October’s First Friday Freebie arrives at the perfect time for those who live anywhere near our neck of the woods. Two days ago we sweltered at nearly 90 degrees and now there is a definite nip in the air. It’s jeans and jacket weather and don’t forget about the –
SCARF!
I’ve long wanted one of these, but I’m passing my fall find on to you. This Passion for Fashion Hidden Pocket Infinity Scarf is, just as the label says, the perfect travel companion. By “travel”, I mean everything from hopping on an airplane to taking a walk around the block!
What makes it so ideal? The hidden pocket with invisible zipper concealed inside the scarf! All you have to do is insert your phone, passport, cash and cards, keys – whatever you like – and you are hands-free to walk the dog, manage the kids or wrangle the suitcases. I mean to say – is this awesome or what?
I think the photo
shows it to be a little lighter and brighter than it actually is. The color is a deep apricot that will go with
lots of fall outfits and you’ll be wondering how you ever got along without
this dandy fashion accessory.
All you have to do to enter the drawing to win the Hidden Pocket Infinity Scarf is leave a comment on this post saying,
You’ll need to do
that before midnight TONIGHT, October 4th, 2019!
Important: Once you’ve entered, you MUST keep checking the email address you used to subscribe or you may not know you’ve won and have to forfeit your free gift. Click here for the complete First Friday Freebie Rules. Remember, I send my freebies out to any winner in the continental United States, so don’t be shy to enter!
All my Freebies
occur on the First Friday of each month and last for one day only, so share
with all your friends and family TODAY through social media, send them the link
in an email or just look them in the eye and say, “Hey! It’s Freebie Day!”
Make your way to
the comment section now before you forget!
The road to winning is paved with good intentions.
First Friday Freebies
are for email SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. You can
subscribe by going to the right sidebar or use the menu to navigate to the
“Contact” page and subscribe to Midwest Storyteller if you haven’t
done so already. Confirming your subscription through the confirmation email
you’ll receive is absolutely necessary, so don’t forget that!
The Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest icons on this page are there to help you
share with friends.
See past gifts and their winners on my “Freebies” page.
Remember, a winner
will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight
by leaving a comment which says, “Wrap me in a First Friday Freebie!”
Glitches
happen. If you subscribe and do not
receive a confirmation email for some reason, please email me and let me know
at barb@midweststoryteller.com
Enjoy the beautiful autumn days ahead! It’s a glorious time of year that always seems to end all too soon.
The most popular posts here at Midwest Storyteller revolve around my Life With Smuffy and my passion to Thrive! You might want to check out those pages if you haven’t been with me from the beginning.
The month of September and summer have slipped past in a whirlwind. So much so that here it is October and I am just announcing September’s First Friday Freebie winner. Have you forgotten these beautiful “paper” earrings?
No, I didn’t forget to give them away. They found their new home soon enough – it was the announcement that lagged.
Let’s meet the winner and wearer –
Ginger
from Prairie Home, Missouri
They look just great on you, Ginger! At their core, these lovely earrings really are paper. Many steps are included in the process that transforms them so that they look like metal under glass. You can see the original post offering the earrings here.
Congratulations,
Ginger, and enjoy!
All
Ginger had to do was comment as directed when she received her email on the
first Friday of the month. That’s all it
took to enter her name into the drawing.
Freebies
are my way of reaching out to more folks who might enjoy the various stories,
recipes and more here at Midwest Storyteller.
Why not share with all your friends via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
Pinterest so they’ll be able to subscribe?
Subscribing is every bit as free as the freebie!
Freebies happen every month. You might be wondering if the gifts are worth the effort. Check out my Freebies pageto see the winner and the free gifts they’ve won.
The October drawing is coming on up Friday, October
4th.
A
winner is chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight on
the day of the drawing by leaving a comment as instructed in the post.
An
important thing to remember is that should your name be drawn as the winner,
you will be notified via the email you used to subscribe. That means you’ll need to check your email
often in the week following the drawing so that you can respond and keep the
prize from being offered to someone else.
Be sure to take a moment make yourself familiar with the Freebie Rules by clicking HERE.
These
four simple steps will have you ready to enter to win on October 4th,
2019.
Leave a comment! Have you ever tried making your own jewelry? I’d love to hear your creative ideas!
Sometimes,
it’s best to gather a few small things together in order to convey the idea
that there is a pattern or consistency to the matter.
If you’ll recall my recent tale of how Smuffy removed the hedge I hated with the help of our 1965 Studebaker Cruiser, you might remember Pookie’s reference to another time when he, after leaving his truck out of gear, had to remove it from the trunk of a tree after it rolled down the driveway. If you missed all that, you can bring yourself up to date with “A Studebaker in the Hand is NOT Worth Two in the Bush” here.
Smuffy
assures us that he has never been involved in a vehicular accident that was his
fault. He may add, with a blush, that
the number of vehicular accidents attributed to him while he is not even inside
the vehicle is rising to a level that borders on the ridiculous.
Again,
it is the assemblage of these events that proves my point that Smuffy and the
gearshift lever have relational difficulties and I present my case to you now
as thoroughly as if I’ve had Paul Drake on the case and Hamilton Burger itching
to object.
For a short time after Smuffy’s documented annihilation of the hedge, he managed to play along with only two strikes against him. Of course, I tried to keep him on the straight and narrow with a word of caution now and then and a helpful tutorial.
Then
came the day he asked the boss if he might borrow his truck.
We
(mostly me) had been furniture shopping for a year and a half. You know how the struggle goes – trying to
solve the dilemma of the look/the space/the price. All this could be taken care of, we
discovered, with an hour and a quarter’s drive to a small town north of
us. It took several trips to deal with
the purchase of the sofa and then came the ordeal of chairs that pleased my eye
and Smuffy’s buns and his inherited desire for high-speed rocking. (If Smuffy were head of design at any one of
the major vehicle manufacturers, they’d all have rocking seats by now.) We’d been enjoying our new sofa, but the
chair selection had dragged on.
