Day: September 20, 2018

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I Hear Ya

 

Bow Tie o’ the Day helps highlight my hair progress with the growing-it-all-out goal. Remember, it’s not my project, it’s yours. So far, I am complying with your votes. Right now, I think my mop would look better if it were actually a mop. But at least I can still see the asymmetry I like to have in my haircuts. Where this will end, I don’t know. I didn’t put a deadline or length on my hairs project. Technically, I can cut my hairs right now and say, “Well, I grew it out for three months. That’s long enough.” But I know what y’all mean: you wanna see it with some real length to it, whether I want to wear it like that or not.

Suzanne knows how much I detest having long hairs, and she says I can go ahead and cut ’em off any time I want. But I also think she secretly wants me to grow it out, because she knows how much it matters to me that I follow through and keep my promises– even about stuff that really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Anyhoo… This is how the hairs are hangin’ as of today.

Bow Tie hung on the bathroom door when I made a discovery earlier. I discovered that my hearing aid is super comfortable– so much so that I forgot it was in my ear, and I wore it into the shower and promptly began to wash this scrappy hair. Oops! I caught my mistake ASAP. I wrapped my wet hearing gadget in a dry washcloth, cast a voodoo spell on it, and hoped.

But my head shifted into a panicky rant about how I had most certainly destroyed my 4-month-young hearing device, and I don’t dare tell Suzanne what I did, and so somehow I have to find $2000 without her knowing it’s missing, to buy another of the exact same model of hearing aid without Suzanne suspecting anything, cuz I’d rather be broke than have to face Suzanne about doing something so stupid, and on and on and on.

But five minutes later, I opened up the washcloth. The device appeared to be ok. I stuck it in my ear, and the house sounds abounded. Luckily, all was right with my hearing device. I discovered that it is a bit water-resistant, thank heavens. And as an added bonus, it was really, really clean. My biggest discovery is that this little hearing-aid-in-the-shower escapade will not be happening again. It created such a panic in me that I was scared smart.

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A Sorta Banned Book Or Two In Delta, UT

Cravat o’ the Day and I were banished to the upstairs last night. It was Suzanne’s turn to host her monthly book club, so I took my cue to be out of the way. Suzanne’s book club doesn’t have a classy name like her Champagne Garden Club does. Apparently, her book club is just a book club. I can report that book club is not raucous, while Champagne Garden Club is never NOT out of control.

As Cravat and I puttered around upstairs in The Tie Room all evening, I got thinking about some of my book adventures in Delta. The first booky thing I remember is Mom’s monthly book club, known simply as Club. Club always consisted of a group of around twenty women, and they took turns hosting the event. One woman was assigned to “give” the book, which meant to talk about it and get the discussion going. The host provided refreshments.

When it was Mom’s turn to give the book, she prepped by marking pages she wanted to be sure to present. Neither highlighters nor post-its had yet been born, and it appeared Mom didn’t believe in paper clips. She clipped her noteworthy pages with bobby pins. When Mom hosted Club, recipe cards were strewn all over the couch for days before the event, as she decided on the perfect dessert to construct.

When Mom hosted, Dad and I stayed in their bedroom watching tv. About every third minute, Club laughter would explode– with two laughs dwarfing the others. After the first round of laughter of the night, Dad would always say about those two wild laughs, “Well, Dot and Roberta got here.”

Club existed for somewhere around fifty years, and then around four years ago, it just stopped. No fanfare. It was sad. But its time had come. Few original members were still living. I think they were maybe a bit booked-out.

My stand-out book adventures in Delta occurred in the DHS library when I was in 7th Grade. At that time, 7th and 8th grades were located in the high school, so the DHS library is where I got my book fix. Miss Hansen, the librarian, yelled at me one day because I checked out too many books. She telephoned Mom– with me standing right there at the library desk– to “tell on” me for my wicked, wicked way: reading a lot. Mom asked, “Has she ever not returned a book on time? Has she ever lost a book? Has she ever destroyed a book?” Of course, I hadn’t. It wasn’t an issue after that. I could check out as many books as my little heart desired, from that moment on.

But Miss Hansen wasn’t done monitoring my reading just yet. Soon after the checking-out-too-many-books incident, I tried to check out another bunch of books, and Miss Hansen told me I wasn’t old enough to read a couple of them. She wouldn’t let me check them out. I wish I could remember the names of all the “banned-from-me” books she wasn’t going to allow me to check out. I do remember that one was a book of plays by Tennessee Williams.

Miss Hansen called Mom again, this time to tell on me that I was trying to check out books that were not appropriate for me. Mom said, “If it’s okay for the books to be in the DHS library, it’s ok for her to read them. Let her check them out.” Mom to the rescue! It was not an issue after that phone conversation.

[What a literate mess I was! Sorry, for the inconvenience Mom. Thanks for the trust in me, Mom.]

But wait! An ending that I didn’t see coming showed up. Miss Hansen was a large woman, and she was old. These two things apparently prevented her from tying her shoes. I was walking by the library one morning when Miss Hansen had just arrived and was unlocking the door. She asked me to come in with her a minute. She asked if I would please tie her shoes. And thus began a couple of high school years of me stopping in the library each morning to tie Miss Hansen’s shoes, whether or not I needed to check out illicit books.

Blame everything on books. And I mean everything.