Mumbling Madly

When we first looked at the place, our landlord quickly glossed over the relics standing in the laundry room: Two ancient washing and drying appliances. Upon further inspection, Josh revealed that the washer was indeed, a Lady Kenmore. For some reason, I find this facinating. We figured the appliances must have come with the completion of the house in the early 1970s, late 1960s. In fact my mother-in-law pegged the house’s origins the second she saw the ancient, pink contact paper inside the kitchen shelves. (”Nobody uses pink to decorate their kitchen anymore,” she claimed). What I love, is this washer obviously came out before Women’s Lib. (Or maybe the manufacturers were still in a position where they could ignore the racious bra-burning feminists). I kinda liked having two vintage pieces of equipment from the past. Sadly, the Lady Kenmore spewed forth the entire contents of one big load of towels on the floor. (Years of use has deemed her incontinent). We had to send the Lady Kenmore (and her Dryer comrade) out to pasture.

The above buttons are for a bunch of different, random, settings. Appearantly the manufacters did not want to overuse the dial on their washing machine. (”No need to have two dials cluttering up the place”).

Tommorrow we fly away from This Place….this hot, dry, bright, sunny, place known as Colorado and landing in Portland, Oregon, home of fur trees, 0 altitude, and fir trees. I can’t wait. Let me tell you…I can’t wait.

Last night I spent two hours fitting pointe shoes at the store after hours. We made a lot of much needed money. It was fun. What was even better was the storm warnings that kept blaring out over the radio. I’ve never lived in a place where the Radio Broadcast System sounds off the alarm followed by a message: Severe Thunderstorms in Northern Larimer County. (That’s me!) Usually, the alarm is just a practice, but here in FC it’s always the real deal! Golf sized balls of hail came down with a wrath so strong that people ran outside and practically threw their bodies over their vehicles in a an attempt to shield them from hail damage. Several customers hoped their windshields would break so they could finally replace them. The sky grew so dark, people turned on their lights at 5pm (this is summer! this is August!). During all this, one of my 3 year old students at the Gymplex had a complete meltdown. It was particularly heartbreaking because the kids had been so excited about the weather. And than Whitney completely lost it…this is a teacher’s worst nightmare. Especially when the parent is no where to be seen and the other kids are just standing there debating on whether or not they should also start crying.
This reminds me of a time, years ago, when I first started teaching 3-5 year olds. Something I didn’t know at the time, is that many of these kids are still getting immunity shots. They are required to be vaccinated for all sorts of stuff before they can enter preschool or kindergarten. It’s not uncommon for me to see a kid sporting several, coloful, bandaids and regalling the others about their harrowing tale of injections. I had one three year old, Isamya, who came in literally covered with bandaids. We’re talking, knees, elbows, everything decorated. Some, of course, were not real, but many were…the kid had been pummeled! I have NO IDEA why a parent would think that after a doctor’s appointment filled with pain a dance class would be the next best thing. Half way through the class, Isamya started bawling, pointing to her bandaids and generally losing her shit. I’ve gotten better at this kind of behavior, but as a new teacher it really freaked me out. So I sat down with her, and the rest of the kids sat down with me, and we all had a long talk about shots. Three year olds are surprisingly compassionate when it comes to relating about their boosters. I listened as one of them explained, “I went to the doctor in the morning, and for the rest of the day I cried…and cried…and cried.” Than we had a group hug and played Sleeping Fairy Princess.
Now, whenever a kid loses it, I always turn to her peers. Yesterday, one little girl recommended to Whitney that she “just take a little rest.” Which is great advice. When we as adults are upset, wouldn’t it be better if we “went into our rooms and took a little rest?” I know I would benefit that way.

It should be noted that this is a classic 4 yr old drawing, incedibly simplistic and well thought out. Pink is a hot color, so of course Ms. Mara has to be pink. Notice my two ponytails and my incredibly long, stick-like, legs. Also, the mother penned in my name, which I think is interesting…nobody really knows what my marital status is. But because I didn’t change my last name, I’ll forever be a Ms. never to be a Miss. again.

