The Ancestral Silver

Our friends brought a poinsettia plant last night. I've put it in the room with the TV on a console with the wires hanging out the back, the new chair and a bunch of unclaimed media bits and pieces all with their own wires. I'm hopeful that all this will go away soon. Well, not the TV. In the meantime, the effect of the poinsettia and the garland of greens on the mantle, purchased from Will's baseball team, add a little joy to the space.

I spent a pleasant hour or so playing with the silver for today's blip. Not that I ever use it, but I do enjoy the thread of initials going back through the generations, memories of my paternal grandmother, who taught me to knit, and my mother who perpetuated the claim that the silver knives MUST NOT GO IN THE DISHWASHER....I might add that none of the silver should go in the garbage disposal either, but the chewed up condition of the sugar spoon belies the fact that I lacked my mother's vehemence.

My children recall that I put the fear of God into them lest they break the "irreplaceable curved glass" of the china cabinet. Dana has it now, in a household of boys who cannot hold an object in their hands without tossing it up and down repeatedly. They're pretty adept, but there's always the possibility of a stray baseball shattering the glass. It's not my worry anymore. Instead of OilMan's grandmother's collection of tea cups, it now contains sports trophies and, papier mache models of a water buffalo and a pig with an apple in it's mouth. I find it rather charming.

I remember when our youngest child went off to kindergarten, I was sitting alone in the house reading the newspaper and I kept hearing this funny, unfamiliar noise. Upon investigation it turned out to be the furnace going on and off. In all the years the kids were around, I had never heard it over the din. Now I'm having deja vu sitting alone in the house, save for a sleeping dog, hearing unfamiliar sounds.

The furnace sounds like someone is walking down the hall when it turns on.
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The refrigerator sounds like what I would imagine the garage door opening would soud like if it worked.

The water heater sounds a bit like a distant truck toiling up a hill.

The washing machine sounds like...well...a washing machine.

At the moment it is actually making a rather ominous sound...perhaps I should go investigate....