Greetings Fellow Fellows and Fellowettes!

I am currently taking a break from cleaning the porch. Actually, in car parlance, I am detailing the porch.

Every summer we have to clean off the North Dakota topsoil that has sifted through the screens and deposited itself on the floors, chair rungs, sills, table,  and screens.

Now the hubster and I have differing opinions about things and this is a perfect example of the, now that I think of it, multitude of differences of opinion.

When he cleans the porch, he first turns off the electricity to the area,  then  brings in all the furniture to the kitchen and finally uses the power sprayer to drench everything.

When I wash the porch, I  first use a long thin implement to clean between the floor boards.  There is screen under the floor boards that I have been told cannot be removed because it is sandwiched between  layers of wood.  So, I have used paint brushes, eraser ends of pencils, straws, screwdrivers, crochet hooks and this year, my mom’s old hair cutting scissors with the thumb hook. They were perfect! And when I needed another end to pry something up with, I used the end of a  long red plastic hand with a pointing finger which I used to use to point to things on the overhead and then the document camera in my classroom.

And, yes, despite my careful placement of the hand across the boards, it did fall in the crack once.

But I popped it right out again with the scissors.

And yes, there are things that I can’t get out of the cracks, but using the scissors as forceps I was able to amass quite a lot of, by now, felted cat hair.

Evidently it’s been a couple years since I cleaned the porch.

I also pulled up $.32,  a screw, and a hat pin with a pearl on the end.  And since it’s been a really long time since I used a hat pin to secure my hat, I am convinced it’s been a few years.

(Actually, I remember dressing up to go downtown for Crazy Days in Red Wing  in hat, long gloves, long dress. I had long hair so that would have been ninth grade.  Sheesh!)

My guess is that I was using the hat pin to try to get the junk out of the cracks and I dropped it, because the porch isn’t that old. The house wasn’t even here in the 1960’s.  It was a greenhouse and a nursery.

But I digress. The hubster has tried to make a device to clean the cracks using the Shopvac. He calls it The Crackmaster. But it is unwieldy and he chooses not to use it.  Of course, the narrow implement that comes with the machine is too wide.

So, it’s up to me scooting along the floor, bent over but not too much because then I can’t see down in there to pull up all that cat hair.

I did find some pieces of yarn from a project long done,  some cracker bits,  some dried lady bugs, and of course, cat hair.

Which brings me to the title: maybe I need to shave the cat.  You know, a pixie cut like mine.  Something. Anything to lessen the amount of cat hair that falls into those cracks.

It’s Buffy the Destroyer’s hair. She has that thick orange coat, whereas Katya’s coat is light and thin. I always think that that’s why she’s such a lapsitter;  she’s chilled.

Back to the porch floor. I finish off the cleaning job by mopping it four times with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Love the smell of that stuff.  Why four times? I have four mop tops for my SHHHHHMOP.   Besides, it needed it. That topsoil from North Dakota is thick!

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Today would be my dad’s 112th birthday.  I miss him. Happy Birthday, Dad!

I have a pair of his baby shoes; they’re high button shoes. Sometimes I take them to school to show the kids. I have a buttonhook, too, so I show them how that works.

We were reading a book on Ellis Island last week in second grade. The kids were most interested in the people in the pictures, the immigrants from 1880 to 1920. I told them that my parents’ people came through Ellis Island.  Then, they shared that their parents had come from  different countries. I suggested that they ask their parents why they decided to come here. There was more that was discussed, but that would be an invasion of privacy for me to tell you about it. Let me just say that today’s elementary school is not all about coloring pictures.

Maybe tomorrow when I go to volunteer I’ll take my dad’s button shoes and my great great grandmother’s shawl that she wore on the boat over here from Scotland in the 1860’s. Her name was Janet Tinsel Morris.

Right now, though, I think I’ll admire my clean porch and then go upstairs to sew a little.

On this Memorial Day, I am grateful for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice  so I can do something so little and insignificant as  clean my porch and go upstairs to sew a little.  Thanks to all who have served and are serving.

Love to you all,

Janet