the empty nest

scooter moved out. i guess he's entitled. he's nearly 22 years old. and it's probably admirable that he wants to be on his own. moved into an apartment about twenty minutes from home.

in the month since he made this decision he's been accumulating things. a couch he found on craigslist. a dining table and chairs he bought at hon's favorite antique store. (not that he paid an antique type price, it was really a pretty good buy.) boxes and bags of things he bought at walmart and target. dishes. coffee maker. toaster. towels. kitchen utensils. then he found a nearly new entertainment center at the local goodwill thrift store. he was set to go. nearly a month before the apartment was available.

scooter's moved out before. into the dorms at college. that was easy to take. it wasn't far away. and even though he was away from home, it wasn't like he'd gone out on his own. he was still a college student. coming home for a meal. coming home to do laundry. and he was still legally a dependant.

this time it's different. likely this is the permanent deal. he's gone for good. hon and i must accept the fact that we're done with kids. they're all gone. likely. and now we have to learn to talk to just each other again. and entertain each other again. that could be tough. but we'll manage.

and based on what i read and what those we know seem to be expecting, scooter's departure is supposed to leave us depressed. maybe a little. not so much for hon. she's already claimed scooter's room for her crafting room. and he's been gone just a few days and she's already moved in and stocked up. she was anxious for that. yeah, she's had her moments. but overall i think we're doing just fine with him leaving. sad, but acceptable.

the physical part of the move? well, that's an entirely different matter.

scooter goes about things differently than i would. in fact, differently than most would. he's known for a month now that saturday was his move in date. on thursday i asked if he'd reserved the y'all haul truck yet. "no, i'll do that today." fortunately, they weren't all booked. then i asked if he'd confirmed with his buddies that they were gonna help him move. "i'll do that this afternoon." thursday nite he told me only one of his friends was able to help. great. third floor apartment with me and him and one other guy. i envisioned myself getting really tired and really sore and really hurting afterward.

we picked up the truck at 10. with his mom's coaxing, he'd gotten almost all of his stuff, like the furniture he'd been accumulating, out in the garage. we simply backed up the truck and the two of us loaded it up rather easily. only heavy or bulky things were his couch, his bed, the entertainment center thing he'd bought, and his tv. not so bad.

scooter's not 25, so he can't rent a vehicle. so i had to handle the responsibility and the driving. don't mind that. i've driven lots of big,heavy things, so a small truck doesn't bother me. we drove over to the complex. i found a place close to the door (the apartments are set in hallways (they call them breezeways, but i was hard pressed to feel any breeze in there.), so we parked near the outside door. then up the twisting stairs to the third floor.

we carried small stuff first. boxes. bags. pillows. then we had to consider two things. the cable fella was due to arrive any minute, and he'd need the tv; and, the tv needed something to sit on. we needed to get to the heavier stuff.

and right about then we were forced to consider yet one more thing. his one friend, the one that WAS gonna show up, hadn't. and he's sent scooter a text message saying he was about to get off work and would be over as soon as he went home, showered and changed. not so encouraging news.

so, undaunted, we off-loaded the entertainment center from the truck. not so heavy, but bulky. cumbersome. one of those particle board/laminate things like you'd buy from walmart. looks good, but not real substantial. flimsy, in fact, when it's not stable on a floor. but we got it off the truck and onto the dollie. have i told you about dollie yet? well, you know dollie. she's sometimes called a hand truck. sure helpful in moving heavy stuff. unless you have to carry it upstairs.

and, if the stairs aren't too narrow and don't have twists and turns.

in this case, we had both. and while that thing was light, remember i mentioned it was cumbersome? it's probably four feet tall and 6 feet wide. and the four feet tall is about all those stairs would accommodate. but in the other direction. so we finally ended up taking it off miss dollie and turned it on end and just carried up from the half-landing between floors one and two. that done - time for the tv.

that's a totally different issue. the tv isn't particularly large. and it certainly isn't flimsy. but it is cumbersome. and it's just the right size to be too big and heavy for one person and too small, not bulky enough really for two people. particularly when you're stair climbing. but we managed.