As the title implies, this is a magnificent thing. Plus, with our elevated, unlit, 2nd story positions, Josh and I can successfully spy on everything that goes on in the parking lot behind our house. Don’t get too excited…it’s still Ft. Collins. No drug deals or alley fights. We have observed countless dumping in the dumpster owned by several businesses. Josh becomes disgusted by the audacity of these people, who pull up with full garbage cans and secretly unload them in, what they perceive to be, a completely free receptacle. WRONG! It’s all so wrong!
A scraggly lady lives next door to the Conoco we’re neighbors with. We see her walk by with her laundry, gaunt and wearing jean shorts, she suddenly reminds me why I haven’t bothered to cut off a pair of my own jeans and replace the jean shorts I threw away a long time ago. Now that I work in a semi-professional enviornment, the days of jean shorts have sort of disappeared and been replaced with denim skirts and practical blouses.
I’ve decided that, somehow, I have Afternoon Depression. This is something I’ve identified for many years now, since adolesence. I’ll wake up, refreshed and joyful, the morning simply thrills me. Around noon I’ll feel a bit of a change, a slump so to speak, progressing into a mild disenchantment. By four o’clock I’m hating life. But in a totally passive, (sigh), kind of way. I was totally going to paint the hallway lavender today, but when I got home at 3:30 I couldn’t peel myself off the couch. Maybe it’s the afternoon sun (as the depression increases during the summer months). Maybe it’s the fact that half the day is gone. I have no idea why the afternoon is so hard for me. I heard, somewhere, that this is the sign of a Morning Person. This type of individual feels their energy drain in the afternoon instead of the morning. Allegedly, Night Owls feel like hell in the am, while morning people feel like hell in early pm. Or something. Anyway, after the sun goes down I feel much better.
I think Summer, in general, is my least favorite time of the year. I like Fall much better, and Spring too…and I like Christmas a lot, so that put’s Winter in a good place. Maybe it’s just Summer in Fort Collins. Maybe I’m just tired in general.

Now that we have a bigger place, it has become inevitably hard not fill it with more things. Originally we thought it would be a great idea to move now instead of later because we could whittle down our exisiting stock. That being said, I have been fairly good about donating old clothes I never wear, the set of chopsticks I never opened, and the hanging, wire, fruit baskets I no longer have a place for. Now that we have two rooms: A Sitting Room and A Family Room (I have huge issues with the naming of both of these rooms. I totally refuse to have a room that nobody uses and is only there for display. Our “Family” consists of Josh, myself, and Hobbes which hardly constitutes the need for an entire room). One room has bookshelves, the glass end table, and our awesome, overstuffed, blue couch. The other room has our dining room table, our tv, dvds, etc, and Josh’s parent’s old brown couch. Now, we took the brown couch so that we could establish two rooms: One for reading and one for lounging and watching tv. We didn’t realize that the brown couch is the most uncomfortable piece of furniture known to man. After being spoiled for so long with the blue monstrosity, the brown couch has proved to be a miserable experience. Therefore, it was unwise for us to wander into American Furniture Warehouse last Sunday.
This was a mistake. Nobody should enter a furniture store after moving into a home that’s too big, has too much space, and not enough to fill it. Of course Josh fell in love with the crimson, leather couch. Of course it’s now only $600 on sale. Of course we’re hemming and hawing over it, knowing full well we have sworn off credit cards and are taking a trip in less than a week. This has caused us to yearn for the couch like one yearns for Christmas Day as a child. Now, I could pull money from my precious savings account…but I just can’t do it. We could buy accessories for the awful brown couch (oversized pillows, etc), but any money we spend on it feels wasted. Like, why buy a matching sham when we could really buy the leather couch? Such a difficult decision…