Sisters

I’ve been “away” for awhile. “Away” as in, not putting pen to paper or whatever you say when you write on a computer instead on paper. My excuse is that I have been working some extra days at the store so my brain has been in the “I’m tired” mode. Things are hopefully getting back to normal (whatever that is) so here I am.

With the days slowly but surely getting longer it’s time to think about getting our yard in shape. When we moved back to New Glarus last June, we concentrated on getting a garage built (whose number one priority do you think that was), putting in a first floor bathroom and doing some work in the kitchen, all of which left us with not much time to do any yard work.

I am a flower lover and we have none with the exception of a few iris so I am anxious to get some planted. I prefer to plant perennials even though initially they cost more (but you only have to pay and plant once) and then use annuals in my planters & pots on my porch. Like so many other things in life, the variety of flowers to choose from is almost overwhelming. I have my favorites like peonies, hydrangeas and lilacs but they can take awhile to grow so I will go for some others that are a bit quicker to bloom so that I can enjoy those while the others get established.

So next week I will wind my way through the paths at Brenda’s Blumenladen here in New Glarus where there is an abundance of flowers, bulbs, bushes and seeds to choose from and get to work in my yard so I can get my “flower fix” every day of the week…k

May 5, 2015

I just saw a commercial on TV for a show called”Surviving Marriage”. Are you kidding me? Who comes up with this stuff? I haven’t seen this show but am guessing two people (presumably married to each other) go through some crisis in their marriage while a few million people watch. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like anything I want to see.

Having been married 43 years, I know first hand that marriage is hard work and not always smooth sailing. Every couple fights once in awhile (unless you live in separate houses a mile apart) and every couple goes through at least one crisis (if not several). Most couples go through the ups and downs of learning to live together, raising children and growing older. You hang on for the ride and hope you come out on the other side the better for it, kind of like going on a scary roller coaster!

I think, as we go through the years, sometimes we need to make “adjustments” to our marriages if we really want to stay with each other. For example, Allan once told someone that the secret to our longevity was “she’s gone three days a week” (I’m not sure he was kidding) and when I retired from flying, our kids weren’t sure how we were going to handle being together seven days a week! I guess we’ve adjusted.

And here we are, 43 years, three kids and five grandchildren later, still plugging along, together…k

March 25, 2015

Today is my 57th birthday (okay, so it’s really my 62nd but who’s counting) and I am AMAZED by all the birthday wishes I received via Facebook! I don’t look at Facebook every day so I have missed wishing some people a happy birthday but I am going to try to do better in the future. 

I spent my birthday at Sisters but I’m okay with that, lots of people work on their birthday. Four special visitors came to see me late in the day….what’s better than that!?!

I think we all have sort of a love/hate relationship with our birthday.  Most of us love the good wishes, the funny messages, the warm feeling and the love we feel on our special day. I’m happy I’m here another year….I still have a lot of “stuff” to get done. 

Some of us don’t like thinking about being another year older, having a few more gray hairs (or less hair) or adding another pound or two to our “bottom line”. Honestly, none of those things bother me. I could color my hair to get rid of the gray hairs and I could be thinner if I’d cut back on sweets (not likely) but that’s not the thing that is at the top of my wish list.

What’s at the top of my wish list? If I could have anything I wanted, it would be for my kids (I consider my daughter-in-law to be one of my kids) and my grandkids to live long, healthy and happy lives and that’s something you can’t buy…k

March 18, 2015

I was born into a large, Catholic farm family, one of eleven children. We are very blessed to all still be in this world with the exception of an older sister who died shortly after birth. Large families were common when I grew up and we (at least I, probably shouldn’t speak for everyone else) didn’t see anything unusual about the size of our family.

There were certainly disadvantages to having such a big family…..imagine shopping for groceries or school clothes, imagine living in a home with one bathroom, imagine how much laundry we had to do, imagine figuring out who had to be where, when and how, imagine keeping track of birthdays, imagine making sure the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa all showed up when they were supposed to. Yikes!!!!! It’s exhausting just thinking about getting it all done let alone actually doing it.

To be fair, there is a flip side to the coin, one can come up with many advantages to having a lot of kids. We didn’t need anyone else to play baseball, (Jack’s famous line “you’re just trying to get me out” still makes me laugh). We always had someone to play with and someone else to blame if you got in trouble. We learned the value of many hands helping out either in the house or in the barn, insuring that the farm prospered so that we were always well fed and well dressed.

