I opened the door on my kitchen cabinet the other day to get a coffee cup, and I immediately found myself being  beaten about the face and head by falling dishes.  I ran from the kitchen dodging plates, cups, glasses and a few other things that I never knew belonged in a kitchen cabinet in the first place.  In all my years as a cabinet door opener, I have never seen so many dishes falling out at the same time.

Now I don't mean to complain. I love it that Hubby is so wonderful and helps me with the housework.  I just wish someone could explain to him the rules of dish stacking.  Like how the plates do not belong on top of a stack of cereal bowls, and the glasses are not arranged in a pyramid. And how the smaller pots go on top of the larger ones and not the other way around. I don't dare say anything myself for fear of hurting his feelings and possibly losing his help around the house.

You see, I'm just not that big on housecleaning.  I used to be. Back in my twenties and late thirties. Then I got older and I'd like to think I got a little wiser.  I used to worry all the time if the house got dirty. In dirty, I mean did I have dust bunnies underneath the refrigerator? Did the wall behind the couch need cleaning? Should the floors be cleaned more than twice a day. Did I remember to mop the driveway and vacuum the lawn today?  I was so naive back then. I thought these things were important.

Then the grand kids came along and I realized that one does not die from grape jelly on the drapes, a glass of milk being spilled on the carpet, or from half eaten apples and  cheese sandwiches hidden in the china cabinet.  Nor do crayon marks on the wall and little hand prints on the windows and mirrors constitute sending the children to a Juvenile Correctional Facility.  I learned that it's much more fun to play hide and seek with the them, than to follow along behind them with a dust mop, a sponge and a bottle of bleach.

I've even allowed the dust bunnies to grow large and fluffy underneath the refrigerator and I haven't seen the wall behind the couch in over a year. I don't worry about the small things anymore. So what, if the tables get a little dusty. I don't scold the kids if they write their name in the dust. (as long as they don't write the date.)

I'm very lucky though to have a hubby who enjoys helping out around the house.  Not all women have this. I have heard their stories and I shudder to think of having to lift a man's foot up off the floor in order to vacuum under it (once or twice a month).

I have learned to tolerate clutter, to function in a house that doesn't resemble the operating room at our local hospital. I still clean occasionally, as needed.  And yes, you can still eat off my floors. Only now you don't need to drop you own food. You could probably find enough cookie crumbs and chips already lying around down there to make a meal. Not to mention dog biscuits and raw hide chew bones. 

Actually, Hubby is a better housekeeper than I am. And he's fast too. The grand children can come for a visit and while I am still hugging them bye, Hubby has their toys all picked up, their dishes have been whisked to the kitchen and loaded into the dish washer, and not one garment remains from all of their clothes they had strewn across the house.  I don't know how he gets everything put away so quickly...and I suppose I don't really want to know. That's the reason I never open  the closet door in the guest bedroom.

Doesn't it seem odd that the older we get, the more important to us our parents become. As children, we saw them in a different light. We thought of them more as the nutrition and hygiene police. They  made us wash behind our ears and always wear clean underwear. They made us eat our vegetables and they limited our sweets. They told us how to dress and when to go to bed, and we resented that.

When we became teenagers, they became the curfew patrol, making certain that we were home before eleven, always needing to know where we were going and where we had been, and what we were doing. We thought of them as old fashioned and "behind the times". We swore we would never be like that with "our kids" when we became parents. We often thought of our parents as an interference in our lives.

But after we grew up and got married and began to raise our own kids, a funny thing started to happen. We began to realize how many times our parents had been right and we had been wrong. We began to see how much more they knew about life than we did. We actually began to seek their advice and expertise on everything from how to boil water without burning it, to the correct way to change a diaper on a newborn.

Then as our kids began to grow up and the cycle continued, WE became the nutrition and hygiene police, the curfew patrol and the interference in THEIR lives.
 
