Some family tales are not stories as much as they are embellished non-fiction shaped by archetypes and character studies. It isn’t always the spoken words that are relevant, but the unspoken history shared by the orator and the audience. Without the history, it is more difficult to discern whether the action is predictable, ironic or just plain dark.

My grandmother’s hands resemble lengths of knotted rope. They have looked that way as far back as I can remember. Frayed with age, swollen knuckles comically out of proportion to otherwise slender digits. It’s amazing they remain capable of grasping at straws much less fastening the clasp of a shiny bauble, but like others marked by the Great Depression, she persists. I’m not sure if it is the hardship that fueled her or a sour feistiness that sometimes impairs her ability to see beyond the current moment.

After my Grandfather passed away, she continued living alone, tackling day to day tasks, occasionally interrupted by moments of shear madness.

Once, when she was unable to to turn the lever of the can opener, she reached for a old fashioned meat cleaver, one of the few relics remaining from grandfather’s career as a butcher, and brought the blade crashing down on a can of corn. There was corn on the counter. The floor. The ceiling. A single serving remaining in the bottom of the can. Maybe it was a fit of madness, or the realization of being alone after more than fifty years of co-dependency marriage. Either way, the roots of impetuosity were deep.

After an unwelcome encounter with a rodent, she took the offensive. She tried a traditional approach and purchased a package of spring-loaded mousetraps. She set a few, but manipulating the spring with her gnarled fingers was difficult, so she opted for sticky strips.

One mouse foiled by the adhesive strip, was caught by his back foot..When she she saw her trophy, she just couldn’t bare “to let the little fellow suffer any longer”. So she put on her garden gloves, picked up the trap, mouse dangling upside down by a single limb, and beat him to a bloody pulp against the side of her house.

When my brother and his wife concluded their family was complete, it was decided that he would go under the knife and take one for the team. Although he is embedded in the DIY culture, my brother concluded decommissioning the family jewels was a task best left to a professional. The professional solicited was not as experienced in vasectomies as he was in blood pressure cuffs and the results left my brother feeling more sore during the recovery process than is typical for this routine procedure.

While seated ever so delicately watching television, his rambunctious two-year-old son stepped on his swollen sac escalating his discomfort level to unbearable. Since his doctor failed to prescribe any painkillers, he resorted to self-preservation and raided the kid’s medicine cabinet. The only pain medication available was a liquid prescribed for an ear ache. He self-medicated directly from the bottle, thoughtfully ignoring dosage recommendations.

As he stood up, a few minutes later, the combined effects of codeine and an empty stomach caused him to pass out and fall back onto the sofa. Petrified, my SIL called 911, and then hung up before speaking with the operator because he regained consciousness. 911 called back before dispatching assistance and scolded her for not staying on the line.

The job that afforded my said shit-hole, was like many jobs when you are trying to establish yourself in a profession. Low paying. Life isn’t fair and most people can expect to pay minimal dues before reaching their goals.

To make things work, I lived frugally. I was fortunate not to have a car payment, and rarely ate out. I didn’t have internet, a cell phone, or cable. I’m not trying to poor mouth, or tell one of those awesome When I was a kid I had to walk five miles backwards in the snow barefoot just to get to school stories, because, frankly I’m not that funny. It’s more accurate to describe it as a When I moved into my apartment I was so cheap… stories, because I managed to save money living there.

Most of my furniture was used, recycled or in one case swiped off a loading dock. My mother graciously gave me an old TV. This worked okay for a year or two with a coat hanger for an antenna, but eventually it died. By this time, I was involved with the Better Half and I knew if he found out the TV was dead, he would go all guy on me and start checking online for reviews and taking me to electronic stores to find a replacement. Not that it wouldn’t have been a nice gesture, but the thing is, we weren’t spending a hell of a lot of time watching TV together. It would have been the IDEA of not having one rather than the necessity. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the dead TV. With a kick ass stereo, a stack of paperbacks, and a drawing table, I didn’t need one.

So I left the dead TV on the shipping crate that served as my entertainment center for eighteen more months until the Better Half and I chose to co-habit. It wasn’t until boob tube didn’t make the move that he found out out it hadn’t worked in over a year.

It’s time to revisit my salad days. Life ebbs and flows. It is time again to bring a TV devotion to a halt. Lately it has been serving as something of a surrogate to real relationships with real people. Blame it on the weather. Blame it on eating alone. Blame it on peer pressure. It doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s evidence of a lack of restraint on my part. Besides if have to look for something to watch, I should probably be spending my time on other things.

During one of these self-induced scrambles I scalded my wrist with hot coffee. I was waiting at the counter of one of those carefully branded coffee boutiques, and rattled, because it took longer to place the order. In my mind the great scone debate of 2009 lasted five minutes, not thirty seconds, so in my head I was one of THOSE high maintenance customers. When my order was up, two tall coffees and supposedly a cinnamon chip scone, I did as I always do. I balanced one cup of coffee on the lid of the other to pick up both cups with my left hand, while using my right hand to carry the pastry bag.