The
folks in that family-owned furniture store were patient with us and, we were
soon to learn, would do just about anything for us. Alas, in November of 2002, the special order
chairs were ready.
Smuffy,
concerned that our short bed pickup might prove a tad skimpy, had asked his
boss for the use of his work truck for the day.
We’d become acquainted with shops and an excellent restaurant near the
furniture store, so we planned to make a day of it.
As
we could only go on Saturday, the store owner had told us that he would be out
that day and that only his wife and another female employee would be assisting
us. He wanted us to be sure we could
handle the loading of the furniture, as he didn’t want to make physical demands
on those ladies.
The
only thing that diminishes the “what might have been” in this story is the fact
that the furniture store was located on flat ground.
As
we pulled up in front, there were no parking spots available so we parked
around the corner, went in to tell them we’d arrived and ask if they had a
place to load in back. A cheery sales
lady in the brightest yellow dress and jacket ensemble I’d ever seen welcomed
us. At the time, I took it as a sign
that she had a sunny disposition. She
did. But, yellow is also the color of
warning lights.
She
informed Smuffy that double parking in front long enough to load was customary,
so he ran off to get the truck and I waited on the sidewalk with Ms. Sunshine. He circled the block and just as he rounded
the corner, the last car parked in front of the store pulled out, allowing him
to ease right in behind a mini-van and avoid having to double-park.
Smuffy, having never been known to waste a precious second, leaped out of the boss man’s truck, ran around to the back and dropped the tailgate. Ms. Sunshine seemed like the vigorous sort to me and I relented after her continued insistence that I hold the door and she help Smuffy. He climbed into the truck bed to heave while she ho’ed and together, they plunked one large box containing a chair and then the other into the back of the truck. Smuffy jumped out of the truck, gave the tailgate a good slam and joined me on the sidewalk.
Then,
the strangest thing happened. Ms.
Sunshine, as though she and the chairs had been lovers and were about to be
separated forever, threw herself over the tailgate of the truck, heaved
backward and dug her little slick-bottomed pumps into the pavement!
Yes,
the truck was rolling. I saw the
mini-van give a lurch, but, all in all, she did exert enough force against that
truckload of furniture to stop it and no damage was done.
I
still don’t know how she did it – sheer adrenaline, I suppose – but I’m glad
she did.
I
spun around to face Smuffy.
“You didn’t!” I gasped, as soon as I managed to speak.
He
raced out into the street, around the truck and threw his upper half through
the driver’s window. I saw his face turn
a vivid shade of pink as he moved the gearshift lever into “PARK”.
Some
lessons simply must be learned the hard way, I suppose – or maybe not.
We thanked our swift-thinking, fast-acting friend and I forked over the money for the chairs, wishing all the while that I had some left for a fat tip for her. Had we been double-parked…Well, I shudder to think!
As we drove away, I began to quiz Smuffy. Concerning those little symbols on the steering column, did he think “P” stood for “Probably don’t ever need to put it there?” Did he think that “D” stood for “Don’t bother to move this lever anywhere else?” Then, I informed him that if he planned on pleading with me to keep this one a secret, he was wasting his time.
Two weeks later, with the weatherman calling for another beautiful Saturday, we decided to take our pink 1958 Buick Super out on a day trip.
After dropping Pookie off to spend the day with friends, we went antiquing in a couple of quaint, historic towns, one of which had the old-fashioned town square with diagonal parking. I emphasize, at this point, that I was merely a passenger.
We
hopped out and made our way around the square, looking in all the cute little
shops. As we settled back into the car,
I fastened my seat belt while Smuffy turned the key in the ignition. Another point to emphasize here is that some
of those old classics can be started in any gear they happen to have been left
in.
As
we drove up onto the sidewalk, I wondered what all those people on the other
side of the plate glass window in front of us must be thinking. But, I must be getting used to this sort of
thing, because the only other thing I found myself thinking what a great story
this would make.
I
tried to be as respectable as possible when I informed Smuffy that this type of
thing simply must cease once and for all.
Weeks
later, we went Christmas shopping, this time in the 1965 Studebaker
Cruiser. Smuffy dropped me off at one
store and went to do some shopping on his own.
When he returned to pick me up, he apologized for taking longer than he
expected and mumbled something about being thankful that the car didn’t need
repairs during the holidays.
His explanation gave me that old, familiar feeling. He’d left the car sitting in the parking lot while he shopped. When he returned, he turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened – nothing – not even the slightest sound. Smuffy groaned inwardly as the whole discouraging scenario played out in his mind – how were we going to get home and what would he have to do and spend to fix this thing? Suddenly, his eyes were drawn to those little symbols on the steering column and there it was in good ole’ “D”. This car, thankfully, couldn’t be started in “DRIVE”.
What
a blessing that he has stopped doing this on hills!
A
certain awareness came over Smuffy after this.
Up until now, he thought he could take gearshifts or leave them as a
casual user and then came to the realization, too late, that perhaps he
couldn’t. Alas, there didn’t seem to be
a twelve-step program or rehab center geared for the transmissionally
challenged.
After
managing to stay on the wagon for a while, or at least keep the wagon
stationary, Smuffy arrived home for lunch one day wearing the look of a man who
had been humbled by trying circumstances.
It seems he’d pulled his van into the parking lot of a convenience store
as usual. He stopped, but ignored his craving
for coffee and a cinnamon roll while he finished listening to an interesting
report on the radio. He then entered the
store, grabbed his goodies and chatted with the girl who rang up his purchases.