now we needed to place the tv into the new entertainment center. this is something we just assumed would be easy. there's a big opening for the tv, and small openings for things like dvd players, gaming platforms, dvd storage, cable boxes. all that rot. in this case, however, as we cautiously wrestled the tv into the big opening that's designed to accommodate the tv, well, it wouldn't fit. as maxwell smart would say, "missed it by that much".

thinking this through, we reasoned that we could pull off a facia plate off the top of the tv square area and then it would maybe fit. then i got a great idea. let's walk around behind the unit, tv in arms, and slide that puppy in from the back side where we wouldn't have that trim piece. and that almost worked. it was a tight fit, but top to bottom, vertically, that is, the tv barely fit.

but did you ever notice that tv's, especially the pre-widescreen tv's, are larger in the front than they are in the back? this one sure was. now we've solved the vertical fit matter, but we're about an eighth of an inch shy of having the tv clear side-to-side.

fortunately, as i mentioned previously, the unit was somewhat flimsy. with a little brute force, we were able to sort of "warp" the vertical piece just enough to get the tv started. then with aid of a quasi shoe horn we somehow managed to force the tv in. and then we moved the entertainment center back in place. actually, it looked like the tv and unit were made for one another. another successful case of jerry-rigging.

now back to the move. we continued. in with the dining room table. the one he'd bought at the antique store on sale for thirty five dollars. complete with three chairs. really a good buy. then we brought up the rest of the items. mostly soft, light stuff that doubled as packing around the breakable things.

and now we're down to mister couch.

mister couch isn't terribly heavy. it's not a hide-a-bed or anything. but it's in excess of seven feet. i'm pretty certain it's gonna be real hard to make the turns at the between floor landings. and i'm completely certain that i really don't want to be on the hauling end of this thing. so i do what any manly-man, any father helping a son, would do. i stalled. and finally it was blatantly obvious that we needed to act. so i suggested to scooter that we haul up the couch cushions.

and just as we topped the stairs with them his friend called him to tell him he'd arrived. groovy. we raced downstairs to great this guy. and i was sure happy to see him. a big, strapping, football player type guy. probably weighs 250. and obviously strong. he got on the business end of that couch with scooter on the lead end, and i think he carried both the couch and scooter up the stairs with ease. mission accomplished. whew.

so it wasn't bad. until sunday morning when i tried to get up. my legs felt like they'd been run thru a shredder. nails driven into them during the night. i was walking pretty much like frankenstein does in the movies. stiff legged. awkward. and monday was no better. climbing three flights of stairs eighty-three trips is not a chore for the weak at heart. nor the weak at calf. and mine are still mooing.

tornados - and the wind sweeping down the plains

i was mostly raised in the desert. (which is very similar to dessert, and that probably explains my affinity for all things sweet.) in the desert we had hot. a bit hot. a lot hot. and very, very hot. but the closest we really came to weather events was an occasional dust storm.

then i moved to flagstaff. which isn't very similar to dessert. nonetheless, i still had the affinity for sweets. and flagstaff was mountainous. and piney. and in the winter we had cold. a bit cold. pretty cold. very, very cold. and we did need to pay attention to the weather. otherwise, we wouldn't know how to dress when we went out. it could be a nice morning and turn to blizzard at 3:30 in the afternoon. so the important thing there was to be prepared to dress warmly. and drive really careful.

now it's oklahoma. and the weather is . . . nice. mostly. oh, we have our "hot" days. and once in a while we have "lot hot" days. and then there's the humidity. but that's not what i'm here to talk about.

the big thing here, as most know, is tornadoes. now the only tornadoes i've ever been around before were cars built by oldsmobile. i think those were really toronados, but close enough to cause my affinity for chocolate. but these tornadoes are peculiar happenings. like the blizzards in flagstaff, they can start up on what has been a rather calm and mellow day. but there the similarity ends.