Was life perfect? Not by a long shot, but you grow up, move on, set aside the bad and remember the good.  As I age, I realize more and more, the size of your family, along with a lot of other things, doesn’t matter. Families have disagreements followed by forgiveness, a support system that’s there when you need it and love, always love…k

March 10, 2015

My favorite magazine came in the mail today, The Cottage Journal. It always has the most beautiful cover and the new Spring issue is no exception. There is a picture of a hammock filled with soft pillows and a flowered throw, beneath it some pretty, bright pink flowers. It looks like a spot anyone would want to spend a lazy afternoon, relaxing, not thinking about much of anything, just doing nothing……if you were the kind of person who likes that sort of thing.

 Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who does like that sort of thing but I have trouble doing nothing. I don’t think of myself as a workaholic, I just happen to like being busy more than I like to relax. I like going to work at Sisters, waiting on customers, looking for inventory, arranging it in the store. (The only thing I hate is bookwork, ugh, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hate bookwork!) I like working on our home renovation projects (with a few exceptions, but that’s another post). I like working in the yard, planting flowers, moving them around to better spots or dividing them when they get too large.

 Now, you may think that I think it’s a bad thing that most people are able to sit and do nothing, relax in a hammock for a few hours on a nice summer day or spend a day with a good book or a half dozen movies. Not so, I think if you are able to do that and it’s enjoyable to you, then absolutely you should do those things and more (or less, if that’s how you look at it), it’s just not for me. That’s because I’m a “non-relaxer”…k

February 25, 2015

As I have mentioned, my husband Allan and I are working on redoing house number 7. As we were wiping down some walls and woodwork this morning before painting, (he painted, I went to work at the shop), I thought about how many times we had done this before. Then I thought back to the house that started it all…..

Our first project was a 3 bedroom 1 & ½ bath house in Darlington. The first thing we had to do was clean all the trash out of the house and the large storage area/garage and there was a LOT of it.  After that was accomplished, we went to work on the inside of the house. We redid the full bath and the kitchen and painted every room along with doing other projects that taught us some great lessons.

 We learned that you shouldn’t walk on floors that you have just sanded with dirty shoes because unless you want to sand the floors again you will always have the faint outline of footprints on your floors. We had already returned the floor sander by the time we figured out the footprints wouldn’t come completely off so we lived with the footprints. We learned that you shouldn’t put in orange kitchen countertops even if you love orange because if you can’t afford to change them in 4 or 5 years…..yep, you guessed it, to this day I am not fond of the color orange. We learned that even though it’s “in style”, kitchen carpet is NEVER a smart choice. We learned that it’s not a really good idea to stain and varnish for several hours in a closed up house unless you wanted to be sick for about 3 days. Dumb, dumb, dumb…

Those were all great lessons but I think the best lessons we learned were how to work with each other, make compromises, do the job right the first time and only think about killing each other, not actually follow through with it…k

February 15, 2015

What’s that poetic line…..something about if winter comes, spring isn’t far behind? That’s probably not quite right, but you know what I mean. We still are in the month of February, cold days tempered with warmer ones, sunlight lasting longer and longer into each day and best of all, we start to think about Spring, glorious Spring.

I’m not much of a winter person (I refuse to capitalize the word because I don’t want it to think it’s an important season) but I’m usually okay with it until the holidays are over. After that, I’m ready for Spring with thoughts of rearranging the store and bringing in new merchandise that we have either ordered or spent hours hunting for.

 I love looking for inventory for the store….it’s probably a good thing that I am limited by time and money or you wouldn’t be able to get in the door. (At this point I need to mention that if my husband wasn’t so willing to help me with loading, unloading, repairs, etc., Sisters would not be what it is, thank you Allan). I try very hard to “hear” what customers are asking for and think about that when I’m out and about trying to find great pieces to bring in.  Suz and I always say as a guideline when buying, “if we wouldn’t put it in our own home, we shouldn’t put it in the store”. Hopefully, the care and thought we put into our inventory choices, shows. We don’t always hit a home run but I guess that’s why we have a sale section!

So as we rearrange, bring in our new finds and dream about Spring flowers, warmer temperatures and longer days coming ever closer, I am not going to think about February usually being the snowiest month in Wisconsin…k

February 12, 2015

As I flipped through a wholesale catalog that came to the store yesterday, I noticed many of the pieces in it were reproductions of items that were used half a century or more ago. There were lots of small things like galvanized trays, buckets and other containers, tool totes and tin “advertising” signs. There were also larger pieces like harvest tables, trunks, chests of drawers…..a literal “buffet” of  things to choose from.