At
this point, everyone’s attention was drawn to the scene unfolding out on the
parking lot. A man, after pulling his
truck into the parking lot and leaping out of it, began to run at break-neck
speed. As they watched, he flew to the
door of Smuffy’s rolling van, yanked the door open, jumped in and threw it into
“PARK” just as it came within a gnat’s eyelash of striking the gas pumps.
I
shook my head at Smuffy’s tale, realizing that the only thing left to do was to
put in yet another request for extra angels to be assigned to him.
The
real question remains: Can this be
inherited? And, if so, how do you know
the signs? Shortly after I had
documented this tendency in Smuffy to commit endless rolling violations, I came
to question his offspring.
From
the kitchen, I heard the most terrible banging and stomping and fussing. I rounded the corner to have Pookie inform me
that the vacuum cleaner switch was most definitely dead. She’d done everything she could think of and
the darned thing just wouldn’t come on.
As she shook it and called it names and demonstrated all this to me, I
looked at it sitting there with its cord all wound neatly around its little
prongs and I sighed.
“Is
it plugged in? You might want to check
that.”
Pookie
spent another five minutes rolling on the floor in hysterics. While pleased that, at the age where self-awareness,
lack of confidence and paralyzing embarrassment collide with one another every
five minutes, she was able to laugh at herself, I wondered if I should brush
this off entirely.
My
thoughts turned to that little laminated card in her wallet, recently given to
her by the folks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I closed my eyes, giving thanks that there
are enough angels to go around.
I’ve been feeling artsy again, and one of my original designs might just be yours if you’re the winner of September’s First Friday Freebie!
Perhaps you remember an earlier post here in which I discussed my handmade “paper jewelry”. My newest creation is in a lattice design that I think you will love. The photo does not do them justice. They are high gloss, with each little opening in the lattice shimmering in the light. These earrings measure 1 3/8” long (2 1/8” with the hook included). Though they have the appearance of metal under glass, they are light as air with a crystal clear coating for durability that adds depth and beauty to the distressed pattern underneath. The smoky stone in the center adds just that bit of extra sparkle to catch the eye. The hinged clasps flip up to secure the hooks so you don’t have to worry about losing them.
Whether you wear
them with now with summery clothes or with fall outfits that we’ll all be
wearing in the next couple of weeks, they’ll be a great addition to your
overall look. Not a jewelry wearer? Go ahead and enter to win! What a unique handmade gift idea for someone
on your gift list in the coming holiday season!
To enter to win
the Paper Jewelry earrings, all you need to do is comment on this post, saying,
“Free jewelry gives me joy!” (I
know it does for me – I’m somewhat of an addict.) You’ll need to do that before
midnight TONIGHT, August 6th, 2019!
Important: Once you’ve entered, you MUST keep checking the email address you used to subscribe or you may not know you’ve won and have to forfeit your free gift.
All my Freebies occur on the First Friday of each month and last for one day only, so share with all your friends and family TODAY through social media, send them the link in an email or just look them in the eye and say, “Hey! It’s Freebie Day!”
Make your way to
the comment section now before you forget!
The road to winning is paved with good intentions.
First Friday
Freebies are for email SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
You can subscribe by going to the right sidebar or use the menu to
navigate to the “Contact” page and subscribe to Midwest Storyteller
if you haven’t done so already.
Confirming your subscription through the confirmation email you’ll
receive is absolutely necessary, so don’t forget that!
The Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest icons on this page are there to help you
share with friends.
See past gifts and their winners on my “Freebies”page.
Remember, a winner will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight by leaving a comment which says, “Free jewelry gives me joy!”
I send Freebies to any winner who lives within the continental United States. For the complete First Friday Freebie rules, CLICK HERE.
Glitches
happen. If you subscribe and do not
receive a confirmation email for some reason, please email me and let me know
at barb@midweststoryteller.com
Enjoy this last few days of summer. Coming up – another glimpse into my exciting Life With Smuffy.
Today I want to
take a moment to make a confession. I
have fallen in love.
After decades of self-study in the area of health in order to understand my own issues and do the best I can for my family, I have, at last, found a resource that seems to be custom designed for me.
I’ve never struggled with obesity. In fact, aside from a couple of photos of me as a chubby toddler, I spent most of my life in the string bean category. Well, maybe a string bean with hips. That is, until I went through something that is just about the biggest hormone screwer-upper ever – chemotherapy. You can find more about that part of my story here.
As I sat in the
chemo room listening to the others chat, I heard women saying that they’d
gained as much as forty-five pounds during treatments. Forty-five
pounds! The patients and their
care-givers blamed it on the steroid anti-nausea drugs. At that point, I didn’t care as much about
the cause as I did the result. The idea
of that type of weight gain stayed in the forefront of my mind and at the top
of my prayer list for the next four months.
Well, I didn’t
gain forty-five pounds, but I did gain fifteen and in the following years, that
fifteen has tried it’s best to turn into twenty. As is my body’s tendency, it wanted to pack
itself disproportionately below the waist, which may have paid off if I’d lived
during the Renaissance and cared little for my modesty. In those days, there was a demand for those
who would, at artists’ requests, recline on couches with a bunch of grapes in
one hand and a dove perched upon the other.
I tried various diets and joined the well-known support group that counts points. Since points were much simpler to count than calories, this worked for me. In fact, it worked for me two or three times. There seemed to be two issues. They declared that “points are points” and we could consume them in any combination. After a while, I learned that some foods’ points stuck to me like glue while others slipped off effortlessly after a period of over-indulgence. The other issue – and this one bothered me most – was that while this farm girl had been taken off the farm, the farm appetite hadn’t been taken out of the girl. I wanted more food, dagnabbit!
After a prolonged period of stress, Stage 3 Adrenal Fatigue showed up, stayed much longer than I preferred, juggled my hormones even further and, if I may cling to that comparison, dropped all the balls. My holistic M.D., along with treatment, advised a diet that would go easier on the glands and I gave up sugar and most grains.