tornadoes are pretty scary. first thing that happens is all the local tv stations start flashing, up in the corner of the screen, "tornado watch". a tornado watch means simply that the atmospheric conditions are right for the possibility of tornadoes. not necessarily that you're gonna have them. but having that message flashing makes you pay attention. after all, you sure wanna be ready to go to your safe place. or, as my mom used to say, your "hidey hole". some have storm cellars. some have safe rooms, which is a concrete room fully contained in the house. we have a laundry room. which we consider our safe room because it's insulated from the great outdoors by at least one room in every direction. no windows. no external walls.

that said, the next thing you watch for is the shift from "tornado watch" to "tornado warning". this means that some sort of rotation has been sighted in the area. maybe not on the ground. maybe as much as a mile up. but there's a rotation that could, if things fall into place, could lead to a tornado which could, if things fall into place, could touch down. this is when things get exciting. and the siren's begin to blare.

all television programming is pre-empted. every channel has roving reporters, called "storm chasers", mobile and deployed in the vicinity of the rotation. david's in seminole. arthur's in shawnee. carl is in vici (pronounced vie-see, believe it or not). amos is in lawton. and jim's flying around in news chopper four. with vince coordinating all the activity from the studio.

david's got some interesting video near seminole. come in, david. yeah, there's a strong wall cloud over here. things look just right for this thing turning into a category f-17 tornado. ok, thanks david. let's go to amos in lawton. thanks vince. we've had unsubstantiated reports of a tornado touching down in the wilderness area between gertrude and poteau. ok, amos. that means all you folks in pottawattamie county need to prepare to go to your safe place. now to arthur in shawnee. things are calm here, vince. but ol' ezra's bunions are hurting him, and most think that means there's some upper level vortex rotation in the sub stratosphere. thanks amos.

and this goes on. one night we completely missed survivor, of all things. a message displayed across the screen telling us we could watch survivor "in it's entirety" at 2:37 a.m. huh? seriously who's gonna stay up and watch survivor at 2:37? fortunately, technology has given us tivo. or dvr's.

along about 9 or ten o'clock things start to wind down. and you can hear the disappointment in vince's voice, and all the mobile reporters as well, when they have to admit that nothing catastrophic's gonna happen and they have to sign off and go home. shucks.

however, there is a reality here. we do have to watch this stuff. because sometimes it really does happen. three times since we've been here we had tornadoes touch down within a couple mile range of our house. fortunately, they haven't been closer. but there have been times when we've grabbed the dogs, and even tried to grab the cats, and holed up in the laundry room with a portable radio. cowering under pillows and mattresses. and waiting for the all clear signal, which is signified by the termination of that infernal siren. better to be safe than sorry.

the weldon and sybil memorial garden

mom and dad retired in 1976 and moved back to their homeland. they settled initially in cookson on a six acre wooded parcel near tenkiller lake. as soon as they got their mobile home planted and the oak trees thinned, they started working on a garden. and every spring, whether in cookson or later when they moved in to henryetta, they tilled the soil and planted a garden.

coming to visit early in the summer was a real treat. we tried to show up about the time they were harvesting the new potatoes and onions. and they always had bumper crops of that greens stuff as well. peas, beans, cucumbers, and the oklahoma staple, okra. yuck.

mom died in 1995. dad had a hard time getting himself motivated to plant a garden the following spring. he just didn't have the interest. but ultimately he succumbed and planted again. it was hard for him to work it without mom, but i guess he felt it was a way to keep connected.

over the years the garden got smaller. in 2007, when we moved back, the garden had diminished down to a few tomato plants. and even that frustrated him because he couldn't eat the entire crop, and he had a hard time finding anyone to give the rest to. so in the spring of 2008, at the ripe old age of 93, he quit. for the first time in over thirty years he had no semblance of a garden.

back then he tried to talk jo and i into hauling his rototiller home with us and starting our own garden. jo has a half-acre lot behind her house, so we had room to do it. but we lacked the ambition.

