Time Capsule

I'm actually in town this morning so I figured I would turn on a computer.
Where have I been? Unplugged, for one thing.

It's really one of the many wonderful perks of having a "dumb phone" that I am not connected all of the time. Yes, that is a perk. If you don't think it is you need to put your phone down.

The kids and I have been foot loose and fancy free this summer. We went back to the beach and then straight to my parents' house. I could bore you with a summary blog post, but why? It was fun. The beach was perfect. Both kids got to go in the kayak. We did a lot of swimming in the gulf. And I gained 8 pounds due to trading work outs for eating ice cream. Worth it. I'll get back in the grind when school starts.

My parents are working to get their house on the market so we spent time in Beaumont trying to help sort through more than thirty years of accumulated things. I'll be honest, it's mainly books. They should jump into the Dewey Decimal System and start a beach library when they move. They could run it out of their house and probably make a fortune on late fees. Or charge membership. They really have that many books.

We went through old photographs, and attic boxes (oh the never ending Coke collection!), and Gran's linens (yes, please!), and Rush family jewelry. Actually we didn't go through the jewelry I just took it home to look through with Kelly. I think when I see her next I should be wearing every single piece, including all five of Pop's police badges.

Wait, didn't I just promise I wasn't going to summarize? Ah!

All of that is to get to this: I brought home Carolena's old rocking chair. No, not Carolena number three. Carolena number ONE. It's old. And fabulous. And the best little rocking chair that ever was.

How old is that wonderful thing? Like 100?

When I picked it up to bring it downstairs the seat cushion fell off and revealed a torn bottom. Upon closer inspection my mother and I realized it was filled with straw and fabric. *Note to self for reconstruction purposes: straw and fabric are incredibly comfortable rocking chair fillers*

"What if there's money tucked away in there?" my Treasure House mother said.
I gave her a skeptical look.
She shot me a mother look that I know very well from both her face and now my own and replied, "That's what people did. I'm serious. When you take this apart be careful and look for hidden money or family jewels."
"Mom, I don't think we're that kind of family" I replied.

A few hours later I was home and all of my new/old belongings were lovingly put away and on display. I decided to tackle the chair bottom and see what mystery was really inside.

Jewels? Money? Valuable family heirlooms?

No, a time warp to the Great Depression. Or perhaps the start of WWII?

Clearly a woman leading a life so different from my own (and yet so similar?) needed to add stuffing to the caving seat of the rocking chair and looked to her own home. I pulled out about eight pairs of antique undergarments, a small blouse jacket, and an entire dress. All of these things were torn. The tears didn't look like the tears of wear (expect for a few places on the dress), but looked to me like tears from being washed during a time with no "gentle cycle" to do all of the work.

It was astonishing. At first I started to laugh. Who stuffs a chair with old underwear?!

And then I realized who does that: people who had nothing else to stuff in there.

And I was humbled. And stood in the middle of our modern day opulence holding the torn dress turned chair stuffing of my namesake great-grandmother.

Generations of babies have now been rocked on that chair. I think it is safe to assume that my dad snuggled up on a lap in that rocking chair a time or two. I'm sure I did. I am positive that my own children have snuggled and rocked on top of the original Carolena's old clothes.

I don't know what I'll use to reconstruct the seat of the rocking chair. Whatever modern convenience I use I'm sure it be it will somehow be less comfortable than Carolena's old clothes. I plan to wash a piece of it and put it back in. I like the thought of generations to come continuing to soothe their babies on the tangible memories of our family.

Becoming Clyde

So it turns out I like to whittle.

That Tiki was a birthday gift for my father (and as seen on the right above) now resides in my parents' beach house. A weekend at the beach means I came home with more driftwood. To whittle of course. 

The possibilities seem endless...

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Other Assorted Things

I found Nils wearing one of Carolena's hats. I thought he looked so cute that I snapped a picture. I have tried like 800 times to upload the photos here, and it just isn't happening. The computer goes haywire (haywire? who says that?!) every damn time. Perhaps it is a message from Future Nils who has some kind of 2030 computer device that is blocking my ability to upload them. Considering the story behind the photos is that I found him wearing a big pink straw hat and took a picture and he insisted that I take about twenty-seven more, yeah, I would say Future Nils is happy they aren't getting posted. He heard the "click" of the camera, turned, posed and said, "Again! Cheeeese!" so I took another one and then smiled and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Again! Cheeeeeese!!!"
So I laughed, he struck a pose, I took another photo, and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Cheeeese!!!"
This went on for quite sometime eventually ending in a tantrum and fifty million photos of Nils in various pageant poses. And I do mean pageant poses.
What are they teaching this kid at school?

Aw, speaking of Nils at school... poor Nils pet an asp yesterday at school. Does that just break your heart or what? That sweet little guy. He saw one of those fuzzy little devils walking by and reached out his pointer finger to pet it. That just breaks my heart in both that my poor Nils was hurt and in its sad innocent cuteness. Evidently in addition to the pain of an asp, his feelings were pretty hurt as well. He told Carolena and me all about it when we picked him up that afternoon. Oh, sweet Nils.
If you've never been stung by an asp before, then chances are you are reading this from somewhere north of the land of anoles, asps, and humid Halloweens. Asps are venomous caterpillars. Yes, really. And you only purposely touch one of those dudes once. They're like crazy mini-porcupines (Casey science, not real science) who have quills instead of fuzz (Casey science) so when you touch them the venomous fuzz gets stuck in your skin and someone has to get it out (real science). Yikes!

Yeah, Future Nils is definitely using some sort of fancy technology to ensure Present Day Casey can't post embarrassing photos. Look, that cute pumpkin one uploaded in a cinch.

Blog updates: 
Reading: I finished Into the Wild (which turned out to be almost too fast of a read) and started The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin which is going to be fabulous. The prologue was so good that I read the whole thing aloud to Chris. I then settled in to start reading chapter one and promptly fell asleep (it was 920... waaay past my bedtime).

Caffeine: I remembered the big container of 1/2 caff and this morning drank plenty of coffee but far less caffeine... so that's good... except that I had four scoops and now I'm about to get up and go make some REAL coffee. Hmph. That didn't work. 
Also, I've been thinking about how I have memories of my grandfather Clyde's (aka "Pop") coffee mug burned into my brain. The fact that all of my memories of Pop involve him with a brown coffee mug (which I wish I now owned) with the dredges of a cup of coffee in it, combined with my father's, sister's, and brother's, and my coffee... ummm shall we say "habits" (aka horrible life controlling addiction) is making me think there is something coffee related in the gene pool. Perhaps that's where the Rush name came from in the first place? I'm beginning to think someone overly caffeinated just got dubbed "Rush" somewhere back in our family history when humans were doling out last names. 
*Also, for those of you who think I'm just obsessing... you've just forgotten that I looovvvee coffee and my neurologist doesn't think unlimited pots is a good thing. So there is a legitimate medical reason for the obsession. Otherwise I would cease to drink water unless it had dripped through beans. And also I like to obsess about things. That's also in the gene pool *cough*jimmers*cough* AND also it's my blog so I do what I want. Start your own blog and talk about boring non-coffee related things. 

Hey, speaking of obsession and non-coffee related things, anyone want to talk about polar exploration?!

Tarantula holes in the front yard count: numerous. 
Number of tarantulas I'm excited to have living around our yard: all of them. That's one fuzzy bug! Those suckers eat roaches, y'all. Bring on the arachnids!

After asps and tarantulas who else is going to spend the rest of the day saying over and over, "that is one fuzzy bug!"? Well, if you clicked on that then you are now...