Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

I’ve never cared much for the Bed, Bath, and Beyond chain of stores, and the last time I remember stopping by one was about five or six years ago to buy a CO²  bottle for a countertop soda machine. (The soda machine was just too expensive to carry on with, what with the price for the carbon dioxide bottles… The thing is out in the shed even now.) I had no real other reason to go there after that, since I had a perfectly good source of home goods through the Base Exchange, and Amazon Vine has always been generous to me regarding other items for bedroom, bathroom and beyond. Anyway, it seems Bed, Bath, and Beyond is about to go bye-bye … and I will hardly miss them … but I will seriously miss the other consumer outlet chain that is set to go out of business and close all their stores.

That would be Tuesday Morning – an outlet that we have loved extravagantly, ever since one of our neighbors clued us into it. Basically, overstocks and discontinued items from the higher-end outlets. As I described it to others – “Nieman Marcus quality at K-Mart prices.”

No kidding – kitchenware, china, glass, linens, and bedding of the very best. Limited pantry items – pasta sauces, mixes, candy, exotic spices and oils, coffee – for this reason alone the local Tuesday Morning outlets were open during the Covidiocy because … they had food items, and so could be classified as essential in a time of (manufactured) emergency. Tuesday Morning was our first choice for buying wedding presents, for towels, sheets and bedding, and our particular passion for perfumed bath soaps from Italy and France.

So, shed a tear for another victim of the current economic downturn. Like Hancock Fabrics, and the late lamented Scriveners of San Antonio (which bit the dust so long ago that only the old-timers recall it), this passing leaves many of us saddened and diminished.

As for the at-home projects – the two footlockers which I assured my daughter would be renovated by the time she and Wee Jamie returned from California – they are all but complete. The metal-sided one intended to be Wee Jamie’s toy-box is complete, since the replacement handle for the front of it arrived at about midday today; a matter of a few moments to attach it and touch up the various screw heads with black paint – and done!

The other footlocker is nearly complete also – but for one small thing; although I used every scrap and inch of the peel-and-stick wallpaper roll, there just wasn’t enough for inside the long angle of the lid. For want of a thirty by four-inch strip… another roll of the same pattern is on order, to be delivered tomorrow. Well – I will have enough of it to cover a shallow tray insert, which I had considered building out of various scraps.

Oh, yes – projects, I’ve got a few, and hoping to get most of them done with them by the time that my daughter and Wee Jamie return from California, after visiting family by next weekend. The tenants renting a house a couple of doors away from us move out – and leave a bunch of stuff. The tenant seems to have had hoarderish tendencies and told us that they are moving with family to Hawaii … so the pruning of household stuff has to be pretty drastic. Indeed, so drastic that there was a dumpster parked in the driveway for a couple of days.  Among the items discarded on the curb were some footlockers; my daughter snagged the two in best condition and … sigh … assumed confidently that I could do something creative with them, something that would return two battered and fairly cheap items to attractive functionality; one to be a toy chest for Wee Jamie, and the other to be storage/transport/display for Matilda’s Portmanteau merchandise … that would be the American Girl 18-inch doll dresses that I make for craft markets, out of scraps from sewing projects and this and that. I have a small trunk from Hobby Lobby that I fitted out for this purpose, some years ago, having purchased it with one of their 40% off coupons, but it wasn’t in the least satisfactory, being too small and too flimsy to hold more that a couple of items … the rest of the Portmanteau inventory is stashed in a couple of plastic tubs …

And anyway – part of my grand plan is to put all the Portmanteau inventory and Miss Matilda herself together in one container – the biggest of the footlockers and use the two plastic storage tubs for other purposes, like my daughter’s vast collection of Christmas stuff.

So far, the footlocker renovation project has necessitated two trips to Lowe’s for spray paint, a can of clear top-coat, and an assortment of small machine nuts and bolts. I will probably need one more trip for some slightly longer machine nuts and bolts to fasten on the replacement lock/latch on the smaller footlocker, which turned out to be metal-clad, with a composition wood-fiber interior that was sadly warped and needed to be stabilized with wood strips along the bottom. Plus I had to place an order to Amazon for the replacement latch, for peel-and-stick wallpaper rolls to adorn the inside, and a couple of replacement strap handles … and then there was a quick jaunt to Office Depot for heavy brochure paper and a roll of paper paste. The larger footlocker, which had a cheap cardboard casing, instead of metal, was damaged when I ripped off a couple of stickers … but never mind, those damaged patches will be hidden by a series of new stickers and the whole varnished over. An array of home-printed versions of vintage hotel stickers and shipping labels lifted from the internet will cover the damage, as Miss Matilda Doll is an experienced international traveler and only stays at the very best hotels in London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Bombay, and Singapore, while traveling by sea on Cunard, White Star and Hamburg-America. I may fit out the lid with rods to display the doll outfits on hangers.

