Funerals and dog food

Yesterday was a day full of tears, laughter and fellowship as we laid my Grandma to rest.  She was a very kind, loving woman who made the best fried chicken EVER!  I've never had fried chicken that tastes like hers; she told me many times that the key was to have the grease really, really hot.  She would make gravy out of the chicken drippings and we would serve it over torn bread - so incredibly yummy with little bits of fried chicken skin in it.  My mouth is watering right now.  For years we had Sunday dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's every week, a meal for 12-17 people, with lots of food and love.  The adults sat at the kitchen table and all of the kids sat at a table in the living room.  When I was about 7 or 8 years old I decided one Sunday that I was big enough to sit with the adults, I was the oldest grandchild present, after all.  I sat down where Mom usually sat and she told me to get up and go sit with the kids, to which I promptly refused to do.  She told me again to go sit with the kids and again I said, "No."  Then it happened.  Grandma thumped me right behind my left ear and said, "Don't you sass your Mama!"  Needless to say, I moved to the kids' table.  Grandma didn't have a dishwasher, so we all pitched in to clean everything up.  I asked her once why she didn't buy a dishwasher and she said, "Well, I used to have four."  Amazed, I said, "You had four dishwashers?!  Why did you get rid of them?"  She said, "Well, they all grew up and moved away."  Obviously, she meant her four kids and I told her that didn't count.  On a side note, I have a dishwasher, but I never use it.  I try to use it once a month to keep it in working order, but we do all of our dishes by hand to conserve water.

Grandma taught me how to sew Barbie doll clothes out of scraps when I was little - my first sewing lesson - on a VERY old sewing machine.  She always wore SAS shoes - I never saw her in anything else until the last few years - whether she was wearing a dress or slacks.  When it was time to head out to work cattle or work on the truck she wore a dark blue cap with a mesh back and a large brooch on the front.  I asked her one time why she had a pin on her hat and she said it was so the guys would know that it wasn't theirs, it distinguished the hat as a girl's.  I cleaned her house every week using windex and her old Kirby vacuum and she'd always say, "Oh, Honey, that looks so much better!"  Then she'd try to give me twenty bucks.

When I was 14 or 15 I had to spend my entire spring break at Grandma and Grandpa's cutting down cedar trees because Mom caught me and my friend, Mignon, sneaking out of the house to go to a party.  It was the first and last time I ever tried to sneak out.  Mignon was banned from the house for a while and I was grounded and punished with semi-hard labor.  My poor brother had to work with me because Mom didn't want him at home alone for the whole week; he still holds it against me.  It's been over 20 years, RJ, let it go, man.  Grandma and Grandpa wore my rear out that week!  They drove the four-wheeler or the truck and RJ and I had to get out and cut down cedars in the fence row or in the middle of the pasture.  I can tell you that to this day, I have a severe hatred for cedars.  They are an invasive, fast-spreading menace of a tree.  You'll probably hear me rant about how horrible they are later.  That spring break is the one time that I can remember Grandma and Grandpa being hard on me, but they did it with love.  They didn't lecture me or yell at me, we all knew why I was there - punishment.  And they intended to get all of the work out of me that they could.  I would have gladly cut down the cedars for them if they'd asked, but the fact that I was being forced to do it for punishment just gave me a bad attitude.  I'm pretty sure that I was quite sour all week.

She was ready to leave this life and her body was worn out.  The last month of her life had really been hard on her - and on Mom, who for the last several years has spent her free time at the assisted living center where Grandma lived, providing additional care for Grandma to try to keep her costs to a minimum.  I will miss her for forever, but I know she is in a better place (which sounds very cliche' when I say it, even though it's the truth).  We knew her death was coming and I had made my peace with it, knowing that she was saved and would go to Heaven, but I still cried more than I thought I would.  I'd blame my pregnant hormones, but I think I'd still have been this upset if I weren't pregnant.

Grandma Lois

After Grandma's funeral, Mom and I were going to go look at a pond, but, she had on her nice clothes and shoes and wanted to borrow a pair of boots.  I hooked her up with my ugly steel-toed boots and I donned my pretty pink and grey plaid rubber boots.  Hey, my boots, my decision.  She should have brought her own if she wanted to be picky.  Both pair are kept on a shoe rack in our utility room and because they're tall, I have to lay them on their side.  She put one boot on and as she slipped her foot into the second one, she said, "What is in this boot?!"  As she peered inside, she screamed, "Oh my gosh!!!!"  I was expecting her to say there was a huge clod of dirt or a rock or something NORMAL inside the boot.  Then she said, "There's dog food in this boot!"  As she handed me the boot and I took a gander inside, I started laughing hysterically because I knew immediately what had stashed all of that dog food in there - a mouse!  When you live in the middle of a pasture, mice happen, no matter how much poison you put out.  But, this is the first time I've seen one stash food in a boot.  A couple of years ago I found a stash of dog food in the back corner of a closet and it was a HUGE pile; that mouse had been busy.  Apparently, this mouse has been just as busy.  It's only about 5 feet from the dog bowl to the boot, but I hope he wore his rear out running back and forth a hundred times to build up his stash.

In other news, I've added mouse poison to my Walmart list.