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pretty basic. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

the business was closed as we walked by on the sidewalk. the luminescent sunset over the harbor was beckoning. but i stopped when i saw the sign – facing out the window: “work hard and be kind“.

i’m not sure what kind of office it was – maybe a realtor, maybe insurance, i don’t know. it doesn’t matter, though. the message was clear and we so appreciated it. it was like a combo quote – of my sweet mom and poppo smushed together. there were other signs of my mom and dad here and there. simple gestures from another dimension.

when big red’s windshield started to high-pitch-whine, there was no way to ignore it. with no time for an official windshield rubber seal repair, we pulled off and found a home improvement store. i could hear my dad as we purchased and then tacked black gorilla tape all along the top windshield seal. his instructions were clear – trim the spots where there is a little gutter so that rain doesn’t accumulate there (good advice considering we were about to be driving in the torrential tropical-storm-turned-nor’easter), be sure to bring the tape all the way across and down into the well created by the driver and passenger doors, press it all down firmly and eliminate as many air pockets as possible.

i couldn’t help but remember the time – more than five decades ago – that my dad and my big brother and i had a breakdown upstate new york and they cut barbed wire from a fence for our pink-painted lilco-van-turned-camper to fashion some kind of engine fix that would get us home.

we laughed as we applied my dad’s version of a rube goldberg repair. and we laughed even more, clear that columbus and my dad were having a good chuckle together watching us from the other side. mostly, we worked hard together at trying to solve a problem, at staying calm and being kind to each other in the process. because a screaming (and later, leaking) windshield can most definitely cause stress and grumpiness.

only a little water managed to get past our super-duper-3-times-stronger-heavy-duty-all-weather homemade seal, which is pretty impressive considering the torrents of rain and wind it endured.

by the time we were walking on the sidewalk down toward the harbor and the sun, we had forgotten about the windshield challenge. we were immersing in a little harbor town i have always loved, intentionally appreciating people who were working hard and people who were kind to us.

but back in big red, on the way back – sans whistling windshield – we talked about our rube-goldberg-ing on the way out.

it all seems pretty basic to us.

gorilla tape won’t fix everything but working hard and being kind can.

*****

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were my momma. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

were my momma still alive, i would purchase this for her. she would have loved the bright colors, the sweetness of it. mostly she would have loved the message – be kind. she was not a complex person, not really. she had a basic approach to living. be kind pretty much encapsulates it.

were my momma still alive, i would bring it to her and we would plant it in a garden she could easily see or, more likely, plant it in an indoor pot, maybe with a snake plant or aloe.

were my momma still alive, we would chat about things. we would talk about how the illustrator of this garden-art post depicted happiness. we would talk about color and folk art and hearts and simplicity.

and then we would talk about right now.

were my momma still alive, she would be appalled at the state of this country. she would be gobsmacked by the outright cruelty and lack of attention – shall we say – to the law, to decency, to morality. she would be devastated by the rifts in her own family. she would be sickened by the rapid dismantling of our democracy and the descent into hellish authoritarianism. she would remind me – though i need no reminding – that my poppo fought against fascism, risking his life being taken prisoner of war – all to keep this country safe from the exact sort of thing that is now rampant.

were my momma still alive, she would weep. and i would try to console her, wrapping my arms around her in a hug, holding her just as she used to hold me in times that i was inconsolable. she would be tired then. she would lay down in exhaustion, wringing her hands in intense worry, fear across her brow, tears on her cheeks.

my sweet momma died ten years ago now – on the 29th of april. i still feel the loss of her in every fibre of my being.

i might go get this garden-art post. because – though it would cost money we are big-time reticent to spend – it would be like my momma is physically here. at least just a tiny bit.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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what i need. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

i am a homebody. i truly love home.

but – juxtaposed on the same life-wave-riding surfboard – i love to get away. i love roadtrips and adventure, exploring backroads, immersing in new places. though i am fed noticing the extraordinary in the familiar, i thrive on images of the unfamiliar. more than once i have cried entering a canyon or at mountain-range first glimpse or surrounded by the scent of a lodgepole pine forest or the quiet of an empty trail or the quaking of aspen leaves.

so i yearn for these places – the ones we have been to and have loved and the ones we dream about.

i’m not high-maintenance when it comes to vacations. i’m not a resort-type or a cruise-type, not a disney-type or an amusement-park-type. i don’t need all-inclusive or my bed turned-down. i don’t need all-you-can-eat-any-time-of-day-or-night. i don’t need fancy or plush or luxurious. i definitely don’t need contrived.

it’s pretty simple. what i do need – is a little or big getaway. short distance, long distance. time to leave, see new things, experience new places, feel the sun from a different latitude or longitude. and then time to go home and feel the hygge that is ever-present back here, the moments that go by perhaps a little underappreciated, to feel the here and now without regret or longing, a chance to revive my homebody-ness.

