A Garden Gnome Morphs Into a Sentient Being, and Mr. Chips Calls for His Close Up

Hoping I might have missed a photo of Mr. Chips, I go though the Lost Box of photos again, pulling apart any that stick together.  I have an idea what era I might have a photograph from, so look for the house I was living in at the time.

I’m tired.  It’s 2 am. There are so many photos. Hundreds and hundreds.  This puzzles me, as they are mostly bad photographs.  I start a stack of pictures to toss.

I root through another bad clump of blurry pics, and see a familiar streak of silver.  I had an Airstream travel trailer.  I don’t ever remember towing it.  I parked it in a pretty spot that looked out over the land, built a little deck, and gardened around its perimeter.  I used the trailer as a summer guest house.

I had Mr. Chips and the trailer at the same time.

Sigh.  Such a bad picture.  I scan it anyway.  A memento of a lost era.

I open the file on my computer, and try to remember that time in my life.  I’d done things like place rubber finger puppets on sticks so they’d poke up above the flowers like hovering birds: silly blue monster heads with wavy arms, shy green monsters peeking through their fingers.  I wanted to have pretty and laughter all at once.  Pink curlers grew in a cultivated row, tucked behind  a fenced off cage of tomatoes.   I was careful: all the flowers were edible and non-toxic.

I stare at the photo of nothing much, wishing it was so much more.

Strange.  I don’t remember having a garden gnome with a peaked hat.  Aren’t garden gnomes green with red hats?  I look closer.

Mr. Chips On Ice

It’s the hottest summer on record.  Yesterday it was 105 degrees.

Day One: Hold funeral for box fan.  I can do this.  I don’t need no stinkin air-conditioning!

Day Two: Standing outside doors of big hardware store at 6:25 am, while it’s still a cool 90 degrees. Open open open!  I need that fan.  6:30 am: hostile clerks hide behind counters: WE ARE OUT OF FANS PLEASE PLEASE LEAVE US ALONE. Do you..? NO WE DON’T KNOW WHERE THERE ARE ANY.  GO AWAY.  How about…? NO AIR CONDITIONERS! HAVE YOU BEEN IN A CAVE?!?

Day Three: Grid is overloading: there are rolling brownouts.  No air-conditioning at work.  We get permission to lose the nylon stockings.  Hallelujah.  It’s Thursday.  Going to the movies tomorrow.  All evening.  Get cool.

Day Four: I lose four pounds sweating at work.  I’m in air-conditioned heaven, watching Star Trek for the third time, with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed. Only movie in the theater that hadn’t sold out.  I try to sleep.  The theater goes black.  It’s instantly boiling.  Power outage.  I will myself to bear the heat until the stampede for the door subsides.

Day Five: 115 degrees.  Starting to see things.  Pretty shimmery things. Oh.  It’s the heat on the tarmac.  There are black lumps on floors everywhere.  The tarmac is melting and sticking to people’s shoes.  We’re all running from store to store, in search of a balmy 95 degrees to cool off. Overheated cars line the side of the roads.  There’s a run on gallon bottles of water.

I’m worried about the horses.

And to All an Excellent Night!

Usually, if you have kids, there’s the one present that makes you cry. It hits that hidden zing place deep in our hearts.  Our kids have figured this out, and vie for the Heavyweight Cry Present Championship.   It’s hilarious.  Once we stop crying.

This year, in a shocking upset, Shaun managed an underdog coup:

It actually said on the glass makers tag: Palomino Shetland pony.  Sniffle.  Sniff.

I may never take the tree down.

I was able to get on and off Hudson without incident, and stay securely onboard for the time between the two.  I may need to get some PT for the leg.  That’s okay.  It went fine!

It’s likely to be quiet on TLH for another week.  Shaun is picking Great Grandpa up at the airport, and I will be doing a lot of cooking.  (Not followed by any telltale bings).

Chocolate cream pie, check.  Not as hard as I thought.

Ham, check.

Cookies, oh drat!

Where’s my coat?  Do we have chocolate chips??

 

(I hope your holidays were lovely, full of everything you could wish!)