I remember when my son was small. He was in the middle of his "Terrible Two's" when he began to assert his "I'm smarter than you" attitude. On one particular morning he woke up grouchy...(well actually "Grouchy" had already left for work). Anyway, he was cranky and when I fixed his breakfast he suddenly threw the piece of toast on the floor and gave me a mean look. "Why on earth did you do that?" I demanded, looking around for my sweet baby boy and wondering where this little monster had come from.

"Cuz you put the butter on the 'wong' side of the 'bwead'!" he shouted, his little face all red and angry. I had to turn away in order to scold him. I didn't want him to see me laughing. To this very day, it always takes me a while to butter a piece of toast. I turn it over three or four times trying to decide where to put the butter.

When we're young we tend to take for granted the love and natural concern that are a part of being a parent... the kind of love that is unselfish and unlimited. And long after they are gone, we still remember the small things they did to make our lives more comfortable, the sacrifices they made for us and the many ways they brought us joy.

Mama used to tell me that I was pretty. I believed her. Mama never told a lie in her life. I suppose all parents think their kids are pretty. A sincere compliment for no reason always warms the heart. Mama gave me a million and one wonderful moments in my life. Mama told me every day that she loved me and I knew that no matter what I did, she would always love me. 

She's been gone for six months now. But I will always remember her teachings. I will remember all the wonderful things she did for her children. I wonder if she knew just what a smart, wonderful lady she really was. I wish I could tell her one more time...

If your parents are still with you, let them know every day just how much you love and appreciate them. They deserve to know.

I looked around my house today and wondered yet again why l'm so lousy at decorating. I try really hard, honestly I do, yet my home always ends up winning the "Tacky Shack" award every year. I just don't have the natural talent to make things look like they do in those pictures in House Beautiful Magazine.

My sister-in-law is a very talented interior decorator. She could decorate the inside of a port-a-john and everyone in the neighborhood would want to go out and buy one. I couldn't decorate the inside of a barn. I tried it once and all the hens stopped laying, the goats ran away, and the cow jumped over the moon. 

I've read countless books on home decorating, I watch all those home make-over shows on TV, and still my house looks like it's been decorated by vandals. It's quite disgusting when you spend all that time and money on new furnishings and artwork for the walls, then have it look like a natural disaster area that would qualify us for federal aid.

I think I must be missing a gene somewhere that makes other women good at house keeping. I had my gall bladder removed when I was young which could have caused me to stop producing the Martha Stewart hormone.  I just never really cared very much for house work. Actually, the only thing I really enjoy about house work is .?.  I would much rather dig in the dirt outside or help Hubby build a deck or put a roof on the house.  Maybe I just never outgrew my tomboy days.

When I was a kid growing up instead of helping Mama inside the house, I chose to mow the lawn, bring in firewood and grub roots and bushes from the fence row in back of our house.  I think it was simply the fact of being outdoors that I liked. I am a very claustrophobic person. Lock me in a closet and I would be dead within thirty minutes.
 
I would keep my doors open and the windows up all year long if it wasn't for freezing to death in the winter months. I panic when I am closed in for any length of time.

It's funny how the mind works; some people are afraid while others are terrified - the kind of fear that goes beyond normal and is called Phobia. The most common phobias are: Acrophobia- Fear of heights and Claustrophobia- Fear of confined spaces.
While doing research on phobias I happened upon a website that listed thousands of fears or phobias and  (I promise I'm not making this up) the following phobias were among the ones listed there:

Pluviophobia- Fear of rain or of being rained on.
Porphyrophobia- Fear of the color purple.
Pteronophobia- Fear of being tickled by feathers.
Scriptophobia- Fear of writing in public.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words. (Gee, Ya think? That one scared me!)
Ephebiphobia- Fear of teenagers. (I can see how people can develop this one...especially those poor parents who own one of them.)