*****

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flowers of the forest. [d.r. thursday]

as we were walking into costco the other day, there was a man briskly walking out. he was balancing a a box of items in his right hand. but in his left was a bundle of flowers. i don’t think he was aware of my brief stare, for outside costco it is windier than most places and we were scurrying to get inside.

but i did stare.

it wasn’t because of the man – i wouldn’t be able to identify him in any way. it was because of the bundle of cellophane-wrapped flowers in his hand. he made me think of my sweet poppo who would purchase grocery store flowers for my momma to put in the center of their coffeesitting table or maybe on the side table in their foyer. my momma loved those flowers. inexpensive, and often on sale – she was ever budget-mindful – but she really loved them.

in these days of a bit more challenge we have taken to a new practice. it’s: pretend-i’m-giving-this-to-you. next to a display of valentine cards sweet-topped in love language with $5.99 printed on the back, we held one out to the other – “pretend i’m giving this to you.” we stopped by the floral cooler and he pointed to a bundle of red roses (with buds and petals actually attached, i might mention) and said, “pretend i’m giving these to you.” the “pretend-i-got-you-this” is far-reaching and much more satisfying than you might imagine.

for it is an intention of love and, in our lighter-weighted and budget-minded world, not stuff.

as we drove home from hiking we contemplated what we might do for the rest of the saturday. it was wide open and we had vowed to hold it as our own. we needed this day on the trail, this time outside, this time together sans angsts. we ran ideas in littlebabyscion.

revisiting frugality is not unfamiliar for us. it is, in fact, much more familiar than extravagance. and so, it is much easier for us to be prudent and thrifty when considering the ‘what’s next’ category. off-trail, our legs were tired from hiking in snow and, though refreshed, we were a little weary from being out in the windy cold.

we considered our options. what to do with the rest of saturday. it was getting later.

back home, we made a little charcuterie board, poured a little wine. we decided to stay home – with our happy dogga. we talked about our trail covered in snow, we read a book together, we played one of favorite cds. kind of a gentle end to our day.

i scrolled through my photo stream then reached out to d with my phone, pulling up one the photographs i’ve taken on the trail we love – this photo of stunning blooms of wildflowers in the winter forest – and said, “pretend i’m giving these to you.”

i’ve noticed lately that my eyes look a lot like my poppo’s.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY


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just three. [k.s. friday]

we stood in the grocery store in brevard, right by the display. the food lion price for the charming smushy-flat white pumpkin was $8.99. it called to me, “you need me! bring me home!” but i got hung up on the price tag and we didn’t buy it.

we’ve had a pumpkin or two most years, often a pie pumpkin that we place on this funny wrought iron stand with arms, making it look like a pumpkinperson. we’ve gotten gourds – interesting shapes that tickle us. but not yet a white pumpkin, even though i really love how they look.

budgets are sometimes fun-oppressors. but any artist can tell you they are necessary. and any artist can tell you that there’s been at least one time that an $8.99 pumpkin – even one that might do the dishes and sorts socks – has not made the cut.

there is a sweet apple orchard out in the county. there is wine-tasting and a distillery at aeppeltreow, so there are spirits and spirited fun. there are a zillion apples and there are pumpkins and gourds and apple cider donuts. two years ago we picked out our tiny patch o’ pumpkins from their flatbeds and gardens of choices. coming home with a pear-shaped gourd and a couple smaller that were wart-laden we felt rich.

we bought pumpkins in aspen that same year and carved jack-o-lanterns at our airbnb with our daughter, leaving our artwork and extra candles behind for the next guests.

last year we featured our aging pear-shaped gourd in our sunroom, put out some orange happy lights and indulged in apple cider donuts at the orchard. despite the gluten they were worth it.

i think this year we will get a white pumpkin. and maybe two orange ones. three in all. just three.

but it will truly be magical.