A couple of years later, a long-time friend of mine lost around thirty pounds. I had to admit that she maintained more joy than anyone I’d ever known on any type of “diet”. She absolutely glowed and was enjoying herself. I asked about it and she told me about Trim Healthy Mama.
Further inquiries
led me to understand that the food on the THM plan was nearly identical to the
recommendations of my doctor. The only thing
– and it seemed such a logical thing – that they recommended to people who wanted
to trim away the pounds would be to separate carbohydrate fuels from fat fuels
at mealtimes.
After toying with
the idea and reading bits and pieces of their plan for a while as I was coming
out of the adrenal struggle, I took their plan and began stepping into it at
the beginning of this year, studying it and putting it into practice one day at
a time. Finally, I have enough food to
eat! I promised to grant myself grace to
go off plan from time to time and to feel no guilt should I decide to go ahead
and use up some off-plan ingredients along the way instead of throwing them
out. I think they’re all gone now (if
you don’t count Smuffy’s cheat stash).
I needed to make friends with a few new special ingredients to help me in separating fuels, being kind to blood sugars and getting the extra protein I needed in my diet. I’ve embraced a lot of new ingredients over the years, so it didn’t rock my world much.
I now have their plan books and cookbooks and since I have a big yard with lots of weeds to pull, have listened to over 130 Trim Healthy Podcasts (or, as we call it in THM Land, “The Poddy”) as of this date. I feel like I’ve completed a crash course in getting to know the authors, Serene and Pearl.
I have lost several
pounds and as my hormones steady themselves further, I’m sure the number on the scale will continue to drop as I
feast on real food and avoid even some of the healthy ones that are known to
spike blood sugars and set off hormonal chain reactions.
In case you haven’t had the realization yet – hormones are everything! Messin’ with those will make you ugly inside and out, if you get my drift.
The best part, or
what is referred to as a “non scale victory”, is that I feel good and do not
feel the slightest hint of deprivation.
In fact, “junk” tastes like junk and I know that’s hard to believe if you’re
still addicted to the SAD. What a
perfect name for the “standard American diet”!
I’ll post more about my journey with Trim Healthy Mama in the future, but today I wanted to share with you some of the great meals and treats I’ve discovered on this plan and give an honest review.
Today, for lunch, I made “Mama’s Famous Meatloaf” (page 157 of the Trim Healthy Cookbook) and topped it with a sauce made from “Trim Healthy Ketchup” (page 482). It had great texture and was moist with good flavor, just as you’d expect from an old-fashioned meatloaf like Grandma used to make. However, we tend to like things with a bit more “zip”, so next time, I’ll probably make it my own by adding a bit more spice. I’m not sure why the topping is more orange than red as I did follow directions, but it was tasty!
The ketchup recipe
can be called a tomatoey sauce, but it is not ketchup to me. However, I had already developed my own
recipe without any refined sugars and it tastes just like Heinz. As soon as
I take the THM one and marry it to mine by having one of my kitchen lab
brainstorms, I’ll post it here on the blog.
What is meat loaf
without mashed potatoes? Well, it’s
fabulous if you serve up “Mashed Fotatoes” (page 264 of the Trim Healthy Table
Cookbook). Who needs all those starches
and carbs? Not me! I’ll never be sorry I left white potatoes
behind after seeing how easy it was to whip of this cauliflower version in the
food processor in a matter of seconds.
I found them
heavenly. Smuffy requests that they have
a little less garlic next time.
Smuffy’s been
growing okra in his garden, so I served it up alongside just the way we like
it. I stir together my own “baking
blend” with equal parts almond flour, golden flax meal and coconut flour. After slicing the okra into half-inch pieces,
I tossed it in about three tablespoons of this mixture and stir fried it in a
skillet I had pre-heated on medium-high heat with a tablespoon of refined
coconut oil and a tablespoon of real butter.
It’s browned and beautiful in no time at all.
All this made a
delicious Satisfying meal. (The THM plan defines “S” meals.)
I struggled with whether to assign this post to my “Thrive!” page because of the health benefits of Trim Healthy Mama, to my “Feed Me” page because it is good food or to my “Reviews” page because I can’t say enough good things about Trim Healthy Mama.
I have tried many recipes from their books and have only found a couple that I considered “duds”. Pearl and Serene, I don’t know what you were thinking. Perhaps they are a hit in Aussie culture, but “Slender Slaw” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) and “Tzatziki Cucumber Salad” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) are both odd. Not horrible – just odd – and not a hit at our house.
To give a completely honest review, I must make one negative comment on the cookbooks. Pearl and Serene, I love you, but whomever is compiling your indexes needs to be assigned to a new job. You’ll notice how many flags are protruding from the books in the first photo. That’s because, once you find a recipe, you’re going to have a dickens of a time finding it again, and I know how to use an index. Recipes need to be listed by under categories, by actual name and by featured ingredients. Just sayin’.
I’m loving “Wonder Wraps” (page 251, Trim Healthy Table) and the first recipe I made from this cookbook, “Creamy Garlic Spinach Spaghetti Squash Bake (page 135). That one got me off to a good start and I couldn’t wait to share it with friends. However, the day I attempted to do so tried my soul and you might want to brace yourself before reading about it here.
I have only two
words to say as I prepare to go downstairs and sneak a couple out of the
refrigerator – “Superfood Mounds”, people!
Forget about those candy bars we grew up with. Stir up a batch of these (page 424, Trim
Healthy Table) in a saucepan and get ready for awesomeness! Another super-easy treat is “Two Minute
Truffles” (page 422, Trim Healthy Table).
I’d make extra if I were you and skip dusting them. They are better when smooth.