The Shetland of Christmas Past

I’ve been quietly panicking.  The holidays are whirling in, there’s so much to do! I’m stuck lying around with ice on my leg.  I don’t do well with…resting.  When my body can’t move, my brain instantly thinks it needs to dredge up every possible thing that could go wrong.  In the next 5 minutes.  How helpful is that?  Each 5 minutes is then followed by another new 5 minutes.  So instead of relaxing and getting better, I’m clenching my teeth, making lists of all the ways I’m failing, and ignoring the stuff I am actually capable of doing, because much bigger stuff needs to be done.  Like making lists of how I’m failing.

Welcome to the Jane psych ward.

I couldn’t sleep.  Many well-meaning but bad things happen when I can’t sleep and feel useless.  But I had to do something to get my brain to quit messing with me.

I dug out our old Christmas stuff to donate: before Christmas. That would be useful, right?  Someone else could get it before Christmas!  See? Doesn’t that sound plausible?  At midnight?

I made a huge mess.  A whopper of a mess.  I hate my brain.

In the old Christmas stuff, I found a shoebox stuffed with hundreds of photographs. Great.  Now I have to deal with these too. I pulled out a fistful, fully intending to toss them without sorting, if they were pictures of an era I’d rather not remember.  There, staring back at me balefully, was my first horse, Spitz.  A 38-year-old photograph.  She’s clean, and severely annoyed by being clean.  Green was her favorite color.  I’m thrilled: I didn’t think I had any pictures of her.  I turn the photo over.  Date is on the back.

I was 15.

If Spitz is in here…?  The ghost of Mr. Chips shakes his mane, paws at the floor, and whumps me with his head.  Holy crap.  Mr. Chips might be in here!

What was a slightly contained mess goes Nuclear.  Hey, there’s our bunny, and the birds! No Wall O Rabbits though.  There are a couple more of Spitz and me in which I’m supremely, mortifyingly, fifteen.  It’s all about me.  She’s a living accessory.  To me.  The center of the universe.

I almost stop, I’m so embarrassed.  Mr. Chips stamps a hoof in my mind.  Okay, okay! I smile.  Pushy little guy.   I flip through more photos.

Is that…Roz?  I tilt the photo.  It’s Roz!  I frown.  This is not where we lived in the middle of NoWhere.  It’s after we moved back to civilization.  No grass.  But lots of places to ride.

 

When I lived here, I still had Mr. Chips, and Roz’ daughter, Connie.

“Right”, Mr. Chips says in my head, “Brilliant.  Helloooo.  Keep going!”

Mr. Chips, Ghost of Christmas Past.  ”Are you going to rattle a chain?” I say, shuffling through photos.  He tosses his  head.

And then:

I burst into tears. It’s 2 am, and I am looking at Mr. Chips for the first time in almost 20 years.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to me!

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Mr. Chips Cracks a Secret of The Universe, and Jane Manages to Stay Out of Prison

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I came home from work one day, expecting to find Roz and Mr. Chips in their usual positions, grazing at the lowest end of the pasture, eking out the last possible moments of socializing with the horses next door.  No one’s parents yelled “dinner time!” yet.

Roz was grazing in star-crossed angst, muzzle to muzzle with her favorite gelding. Separated by fencing.  Thank god.  Remove the fence and Roz’ favorite gelding would immediately be beaten to a pulp for looking at her wrong.

Fences.  The difference between dating and marriage.

I drop the grocery bag and run.  If you come home 362 days of the year, and your horses are always in the same spot, on day 363, when one is missing,  you run.

I find Mr. Chips standing in the middle of the pasture, nose nearly to the ground.  He’d been hidden from view by the barn.  He nudges something.  I see a flash of black and white in the sun-burnt grass, and start sniffing for scent.  A dead skunk?

No smell that I can detect.

Oh no.  A live skunk?!

Horses in Opera

First, dedicated to  Halt Near X:

Elmer Fudd sings the Ride of the Valkyries, the original version:

With goamwat’s inspiration, and my odd Mr. Chips/Valkyries experience to under my belt, I hit YouTube with a vengeance: I entered “Horse + Opera” and pressed Search.  I thought we’d ease our way into it.  Here’s a horse singing opera: the Largo al Factorum from “The Barber of Seville”

Next, The Phantom of the Opera is performed on horseback:

Unbelievably, there really IS more…

Mr. Chips and the Valkyries

There was a second work of music that Mr. Chips liked nearly as much as “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

It’s been driving me crazy that I couldn’t remember the music.