*****

MILLNECK FALL ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

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quaking aspen dreams. [two artists tuesday]

we have our own personally-funded go-fund-me for this dream. it buys time for the bigger dream.

the tiny stand of quaking aspen trees beckoned to us. it was instant love. at first sight, no less. tall, willowy, silvery-white bark, the stand transported us to high mountain forests, to trails in breckenridge, to the first ahhh moments coming over the pass.

we took a breath and asked the price.

the nursery is an oasis. in the middle of our town, we sank into it for a few hours, just strolling about and imagining. these trees brought us to center.

our real landscaping need, right now, is for tall grasses along our new fence. we studied each variety and its characteristics – upright and erect or billowing and rounded, low to the ground or reaching to the sky with plumes, feathery in the light. i visited again during the week, asking questions and spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the aspen trees, photographing from different angles and surprised, soaking, by a full-on sprinkler. we’ll go back and purchase a few grasses.

we’ve run the numbers and the stand of aspen must wait. our tiny aspen tree, delicately brought home from the high mountains, aptly named “breck”, is in our backyard and would love the mentoring of a taller, more established stand. with us five years now, we don’t want breck to feel lonely. but, numbers don’t lie and a stand of aspen, along with planting it, is a little bit expensive. the immediate-gratification toddlers in us want it now, but the adults know it needs to wait. there are other priorities. sigh.

we’ll visit the aspen again. and i’ll visit it while david is working, again. and we’ll save up and keep on designing what we want the next phase of our backyard, our sanctuary, to look like.

in future days, our – still-imagined – tiniest “pando” (latin: i spread) of aspen in our yard will grow and remind us of the interconnectivity of all. the canopy-to-come will bring us to places we cherish, dreams beyond the dreams. we will keep saving, a deliberate stand-fund.

we are aspen-dreaming.

*****

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kitchenaid, oh, kitchenaid. [k.s. friday]

a good self-actualizing refrigerator and freezer will keep things cold and frozen, respectively, and have no further issues. the job is simple.

now, there are fancy fridges and run-of-the-mill fridges…side-by-sides, french-door-bottom-freezer models, freezer-on-top standards, retro fridges, beverage center fridges, deep built-in fridges…but the one thing they have in common is keeping things cold, keeping things frozen. so, leaking water onto the floor is not in the list-of-things-to-do for a fridge/freezer combo that has any self-respect.

which brings me to the last two years of our kitchenaid.

back in 2013 i spent a literal fortune on a stainless steel french-door-bottom freezer refrigerator because suddenly, after merely 24 years, my fridge had failed. there is limited space in our old kitchen where the fridge goes so i had to choose carefully, measuring tape and measurements in hand.

they installed the new shiny fridge and, i have to tell you, i felt fancy. gleaming stainless steel, sunlight reflecting off its french doors, bottom freezer the coolest-invention-ever, i was pretty darn excited, despite the monthly payment to the temporary credit card issued by the local appliance store. classy fridge and all, i moved on in life.

seven years later, this fridge, that i have babied with stainless steel cleaner and soft cloths, began to weep onto the wood floor.

there was no reason for it to weep. on the contrary, i should have been weeping as i watched rust spots accumulate on its no-longer-gleaming doors. stainless steel that is not stainless. when i asked kitchenaid about the rust spots and streaks, they said, “we’re sorry you’re experiencing rust on your stainless steel fridge. we recommend using stainless steel cleaner.” well, hello. that’s the only thing i have used, frequently enough to have to purchase and re-purchase. somehow i am not feeling their remorse or sympathy.

but, back to the water-on-the-floor. the opening credits of the pandemic on the screen of life, we were not anxious to bring in a service rep, so i googled. there was a gigantic sheet of ice under the drawer of the freezer – and this was leaking onto the floor. apparently, this is a common problem. (which begs the question why this is not addressed.) i defrosted the freezer and fridge, cookie sheet catching the icebergs as i rubber-spatula-ed them off of the freezer floor. cleaned everything, dried it all off, stainless-steel cleaned the doors and body for good measure and turned it back on.

and now? i am doing this every four to six weeks. but i have it down to a science. i use this tiny fan that my sweet poppo made, a rube-goldberg special the rpms i could not guess but the pitch of the whir tells me it’s mighty fast. i only thaw the freezer floor – so i only need one larger cooler for the freezer food and i don’t open the fridge. i wipe it all down (there’s no chance for it to get icky these days) and turn it all back on.

