For Memorial Day

As a special treat for Memorial Day I give you parts of the story of my Dad in the U.S. Navy. My favorite story from this period in his life was how he figured out a way to make ice cream.

My Dad, George, wanted to fly planes. So when he joined the Navy he signed up for the Naval Aviator Program. He and my mom, Nancy, eloped partially because Navy Pilots weren’t allowed to be married. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, the program ended before he got to train to fly. Instead of learning to fly he was shipped off to an island in the Pacific where he was a supply clerk (think Radar O’Reilly here) at an air strip. (I think this may have been Guam, but I am not sure.)

While he was away, Nancy lived on the family dairy farm in upstate New York, and worked as a soda jerk at the local drug store. She wrote George every day, and regaled him with details of her life – including explicit descriptions of the ice cream sundaes, milk shakes and other frozen treats she created behind the counter in downtown Horseheads, New York.

In the primitive conditions on an island in the South Pacific, they had very limited resources for refrigeration, and a treat like ice cream was unheard of. George would get Nancy’s letters, and read aloud to his comrades about the ice cream treats she had created. In the sweltering South Pacific heat they all longed for ice cream.

 Each day the pilots were required to get in so many hours of flying, and they would take off, fly around for a while, and then return. When they returned from their little trips, they would complain about how hot it was on the ground. It was then that George realized it just might be cold enough at those altitudes for cream to freeze. So he hatched a plan and set it into motion. He put the ingredients into a metal container and promised the pilots that they could have the first spoonfuls if they took it up with them during their flights.

George, and as much of the company as possible, would line up and be waiting on the runway when the plane landed. George would have two spoons, and would hand one to the pilot as soon as the container, which was almost too cold to hold in his hands, was removed from the plane. Then each of the men in the company would get a spoonful of the frozen treat.

For this Memorial Day, if you are lucky enough to have ice cream as part of your day, really taste that first spoonful, and think about those men on an island in the South Pacific, how my Dad managed to make ice cream, and smile. As I will.

The Bane of my Existence

     If you have ever been to my house you know that most of the first floor is covered with tile. Often, when someone comes over for the first time the first thing they will say is something along the line of, “Oh, I love these floors!” to which I usually respond, “Yes, the bane of my existence”. Then I have to explain to the quizzical looks that these floors are the one thing the builders did right when they built this house in 1965, as they are laid atop a 4” bed of cement. The tiles themselves are Mexican Saltillo, picket style, and there are about three of them in each square foot of floor space. They run from the front door of the house to the back door, from the eat-in kitchen all the way to the family room and the garage entrance. They are under every cabinet, appliance and wall on the first floor. (All in all, about 600 square feet of tiles.) Saltillo tiles are hand-made, no two are alike, and they are uneven and extremely porous. They are not sealed. So they soak up every and any liquid the come in contact with. And they have been the bane of my existence. 

                                                           Nick with Gambit back in 2005
                                                           Here you can see how the floors usually look

     When we bought this house 18 years ago, I thought the floors were red brick with black grout and I thought, “Great! The boys won’t be able to screw these floors up.” And I was right; nothing that the boys have ever done has made a dent in those floors. I have come to realize that nothing short of a large quantity of C-4 will ever make a dent in these floors. After a couple of years of cleaning and scrubbing the everyday messes created by an active family, black gobs started to come up from the grout revealing grey crumbly cement. This was a concern.

     Then one day I knocked a pot lid into the space beneath the stove and was shocked by what I discovered upon crawling in to the cupboard to reach under and retrieve it. (Yes, I probably should have sold tickets to that event.) As I reached under to pull out the lid my hand touched something that clearly was not the pot lid. So I grabbed a flashlight to get a better look before I stuck my hand back in there again. What I found was a perfect 9 by 11 glass baking dish and, much to my horror, rose and gold colored tiles with off white grout.

     And so began my quest to clean the tiles. This started a chain of events which just went from bad to worse, reminding me in many ways of the movie Money Pit. I spent hours on my hands and knees scrubbing with everything I could find, masked to protect myself from all the harsh chemicals, pulling up years and years worth of Mop-n-Glow encrusted grout and peeling layers from the tiles. We rented an industrial floor cleaning machine and tried everything we could think of. When I finally realized I needed professional help, the first contractor who came to the door looked down, said, “I won’t do this job” and walked away. (Not even a “Hi, it’s nice to meet you”.) We ended up needing to have all of the grout replaced, which meant that there were guys on their hands and knees, using a Dremel-like tool, digging out all of the old grout.
    