At this juncture, with a week to go before Wee Jamie and my daughter return from California, the smaller trunk for Wee Jamie’s toys is all but finished, and the larger for Matilda is just started. I painted over the whole thing with brown paint yesterday and have begun masking off the main areas with painter’s tape now that the first coat is dry and hardened, so that the edge trim, corners, latches, hinges and handles can be painted a metallic black – a tedious and finicky process.

Almost as tedious as scraping and sanding off all the finish on the oak child’s armchair – which is also about half done.

One more week.

Well, today I had a reminder of how those of us on the scene of, or immediately after an incident are the ‘first responders’ on the scene – generally beating out the police, fire department and ambulance, by minutes and sometimes hours. As this happened in a suburb, and on a heavily-trafficked intersection where two four-lane roads meet not half a mile from the fire station, the professionals were on the spot within five minutes. I’m certain other people had their cellphones out and calling 911 within seconds, as did I.

It was all very startling – and as these things usually do – happened in a matter of split seconds. I had concluded that I needed to make a run to Lowe’s for some more spray paint and other stuff for a couple of furniture renew projects and stop by the HEB grocery store for pet food on my way back home. So there I was, waiting in the left-hand turn lane on Nacogdoches, to turn left onto O’Connor, with one or two cars ahead of me, also waiting for the signal to turn green for us. The intersection seemed to be mostly clear; traffic waiting in both directions on Nacogdoches – first for the line of cars behind a small white compact, waiting to turn left from O’Connor, then for the other lanes to move.

I am not certain where the blue car came from – either flying up O’Connor from the direction of the highway, or up Nacogdoches in the other direction from me and trying to beat the red light. It was going at a good clip, at any rate. And it crashed head-on into the little white compact, just as it edged out into the intersection on seeing the light for the turn-lane go green. No matter which direction the blue car came from, it was going so fast that the impact flipped the white compact clear over, front to back. There it was, wheels up to the sky, and everything frozen for a moment.

It’s a peculiar metallic crunch, the sound that an auto crash makes, a sound that sticks with you. Several of us agreed on that, later. It’s the sound that an aluminum baseball bat the size of a small telephone pole makes, upon striking a pallet of empty cans.

It was a bit past noon on a working day, so there was a lot of traffic at the intersection – there’s a HTeaO outlet on one corner, a Black Rock Coffee outlet on the other, and across from those two enterprises on Nacogdoches, a CVS, and a Chase Bank with a good-sized HEB and a row of other enterprises behind it. I don’t imagine there was more than a moment before people began piling out of their cars, and going to the aid of the driver and whoever else was trapped in the white compact. It reminded me of the dash-cam video of the concrete pedestrian bridge over a busy artery in Florida a couple of years ago. A moment of shock … and then car and truck doors opening, and people – mostly men – running towards the scene of the collapse.

I was at a place where all that I could do was call 911 – and when I got through, the dispatcher already knew there had been a rollover at that intersection. I did manage to weave through the parking lot of Black Rock and make a way through the CVS parking lot – by that time, two police cars, an ambulance and a fire truck were already on the scene, and the police had all the witnesses that they needed for their reports. By the time that I came back through that intersection an hour or so later, everything was cleared away, all but a couple of piles of absorbing grit poured onto fluids leaked out of the crashed automobiles.

Reminder to self; remember to count to three before venturing into an intersection, upon the light turning green. Also – keep an eye out for a-holes coming the other way who don’t seem to be slowing down…

My daughter and wee Jamie, the Wonder Grandson are in California to visit family – notably my sister and her family, and to introduce Wee Jamie to them all. They are having a glorious time, so far … and meanwhile, I am getting things done, now that I do not need to schedule them around Wee Jamie’s naptime, appointments, walks, scheduled playtime with the therapists, bath time … all of it. So this was how I was able to write one book in a matter of three months, a trilogy the same length as Lord of the Rings in a mere two years … anyway, I am filling in the hours, pottering in the garden, refitting a couple of inexpensive steamer trunks that my daughter snagged from a pile of discards from a neighbor who is moving lock-stock-and-barrel to Hawaii. One trunk is to be Wee Jamie’s toy chest, the other to be the storage, transport, and display for Matilda’s Portmanteau goods. Both are battered, and rather dirty, and … well, I’ll see what I can do with them. I also must refinish and repair a small oak armchair for Wee Jamie, against the day when he outgrows several other baby chairs.

Then there are a couple of sewing projects, notably a white cotton early 20^th century blouse from Past Patterns, sized up to fit me in my present incarnation and trimmed with crocheted ecru lace. The Seguin book festival has been moved back to late in the year, which I am grateful for, as it is a two-day outdoor event, and April in Texas is about the last time of the year that I can endure such, in my customary Victorian/Edwardian costumes.

