Jibber-Jabber And The First Best Story Of My Life

I took this picture on my walk this morning and was completely blinded by the sun when I took it. It really was just "point and shoot" because I had no idea what I was shooting although it turns out that the sky is pretty easy to get a picture of, even if you can't see it through the lens. 
I guess because it's so big? 

So, yeah, I got out there and did the walk and it was fine. I didn't feel close to dying although I was hot. Part of my route took me down Main Street in Lloyd where I noted that the restored house is still for sale. It seems that there's more and more "cute" things showing up on the porch and in the yard which I guess is someone's way of trying to improve curb appeal. I'm not sure we have curbs though. You'd think I'd have noticed by now. I also saw that there are TWO porta-potties on Abraham's property across the street from where his house is which would usually indicate some sort of construction about to happen. I also noticed what I think is a new truck in Abraham's yard and I am just hoping that he won the lottery and is building himself a new and stronger house because if not, he may have sold that property to someone who's going to put something commercial on it. Like the GDDG which is right next door. 
Hoo-boy. 

The route I walked was intended to keep me less than a mile from the house because the sky was threatening. By the time I got home, it was seriously thundering and rain had just started to fall. It turned into a downpour and I was so glad I made it home before that started. Since then it's already rained at least twice more. 

It felt a little cooler when I'd finished my lunch, or at least I was cooler, so I decided to go out and dig up some more potatoes. It tickles me that when Maurice sees me putting on my gardening shoes, not to be confused with my walking shoes, she heads on out the back door to meet me outside. She may be crazy but she isn't stupid. She kept me company while I dug potatoes which was a messy business due to the wet dirt and I sweated through my clothes once again. She laid in the shade and kept an eye on me, just in case...well, I don't even know.  Keeled over from heat stroke? What would she do? Dig around in my pocket and find my phone in the ziplock I keep it in when I work in the garden to prevent dirt from getting into the charging port? Take the phone out of my pocket, remove it from the bag and call 911? 
Nah. She'd probably just stand over me and meow. 
I know she is concerned about my wellbeing, though. The sky darkened up again and when it began to thunder, she did indeed meow directly at me and then went and sat closer to the gate so I'd get the message and stop what I was doing and go inside. Between that, and the fact that it was starting to rain, AND that I'd dug up not only some potatoes but also some extremely fierce-looking ants, I decided that was enough for today. Those ants were huge and they were boiling out of the ground. Also, they were very red. I managed not to get stung which was a sort of miracle for which I am grateful. 

I've got the potatoes on an old sheet with the other ones I've dug with a fan on them to dry them out a little. We've eaten a few of the potatoes and they are fine. I do not care to lose them to rot. 

I've got a little experimental project going on here. It's so silly and so simple that I'm a bit hesitant to even mention it but here goes- when I make fruitcakes, I wrap them in cheesecloth which I have soaked in rum and then I wrap them in aluminum foil. That's the way it's generally done, I believe. Cheese cloth is, well, cheese cloth. It's used for many things in a kitchen and it's available in kitchen supply stores and even grocery stores. 

When we had eaten all of our fruitcake last winter, I decided I was not throwing that rummy cheesecloth away and I didn't. I washed it and it came out of the dryer feeling like the nicest cotton gauze. Like, perhaps the sort of cotton gauze that hippie clothes were often made of, but softer. 
Hmmm... I said. What have I here?
And since then, I have been using cut up pieces of that cheese cloth as cleaning cloths and also, sweat rags which are infinitely valuable here. When I'm working outside, I have to have a sweat rag to keep the sweat out of my eyes and off my face. I've used old napkins before and if they are the older, softer, more absorbent ones, those work great. 
But they have met their match with these cheesecloth squares which I just use and wash, over and over again. 
And today, I washed most of a package of unused cheesecloth with the dedicated purpose in mind of using it for all sorts of things that need utmost absorbency and softness. 

Here's the piece I washed today along with a piece that I've been using since winter.

The top one is the older one and it has gone through some bleach loads which is why it's so much whiter than the new one. And because the new one has only been washed and dried once, it has not yet achieved that closer weave. I plan on cutting the new one into good-sized squares or rectangles and hemming them. I can guarantee that they will be used over and over again. With enough of them, I could almost do without paper towels. But that's a long way from happening. Meanwhile, I will be buying more cheesecloth. That package in the picture cost about five dollars, maybe? 

Some of you who are as old as I am, will probably remember Birdseye diapers. These are still made and every new mother should have a few packages, not necessarily to use as diapers, but to use as burp cloths or as we called them around here, spit-up rags. 

These, too would probably make excellent kitchen rags or sweat rags if that's something you could use but for right now, I'm going with the cheese cloth. 

So that's my household tip for the day. Just call me Heloise. 

And I have to add that forty-nine years ago right now I was in labor with my first baby, having no idea whatsoever that labor could be so horrible. It was for me, anyway. It's certainly not for everyone but it is not painless without drugs. I'll just say that. I wanted a home birth and the women who attended me were not trained midwives, but women friends, some of them who had had babies of their own, who wanted very much to be midwives. Armed with a copy of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin, they were by my side for the entire twenty-eight hours of the labor. I finally could not go on one more moment and my then-husband drove me to the hospital, which was about a mile away, where I was checked in, assessed, and sent immediately to the delivery room where the doctor who had done all my prenatal care, delivered the baby. Fast, fast, fast. 

Forty-nine years ago and I remember some of those moments so clearly. So very, very clearly. The memory that always makes me laugh happened after I got to the hospital and the nurse was trying to get me to get up on the exam table and I was so into pushing that I would not stop squatting on the floor to do just that. 
"Get up here on this bed," she said, "Or you're going to have that baby on the floor!" 
"I DON'T CARE!" I roared. And I didn't. 

And that was Hank. My red-headed baby whose arrival immediately put all of that work, all of that pain, into a place that didn't matter and there was nothing that mattered except for him and I knew what love was from that moment on. 

And before supper time, we checked out of the hospital, AMA, and went home where my life and Hank's life too, truly began. 

I was twenty-one, almost twenty-two and I had just met the greatest teacher of my life. 

And that's what's going on within me and without me this evening. Mr. Moon and Owen are at the lake and hopefully, no one's fallen off a roof or lost an arm or a leg to a power saw. I hope they sleep well. I do believe I will. 

Love...Ms. Moon