully included in my pack had melted being so near my body heat.

They crumbled and fell out of the pouch so that now, even as I write this, there are some colorful clumps of lozenges stuck to the sidewalk in downtown New York. But the worst was when I had to hand United States Secret Service agents the handful of sticky change that had been glued together with the melted heartburn meds. I’m pretty sure they sanitized their hands quickly after touching that muck!

After that experience, I had a real case of stress heartburn, but that didn’t help me any because the lozenges I should have taken for it were stuck all over my money and licking it off my coins didn’t seem all that appealing! I hate security!

© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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