And the garden … I’ll go on planting seeds and transplanting seedlings, as I have a goal of eating fresh garden-grown vegetables daily and freezing any surplus. The pea plants did so very well, I will probably want to plant more, as they mature and die off. The beans are doing so nicely that I’ve had a good few side dishes of fresh green beans in the last couple of weeks. The first crop of bush beans are likely soon to age out of productivity, but I have several pots of pole beans coming along. I rather like pole beans, since they grow up, rather than producing only at ground level. Tomatoes … I also have a good lot of tomato plants coming along at various stages of development. Yes – tomatoes; infinitely variable in use.

And this might be the year that I have edible squash of various sorts (cross fingers here) – especially the small green ruffled patty-pan squash, which I deeply adored as a kid. They were cheap. readily available, tender, and tasty, and Mom bought them frequently – but where are they in markets today? I haven’t seen patty-pan squash in ages in the supermarket.  As for zucchini, they are often seen, but expensive, so I’d like to grow them. I’ve never been able, save for one single year, to have a good zucchini crop – and the joke is that anyone can grow zucchini and have enough of the darned things to inflict on your neighbors, by leaving a bag full of them on the doorstep, ringing the doorbell and running away. The only year that I did have a couple of edible zucchini squashes was the year that I tried out some exotic hot-weather variety from Lebanon, in a raised bed … and I think I had all of two or three. The squash-borers get to them, it seems, unless one is very lucky.

And that’s my week, since getting up very early Sunday morning and sending off my daughter and Wee Jamie on the train to California. Yours?

My daughter and the Wonder Grandson, Wee Jamie, are off in California for three weeks, visiting family,  showing Wee Jamie to his living ancestors, cousins, great-aunt and uncles and assorted other kin, and giving my sister and her family a bit of a break, in looking after Mom, who is mostly paralyzed and bedridden, since a fall in her kitchen some years ago. This leaves me alone in the house, or as alone as one can be with a pair of dogs, three cats and two hyper-energetic kittens. (They all seem to be extra-clingy to me, in the absence of my daughter and Wee Jamie, though.) Is there a feline version of Ritalin for kittens… no particular reason for asking. Really. I am under strict orders from my daughter to check in with the next-door neighbor, Miss Eileen at least once a day, or else a welfare check from SAPD will be ordered up. No kidding. On an occasion in the early Oughties, when the Daughter Unit was still in the Marines, one of the cats knocked the bedroom telephone extension off the night table, and I didn’t notice. The Daughter Unit tried to call me for most of a day and only got a busy signal. A nice patrol officer from the local substation rang the doorbell early in the evening…

I’d rather not have that happen again.

Not having to work my day around Wee Jamie’s naptime, activities, exercise and appointments allowed me to get an enormous lot of stuff done, over the last several days – laundry without worrying if the noise from the washer and dryer would disturb his nap, time at the computer without little hands grabbing for my phone, keyboard or mouse, or keeping an ear on rotating alert for dangerous noise or even more dangerous silence … and time in the garden without worrying.

The range of potted herbs and veggies by the front door

The Greenhouse, with one of the newly-paved sitting areas

Yes, the garden. The greenhouse is done, and altogether splendid, although I made some mistakes in installing the eave panels, mistakes that I can’t go back and remedy, not without tearing it half apart again. Better just to adjust and move on … move on to covering more of the side garden with pavers to permit sitting areas and clusters of potted plants; the soil here is so dense and clay-like that I have long given up trying to grow anything in it. Better to pave with ornamental pavers and pea gravel and containers on top, or larger metal-sided raised beds full of purchased garden soil … the container garden is burgeoning with green, after a number of days of rain. We’ve already had several side dishes of fresh beans and peas. Last night I had two small red potatoes from the raised bed, and they were delicious and creamy. I’ve depended for weeks, nay, months! on the blessings of fresh basil, parsley, oregano, fennel, cilantro, sage, and dill from the pots by the front door. The container garden holds a tempting promise of tomatoes of all sorts, okra, squash and peppers of all kinds, from Bell to various exotic hot peppers. I’ve managed to fill an extended raised bed with topsoil, leaf mulch from the mulch pile, and maybe I’ll be able to plant some more beans, corn and pumpkins in it by the end of the week.

Of other projects – besides finishing the Civil War novel – three of them concern items that the Daughter Unit snagged at yard savings, or from a pile of discards from a neighbor who is moving to Hawaii and ditching every shred of excess to needs items; an oak child’s armchair and a pair of small steamer trunks. One is to be fitted out as a toy trunk for Wee Jamie, the other to be an all-in-one traveling display and storage for Miss Matilda. I’m hoping to finish all three by the time that my near family returns from California.