yesterday morning…merely nine days since the last great-thaw…we woke to puddles under the fridge, clearly having a meltdown (no pun intended). we are increasing the defrost-the-freezer-frequency and looking up appliance repairmen.

my conversation with kitchenaid was…interesting and very, very long. they promised to send me a part on the 22nd. a couple days ago i checked on this. they told me the information i provided does not match their records. so i am at ground zero again. no irony there. zero. the degrees the freezer is set at.

i just don’t know. it goes without saying they just don’t make things the way they used to.

kitchenaid is leaving my heart cold.

*****

I DIDN’T KNOW from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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pink squishies. [merely-a-thought monday]

yep. they are mine. sponge curlers from my growing-up.

and, i have to tell you, i am tempted to try them. i mean, remember banana curls? well, they are baaaack.

everything comes back, it seems…so my sweet poppo was right in saying that you need to have a giant barn “out back” where you can put every single thing until it comes back into style again. and again.

the cleaning-out-of-the-basement (and the closets and the attic and the cupboards and the garage) is just a tad bit overwhelming, not that you haven’t guessed that from all the other times i’ve mentioned it.

these sponge curlers are riding the can’t-decide-train. they alternatively go from donate to trash to keep. i’m leaning to keep. i mean, how much room do they actually take? and….wouldn’t it be fun to try them again one day? i think i have a curling iron or two tucked away somewhere, but we all know old-school is, well, old-school.

we came across the word “modtro”. ohmygosh, ya gotta love it! it is us, i told david. a cross between modern and retro. yup, yup. and no, we aren’t going to go all math-like and try to figure out the proportions of each…what percentage modern and what percentage retro…i’m sure that the girl and the boy could fill you in on that. but i do love having a descriptor. because, truth is, we sit kinda close to the tail end of the baby boomer category and we are not really gen-x-ers either. it’s tough without a proper descriptor. modtro. i like it.

so, as a modtro, surrounded by both – the modern and the retro and don’t forget the retro-ish-modern – my life-work is now – for this moment – discerning between treasure and what’s-a-nice-word-for junk. discerning between we-should-keep-this and someone-else-could-really-use-this-especially-if-they-didn’t-have-to-buy-it-let’s-give-it-away. discerning between someone-else-needs-this and someone-else-would-buy-this. discerning between i-can’t-part-with-it and i-can-take-a-picture-of-it-and-thank-it-and-let-it-go. discerning between the necessary and the not-necessary. discerning between the i-can’t-store-it-anymore and the deep-regret of getting-rid-of-it.

i come by all this honestly. my parents were not wasteful. they had a tight budget – i now see – and they re-purposed and re-used and did-without and passed on the genetics of this in full force to me. the i-might-need-its rear their ugly heads and i push back, conjuring up the strongest ruthless inclinations i can muster.

and i’m doin’ it. the stuff is clearing out. it’s a long process with many decades to review as i go. there are moments of utter joy – remembrances and visceral memories. there are moments of wistfulness. there are moments that make me laugh aloud.

i clearly remember my sister not-so-gently brushing my hair and winding it around these old sponge curlers. then i’d sleep on them all night, which is a gigantic sleep-sacrificing effort. and then, voila! curls! “it hurts to be beautiful,” she’d admonish me when i complained, bonking me on the head with the hairbrush.

so it’s hard to know in what pile to put these pink squishies.

for now, they don’t take up too much space.

*****

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and then, the feral. [d.r. thursday]

in my recollection, my sweet momma didn’t buy flats of flowers with the arrival of spring. my mom and dad didn’t run nursery to nursery purchasing new shrubbery or plants to add to the gardens around our home. they didn’t pore over landscaping catalogs nor research shade and sun preferred plantings. though it didn’t occur to me then, i realize now – and empathize – that they couldn’t afford it.

the half-acre piece of long island on which i grew up was beautiful and natural and serene. along one side of the house – a little bit shady – were four-o-clocks and bleeding hearts. along the other side were hosta. in the front corner and along the side where the neighbors-who-had-the-nice-weimaraner lived there were forsythia. on the other side where the neighbors-who-had-the-weimaraner-who-bit-me lived there were rose of sharon. we had rhododendron and i can’t remember what else in the front garden. but they all came back; they were perennials. because anything annual, well, i don’t think that was in the budget.

