The freezer

On Sunday, one of Mama and Daddy's sitters asked me if I knew insulation was hanging out of their chest freezer. The answer would be no!
I've worried about this freezer for a long time. It's the one my parents filled with the fruits of a vegetable garden at Rock Ridge. No one has used the food in it for years. A decade, is more accurate. I've worried that the freezer would stop working and the food would thaw out and rot without me knowing it until the telltale odor revealed the problem.
Well, that wasn't the problem. I really don't know what happened, but Sunday, when we tried to open the freezer lid, it wouldn't budge at first. Eventually, my husband pried it open, leaving a layer of yellow insulation frozen to the edges of the appliance. Reggie used an ice pick to break the insulation away. So now the freezer lid is in two pieces: the actually white lid and the layer of insulation. On Sunday, he chipped away the ice that had run over the top of the freezer and took out enough food so we could somewhat close the disconnected lid. We placed a carton of soft drinks and boxes of Boost on the lid to hold it down.
We left it like that until last night. The garbage is collected today, and according to the person I talked to at the city, it was OK to place the bags of frozen food beside our roll-out container. The freezer will be taken out of the house on Friday.
We waited until Mama and Daddy had gone to bed last night before we started our work. I didn't know how I would explain why we were hauling bags from the house, and I knew the truth would upset Daddy too much. So I didn't tell him. (He also would have insisted I cook the 15-year-old corn for supper or fry up a package of chicken.) Reggie and I both put on our winter gloves to protect them from the chill of the frozen food and got to work. While I filled 12 large black leaf bags, he hauled them to the front yard.
Because the lid no longer stays open by itself, I had to prop it against my shoulder or my head and reach deep inside to retrieve pint-size bags of corn, crowder peas and butterbeans lovingly grown at Daddy's Rock Ridge farm and brought home to freeze. A few times, I almost lost my balance reaching so far down and had a secret fear of falling in and having to wait for Reggie to rescue me between his trips to the curb. But I didn't fall, thank God. Can you imagine trying to explain that injury at the ER?
Stacked between the vegetables were freezer-burned steaks and pork cutlets, packages of bacon and even a freezer bag filled with snow cream with a note in Mama's writing saying it was made on the second day of the snow and was icy. I can promise you my mama would have eaten the snow cream if she had know it was in there!
There was even an unopened half-gallon of Winn-Dixie's Superbrand vanilla ice cream. I also found a few grocery store receipts, including one from West Nash Market. And Reggie discovered an ink pen that probably fell out of Daddy shirt pocket the last time he reached in to re-arrange the frozen foods.
After I had pulled out all I could get, Reggie had to once again pull out the ice pick to free dozens of pints of peas that were embedded in a thick layer of ice. But, in less than an hour, we had the job done.
Mama and Daddy always dated the vegetables they froze, so we know exactly how old the corn and peas are. Many were dated 1997 and 1998; the oldest bag I saw was from 1992.
My son, Robert, turned 2 years old in 1992. When he was a little boy, he loved to help Grandma and Grandpa freeze corn. It was his job to put the ears of corn into a large bucket of ice water to chill.
A lot of work went into raising vegetables on a farm you don't live on, and the work continued when the picked food was brought home to be shelled and frozen.
Daddy purposedly filled up his freezer with his homegrown vegetables because he wanted to enjoy them when he was too old to farm. He told me this many times. But Mama stopped cooking years ago, and the corn and peas stayed in the freezer. I cooked the ones Daddy had given me, but the rest remained in their cold storage for more than a decade. It's sad, really, to know Mama and Daddy's hard work ended up as trash.
But at least he had peace of mind all of those years, knowing it was there if he needed it.

Erasers work

Sometimes the mail at the work brings presents. Last week, I got a goodie box with Febreze products inside. Some of the products have a lavendar/ vanilla scent. I passed those along to my co-worker; she doesn't have allergies!
I did take home the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser with Febreze. It's a "powerful foaming cleaner for kitchen and bath." Well, the tub in my bathroom needing some powerful cleaning, so I gave it a try.
The tub in question is in the bathroom we had added to the house several years ago. I was so proud of that shiny white tub when it was first installed, but it had gotten dingy, and despite many efforts and lots of stinky cleaners, the ring and soap scum remained. I had used Mr. Clean Erasers before to remove marks on the walls. They worked like magic. And, guess what? The kitchen and bath cleaner worked like magic as well! With a little bit of elbow grease, I was able to remove those dingy stains from my tub in about five minutes, and, I promise, the tub felt smooth and looked new again. And, another plus, my hands didn't smell like bleach.
After we finished with that tub, my husband used the eraser on the other tub as well as the kitchen sink. We also used it to remove from the side of the tub a tiny, 3-year-old rust spot from a wayward bobby pin.
I've seen Mr. Clean Magic Eraser with Febreze in local stores, selling around $2.50; there are two erasers in each package. I think it's a real bargain!

Happy Birthday Anna

I know my daughter's birthday is her special day, but as her mother,
it's pretty special to me as well. I've spent much of today remembering back to Anna's birth 14 years ago. What a staggering thought to realize it's been that long since I first held my little girl, admired her dainty features and marveled at the tiny bow the nurse had placed in her hair.
Today, I've thought back to the little details of the day: how incredibly thirsty I was during labor; how ridiculous I thought it was for my doctor to suggest I'd deliver quicker if I just didn't have an epidural; how the nurses looked after my queasy husband; how different it was to deliver naturally rather than by C-section; how eager Anna was to nurse just minutes after her birth; how excited her big brother Robert was to find his mama and little sister later that day.
I also remember Mama. In the last weeks of my pregnancy, I had told Mama that the most important thing she could do for me during labor was to make sure 3-year-old Robert was OK. I told her I'd rather she stay with him than to sit in the hospital waiting room. We dropped Robert off at her house the morning I went into labor. She walked out to the car to talk to me, looked into my eyes, and I'm sure she saw the pain and fear I was experiencing. I can only imagine what happened next, but before long, Robert was in the safe care of my aunt and cousins, and Mama was in the hospital to make sure her own little girl was OK and to await the arrival of her granddaughter.
Anna has turned out to be such a joy to my mother. Just like her brother, Anna stayed with my parents while I worked. She and Mama developed a close bond as they spent their days together enjoying the world around them: walking through yard looking at the flowers, collecting pretty pebbles from the gravel driveway, looking at birds hunting for sunflower seeds at the feeders or worms in the front yard.
Now, as Mama struggles with the trials of Alzheimer's, Anna continues to be a joy to her. It's now Anna who takes her grandmother for walks around the yard, looking for the first signs of spring flowers or perhaps picking a camellia blooming in the back yard.
When I stopped by Mama and Daddy's at lunch, I told them Anna's birthday was today. Mama was thrilled. She asked me if I'd write it all down on a piece of paper. I wrote: "Anna is 14 today." She held the piece of paper in her hands, looking at it every few minutes as if she were memorizing the words. I promised that Anna and I would drop by her house after school so she could tell her happy birthday.
Three hours later, we did just that. Mama smiled when she saw Anna, stood up and gave her a birthday hug. Clutched in her left hand was the paper from the notepad. It was folded up three or four times. "I've held it so I wouldn't forget," she said.
It's another birthday memory I hope I never forget.