After reading through the list, I found that I have over half of the phobias listed there, so I suppose you could say that I have Panophobia or Pantophobia - Fear of everything.  I wonder if there is a name for Fear of Interior Decorating? I bet there is, but I'm too afraid to look for it.

In the meantime, I suppose I'll stay with the "Contemporary Dumpster" look...unless I can persuade my sister-in-law to come and live in our house for a while. Or unless a tornado happens to rip through the house, thus creating severe improvements to the furniture arrangement and wall hangings.  But wait, I'm terrified of strong winds...

You know what my idea of a good day is? It's any day that I don't find my name in the obituaries. Sometimes I'm reminded of that old country song, "I'm Hangin' By a Thread And You Hold The Scissors".  The days keep flying by so quickly I often need  Dramamine for the motion sickness.

Each time I round a corner I'm afraid I'll bump into myself coming from the opposite direction. And so it is with most of us in this fast-paced get it done yesterday society. We have become a generation of "hurriers".

I don't know why we humans think we need to get so many things done in one day; there's always tomorrow, and if there isn't, then we won't need to worry about it anyway. I remember when my sister and I were children, growing up in the fifties. Is it just me or did the days seem to last a lot longer back then? And that was before daylight savings time was invented.

We had few of the modern conveniences we have today. Nothing was automated, everything was done manually, and it was done by a real live person and not a machine. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry back then. People had time to sit down together to talk and visit. I remember in the evenings when friends and family would gather on the front porch to rest and unwind after a long day. The grown-ups talked about grown-up things, while the children chased lightening bugs across the yard, jumped rope, played tag and Red Rover. The sky was further away and the stars were a lot bigger, the air was much fresher and ten o'clock was late. We were usually yawning and tired by the time the good-nights were all said and everyone had gone home. We would go inside and get ready for bed, happy and exhausted, secure in the knowledge that we were loved.

Everything that needed doing got done back then and yet nobody hurried. Time, for us, wasn't measured on a clock. Instead it was measured by how long we could jump rope without missing a step, how many wild strawberries we could find or the number of fish we caught in one day. Time was making garlands of daisies and buttercups to wear as jewelry, building a playhouse in the wood shed, holding the warm wiggly body of new puppy or kitten, or discovering baby chicks newly hatched. Time wasn't something we saved; time wasn't wasted; time was well spent.

I remember waking up early, while the dew was still heavy on the ground. Walking barefoot through the soft grass, picking Morning Glories before they closed their faces against the sun. Golden honeysuckle grew wild along the Nolichucky and its sweet scent filled the air, unequaled by any perfume that could ever be made by man. Butterflies added splashes of blue, yellow and brown among the white blossoms of the Mock Orange in the corner of the yard. If happy had a smell, this would have been it. If time could be relived, this would be it.

As is only natural and always expected, times have changed since my childhood.  Of course every generation says that and I'm sure it holds true for all.  I wonder if it is the fact that we were children, without the cares and responsibilities of adulthood, that makes us think life was a lot more simple back when.  I wonder if the children of today will look back on this time and remember it as "the good old days".

I smile now, remembering  how my grandma would always say "Lord ha' mercy. How everything has changed since I was a young'un. This world is going to the dogs and the children nowadays are nothing but little hellions"   I suppose we all wax a little nostalgic when we begin to look back at yesterday. Perhaps by living through a few wars and a multitude of different occupants of the White House, we've earned the right to recall 'the good old days'.

The world is a lot better today in some respects, and a lot worse in others. Technology and medicine has made tremendous progress and our lives are made better for it. We have better schools, better roads, better means of communication and better jobs.  We just need to sort out the better from the worse, use our own good judgment that the Lord gave us, and be more thankful for the simple things than we are. We need to sit on our front porch more, talk with our neighbors, maybe chase a few lightening bugs or smell the flowers.

I'm just thankful for another day that I wasn't in the obituaries. It could happen. After all, I'm only passing through this world. I don't plan on staying.