As I looked at page after page, I kept thinking, “hey, we have one of those in the store and it’s not a repro”.  Now, don’t get me wrong, reproductions have their place and we have some marked as such, but (like I’ve said before, there is always a but), if you have the opportunity to buy the real thing, I would. Why, you ask? I would for three reasons. One, unless you overpay or don’t take care of the piece, you shouldn’t lose money on it if you sell it. Two, the real thing is almost always better than a copy, kind of like real money is better than counterfeit. Third, many times the reproduction is more expensive than the original.

Notice I said earlier, “if you have the opportunity to buy the real thing”….of course if you don’t have the chance, the time or the inclination to buy an original piece, there is nothing wrong with buying a reproduction if you love it.

 And that’s the bottom line, old or new, antique, reproduction, pristine, beat-up or somewhere in the middle, all that really matters is that you love it…k

February 10, 2015

I just saw the weather forecast……not too bad for us here in Wisconsin but looks like the Northeastern part of the U.S. is going to get blasted with a huge snowstorm. “Historic snowfall”, “life-threatening” and “dangerous” are terms the National Weather Service and other officials are using. Sounds like it is going to be very nasty.

Most of you know I was a flight attendant for 20 some years, retiring a few years ago.  It was not a career I aspired to, but thanks to one of my sisters, I sort of fell into it. I enjoyed most of the people I met, loved some of the places I was able to travel to, particularly In Europe and I was glad that my family was able to use the travel benefits that went along with the job.

The week following 911 was not a favorite in my life as I was stuck in Japan for 6 days at a time when all I really wanted was to be home with my family. I remember finally getting home and my husband saying to me “ I’m just going to tell you I erased all the messages on the answering machine because a lot of the people who called were crying and I didn’t want you to hear it.” I had the very same trip the following week. I went because I knew if I didn’t go, I would never be able to fly again. I also worked a trip to Japan on a 747 with 400 passengers on board that developed a major mechanical problem over the Bering Sea. We limped back to Anchorage for an emergency landing and just prior to yelling “brace for impact”, I am not embarrassed to admit, I thought I might not survive and said a quick “please, God.”

Those were difficult things to deal with. As a flight attendant, you are trained to react appropriately in emergency situations and I think I did ok.

 Emergency situations were one thing and certainly not fun to go through but what really drove me crazy was when people complained about a flight being delayed or cancelled because of the weather. I used to want to say “who in their right mind would want to fly in this weather?”  (Ranks right up there with “why would you want to take a ride on a broken airplane, especially if the pilots don’t want to fly it?!?!”)

So as the bad weather moves in, I sympathize with the airline personnel who will have to bite their tongues and deal nicely with folks who sometimes don’t have the sense to know when someone is looking out for them. I am so glad I’m no longer one of them…k

February 8, 2015

I blame my mother for my love of antiques.

When I was about six months pregnant with my first child, she asked me if I wanted to go to an auction with her. Never having been to an auction and wanting to spend the day with my mom, I agreed to go. It was a scorching hot day the end of July and it seemed as though the auction went on forever.  I got a little overheated and I really wanted to go home but of course we had come in the same vehicle and we were quite a drive from home. I leaned towards my mother as she bid on yet another piece of pink Depression glass (her favorite) and said kiddingly, “I’m so hot, what will you do if I faint?” She paused ever so briefly and said “I’ll just kick you under the wagon and keep bidding.”

 Now if you knew my mother, you know she was trying to tell me was that if I really felt that bad, I should say so and we would go. On the other hand, if I was just complaining that it was hot (really, the end of July, what did I think the temperature was going to be!?!?!) I should basically suck it up and we would stay. I’m quite sure she was hoping for the latter. We stayed until the auction was over a couple of hours later.

 Last night I emptied a cupboard because it needed some repair and it was going to be fixed this morning. As I took each item out of the cupboard I thought about my mom and how much I still miss her even though she has been gone almost 20 years. Sometimes I smile inside when I think about her and the good memories, other times I still feel as though it was just yesterday that she died and it moves me to tears. At the age of just 66, she had a lot of things left to do on her bucket list.

 So as I moved each beautiful piece of pink Depression glass from my cupboard, knowing that even though I rarely use any of it and it takes up a lot of room that could be better utilized, I just can’t let it go…k

January 21, 2015