In case you
haven’t met them, Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett are sisters from “down
under” who have ended up in the hills of Tennessee along with their husbands,
children and extended family. After
writing a book to share with friends and acquaintances who asked them for the
science and “how-to” on how they stay so trim and healthy, they found
themselves on the best-seller list! Now
their sensible, scientific and doable approach is available to us all.
Thanks, Serene and Pearl!
Are you aTrim Healthy Mama? Are you toying with the idea? Never even heard of it? I’d love to chat about it so leave a comment!
What’s all the fuss about eating healthy? We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive! Check out my Thrive! page. My Feed Me! page offers recipes with free printables. Not every recipe there is THM compatible, but most can be altered to work and I’ll try to make edits in the future to help you with that.
Be sure to
SUBSCRIBE, so you’ll receive an email reminder each time Midwest Storyteller
has something new.
As the years go by, I find that events are often recalled in association with something Smuffy has done. In mid-conversation, one of us is bound to insert, “Wasn’t that around the time that he…?” As we near the close of August, my mind returns to the events of August 29, 2015 and, I imagine, they always will.
It was a leisurely Sunday afternoon – for some of us. Pookie had asked if she could come by and have my assistance with an artsy little project that took four hands – well, maybe six, but we had four. I was happy to oblige. She wanted to put a fun, fabric cover on a new planner and, like her mother, she aims to be chic at all times. Why sit at your desk and look at leatherette when a bright and modern print is just a can of spray adhesive and a pair of pinking shears away? Being the end of August, it reminded me of the good ole’ days when we would prepare for a new year of homeschooling by caressing our shiny new books and covering our binders and folders – a pleasant way to stave off the inevitable fact that anything, even if it’s interesting, takes on a certain dullness when the day-to-day routine really gains a foothold.
I had worked really hard the day before at deep-cleaning the carpets and had claimed this day as my own for rest and rejuvenation. A craft project, followed by a mug (or two) of my fabulous Not Apologizin’ Hot Chocolate, sounded pretty much ideal. (The recipe, by the way, can be found here.)
Smuffy, that
love of my life, didn’t have it so easy.
One of his summer goals had been to pour a concrete pad under our porch
steps, an area that had been nothing more than dirt ever since we’ve lived in
this house. That would’ve made this
project overdue by…hmm…let me
see…do I need a calculator? …oh yes, that’s right, thirty-six years. Not that he’s a procrastinator – I’m always swift
to admit that Smuffy fixes everything almost before it’s broken – but that in
itself, my Dear Readers, is a story for another day. Feel free to request in the comments, as a
reminder to me, to tell the tale of how my furniture was nearly bolted to the
walls.
Smuffy
prepared the area and built forms in the evenings after work and on Saturday he
poured the first part of the L-shaped pad.
Everything went smooth as silk, but the bigger portion remained
undone. He’s learned over the years that
Sunday as a day of rest is a glorious and life-restoring gift. Sometimes, however, a job requires more
attention that he can give it in the hours he has after work, so there he was,
on this fine afternoon, outside mixing concrete.
Our peaceful
measuring and cutting was soon interrupted by the sound of feet rushing up the
basement steps, through the hall and into the bathroom. Nothing unusual – after all, sometimes you’ve
really gotta go! It was the YELP!
that followed that pricked my ears. Smuffy
doesn’t yelp. He always professes, no
matter what the injury, that nothing hurts.
A mild stomach flu and he’s practically lost his will to live, but
injuries never seem to faze him much. He’s
actually commented in the past that he could probably handle being an amputee
with greater grace than if he were afflicted with ongoing nausea. Hold that thought.
I stepped
into the hallway to have a look. There
he was with his hands in the sink.
“What
happened?” I asked.
“Get me some
paper towels.”
“But what happened?”
“I need
paper towels!”
I ran for
the towels.
“What
happened?” asked Pookie as I flew past.
“He wants
paper towels.”
“What did he
do?”
“I don’t
know.”
Then came
the stand-off. I had to know and he had
to, for whatever reason guys do so, act like it was no big deal. After a good deal of snappy dialogue we
arrived at –
“Is it bad?”
“Pretty
bad.”
“Do we need
to go to the ER?”
Round two of
snappy dialogue occurred as I followed him down the basement steps. Where
is this man going? He’s messing with
concrete and blood is going everywhere.
I tell him to drop everything and let’s go to urgent care or the ER.
“The very
least you need is probably stitches. How
bad do you think it is?”
“Do you want
to see it?”
Florence
Nightingale I am not, but at least I
have a nurturing gene that enables me to take care of my own. As soon as he began moving the wrapping away,
my arms and legs physically ached and did their best to curl up and drop me to
the floor. I took my obligatory
look. My gaze didn’t linger long. Logic tells me that if it is something beyond
my range of skill, the person’s life is not in immediate danger, and skilled
personnel are nearby, there is no point in looking! The idea here is to tell what happened, not
to give you nightmares, but if Stephen King ever runs out of ideas, I suppose
he could write a book about a crazed lunatic who attacks people with a potato
peeler. You know that pointy thing on the
end that really enables you to get those eyes out of that potato? Well, inserting the potato into the gears of
a concrete mixer would have a similar result, I suppose. The end of the pinky finger was – never mind! I promised not to give you nightmares!
“You have to
go to the ER!”
“I have to
finish this concrete.”
“You CAN’T
finish this concrete!”
“Do you want
this big, wet pile of concrete to dry like this and have to stare at it the
rest of your life?”
“Ughhhhh!”
“Help me
wrap it up and we’ll go as soon as I finish.”
“When will
that be?”
“I don’t
know. When I’m finished! We’re wasting time!”