Today I tried to get motivated to clean the house.  And it hit me. Mr. Chips second favorite work of music: The Ride of the Valkyries.

I’m probably the only one of you who couldn’t have guessed Mr. Chips would like this.

I thought it was terrific housecleaning music.  It used to energize me to clean, and motivate me to finish.  Yup, it was energizing. It was also overbearing and irritating.  Perfect!   I cleaned in record time.

Someone must’ve given me a “Classic Works” album of “Great Composers Greatest Hits” for Christmas one year, and that’s how I came to own music I pretty much…hated.

I went looking for it on YouTube, to add it to Mr. Chips Greatest Hits page.  All I knew was the title and the composer.  (This explains the amnesia.  Mental block.  Not a Wagner fan.) Found a good orchestra version. (It’s on his playlist)

I, uh, never did bother to learn anything about Wagner or some famous opera he wrote.  (um, that would be The Ring.  The one that brought us Brunhilde(a)?)

I scrolled down YouTube results a little more, and found an opera version of The Ride of the Valkyries.

Ooooo.  Subtitles.  In English.  Now I’m curious. Here’s my chance to learn what the Valkyrie thing is about!

I sit back and try to relax as a passel of intimidating-looking, designer-gowned, opera divas file out on stage.  Cue the orchestra, and there it is!  The music Chips loved.

Then one woman starts singing.  And the subtitles appear.

What?!?

No flippin way!

Mr. Chips Meets Piano

I was still relying, in that college sort of way, on the backbreaking volunteer labor of my more macho friends. The piano was being delivered, but my friends were going to help me get it in the house, thereby saving me $200, which they desperately hoped I’d spent on beer and snacks. Not being a guy, my brain went more toward tea and cake, but I did manage to come up with the beer and…cookies.

Murphy’s Law was in full force that day, patrolling the streets, escorting my piano up to its new home. There was trouble getting it out of my parents house.  Going into the truck, one of the professional piano movers had  an oops moment, forcing the other professional mover to catch the full weight of the piano. Out went his back. (Piano was a studio upright, sort of the equivalent of a nice 17hh warmblood.  Tall and beefy.) Mover called. It’s on the truck.  I hear moaning in the background. They can haul it up, but will shave off $200 if I can get someone else to get it down the ramp and into the house.

I dialed up the most macho guys I knew, rented a piano dolly, picked it up at the rental place, and met everyone at my house in an hour and a half.

We wait. Nothing.  (Pre-cell phones.)  They were awfully late.   My guys drank a lot of beer, and ate a lot of cookies, making terrible faces at the combination.  Still waiting.

Phone rings.  It’s the radio dispatcher from the moving company.  Truck was late: one mover down, then a flat tire on the freeway: a highway patrol officer pulled over to help – via leaving his bar lights flashing and leaning against his patrol car.  He supervised the healthy guy struggle with a tire on the shoulder of a 12 lane freeway.  Standing there, Officer discovered a broken tail light.  He doled out several tickets (illegal pulling over on a freeway, tail light out, peeling registration tag).  For good measure, he breathalyzed the moaning guy to make sure the moaning wasn’t because he was dead drunk.  The fact that PIANO MOVING was painted on the truck in four-foot high letters didn’t faze him.   He checked the back for stolen goods.  Once cleared to go, an entire day’s pay was effectively used up in the first 20 minutes.  They still had two hours to go.  I’m lucky they did not drive my piano over a cliff.

Mr. Chips Playlist

Just writing that makes me crack up.

There’s a new page on TLH: Mr. Chips Greatest Hits. As I remember them and have time, I’ll add to the list. Of course, In The Hall of the Mountain King is first.

Mr. Chips Discovers Music

I was a weird kid.  You know the kid you have to drag to the piano bench, plop the sheet music in front of, set the timer on, threaten to ground for all eternity ,and still have to yell at in order to hear sullen plonking on the piano?

That wasn’t me.

The neighbors called.  Would my parents please get me to stop?  No more scales at 1 am?  Could I please not play the piano AT ALL before six in the morning or after 11 at night?

How unreasonable is that?  I was already using the mute pedal half the time.  I did some of my best arpeggios at 3 am.

I was ten.