So this time the cups weren’t balanced as well, and the top cup fell over as I stepped away from the counter. It splashed my shirt, maybe covered is a better description, and scalded my right wrist before the cup fell to the floor. Groan.

It’s unlikely I would have scalded myself, had I not created this artificial pressure to get out of the way. Ironically, in an effort to dispel attention away from me, I attracted more.

When we returned home, I perused the interwebs for treatment options and quickly discovered I box of bandaids does not constitute a first aid kit. In typical DIY fashion, I confiscated one of the Better Half’s cotton t-shirts, and used it for bandages, sterilizing it in the microwave first. Instead of the painter’s tape, I opted for electrical to hold the cotton strips in place. It looks like Bob the Builder was hired to do the costume design for Xena, Warrior Princess. Cheap, tacky, and strangely effective.

The Better Half is concerned about scarring. I’m concerned about ability to go on as if nothing ever happened. Both of us might be ready to concede the necessity of a decent first-aid kit.

When Better Half and I got engaged, we were cranberry sauce novices. Our combined experience was limited to the mysterious gelled substance that made a disgusting slurping noise as it was disturbed from the the vacuum that sealed it in the can. If it wasn’t cylinder shaped and ribbed, it wasn’t a cranberry sauce, it was some sort of fancy impostor.

On impulse, we purchased a bag of ripe cranberries, We assuming people purchased them for snacking on because they were next to the grapes in the produce department, and the dried cranberries tasted pretty good, and heck they had fiber, you can’t really go wrong with fiber.

We popped a few cranberries into our mouths, which immediately caused my face to contort like one of those scary denture-less old ladies you see in the hospital wearing the backless gown wandering down the hallway trying to remember where she parked her Buik, then I spit them into the sink and threatened to lick the shag carpet to eliminate the memory of the unfortunate assault on my taste buds. We decided those berries might not be ripe enough, and chose darker berries for taste test number two, and dude what the hell, those were bitter too. We threw away the bag.

Fast forward to the following year, and my aunt invites us to join her for Thanksgiving dinner. Like a gracious guest who is relieved not be saddled with the burden of cooking for eight, I ask if there is anything we can bring?

Yup, you guessed it. A bag of fresh cranberries. I asked if she was sure, and the Better Half went into a lengthy diatribe about the bitter truth about cranberries. Unconvinced, she insists. Fresh. Cranberries. In. A. Bag.

Fine.

So, we show up with fresh cranberries. In a bag. My aunt tells us, oh the cranberry sauce is easy. Just follow the instructions on the bag. Better Half gives me the, you can’t turn shit into shinola eye-roll, and I think to myself, THERE WERE INSTRUCTIONS? ON THE BAG? FOR REALS? I am such an idiot.

It was easy. Sugar repairs a host of ills when it comes to cranberries. But they aren’t really ill, just misunderstood. It’s easier to make cranberry sauce from scratch than it is to coax that gelatinous glob out of the can….although homemade is ridge-free and I find that suspect.

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In high school there was a female student, the guys referred to as Peanut Butter, supposedly because her legs were easy to spread. Classy bunch, teenagers. In retrospect, I wonder if the rumor was even true, since no one tells the truth about sexual conquests at that age.

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The small town I grew up in declared itself to be the Peanut Capital. If you look the web, there are plenty small communities that think so highly of themselves in Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and even Australia.

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I knew a guy who ate peanut butter and tuna fish sandwiches. The salty sweet combination makes palate sense, but I’ve never liked tuna in a can. The smell is too strong. Fresh seared tuna? Save me a seat.

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Peanut Butter is useful for removing chewing gum from hair.

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It’s the only food item in the pantry I don’t offer guests. It isn’t based on a deep seated spiritual belief that peanut butter is the holiest foods from childhood. I never saw the image of the Virgin Mary in the shadowy scoops of creamy goodness. Mostly, it’s because I eat it straight out of the jar for breakfast on those mornings I don’t feel motivated enough to scramble eggs or cook oatmeal. I used to chase it with milk gulped directly from the carton….Yeah cliché. Not any more, though. So feel free to ask for a glass of milk. It’s safe. No cooties.

And so it began with a sliver of peeling paint on the deck rail, and a phone call. Two separate impetuses leading in opposite directions. The phone call I prefer not to consider, but the peeling paint provided a way to keep my hands busy on the phone. Phone calls require an enormous amount of pacing on my part, not that each calls is worthy of such abstract busyness, but I find it almost impossible to stand still while listening on the phone. Perhaps it is the embedded notion of feeling the constant need to multi-task or maybe just a non-threatening version of attention deficit disorder. Either way, I stood at the rail lifting paint with my fingernail until a turned a small imperfection into a gaping problem as I exfoliated the deck rail of sheets of paint exposing the raw wood.

