Cleaning out

There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to re-think the clutter in their lives. I don't mean work, classes, organizations, kids events and such, but the actual clutter! As we get older, our collection of "stuff" grows. We each have treasures from our childhood. Then, we have the school years. Of course there's our young adult lives. (The first trip/vacation on your own, your first apartment, etc.) Then perhaps you get married and have children. Wow...now your home is filled with all sorts of beautiful things. I have to say things because not everything you receive is easy to categorize!
Over the past month or so, I have been busy sorting and condensing all of the treasures our house holds. I have discovered that we need a house about twice the size to hold everything we have! And this is the time in our life when we're supposed to be thinking about downsizing!
This ritual cleansing has truly been a trip down memory lane. It was spurred on by the fact that we moved Rick's Mom to a smaller apartment. She had tons of stuff and each item had a story. We knew that she wouldn't be able to fit everything into her new space, so it needed to be relegated to a place. That place could be the yard sale, the new apartment or a child's home. Just what we needed, more stuff to find a home for! But, we inheireted a beautiful antique china cabinet and all of Mom's pink Depression glass. That was the catalyst for the cleaning. In order to have a place for the new china closet, space had to be made in our dining room. Anyone who has been to our home knows that there rally was nowhere to add another large piece of furniture. So, decisions had to be made. What to keep, what to get rid of, what to "re-purpose". What a challenge!
The storage room needed to be cleaned & sorted so that there would be room for the stuff we would keep, but not necessarily display. This room was a treasure trove of memories. Everything from Matt's first teddy bear to Tiff's bag o' stuffed animals. There were board game galore (handy to have when there was no power!). Lots of treasures from the kids high school years. And photographs! Lots of photographs. Those spanned over a hundred years!! Photos from my Mom's youth through photos of our children's early years. It took forever to clean out that room. Partly for the amount of stuff in there, but more because of the memories in there.
As anyone will tell you, it's a process. There are things that don't "make the cut" and must find another life, outside our four walls. Our piano is a perfect example. over the years, it had progressed from a musical instrument to a place to put photos and trinkets. It was time for it to have a renewed life (just not in my dining room!). It went to a lovely lady who was just starting to take piano lessons and was thrilled to have an actual piano, not a "keyboard'. I know she'll treasure it for what it was meant to be. It wasn't easy to say goodbye to it, but that's part of cleaning house.
Children's treasures have been boxed up, with their names on it for a time in the future when they can take them to their homes and quietly relive their memories.
It's a time consuming and sometimes overwhelming project. It's taken years to create this mosaic of life and will undoubtedly take a while to sort it all out. But the trip down memory lane has been one I'll never forget.

"Low bridge, everybody down"

If you are from Central New York, you probably know what the title of this blog means. It's a lyric from the Erie Canal song. If you were traveling in a packet boat on the Erie Canal, you had to duck down when you went under a bridge.
I used it as my lead in today as that's where I spent my day. Well, okay, not ON the Erie Canal, but working at a local history museum, The Erie Canal Village, in Rome, New York.
I worked there about 10 years ago. It ranks up there as my favorite job.
This was the place I honed my 19th century skills. Or, as my son Josh once said "Mom, they can't hurt us if they turn off our power!".
The Village is a recreation of a small town set along the Erie Canal. In it's heyday, there were many, many small towns like this. Each had the basics. A tavern, a blacksmith shop, a general store, a church and a schoolhouse. At the ECV, all of these buildings are present. It is set on land where the canal was first created. On this land are two versions of the Erie Canal. The original one, better known as Clinton's Ditch, and the "enlarged" Erie Canal. It was enlarged when folks discovered that the first one they had built was not wide or deep enough for all of the traffic it held. Nowadays, some folks will tell you that the Barge Canal is the Erie Canal, but they would be sadly mistaken.
All of the buildings on this site were moved there from other places, to recreate a typical canal village in the mid 1800's.
The Village is a seasonal operation. They open Mid-May and close for the season after Labor Day. (With the exception of a few weekend events in October.)
In preparation for this years opening, I went to volunteer to help get the place cleaned and polished up for the 2010 season.
Melody Milewski, the site manager, threw me the building keys and told me to pick a building. I chose one of my favorites, the Settlers House. It's the oldest building in the Village, built in 1807. Back when they did a Christmas program, I spent quite a few cold December nights, warmed by the hearth fire and the smell of fresh pine boughs. This building has none of our modern conveniences. No electricity, no bathroom, no running water. Talk about "living off the grid"! But when you spend 8 hours a day, "living" this way, it changes you. It forces you to slow down and appreciate a different way of life. Would I want to go back to that way of living on a permanent basis? That's a tough question. I appreciate things like hot water when I turn on the tap, or flipping a switch and having the lights come on. A furnace is a wonderful thing too.
Yet, there is something to be said for taking a bucket and fetching your water. For going out to the chicken coop to gather eggs to make your cake. For the joy of spinning your own flax into linen to then weave into cloth.
Does this make me an oddity? Probably! But it wasn't that long ago when our forefathers (and foremothers) were doing just that.
Luckily for me, I can travel back in time and enjoy the simpler way of lifewhenever I wish. (Then head home and microwave dinner!)
If you'd like more information about the Village, visit their website: www.eriecanalvillage.net.
Maybe I'll see you there!

