February 26, 2020
I don’t remember all that much about my father. For some things, I’m not sure if what I recall is an actual memory, or simply the memory of the few things my mother chose to share with me.
It was 1963 when my father died. I was eight and a half years old, and not nearly as sophisticated as the kids of today are at that same age. All kids in those days grew up sheltered. Well, sheltered and maybe something more. I’m not certain if people back in the day considered children as fully sentient human beings.
One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “children should be seen but not heard.” I don’t know if that was a common belief back then, but it’s a very telling one, isn’t it? It almost makes it seem as if children were no more than….the sofa, or an end table. Those are two other objects taking up space that are seen but not heard. I’d have included “a pet” in that analysis, except of course, one hears the dog bark to go out, and in response, one immediately opens the door.
I think that attitude toward children must have been close to being normal for the times, because in the aftermath of my father’s death, there were no psychologists wondering how I was coping with my loss, no teachers who took extra time or care to ask me how I was doing, or listen as I grieved. From what I experienced, there was sympathy for my mother who’d lost her husband—and to be honest, she believed she was due all that sympathy, and so do I. But as much as I loved my mom, she never quite processed that not only had she lost her husband, but her children had lost their father.
I don’t recall there was very much sympathy extended to me, an eight-and-a-half-year-old suddenly fatherless child.
One of the things that I do remember about my dad was that he had a definite nick name for this month we’re nearly done, an adjective that he said in front of the word “February” that was something I was definitely not allowed to say as a child.
February is the month that I recall being the absolute worst of the winter months. It was the coldest, and the snowiest. There’d be the odd glimmer of spring here and there—and then that promise would be snatched away, as old man winter would strike again.
I almost feel as if this particular February in which we’re living is a blast from the past. Only two days ago, on Monday, the sun shone all morning, and the temperature reached a balmy forty-nine degrees. As I drove into the city that’s east of here, I noticed how almost all of the snow was gone. Yes! The groundhogs had gotten it right. Spring was about to arrive!
This morning, the forecast calls for four to six inches of snow, with the temperature headed for 32, but feeling more like 21. Really? Mother Nature, you’re really going to dump all that darned kaka on us this close to spring?
That woman, in my estimation, has a warped sense of humor.
So as I sit here, writing this, I peer around the edges of my new, very large monitor, and can take just a moment to appreciate the beauty of clean, white snow drifting earthward from heaven. I can appreciate the beauty of the flakes, and can even imagine soft, soothing music to accompany the display. For about two minutes.
Then I just want the kaka and the cold to go away. It’s going to be March in just a few days. And although, yes, I’ve always said winter here is October to March inclusive, the truth is that March is when, in my heart and on the calendar, spring begins.
It really can’t happen fast enough.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
February 19, 2019
Where we live, here in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada, I can’t say that it’s been a particularly bad winter. Though we’d been warned that it would be, that there would be a lot of snow and a lot of very cold days, we seem to have dodged that double-headed bullet. For the most part. There has been some snow, and a few days where we were at below zero, Fahrenheit, temperature-wise. But those cold and snow-laden days have been interspersed with a handful of milder days, resulting in what snow we’ve had, melting.
My daughter and I did take advantage of one exceptionally cold Saturday by tackling a task that had needed doing for some time: cleaning out the freezer.
The ice build-up in my freezer made interior of the appliance resemble an iceberg. Believe me when I say I actually hung my head in shame. It’s not a big freezer, either, but it’s big enough for us. It had been a few years since I’d tended to it properly. While the iceberg didn’t threaten our ability to open and shut the thing, it had assimilated the small basket, rendering it stationary.
We needed that cold day in order to put the contents of the freezer outside (we used our blue boxes to hold it all) where they could maintain their frozen state. Then it was simply matter of slowly pouring hot water (from the tap) on the worst of the ice, then bailing out the water and ice chunks and then using the spin mop for what couldn’t be scooped.
I had envisioned hours spent doing this job, but it didn’t even take a full hour. Now the basket is free and can move again, and we have more space than we had, space to be used to take advantage of bargains.
I had reorganized the contents of this freezer a couple of years ago, just before David retired. At that time, we didn’t know how long it would be before he began to receive payments from the his company pension plan. So I spent the couple months ahead buying meat, and I instituted a very anal storage program.
To this day, in my freezer, are five reusable shopping totes: one each for beef, pork, chicken, and hamburger as well as one for things like bacon, seafood, and frozen entrees. I find this is an excellent system because I know where things are, specifically. This means that when I want to pull out a roast of beef, or some stewing beef, or a pork roast, I know exactly where to find it.