With lots of
gauze and tape and a latex glove stretched over the whole thing, he went out to
pour the rest of the concrete while Pookie and I stared at one another, wondering
how to stop the madness. She was filled
with frustration at knowing that her husband would run to our aid if she called
him, but he was too far away to get there in time to do any good. She busied herself by running in and out and
holding one end of Smuffy’s leveling board when necessary. I busied myself with glancing out the window
and muttering under my breath, “Jesus, You know my wonderful man and You know
when he’s being a dope! You’re going to have to take care of this
one.” I made calls to the local hospital
and two urgent cares to check on how our new insurance worked with this type of
thing. You don’t really get good answers
to those questions on weekends.
Time marched
on and we thought the man would never come in the house. Each time we questioned him we got the same
answer, “When I’m done!” After a while,
there was really nothing else to do but go about our business and wait it out.
Finally, I
looked at Pookie, exclaiming, “I feel ridiculous! I’m going to be telling people, ‘Smuffy
mangled his hand in the concrete mixer!’ and then they’re going to say, ‘Oh
my! Then what happened?’ and I’m going
to say, ‘Oh, we finished up a craft project and made hot chocolate!’ This is CRAZY!”
At one point
we actually lost him. Pookie couldn’t
find him out by the concrete job and I couldn’t find him in the basement. We found him, at last, in the back yard
sitting in the swing – just chillin’.
That was when I should have gone back in the house and started calling
mental hospitals.
Two hours
after the accident, we pulled out of the driveway, but not before Smuffy had a
concrete pad that looked perfect, had taken a bath and changed clothes, eaten
some supper and rewrapped the gruesome digit, all the while saying he felt fine
and that it didn’t hurt a bit.
This is when we had our third round of snappy dialogue, which concluded with me saying, “No, you will NOT drive, you BONEHEAD! I’m driving! GET IN THE CAR!”
We pulled
into urgent care first, which was a waste of time, as that doctor took one
look, informed us that the finger was 7/8 amputated and we needed a hand
surgeon. We sped on over to the hospital
and were very pleased with the experienced surgeon who brought his operating
kit to the ER and, perching his glasses with their attached microscopes atop
his nose, did a two-hour delicate surgery, reattaching Smuffy’s finger and each
of the tiny nerves and sinews inside. His
experience and expertise led him to estimate that the precise location of the
injury would miraculously enable the regrowth of the nail, which I would have
said was impossible. I had to admit that
when I saw it after the surgery was complete, I thought it looked very good in
comparison to the mangled mess I’d seen six hours earlier.
Smuffy, of course, assisted with surgery any way he could and chatted away with the doctor the whole time about hobbies, vocations and grotesque injuries that belonged in the category of “Truth is Stranger than Fiction.” I stayed in the room, sitting by my man with my chair strategically positioned to avoid the slightest glimpse of the action.
Despite his brave front, when it was all over I thought he looked as though he’d lost a bit of his polish.
Smuffy went
back to work the next day, and it’s not a desk job. “Yes, Lord, he’s being a dope again, and
You’re going to have to take care of my sweetie.” He took no pain killers, either prescription
or over-the-counter, aside from what the doctor administered in order to perform
surgery, because he said it didn’t hurt.
I followed
up the whole incident by doing a Google search on “people who have their pain
receptors turned off”. Sometimes there’s
no escaping it – you just have to shake your head at Smuffy and admit that something
is wonky here.
Smuffy is endowed with swift and thorough healing and if you’ve been keeping up with my“Life With Smuffy” here on the blog, you know how much he needs it!
Just last
week, he carried a couple of water heaters down full flights of stairs by
himself because, you know, somebody had to do it and just to refresh himself,
came home with a new motor scooter. Ever since, I’ve heard him muttering about
how all it needs is a little more power – as if all I needed were bigger hills
to stand upon in order to phone an ambulance!
I think of
Smuffy sometimes when Pookie and I sit down for our favorite movie, “The Sound
of Music” and watch Maria and Captain von Trapp gaze into each other’s eyes and
muse that somewhere in their youths or childhoods, they must have done
something good – for, somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have asked for
a dynamic prayer life and by doing so, had it enhanced when I received the Gift
of Smuffy.
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Comment” under the title of this post.
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We welcomed August with a pineapple, a symbol of welcome, or perhaps not, as we discussed in the original post. Let’s see who won the drawing for the First Friday Freebie and welcomed it into their home –
Eva
from New Franklin, Missouri!
This shabby little bit of metal décor from Hobby Lobby will liven up Eva’s walls, that is, if her daughter doesn’t latch onto it for her own room. I’m told she’s enjoying a pineapple craze at the moment. Do teenagers do that?
Congratulations and enjoy, Eva – whichever one of you ends up with it!
Eva has entered to win multiple times as one of my faithful subscribers. She commented as instructed when she received her email on the first Friday of the month. That’s all it took to enter her name into the drawing.
Freebies are my way of reaching out to more folks who might enjoy the various stories, recipes and more here at Midwest Storyteller. Seriously now, would you want one of your friends to miss an episode of my Life with Smuffy? Why not share with all your friends via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest so they’ll be able to subscribe? Subscribing is every bit as free as the freebie!
Freebies happen every month. Check out my Freebies pageto see the winner and the free gifts they’ve won.
The August drawing is coming on up Friday, September
6th.
A
winner is chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight on
the day of the drawing by leaving a comment as instructed in the post.
An
important thing to remember is that should your name be drawn as the winner,
you will be notified via the email you used to subscribe. That means you’ll need to check your email
often in the days following the drawing so that you can respond and keep the
prize from being offered to someone else.
Be sure to take a moment make yourself familiar with the Freebie Rules by clicking HERE.
These
four simple steps will have you ready to enter to win on September 6th,
2019.
Leave
a comment! On a desktop computer, scroll
back up under the title of this post and let me know what you’re thinking. On various devices, you may find “Leave a
Comment” at the bottom of the post.