I created the problem so it seemed only logical I correct it. I set about the business of scraping and sanding with the intent of priming and repainting. It would be my side project. A maintenance project undeserving of adult supervision, because damn it, I can paint, sand, and clean up after myself.

All was fine until the Better Half (BH) intervened and offered to help. I offered a paint scraper and resumed working. After ten minutes or so, he suggested replacing the deck flooring (a.k.a. my current assignment is too tedious and there is no credit to be gleaned from simple maintenance, I want a more glamourous, or perhaps supervisory position). I never solicited his help in this. I took responsibility for defacing my own property. I agreed and told him to do the prep and planning if he could finish in a week or less. It’s a small deck and the flooring has water damage, even if it isn’t dangerous or rotting. I continued scraping and sanding as he ran the numbers. He wants to replace the rail as well, but I refuse. The rail is usable, not worthy of a landfill, and I have already spent hours on sanding and scraping.

The next morning, we rented a truck and purchased supplies. This took four hours. Next, BH started some mild mannered demolition pulling up deck boards, as I continued sanding and scraping. During demo, BH discovers we have water damage to the siding, and feels we need professional help. I concur.

Again, he offers to help scrape paint, while we wait for the professionals. This time, he works maybe twenty minutes, before deciding this is still too tedious and thankless, and suggests we take the railing apart for better scraping. Fine, I say, label the parts so we can put it back together after painting. Once again labeling is too tedious, but I refuse to budge on this. Shit always happens, and we usually finish projects like this weeks behind schedule. He relents but walks away before demo is complete leaving me to pry out rusty nails, and continue scraping.

He lines up a repair guy, and I spend 8 hours painting primer on the rail parts. Gotta love those four sided spindles. Two guys show up for repairs and BH spends most of the day supervising and talking with them. I’m a little put out by this. Not the talking or the chest puffing, but the fact they seem to think as the token female my job drop whatever I’m doing to listen. If they don’t want to work fine, but preventing me from getting work done is a deal breaker. This is BH’s domain. I walk away to paint the deck rails. Throughout the day, I complete 4 loads of laundry, cook breakfast, straighten up, clean paintbrushes, rip a few boards, clean the pond filter, and cook dinner. The BH, well he supervises, and he watches me paint.

That night at midnight, a thunderstorm moves and dumps almost an inch of rain. Nothing is protected except for a few pieces of siding. I wake up to the sound of thunder, and walk through the house muttering golfing words. There is an eave, but the siding is removed, exposing the house innards to moisture. The next morning all is okay, but there is more damage exposed that must be repaired. Groan. The men work until the lunch, when the rain returns.

Today the rain continues, the work is incomplete, and it is too rainy for me to finish painting the rail. I guess I’ll read a book instead. At least there is no structural damage, and the water damage will be repaired and the siding replaced, though I will have to paint the siding as well once repairs are complete. Thankfully this isn’t one of those second mortgage repair jobs, it simply an inconvenient one, but aren’t they all. Who knew lifting the corner of some loose paint could stimulate the economy so effectively?

They are for scraping, sanding, priming, painting, plumbing, pressure washing, and eating chinese food. So these pants, well, they haven’t won me any brownie points with my Better Half (or just Other Half, depending upon the moment). Meh. Sexuality and functionality aren’t exactly codependent.

Unplanned repairs required renting a truck at the home improvement store. Someone, who shall remain nameless, has reservations about strapping 16 foot pressure treated timbers to the roof of his precious SUV, but maybe they aren’t completely unfounded…Oh, yeah I remember almost being sucked out of the sunroof when we tied a queen sized mattress to the top. MMMM my bad. The Better Half and the Home Improvement store guy start loading our lumber on the truck. This isn’t one of those standard pick-ups you see good old boys pulling into diners. This is a truck on steroids with a wiener shrinking eight foot cargo bed. I know. What were those yahoos thinking. And the clincher? The bed is only certified to haul 3000 lbs. ‘Scuse me, why did you spend extra money on the engine only to restrict hauling capacity for cargo, who are you a a bank?

As they loaded the lumber, I stood off to the side in my rusty brown non-lycra work pants. That is until the Better Half decided I would be of more use in the truck bed stacking boards. Sure…The bumper and tailgate were taller than factory equipment. The bed was not standard equipment, but industrial grade after market reinforced steel. Great for stability, but sucky for catapulting short legs. I stepped onto the bumper effortlessly, but there was no way my spandex free pants would allow me to raise my leg over the tailgate.

Using my hands to walk along the truck bed, I pulled my body over the tailgate until my feet cleared and resumed shifting lumber to the amusement if my better half and the HI loader dude. All behaved as if nothing unusual occurred.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, the Better Half remarked, “I think I like those pants.”