and so i guess i have come by it honestly. it wasn’t a “thing” when i grew up to run out and purchase – before anyone else picked them all over – flats of this year’s preferred annual flowers. it wasn’t a “thing” to plant hanging baskets and wooden barrels or giant clay pots with flowers for the season. it was expensive then and it’s expensive now. i learned early to appreciate the simplest garden, the natural setting of a woods, the reassuring return of perennials you have nurtured and which, likely, came from cuttings someone else gifted to you.

when i first moved to wisconsin, it was a full-impact moment when may arrived and everyone was talking about the flowers they would plant. friends and neighbors would dance gracefully into planting season and the ballet seemed a bit foreign, a bit out-of-reach. the quietly-popular greenhouses were divulged to me; i purchased a small trowel and got to it. impatiens and waxed begonia and petunia flats later, to no avail i had tried to avoid the pressure. each year posed the angsty question of color – for there are trends, i found, obvious by the missing palettes at the nurseries.

my momma and my dad loved their garden. they loved their indoor plants as well. and, when they planted vegetables out back next to – but far enough away from – the dog run, they loved those too. mostly, they loved the trees canopying our house and yard, the woods out back, the tiny lily-of-the-valley next to the old shed. i never heard them utter a peep wishing for more. i never felt – growing up – that i had missed out, not having new flowers or plants each year.

yet, here i was – i am – living in a place and time where that seems to be of vital importance. and i have wondered why this urge, this spring-flower-purchasing-extravaganza doesn’t come naturally to me. i know it’s not because i don’t love flowers.

we walk and hike through the woods. no matter whether the forest trail takes us into the mountains or along the low elevation of a river in the midwest, we notice the floor of greenery, the flowers growing wild, color and shape, exquisite all.

once again this year – like last – we won’t purchase annual flowers. the plants we will add for our summer will be cherry tomato plants, basil, lemongrass, perhaps lavender. we will appreciate the tenacity of our hosta and our ferns, the spreading wild geranium, the stubborn return of our daylilies, the tender peonies, our aspen sapling, the ever-present grasses. we cheer on the groundcover sally gave us and the groundcover sneaking under the fence in its every-year attempt to take over the garden. we celebrate the simplicity and wish that our front yard – in its water-main-replacement-utter-mess – wouldn’t require neat and tidy grass replacement, a huge and costly job to remove old sod and stray cement poured from the temporary sidewalks and various strewn deposits of rubber and metal and rocks.

my sweet momma and dad adored the yard of my growing-up home. they didn’t pass on to me the necessity of more. instead, they passed on to me an embracing of simplicity, gratitude for what-we-have and the appreciation of other gardens – friends’, neighbors’, public botanic celebrations of gorgeousness. they passed on the love of feral forests of jack-in-the-pulpit and the crowning glory of trillium.

*****

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black ‘dack stack. [two artists tuesday]

i was a doubter. i doubted the plastic lumbar support. but i had done my research and, with the budget we were allowing for new chairs – which didn’t include traditional wood, composite or cool new resin – and the fact that we wanted black chairs – these were what i had come up with.

so we went to the ace hardware store not holding out a lot of hope, thinking that we would have to nix this plan and move on to target or menards and get some other color.

the adirondack stacks were outside on the sidewalk. every color you could think of, stacked high against the front windows. a rainbow of adirondacks. we pulled one of the black ones down and drew in our breath to try it out.

in a surprise moment of don’t-expect-too-much-this-is-plastic-after-all it was actually quite comfortable. we bought two, loaded them into littlebabyscion, drove them home and placed them on the back patio to see if we would like them or if they would need to be returned. not shockingly, we quickly decided that we wanted a few more and, as luck would have it in our plastic-chair-budget-world, the ace was having their grand opening the next day and had given us coupons for $20 off purchases.

we went there in the rain. early. we didn’t want the black stack to be gone. you know…a lack of black in the ‘dack stack.

the dj was pumping out music, there were hamburgers and facepainters; it was quite the festival of celebration for a hardware store.

we grabbed four black adirondacks, whipped out our coupons and moseyed off into the wild grey yonder, happy as clams to have six new adirondack chairs in which to sip wine, gather ’round the bonfire, soak up the sun, ponder life and all its mysteries and support our lumbars.

*****

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