dad died last october. we made several trips to his house to settle things. and we went thru his "stuff" and we all grabbed anything we wanted keep. on my last trip out hon and i cleaned out the rest of the things we felt anyone wanted and left the remainder to be sold at the estate auction, which should be taking place next week. then, while we loading things up, i hoisted that heavy old rototiller and brought it back too.

we used the tiller about a month ago. on a nice sunday while hon was still in branson, i tilled the flowerbed in front of jo's house. then we started talking about a garden. why not.

so today, saturday, the day before easter, and a nice day at that, scooter and i went over to jo's, back in to the "pasture", as we call her back lot, and we tilled up a nice sized area. then jo and i went to the farm store and got some plants and seeds. tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, zucchini, onions, bell pepper. maybe more. can't remember it all. when we were done tilling and starting to sow the seeds, scooter suggested we need a sign. the weldon and sybil nix memorial garden. good idea.

sunday, sunday

i'm still working on figuring out the dynamics of this blogging thing. i feel i should add something once in a while. or, since it's sunday, and i've been listening to my ol' buddy dw for a good part of the day, i should say "i feel i oughta add somthin oncte in a while." and i'm trying to do that. in fact i have major plans.



hon has a blog. and even though hon's generally (oh, forgot it's sunday. make that "generly") less computer literate than i am, she has a blog and she has moving pictures and all kinds of neat stuff on it. not moving pictures as in movies. just a sort of slide show of some of the artsy/craftsy things she's created. and i'm working on "figerin" out how to do that so i can post all the pictures i wanna post. pictures of my family, my friends (both of em), my dogs, maybe a cat even. and pictures of the ducks and geese at our lake. and things like that.



then i "figer" i can tell a little story about each of these family members. maybe a bit of a bio along with some "inerestin" anecdote (i think it was ron white who said that if he'd known the difference between anecdote and antidote his childhood best friend would still be alive. but somehow reading his buddy a short story from reader's digest didn't do the trick.) about that family member.



so toward acheiving this goal i've asked my kids and family members to send me digital pictures. i'm storing them on my computer. and when either i figer out that slide show stuff or just talk hon into doing it for me, i'll get them posted and have a real blog thingy.



that said, someone suggested that mostly bloggers, that's what the author of a blogspot is called, use their blog to talk about something that they may be passionate about. like politics. or recycling. or maybe donations to the autism foundation. so i could talk about racin. i could talk about children's cancer stuff. or baseball. (by the way, this is opening nite of the 2009 baseball season. and my oldest daughter, adri, and her squeeze carlos, are in philly sitting two rows behind the phillie's dugout waiting for some has been dignitary to throw out the first pitch so the game can begin.)



now i guess it's incumbent upon me to pick and choose one of these categories (or can i speak of two? or maybe three?) and commence to writin stuff that may be inerestin about somethin. maybe another day.

april fool's day

my opinion is it doesn't have april first for the fools to surface. it can happen any and every day. it does happen every day. like when i was driving home from tulsa last night. and as i moved into the left lane behind a yukon that was traveling slightly slower than me and a car coming up from way behind apparently felt me and the yukon driver needed to move back into the right lane and let him go by. but we couldn't cause we were pretty much along side the truck by then. he flashed his lights off and on several times. i waved. when we cleared the truck i moved over and let the fool go by. state of oklahoma official plates. i wrote down the number. i'll be reporting the fool today.

scooter did his taxes on-line. and e-filed. and there was some sort of error that caused his return to be rejected by the irs. last week he and i corrected the error and re-submitted his return. he's anticipating his refund this week. and he's excited to get the money as he's looking to move into his very own apartment and the tax money will sure help with that.

sadly, he received an e-mail this morning informing him that his return had been randomly selected by the irs for auditing. his return processing will be delayed thirty to sixty days. he called me to discuss this. i suggested he call the number referenced in the e-mail. i also asked him to call me back and let me know what he finds out.

one minute later the phone rang. he got it. the phone number listed for the irs was actually the oklahoma singles hotline. that's when he realized he'd been had. yep. april fools.