I’ve heard for
years that the pineapple is a symbol, especially in Hawaiian culture, used to
give one’s guests a hearty “Welcome!” A
pineapple in your entry hall or used in your tablescape can indicate more than
just a liking for tropical décor.
Recently, however, a friend told me of another custom. It seems that when you’ve had house guests and enjoyed their company for just about as long as you can stand it, you leave a pineapple in their room. It’s meant to imply, more or less, “Here’s a lovely parting gift, because it’s time for you to go!”
The latter is a fabulous idea as a mannerly way to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. Of course, it does little good and merely provides a nutritious snack if your house guests haven’t heard of the custom. I promise that this month’s First Friday Freebie is meant to welcome you to Midwest Storyteller and to invite you to stay as long as you like!
This pineapple from Hobby Lobby, at 10 inches tall and 5 inches wide, will be a great addition various styles of décor, including farmhouse styles, due to its neutral color and weathered appearance. A shabby bit of metal art that sits close to the wall or nestles into the back of a bookshelf, it’s a great way to welcome guests to your home. It’s shown in the photo above hanging on my fence, so it could also welcome guests to your back yard.
I suppose you
could let it make a sudden appearance on the nightstand should you have some
guests who linger a bit long, but I’ll leave that up to you.
To enter to win
the metal pineapple décor, all you need to do is “Leave a Comment” on
this post, saying, “I welcome First Friday Freebies!” You’ll need to do that before midnight
TONIGHT, August 2nd, 2019!
Important: Once you’ve entered,
you MUST keep checking the email address you used to subscribe or you may not
know you’ve won and have to forfeit your free gift.
All my Freebies
occur on the First Friday of each month and last for one day only, so share
with all your friends and family TODAY through social media, send them the link
in an email or just plain tell them, “Hey!
It’s Freebie Day!”
Good intentions
will not help you enter to win before midnight tonight so you had better navigate
to the comment section now before you forget!
First Friday
Freebies are for email SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
You can subscribe by going to the right sidebar or use the menu to
navigate to the “Contact” page and subscribe to Midwest Storyteller
if you haven’t done so already.
Confirming your subscription through the confirmation email you’ll
receive is absolutely necessary, so don’t forget that!
Use the Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest icons on this page to help you share with
friends.
See past gifts and their winners on my “Freebies”page.
Remember, a winner
will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight
by leaving a comment which says, “I welcome First Friday Freebies!”
I send Freebies to any winner who lives within the continental United States. For the complete First Friday Freebie rules, CLICK HERE.
Glitches
happen. If you subscribe and do not
receive a confirmation email for some reason, please email me and let me know
at barb@midweststoryteller.com
Enjoy this last full month of summer and prepare yourself! I have a couple of things I’d like to tell you about my Life With Smuffy.
My last First Friday Freebie was a small thing reminding us to enjoy the small things. Let’s meet July’s winner –
Elise
from Sterling, Illinois!
This 6”X6” bit of wood and metal décor with metal lettering will perch on Elise’s shelf or hang on the wall.
I know you’ll find
the perfect spot for it, Elise. I’m so
glad you entered to win!
Congratulations!
All Elise had to do was to become one of my faithful subscribers (which she was already) and comment as directed when she received her email on the first Friday of the month. Then, POOF, just like that, her name entered into the drawing for the Freebie.
It’s
that simple, folks! Why not share
Midwest Storyteller with all your friends via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
Pinterest so they’ll be able to subscribe and do the same? Subscribing is every bit as free as the
freebie!
Freebies happen every month. Check out my Freebies pageto see the winner and the free gifts they’ve won here at Midwest Storyteller. To see July’s original Freebie offer, click here.
The August drawing is coming on up Friday,
August 2nd.
A
winner is chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight on
the day of the drawing by leaving a comment as instructed in the post.
An important thing to remember is that should your name be drawn as the winner, you will be notified via the email you used to subscribe. That means you’ll be needing to check your email often in the days following the drawing so that you can respond and keep the prize from being offered to someone else.
Be sure to take a moment make yourself familiar with the Freebie Rules by clicking HERE.
These
four simple steps will have you ready to enter to win on August 2nd,
2019.
Enjoying
the Freebies? Leave a comment! If you’re on your computer, scroll back up
under the title of this post and let me know what you’re thinking. On various devices, you may find “Leave a
Comment” at the bottom of the post.
Smuffy’s latest adventure, “A Studebaker in the Hand is Not Worth Two in the Bush” got a lot of attention! I’m glad so many of you enjoyed it. The incident reminds me of the time we went to pick up some new living room furniture… Stay tuned, for Smuffy, quite literally, is “on a roll”!
Each
summer, our town celebrates its annual Heritage Days Festival. There are arts and crafts, quilt shows,
entertainment, a carnival, fireworks and lots more, all to celebrate the rich
history that all started when a widow and her nine children settled here in
1810.
This
event can never pass without bringing to mind an incident that occurred during
Heritage Days. While everyone else frittered
away their time downtown, I was at home with Smuffy, where the real action took
place. I may not have journeyed via
rough country in a wagon or crossed rivers with nine children in search of a
better life, but I do live with Smuffy and that has to count for something in
the annals of courageous women.
I paid the man at the muffler shop, hopped in my classic 1965 Studebaker Cruiser and headed for home. Now that the exhaust had been fixed and the tires rotated, my snazzy ride purred like a kitten and was ready for the road. Smuffy, with more of my help than I ever intended to supply, had re-built the car from the rusted floor boards up, given it a new coat of its original Bermuda Brown, and we were enjoying our love affair with it at last. It would become my everyday driver. When the sun hit those purple metallic flecks in the paint, it made me smile.
When I arrived home, Smuffy announced that the brakes needed fine tuning. “Park it anywhere you like,” he said. “I have to move it to flat ground so I can take it out of gear.” I left the car halfway down the hill that is our driveway and went into the house.