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In lieu of what has become the habitual death watch post, I offer a recess which includes charming pictures of my non-human allies over the course of this void.

First, is Delilah*, a charming golden retriever who keeps my loyal friend, and spare bed provider, Marsha* company on cold nights. I like staying with Marsha. It’s relaxing, and informal and did I mention? She bakes. Delilah* does not bake, but she is genuinely glad to see you.

Delilah is generally low key, until she wants your undivided attention, at which point she brings a love offering consisting of a destroyed single-eyed-stuffed-weinerdog or perhaps a pair of dirty socks from the hamper. Pawing your leg is her pull-out-all-the-stops move.

Avoid all open mouth kissing attempts and lascivious advances, as Delilah has been known to drink directly from the toilet. Ask me how I know. Well…Delilah woke me at o’fuck thirty lapping water from the commode, and then expressed her gratitude with an attempted good night kiss, as I lay in the bed half-asleep. Love knows no boundaries….but she seems unaware I don’t really love her that way, I just like her a lot, though maybe shaving the fur off her rear end confused the issue and sent the wrong signal.

This is Delilah’s* house mate, S.O.S*.

Don’t be fooled by the dramatic lighting. S.O.S* is a one woman cat. I am not that woman. My kitty sense has taught me to give characters like S.O.S* a wide berth.

She had the misfortune of hiding under a dresser one evening and getting locked in our bedroom. She was fine until 3 AM, when I heard scratching at the door. Drowsy me assumed the scratching was coming from OUTSIDE the door, so I made hissing sound and muttered stop. It worked until 4 AM, and then there was a repeat, and at 5AM. After 6 AM it was apparent the cat was in the room with us. After she tried to gnaw off my husbands ankle, we decided it was best to get up and make coffee.

This charming creature is Dakota*.

He’s a frequent visitor at Marsha’s*. Dakota* may not look the part, he’s so humble, but he is a movie star. Currently he’s working on a zombie movie with W00dy Harels0n and Matth3w McC0naugh3y. I never said he was discriminating about selecting scripts. He has much to learn about show-biz, but he is very resourceful in the kitchen. During my stay, he swiped 2 loafs of bread and a serving of bread pudding with lemon sauce. Dakota* has good taste in food.

Last but not least, is Gorgeous George*.

Gorgeous George* turned out to be an error in judgement. He is a green anole, I caught in a sego palm outside my MIL assisted living facility. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Small lizard that turns from green to brown. Food from the pet store, plastic cage. Easy to catch. I should have put more time into research before I brought George* further north. It seems Gorgeous George is high maintenance. He needs a 10 gallon tank, special UV lighting, and a misting system.

I am an idiot. I caught a perfectly happy lizard, transported him almost 400 miles, and brought a solar powered reptile to a colder climate. Anyone else care to sit beside me in that hand-basket?

George hasn’t been consuming his pet store food, and I don’t intend for him to starve to death. While SOMEONE on four legs would love to become intimately acquainted with him it seems somehow wrong to witness natural selection on the tile floor between refrigerator and the swivel bar stool.

Today, when the temperature peaks, Gorgeous George* will be released into the yard edge, with plenty of cover from the birds. Sorry George*, but if I keep you caged you won’t last long enough to return to the south. I need not worry about the source of my bad karma any longer.

* names changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I lack awareness of all things fashionable. I favor functionality over stylishness. You can’t climb a kitchen cabinet in a dress or scale a fence, so I have little use for feminine attire. In the interest of pragmatism, I keep a black pant suit in the closet, just in case. Fortunately, in case means happy celebrations, as well as, necessary evils.

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I last wore the suit to my mate’s aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding celebration. Fifty years. It’s difficult to comprehend spending half a century with the same person, especially since I haven’t been alive that long. Having donned business casual for the celebration of life, it is only appropriate the pendulum should be dictated by gravity to swing in the opposite direction.

After issuing congratulations to the aunt and uncle, we made an impromptu decision to visit my brother unannounced.

As we approached the door, my brother walked out, and said in an stiff tone, “Can I help you?”.

Not one to ignore a tense vibe, I presumed we came to visit at a bad time. I continued to approach with the intent of speaking and departing quickly. I said something to the effect of being in town, and thought I would say hello but since it seemed inconvenient, we would be leaving.

Upon recognizing my voice, my brother’s face relaxed and he smiled. “Ah, shit! I didn’t recognize you all dressed up. I can’t see as well when I wear my glasses. I thought you guys were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Come on in and visit.”

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It feels weird selecting appropriate attire for a service that isn’t yet necessary. I don’t think the boy scouts were referring to funerals, when they coined the motto about the importance of preparedness. So much for being prepared. Wednesday AM we return to wait.