     Yesterday, for the second time in the past 18 years I have accomplished the goal of getting the floor cleaned. The first time, you ask? It was during the 30 seconds between a contractor completing the “two week” job which took more than three months and our walking out the door to head to Germany for two years. Unfortunately, by the time we got back, the floors (which need to be sealed every year) were already dirty again.

     My boyfriend did a lot of research on the internet and we bought a steam cleaning machine, in hopes that it would do the trick on the floors (along with other cleaning tasks like the grill, the fireplace doors, etc.). I was hopeful, but didn’t really know if it would work on these floors or not. Imagine my delight when he tried it on the floor for the first time and loads of dirt came right up! It is a slow process, but I don’t have to get on my hands and knees with a toothbrush, and it does the job! I started with the kitchen yesterday, and in about three hours the floor was clean. The only problem is that now the rest of the floor is clearly very dirty!

                                             Before, dirty, nasty floor!

                                             The Steamfast!

                                             SO much better!
     I am excited about bringing these floors back to their intended beauty, and even though it is going to take time, using the steam cleaner is not physically taxing, so it just means time and attention, not painful scrubbing. I figure that if I spend a few hours each weekend, I will have it done by the spring, when it will be time to start over and then I will be able to seal them once again. An accomplishment for 2014!

Welcome 2014

    
Welcome 2014. Usually on New Years I come up with a single word which is supposed to be my guiding concept for the coming year. I have been having difficulty finding my "word" for this year, but thought perhaps I could work it out by writing my way to the "word". It is another one of those times when I am in transition mode, something I have done pretty frequently, and with so much uncertainty, the "word" for this year has so far escaped me.
     Part of the reason I am in this strange place is that I have accepted a new kind of position that will start in a couple of weeks. I will be wading into the unfamiliar territory of a research assistant at the Social Research Center in Ann Arbor. This is a part-time gig that will allow me to both work a "real job" and continue to work from home on my writing and editing projects. I am hoping that this new job will open some doors and help me to focus on my field of study, Social Sciences.
      So now I am facing the dreaded hour long commute - which is daunting in the mitten in January and February (and sometimes March and April), but is still not as bad as the hour and a half to two hours my boyfriend faces each way every day. That fact brings me to another undertaking for 2014, getting our house projects completed so that we could put it on the market and move closer to his work, if that is what we decide to do. This is no small task for many reasons, and while I am looking forward to getting the house in order and updated, these kinds of things require a lot of time and effort - always. Handy-man type projects always take longer and cost more than I think when I start them, and often, we wait until things have to be done before we face them.
     There are more things in the house that need to be done than we can easily afford, and one thing almost always leads to something else. Here is an example: We need a new fridge. The one we have I bought in 1985 while pregnant with Nick. The ice maker is kaput, and for some reason, the paint has decided it is time to peel off and fall on my floors. It still runs very well, and things stay nice and cold inside, but I know it is simply a matter of time before it gives up. So my boyfriend and I went shopping and picked out the one that we want – really beautiful French door model. The problem is that no matter how we have measured it, it will not fit through the doorways so that we can get it into the kitchen. Well… we also need to replace all the windows in the house (and should have done so 15 years ago) and part of that project is that we want to put in a door-wall from the kitchen to the deck – which would also allow us to get the new fridge into the house. So now, in order to get a new fridge, we need to tear a huge hole in the back of the house and put in the sliding door so we have an opening large enough for the new fridge to fit in. Oh – and the whole kitchen needs to be painted since we have had a new chunk of ceiling since about 2008 which is naked above the table and the paint is beginning to wear off the cabinets, and… and… and… One thing leads to another.
     So I have been thinking about words like ‘projects’ or ‘completion’ or ‘execution’, but now I am thinking about "accomplishment" as my word for 2014. I am thinking that I should probably look at each small part of a project I get done as an accomplishment which will lead me toward the larger completion. In thinking about this I have also realized that I have often failed to acknowledge my accomplishments, no matter how big or how small. So this year, dear 2014, I will stop and acknowledge my accomplishments, no matter how small, in my quest for larger project completions. There. I just finished my first blog post for 2014. Well done, me.