That’s not excessively anal for a woman who prints out her grocery list from an excel spread sheet every week. The items are listed in the order I expect to find them in the grocery store, and I even have the estimated price I expect to pay beside each item. And yes, I stick that sucker on a clip and zoom down the aisles in my mobility cart to fetch them.
I considered cleaning out that freezer a major job, but with both of us working together it was accomplished quickly.
And it almost seems to me that this winter is going to be over just as quickly, too. I know we haven’t had it as bad as so many others, including those of you in the southern United States who seemed to have gotten whacked by snow and ice storms a lot this year. I’m not complaining about our unexpectedly mild winter, but I am curious. Since I know it has been a better winter than expected, why am I so eager to be done with it?
It must be something innate within me, but maybe, not just in me. I think racial memory connects us all to the desire to survive, to thrive, to leave behind the season of hibernation and bounce into the season of new life.
I feel an almost desperate need for spring, for the sight of early sprouting, beautiful blooms and rich green grass. I hunger for the blue skies and warm sunshine that will help nurture the life growing all around us.
And oh, how I long for the scent of lilacs and lilies of the valley once more.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
Where we live, here in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada, I can’t say that it’s been a particularly bad winter. Though we’d been warned that it would be, that there would be a lot of snow and a lot of very cold days, we seem to have dodged that double-headed bullet. For the most part. There has been some snow, and a few days where we were at below zero, Fahrenheit, temperature-wise. But those cold and snow-laden days have been interspersed with a handful of milder days, resulting in what snow we’ve had, melting.
My daughter and I did take advantage of one exceptionally cold Saturday by tackling a task that had needed doing for some time: cleaning out the freezer.
The ice build-up in my freezer made interior of the appliance resemble an iceberg. Believe me when I say I actually hung my head in shame. It’s not a big freezer, either, but it’s big enough for us. It had been a few years since I’d tended to it properly. While the iceberg didn’t threaten our ability to open and shut the thing, it had assimilated the small basket, rendering it stationary.
We needed that cold day in order to put the contents of the freezer outside (we used our blue boxes to hold it all) where they could maintain their frozen state. Then it was simply matter of slowly pouring hot water (from the tap) on the worst of the ice, then bailing out the water and ice chunks and then using the spin mop for what couldn’t be scooped.
I had envisioned hours spent doing this job, but it didn’t even take a full hour. Now the basket is free and can move again, and we have more space than we had, space to be used to take advantage of bargains.
I had reorganized the contents of this freezer a couple of years ago, just before David retired. At that time, we didn’t know how long it would be before he began to receive payments from the his company pension plan. So I spent the couple months ahead buying meat, and I instituted a very anal storage program.
To this day, in my freezer, are five reusable shopping totes: one each for beef, pork, chicken, and hamburger as well as one for things like bacon, seafood, and frozen entrees. I find this is an excellent system because I know where things are, specifically. This means that when I want to pull out a roast of beef, or some stewing beef, or a pork roast, I know exactly where to find it.
That’s not excessively anal for a woman who prints out her grocery list from an excel spread sheet every week. The items are listed in the order I expect to find them in the grocery store, and I even have the estimated price I expect to pay beside each item. And yes, I stick that sucker on a clip and zoom down the aisles in my mobility cart to fetch them.
I considered cleaning out that freezer a major job, but with both of us working together it was accomplished quickly.
And it almost seems to me that this winter is going to be over just as quickly, too. I know we haven’t had it as bad as so many others, including those of you in the southern United States who seemed to have gotten whacked by snow and ice storms a lot this year. I’m not complaining about our unexpectedly mild winter, but I am curious. Since I know it has been a better winter than expected, why am I so eager to be done with it?
It must be something innate within me, but maybe, not just in me. I think racial memory connects us all to the desire to survive, to thrive, to leave behind the season of hibernation and bounce into the season of new life.
I feel an almost desperate need for spring, for the sight of early sprouting, beautiful blooms and rich green grass. I hunger for the blue skies and warm sunshine that will help nurture the life growing all around us.
And oh, how I long for the scent of lilacs and lilies of the valley once more.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
February 12, 2019
I’m wearing a bandage on my left thumb. I haven’t needed one on any of my fingers for some time, because I’ve been very careful when cutting things. However, I admit I was a bit tired on Sunday when I was prepping supper.
On the menu was meatloaf, and scalloped potatoes. My husband wanted cooked cabbage as the veggie, but I wasn’t sure if my daughter liked that, so I also made carrots. A lot of cutting was going on!