A breeze stirred through the open windows, making it a perfect summer evening. I paused as I loaded the dishwasher to answer the door and took the friend who dropped by to the kitchen with me for a chat while my daughter wandered off to her room for a bit.
Outside
my kitchen window, a giant yew hedge grew along the side of the driveway at the
bottom of the hill, screening in our patio.
These bushes were Smuffy’s pets and in his pride over their prosperity,
he’d let them grow so tall that they now stretched to over twelve feet in
height, flaunting their tops above the railing of the upper deck. Being a lover of natural light, I hated the
things.
Suddenly,
an unidentifiable noise interrupted our conversation. My head jerked in the direction of the window
and I saw the tops of the yew bushes jerk violently east and west – mostly
east.
I’ve
lived with Smuffy for a long time. “What
is that man doing now?” I thought to
myself and my first assumption was that he had climbed into our boat and fallen
out into the bushes while trying to do some oddball repair that really should
only have been tackled by a crew of six.
These occurrences are common enough at my house and, besides, I didn’t
really feel like disrupting the flow of conversation with my friend to go
outside and investigate.
Our daughter, known as Pookie here on the blog, appeared in the kitchen. She’d heard the noise as well and told me later than her first thought was, That sounds like the exact same noise I heard the time Dad left the truck in gear and it rolled down the driveway and into a tree. Well…
My friend showed more concern than either of us. She seemed convinced that the sort of noise we’d heard could only mean an accident. Her insistence, the fact that I didn’t hear Smuffy holler and the fact that the tops of those bushes had never sprung back into place finally gave me the nudge I needed to venture outside.
I opened the side door and started down the deck steps. The first things I saw were the wide eyes of my neighbor as she rushed down my driveway. When we all reached the bottom and turned to see what she saw, we got the full picture. Our boat, a 1957 all-wood run-a-bout, had been parked on flat ground at the bottom of the driveway. Rather than move it, Smuffy had decided to adjust the car’s brakes on the flat area at the top of the driveway, where he had jacked it up and taken it out of “park”, which, apparently, is a must in these situations.
The
important thing for a mechanic to remember, which he didn’t, was to put the car
back in “park” before letting the jack back down. Our excited neighbor said she’d seen poor
Smuffy sitting on the asphalt, gripping the back bumper with all his might and
with heels dug in, but all to no avail.
He finally turned it loose and, as usual, God blessed us in the midst of
our own stupidity.
The
Stude (pronounced STOO-dee), as we say in classic car lingo, rolled all the way
down the driveway and struck the spare tire attached to the side of the front
end of the boat trailer. This sent the
trailer and boat back and north, into our rock wall flower border. The boat jolted off the back of the trailer
and onto the rock wall, coming to rest in the rose bushes and day lilies. The car continued north-ish and plowed into
the yew bushes, becoming wedged in such a great tightness that it could not be
driven out. Though it had left the
driveway, the bushes had kept it from hitting the deck supports and from
falling onto the patio below. The
driver’s front wheel nested firmly in the large lower branches and there she
sat.
The application of a chain and a truck to pull on it with had no effect whatsoever. Smuffy was forced to forget the chain and get the chain saw. After the bushes were sufficiently mangled beyond any hope of salvation, the truck and chain were, at last, put to good use and I tried to stifle my inward YIPPEE! lest it crush the spirit of my beloved.
Afterward, we made an assessment of just how blessed we were. The wood boat, though displaced to be sure, came out unscathed! Ruining that would have been a sad thing, for it was a beauty. One year, pulled behind Smuffy’s 1963 Studebaker Champ pickup and filled with area homeschoolers celebrating summer vacation, it won first place float in the Heritage Days parade.
Its trailer suffered minor damages. The rock wall proved to be sturdy and didn’t have a single rock dislodged. Believe it or not, our classic Stude received only scratches! Over time, we’ve often been compensated for doing without such things as automatic windows and other modern frills and felt the warm gladness that comes from driving an antique made out of real metal! Later, finding the original color discontinued, I used my creative influence and Smuffy repainted it in Prowler Purple!
The yew hedge suffered total loss, but since I’d been begging for years for it to be cut down, I could only shout, “Hallelujah!” and offer up a great big, “Thank You, Jesus!” that it was the back bumper Smuffy had been attached to when the car went rolling and not the front.
The
seat of Smuffy’s jeans, a portion of his backside and a smidgeon of his pride
received a chafing that healed in due time – well, maybe not the jeans. He admitted later that he’d actually been
able to use his brute strength to stop the car from going down the hill – he
just couldn’t answer the question that entered his mind as to what to do with
it once he’d captured it, so he let go, closed his eyes and hoped for the best. In retrospect, I’m glad he didn’t start
shouting for me to come outside, jump in and apply the brakes because, odds
are, I would have tried!
After
the fact, we came to enjoy the whole incident as an unplanned burst of
excitement. How often in this life do
you get to provide that much entertainment for your neighbors? Most of them missed it, though. The neighborhood had emptied out when they
all went downtown for Heritage Days, leaving only our neighbors to the North to
join us in the fun.
The aftermath left the crash site in a state that took a good amount of time and effort to restore and although I took several photos of the Stude stuck in the hedge with Smuffy employing every means at his disposal to dislodge it, not a single one turned out. We can blame that on the dim light of the setting sun, but more than likely it’s because I laughed so hard I couldn’t steady the camera.
Time
has passed – much time – and still I
wait patiently for someone else’s husband to do something ridiculous that
causes their car to come careening along our street and, without harming a
single soul, wipe out the thorny, icky bushes Smuffy planted at the top of the
driveway that I can’t stand.
Comments? I’d love to hear from you. Just scroll back up and click on “Leave a
Comment” under the title of this post.
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