Grandma and the mouse

One day my mother, who we now call "Grandma," came home from work - yes at 74 she still works three days a week - and smelled a mouse.

When I was growing up in a little house at the edge of a small town, surrounded by corn fields and a farm implement salvage yard, we often had mice and, too horrible to speak about, their larger cousins, in our home. They found any cranny to invade and bear their young. The rats crawled into the walls and scratched at night. We were surrounded and overwhelmed.

Today, better armed, emotionally and financially, when any member of my family smells a rat, we freak. We go into full retreat.

So, Grandma not only smelled the mouse, she saw evidence of it everywhere. On the stove, in a drawer. It was too much.

She threw out all the food in her house and cleaned her refrigerator and kitchen like she was preparing for surgery. The dog now eats outside. My sister and her children stopped by for a visit recently and ended up staying with another relative, "just so we could eat."

She has a plan, though. She goes to Wendy's and buys a baked potato, a chicken sandwich, and chili. From this she can make several meals. She has bought a few TV dinners, but generally frowns upon such sterile fare. She does have a nearby Jewel store and appreciates the bakery and deli. Actually, she seems to be making sort of a game out of the situation. How long can she go without cooking?

Maybe this is some sort of rebellion after having been responsible for feeding, first, her younger siblings and then her four children. And then her ailing husband.

What I do know is this: I can tolerate a mouse in the house, confident that one of the three cats who I share my space with will catch it sooner rather than later. If a rat were to enter my home, however, I think the memories would overtake me. I would leave. My mother's reaction to the mouse does seem extreme, but I do understand where she is coming from!

miracle cure

"Did you soak it in Epsom salts?"

When I call my mother and complain of any pain, soreness, or ache, she asks me this question. This woman believes in the power of Epsom salts and claims that they can cure many an ill. She has taken them internally for gastrointestinal problems and has filled the bathtub with them so she could have a good "soak."

The source of their cure? They "draw."

She remembers her grandmother administering a dose of "salts" for constipation and other ills. Living on the rice paddies of Arkansas, my family ingested or soaked in salts as a first course of action, often preempting a visit to the doctor.

My mother has suggested the Epsom-salts cure for me more times than I can count. She doesn't know that I don't purchase them or soak in them regularly.

On Monday morning, my dogs, as usual, woke me at 5 a.m. whining to be fed. Lucy, my 8-year-old chocolate Lab, loves to eat. With Lucy in a feeding frenzy and me in a sleep stupor, we collided. Her leg bent back my little toe and I heard it snap. I doubled over in pain as I filled her bowl with chicken and rice kibble.

Then I sat down and looked at the damage. The toe was twisted, blue, and swollen. I was sure it was broken, but limped back to bed and hoped for the best. After my shower, I buddy taped the damaged digit to the next toe and actually made it through a full workday and karate class.

After class, however, the toe was red, purple, and huge. I put ice on it and kept it elevated. On Tuesday, I realized that I would have to go to the doctor, so I pulled out a foot soak that I had recently purchased to try to make my feet more presentable. As I filled a tub with water, I read the label. The soak's main ingredients are salts.

The warm water felt good and I was reading something pleasant, so I think I soaked my feet for over an hour.

When I woke up Wednesday morning, the swelling, bruising, and pain had subsided. I concluded that the toe was not broken, but only sprained. The "salt cure" had drawn out the inflammation and the bruising. If the swelling returns, I will go to the doctor, but tonight I'm hoping for the best and believing that great grandma Wheeler knew a thing or two. I'm happy my mother passed this wisdom on to me, although it has taken me many years to apply it.

open your mouth

Sometimes when we see abuse or neglect we feel powerless.

Please remember that if we don't say it is wrong then that says it is right.

Keep an open mouth!

"None of us are free if one of us is chained."
"If you don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right."
–Solomon Burke -
None of us are Free

"Everybody's gotta fight to be free"
—Tom Petty
Refugee

Amen.

Spring on the horizon

Click on the photo to see a close up of a beautiful spring moon. Soon we will be sitting in sunshine!

pretty sad

I feel bad.

Since my last post I have gotten a new computer (another story) and thus a new Internet browser. I actually had to Google "Coffee and a Cubicle" as I had forgotten the exact URL for my blog.

Anyway, you might ask, what, after a five-month hiatus, has inspired the Cubicle Queen to once again pick up her mouse and blog?

It is shoe wipes. Yes, shoe wipes. Sorry.

If, like me, you live in the midwest or other variable-weather region, you often arrive at your cubicle with shoes that would just not do if you were to be suddenly called upstairs. I often slop through ice-melt, slush, mud, dew, and all matter of earthly nastiness before sitting down to my computer in the morning. My shoes look, literally, like they've been dragged through the mud.

I was at Walgreen's today looking for an expectorant cough syrup (yet another story) when I passed by the shoe-care aisle. "God my shoes look nasty," I thought, so I stopped to browse the inventory.

I spied Kiwi shoe wipes. They come in a little plastic pouch with the inevitable pop-up flap that releases moist wipes. I'm standing there thinking, "these are probably just water with a dash of alcohol. I bet all the various 'wipes' scattered all through this store really have the same ingredients, whether they be for you bottom or your counter or your shoes."

But, I do have nasty shoes, so I decided to try them. I am totally surprised to tell you that they are great. They are a small cloth with a hint of oily substance mixed in with an effective cleaner. Just several strokes across my shoes and the results are, well, amazing. After trying them out, I dashed downstairs to demonstrate them to my husband. I told him he could have this packet for his desk drawer and I'd get me another.

"Just think," I told him, "you get to work and notice mud and crud all over your shoes… and all you have to do is whip out a Kiwi wipe and you are ready to start your day with confidence!"

He tossed the little packet onto the coffee table and turned back to the Super Bowl.

knee deep in catalogs

I haven't felt much like writing this summer. I have been knee deep in editing and proofreading the undergraduate and graduate catalogs. The phone book and the schedule of classes have been hovering in the wings.

The printer who has produced our catalogs and class schedules for the past 15 years went out of business. Finding a new, reliable printer has been quite a task. Then, the new printer had exact requirements for how they received the files.

We do have a new president on campus who promises to bring change and excitement. I believe this is a good thing, and I am looking forward to a new era at Bradley!

In the fall I hope to back to blogging… and back to normalcy.

Thick as Flies

I walked home from lunch the other day in tremendous heat and humidiy. As I gained the steps, I noticed flecks on the window behind the mini-blinds. I walked in the back door, lifted the blinds, and realized these flecks were a bevy of flies.

The spectacle of 60 to 70 flies hanging on my kitchen window rapidly took away my appetite. So, I rolled up a newspaper and began swatting away. Whack, splat, whack, splat. I got out window cleaner to tidy up the carnage splayed across the glass and soon realized that ammonia-based cleaner did double duty: it suffocated flies and cleaned up their carcasses at the same time.

After work that day, I called up my mother to see if she too was overrun with flies. She had not suffered the same plague, it seemed, but she did recall her childhood when flies were a pestilance.

"They were thick," she recalled. "Sanitation was bad and flies were everywhere." She said she would help her mother cover everything in the kitchen before spraying it down with a pesticide.

"Thick clouds of flies - they would be everywhere," she said.

She also opined that my recent infestation could have been caused by eggs hatching in the windowsill. I suspect it is from the screen that the dogs broke out, however.

Whatever the cause, a thick swarm of flies in the kitchen is one of the grossest things I have encountered recently.

It rivals only the flying ants that we had in our basement cubicles a few weeks ago.