The cabbage, of course, was the veggie that plotted with the very sharp knife to slice my thumb. I guess my tiredness played a factor, too. Whatever the case, I ended up with a nasty cut on my thumb. Not bad enough to need a doctor or a stitch, but it bled, so I needed to tend to it.
Knives and I on average just don’t get along all that well anymore. Neither do the oven and I, though, touch wood, I haven’t burned myself in a while. I understand that I need to be diligent always, in several areas: walking, using utensils, showering…
Being aware, paying attention, that’s a skill that I’ve honed over the years. You don’t need to fall too many times, walking with a cane, to understand that you must pay attention to every single step you take all of the time. Falls are to be avoided at all costs, and while a part of me acknowledges that some falls will happen, the rest of me contends that they’ll be far fewer than they might otherwise be if I just pay attention.
My friends, getting older is not for the faint of heart.
The cut on my thumb is healing but the process would go faster if I could remember to not use my left thumb to do anything.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that my beloved and I have now two eleven-week-old puppies. Yes, he and my daughter won that one. They just decided it would be so. To be completely fair, she is pitching in. The little guys are used to sleeping upstairs in her bed-sitting room with her chihuahuas, one of whom is the puppy-momma. So she takes them upstairs at bed time (anywhere from 9pm to midnight), and the little ones spend the daytime hours down here with us.
That’s actually quite reasonable. Now, you might ask, “but Morgan, what will you do if your daughter goes away overnight, or for a few days? I can tell you the “overnights” are highly unlikely. She has told me that God has not yet created a man worth kicking her dogs out of her bed for. But the few days will happen likely once or twice a year. She and our second daughter are planning a four-day, three-night jaunt to the Caribbean before the end of this month. And the answer to that dilemma is simple. During the time that she’s away, David will be sleeping up in her room—likely on her sofa—so the animals will not be lonely or distressed.
It doesn’t suck that for those three nights that I will have our new, wonderful Casper bed—and all attending linens—to myself.
The job of training the puppies is ongoing. Three things they need to learn as quickly as possible: to use the outside as their bathroom (though we do have puppy pads for those times when they forget, or can’t get out), they need to learn their names, and they need to heed one command: up.
As it was with their puppy-daddy, Mr. Tuffy, I can’t chase them. They need to know that if I want them then they have to let me pick them up. So far, Bear seems to be the most responsive to this command. Missy—the name we’ve given to the female pup my daughter nicked named Little Miss—isn’t quite there yet. One sentence of digression, here: the girl dog’s name is actually Little Miss Sweetie, and we’re calling her Missy, for short.
Oh, and I don’t know if I mentioned this or not. Bear is more chihuahua than Morkie, and Missy is more Morkie than chihuahua. Bear was born last and for the first two weeks he was the biggest of the three. But he is now half the size of his sister. The hardest thing so far has been trying to convince my husband that Bear is normal sized for him. He’s never going to be really big, and that’s the truth.
Mr. Tuffy was on the small side for a Morkie. I have a feeling that won’t be Missy’s fate. Of course, as with all things, only time will tell.
There is one more thing they’ve both learned in the last week, as well. In the evening when David and I are on our new sofa-recliner, watching a bit of television, that’s the time for them to climb the puppy stairs to the sofa, and sleep on the bed that is the human-mommy.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
I’m wearing a bandage on my left thumb. I haven’t needed one on any of my fingers for some time, because I’ve been very careful when cutting things. However, I admit I was a bit tired on Sunday when I was prepping supper.
On the menu was meatloaf, and scalloped potatoes. My husband wanted cooked cabbage as the veggie, but I wasn’t sure if my daughter liked that, so I also made carrots. A lot of cutting was going on!
The cabbage, of course, was the veggie that plotted with the very sharp knife to slice my thumb. I guess my tiredness played a factor, too. Whatever the case, I ended up with a nasty cut on my thumb. Not bad enough to need a doctor or a stitch, but it bled, so I needed to tend to it.
Knives and I on average just don’t get along all that well anymore. Neither do the oven and I, though, touch wood, I haven’t burned myself in a while. I understand that I need to be diligent always, in several areas: walking, using utensils, showering…
Being aware, paying attention, that’s a skill that I’ve honed over the years. You don’t need to fall too many times, walking with a cane, to understand that you must pay attention to every single step you take all of the time. Falls are to be avoided at all costs, and while a part of me acknowledges that some falls will happen, the rest of me contends that they’ll be far fewer than they might otherwise be if I just pay attention.
My friends, getting older is not for the faint of heart.