A story of a life

When you get to be my age, you discover that life holds more endings than beginnings. I am in the process of another ending.
My cousin David Bugbee (my mother's nephew) has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. On Sunday, Rick and I went out to Buffalo to see the family. David's sister Sylvia was there with her daughter Shereen. I've not seen them in years. David's daughters, Sheila and Luanne flew home from where they live in Alaska. The last time I saw those girls, they were just little tykes. David's wife, Bonnie, is as beautiful as the day he married her.
We were brought together because of David's illness. This makes me wonder how we can get so wrapped up in our own lives, that we just think those we love, who are far away, will always be there. Life has a way of reminding us that our time on this earth is temporary.
I guess my theme today is, let the folks you love know that you love them. No matter how far away they live, or how long it's been since you've spoken to them. Call, e-mail, send a card.....times passes too fast. To my family, I love each and every one of you!

A feeling of pride

When you have children, you have a proprietary sense of pride. You cheer each accomplishment....from their first step onward.
This past weekend, we burst with pride for our son Derek. He has honorably served our country in the Marines and is now back in college, going for his degree in Theater. His theater company is in the midst of their run of "Rent". We expected him to do well, but he (and the rest of the cast & crew) blew us away. While watching him onstage, I was watching "Tom Collins", not Derek, the son. I can't say enough about his performance except to say that there were two parents in the audience in awe of the talent onstage.
But, as a parent I am blessed in so many ways. Each of "my babies" is multi-talented. Matt designs remarkable things (and sings a mean Neil Young...especially if he thinks no one is listening!)
Josh has a brain I envy.....I couldn't begin to figure out how to create video games. And some of my favorite music CD's are the ones he made while in college! Tiffany has such a wealth of compassion for others (which is why she'll excel in her line of work!) and has the voice of an angel.
So much talent and so much beauty. And yes, each of them is beautiful. I love my babies, more than they know.

Green is beautiful

This time of year, my favorite color is green. After the long winter of white (or brown) it's such a treat to see everything starting to turn green.
We have some bushes (although I don't know what their name is) that we refer to as our "spring bushes". We use them to know whether we are done with snow for the season and if we can safely take the snowblower off the garden tractor! How you ask? Each spring, after they have leafed out we have no more snow. That doesn't mean that it won't get cold again, but it's never snowed after the leaves have come out.
In early spring when we take our walks, we start looking to see any signs of green on these bushes. As the tiny leaves start to emerge, we get more hopeful.
I'm happy to report that these leaves have opened and the snow is officially over! As you drive down the road, you'll see these bushes as a beautiful haze of green. I know that when I see that the worst is over and we're heading straight for spring.
Of course I also need to give a nod to the willow trees. They seem to be the first tree to open their leaves to the spring sunshine.
I'm sure that back in the olden days, that was one of the ways that folks knew winter was over and warmer weather was finally on its way.
All I know is that these are beautiful signs of spring!

Scrub-a-dub-dub

If you ever want folks to look at you like you've gone off the deep end, tell them you make your own soap! (Well, admittedly, that's only one way...)
Quite a few years back, a friend of mine taught me how to make soap. The ingredients can be as simple or complex as you choose. I've done the more elaborate but still prefer the plain and simple.
Over the years I have also discovered different methods. My latest and most favorite is "blender soap". Unlike long ago when you combined the ingredients and stirred and stirred until you thought your arm would fall off, blender soap lets the machine do all the work.
Does that make it cheating? Does it make it any less home made? I'll admit that I have a problem with the soap kits you find in most craft stores. They usually consist of a blob of glycerin that you simply melt down and pour into molds. That to me doesn't count as home made.
I still prefer the science end of it. I enjoy taking the lye and the oil, mixing them together and have the soap magic happen! (The actual word for that is saponification) And the beauty of the process is that when the magic happens, the soap has lots of glycerin in it! Nowadays when commercial soap is made they extract the glycerin. That is then turned into glycerin bars that sell for much more than "plain" soap. That helps to explain why store bought soap can be very drying on your skin.
Homemade soap contains wonderful things like olive oil or coconut oil and the glycerin that occurs naturally! And unlike storebought soap, your skin feels clean when you rinse it off, not like you have just applied a layer of something.
I suppose I should climb off my soap box for now. If any of you are interested in trying a bar, just let me know!

Interesting projects

With the weather turning nicer (at least for a few more days!), it's getting easier and easier to come up with projects to do outside. Some are given to me by nature and others will satisfy my more creative side.
Nature gave me more strawberry plants. Runners that had cascaded over the side of the planters last year managed to grow all the way down to my lily plants. As I was cleaning around the lilies today, I discovered quite a few strawberry plants! So now, beside moving the rosebushes that the lilies were squeezing out, I need to re-pot the baby berry plants!
My more creative project is to build a cob oven. What it a cob oven, you ask? It's a wood fired outdoor oven. I've used these over the years (or ovens like them) and love the flavor of food that comes out of them. It's the same theory as using a beehive oven (which is built inside a home, right next to the hearth). It shouldn't take too long to make and the list of "ingredients" to make it is very straightforward. If it works, I'll post pictures throughout its creation. Then I can show off what I've baked in it! Keep your fingers crossed!