The cut on my thumb is healing but the process would go faster if I could remember to not use my left thumb to do anything.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that my beloved and I have now two eleven-week-old puppies. Yes, he and my daughter won that one. They just decided it would be so. To be completely fair, she is pitching in. The little guys are used to sleeping upstairs in her bed-sitting room with her chihuahuas, one of whom is the puppy-momma. So she takes them upstairs at bed time (anywhere from 9pm to midnight), and the little ones spend the daytime hours down here with us.
That’s actually quite reasonable. Now, you might ask, “but Morgan, what will you do if your daughter goes away overnight, or for a few days? I can tell you the “overnights” are highly unlikely. She has told me that God has not yet created a man worth kicking her dogs out of her bed for. But the few days will happen likely once or twice a year. She and our second daughter are planning a four-day, three-night jaunt to the Caribbean before the end of this month. And the answer to that dilemma is simple. During the time that she’s away, David will be sleeping up in her room—likely on her sofa—so the animals will not be lonely or distressed.
It doesn’t suck that for those three nights that I will have our new, wonderful Casper bed—and all attending linens—to myself.
The job of training the puppies is ongoing. Three things they need to learn as quickly as possible: to use the outside as their bathroom (though we do have puppy pads for those times when they forget, or can’t get out), they need to learn their names, and they need to heed one command: up.
As it was with their puppy-daddy, Mr. Tuffy, I can’t chase them. They need to know that if I want them then they have to let me pick them up. So far, Bear seems to be the most responsive to this command. Missy—the name we’ve given to the female pup my daughter nicked named Little Miss—isn’t quite there yet. One sentence of digression, here: the girl dog’s name is actually Little Miss Sweetie, and we’re calling her Missy, for short.
Oh, and I don’t know if I mentioned this or not. Bear is more chihuahua than Morkie, and Missy is more Morkie than chihuahua. Bear was born last and for the first two weeks he was the biggest of the three. But he is now half the size of his sister. The hardest thing so far has been trying to convince my husband that Bear is normal sized for him. He’s never going to be really big, and that’s the truth.
Mr. Tuffy was on the small side for a Morkie. I have a feeling that won’t be Missy’s fate. Of course, as with all things, only time will tell.
There is one more thing they’ve both learned in the last week, as well. In the evening when David and I are on our new sofa-recliner, watching a bit of television, that’s the time for them to climb the puppy stairs to the sofa, and sleep on the bed that is the human-mommy.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
February 5, 2020
There are only three prognosticating rodents that I pay any attention to: Punxsutawney Phil, Staten Island Chuck, and Wiarton Willie. For my American readers, the last one is in Ontario, north of here.
It doesn’t happen very often, but this year all three of them have predicted an early spring. Now, I’m going to ignore the whole “early spring” versus “six more weeks of winter” discussion claiming that, in fact, the two are actually the same amount of tiem. The difference is, of course, what you make it of it. So many choices, so little time!
So no, I won’t go there.
You may recall that I claim that up here in Canada, we really have six months of winter, stretching from October first to March 30th, inclusive. By that reckoning, we are at this moment 4/6th done with the blighted season, with only 2/6th left to go. Again, same time frame it just sounds better to say 4/6th done as opposed to 2/3rd done. My final word on the subject is that spring will come, and in my opinion, the sooner, the better.
We changed our minds about the sofa/recliner we wanted for our living room in that we were going to order it in black, which would mean a 12 to 14-week delivery period. We decided we really didn’t want to wait that long. So this past Saturday, we went to the furniture store, and tried out the one that they had in stock, the very same model only in walnut instead of black. We tried it, we loved it, we bought it.
Our new sofa/recliner arrives today!
Now all we need to make our living room complete is a small round or oval area rug in front of the sofa, and a piece of art to hang on the large blank wall above our television set. My husband is insisting on working on the bedroom next. I’ve asked him if he wouldn’t really rather get someone in to do it for us, but he has refused. He wants to do it himself (with some help from our daughter and possibly, hopefully, he will accept the help of our granddaughter’s fiancé, a lovely young man who works in house construction).
I understand where my beloved’s insistence coming from. I think a lot of men, especially, go through a phase after retirement where they wonder if they have any usefulness anymore. It’s surprised me some that he’s feeling a bit of that, but he is. So, I am not saying anything, except to encourage him to do whatever he wants to do.
We human beings are complicated creatures, aren’t we?
Now, I promised all y’all an update on David’s decision about whether or not he was going to keep one of Tuffy’s puppies. I’m so happy to tell you that he is! You may recall that the litter born on November 28th consisted of three pups – two boys and a girl. One of the boys and the girl are fluffy – more Morkie-like than Chihuahua. The other boy that was more Chihuahua but with some Morkie showing, has Tuffy’s black/brown-beige combination of colors. He also has that look in his eyes that is so like Tuffy. The fluffy boy has been adopted by one of my daughter’s friends. He now lives only a few blocks from here, and there may be play-dates in the future. His adoptive family already loves him to bits.
Our daughter is still trying to find a home for the fluffy girl. I have a feeling that my encouragement to my husband about the love of a puppy being worth the cost of the eventual parting might have taken better than I’d hoped. It’s more than a little possible that if our daughter can’t find another home, he’s going to insist on keeping her, too.
As much as I don’t feel we can manage that, I know my daughter is here, so the extra work isn’t all on me. But more, I don’t believe I have the right to tell him what to do in this, either. If I don’t appreciate someone here telling me what I can or can’t do, then how can I object if he comes to a decision of what he wants?
The answer is: life is short, and I can’t. I’m trying to live by the principle of doing unto others, and I have found the older I get, the easier that is.
I will let you know if indeed he makes that choice. In the meantime, I introduce to you Theodore Bear, son of Tuffy.
He’s already well loved (as is his sister). I’ll keep you informed on the puppy situation.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
There are only three prognosticating rodents that I pay any attention to: Punxsutawney Phil, Staten Island Chuck, and Wiarton Willie. For my American readers, the last one is in Ontario, north of here.
It doesn’t happen very often, but this year all three of them have predicted an early spring. Now, I’m going to ignore the whole “early spring” versus “six more weeks of winter” discussion claiming that, in fact, the two are actually the same amount of tiem. The difference is, of course, what you make it of it. So many choices, so little time!
So no, I won’t go there.
You may recall that I claim that up here in Canada, we really have six months of winter, stretching from October first to March 30th, inclusive. By that reckoning, we are at this moment 4/6th done with the blighted season, with only 2/6th left to go. Again, same time frame it just sounds better to say 4/6th done as opposed to 2/3rd done. My final word on the subject is that spring will come, and in my opinion, the sooner, the better.
We changed our minds about the sofa/recliner we wanted for our living room in that we were going to order it in black, which would mean a 12 to 14-week delivery period. We decided we really didn’t want to wait that long. So this past Saturday, we went to the furniture store, and tried out the one that they had in stock, the very same model only in walnut instead of black. We tried it, we loved it, we bought it.
Our new sofa/recliner arrives today!
Now all we need to make our living room complete is a small round or oval area rug in front of the sofa, and a piece of art to hang on the large blank wall above our television set. My husband is insisting on working on the bedroom next. I’ve asked him if he wouldn’t really rather get someone in to do it for us, but he has refused. He wants to do it himself (with some help from our daughter and possibly, hopefully, he will accept the help of our granddaughter’s fiancé, a lovely young man who works in house construction).
I understand where my beloved’s insistence coming from. I think a lot of men, especially, go through a phase after retirement where they wonder if they have any usefulness anymore. It’s surprised me some that he’s feeling a bit of that, but he is. So, I am not saying anything, except to encourage him to do whatever he wants to do.
We human beings are complicated creatures, aren’t we?
Now, I promised all y’all an update on David’s decision about whether or not he was going to keep one of Tuffy’s puppies. I’m so happy to tell you that he is! You may recall that the litter born on November 28th consisted of three pups – two boys and a girl. One of the boys and the girl are fluffy – more Morkie-like than Chihuahua. The other boy that was more Chihuahua but with some Morkie showing, has Tuffy’s black/brown-beige combination of colors. He also has that look in his eyes that is so like Tuffy. The fluffy boy has been adopted by one of my daughter’s friends. He now lives only a few blocks from here, and there may be play-dates in the future. His adoptive family already loves him to bits.
Our daughter is still trying to find a home for the fluffy girl. I have a feeling that my encouragement to my husband about the love of a puppy being worth the cost of the eventual parting might have taken better than I’d hoped. It’s more than a little possible that if our daughter can’t find another home, he’s going to insist on keeping her, too.
As much as I don’t feel we can manage that, I know my daughter is here, so the extra work isn’t all on me. But more, I don’t believe I have the right to tell him what to do in this, either. If I don’t appreciate someone here telling me what I can or can’t do, then how can I object if he comes to a decision of what he wants?
The answer is: life is short, and I can’t. I’m trying to live by the principle of doing unto others, and I have found the older I get, the easier that is.
I will let you know if indeed he makes that choice. In the meantime, I introduce to you Theodore Bear, son of Tuffy.
He’s already well loved (as is his sister). I’ll keep you informed on the puppy situation.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
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