Where the Walls are Soft…

“Where the Walls are Soft” as a Groovy-Cool Graph

Yes, folks,
the
poor kid’s
hands were growin’
out her elbows.How cool is that?! I was checking out another cool blog called Design Sojourn and found this little gizmo. You type in any url, and it graphs it as you watch. The end result is rather purty, but the “watching” part is the fascinating thing. I think it’s the cat’s ass, myself. Go check it out for yourself…

Okay, onto the original subject, for which I have no pic, which is why I had to post the groovy-cool gizmo link… I’ve been harangued about this subject since I first brought it up, by all the Ruby fans (okay, mostly by Cardiogirl), and I can’t go another day with all the betch, betch, betching…

Ruby’s Mom was born with her arms drawn up so that her teeny-tiny little hands were pretty much touching her teeny-tiny little shoulders. It was all they (and by “they”, I must assume Ruby means her mom’s parents with the help of a midwife, considering her mom must have been born close to a hundred and twenty-five years ago, if not over…) could do to draw her little arms down into a normal-looking position, and it took days to a week to do it. She never was quite able to straighten her arms right out and lock her elbows, either.

Afterward, it became rather painfully apparent that this otherwise normal and most beautiful infant had been born… with….

No.

Forearms. (cred to Cardiogirl, who won’t type it any.

Other.

Way).

Yes, folks, the poor kid’s hands were growin’ out her elbows.

I know that sounds a little mean-spirited, but that’s how Ruby said it to me, so that’s how I’m saying it to you. From Ruby’s mouth to your ears (eyes, ahem…*).

ANYway….

Ruby’s Mom (whose name I never did remember to ask, but I’d only have to come up with a pseudonym anyway, so I will stick with “Ruby’s Mom”, I guess) never let the fact that she had.

No.

Forearms.

get in the way of anything. She grew up, went to school, taught school, got married, had eight kids (EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!), and ran her house like clockwork back in the days when most women had their share of overwhelming days.

She lived in the middle of the Northern Ontario “bush”, in a little, wee berg called “Northland”, where the only way in was by train. They eventually got a road built in; Ruby was old enough to remember it being built, but even then… Wow!

There was no electricity. No running water. And it’s not like Ruby’s Mom could run to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread, either. Nope. She made her own. Enough to feed EIGHT!!!! KIDS!!!!, remember?! Washed her family’s clothes by hand. Sewed most of them herself, too, with the exception of their “dress-up” clothes, the ones they wore to church, funerals, and dances. On top of all of this, she ran a small farm, growing vegetables, raising pigs and chickens, and chopping kindling… with.

No.

Forearms.

Ruby remembers that she never wore short sleeves, although she’d push her sleeves up past her elbows when she was working at home. If there was a knock on the door, though, first thing she’d do was yank her sleeves down over her wrists, so Ruby thinks that in some ways, it did bother her a little.

But, here’s the real kicker… it wasn’t until one of Ruby’s older sisters went to school for the first time and came home afterward crying, that Ruby even knew that her mother had.

No.

Forearms.

Seems that in the one-room school house that the kids all went to, that they liked to trade their lunches with each other (some things never change, huh?). It was during her first lunch hour at school, that Ruby’s older sister found out in that mean and nasty way that only kids have of treating each other, that she wasn’t able to join in on the lunch trade with the other girls.

Why? Well, that’s what Ruby’s sister wanted to know, wasn’t it? Well, it was because, they said, “Your mother works her bread with her elbows!” And they laughed until Ruby’s sister cried.

And then some.

When her sister came home with this story, Ruby was first puzzled. Then hurt. Then steaming mad. Ruby’s Mom, on the other hand, set about making a chocolate cake. In the middle of the week.

Un.

Heard.

Of.

And the next day, Ruby’s sister was most certainly the STAR player in the school house lunch circle, seeing as how she had a coveted piece of the Blue-Ribbon-Winning-Chocolate-Cake-of-Which-the-Recipe-was-
Never-Shared-and-Everybody-Else’s-Mother-was-Green-with-Envy-Over in her lunch pail.

Not bad for having

No.

Forearms.

Boo-Yah, Ruby’s Mom!

As a bit of a PS… watch this space tomorrow (or the next night, at the latest) for evidence of dead people. Damn, Suzi and her Dumb Dares.

Random Song for the Day: “Me and My Shadow” - Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr.

“Tell that Mushy-Fella that this one’s for him.”

I can
just
see that
little house all
decked out
for Christmas, the
table lit after dark
with a coal-oil lamp, and a dim but pretty popcorn-
laden evergreen in one corner.Ruby, try as she might to insist that she “don’t trust that Internet”, gets a real kick out of the comments I relate to her - especially when they come from Mushy. She laughs the hardest when he begs for a photo, but won’t let me post one. She won’t let me send him one “privately”, either. She’s even made me swear not to post one after she’s, um… “gone”. That sucks, ‘cuz she is a beautiful lady and I would love to be able to share her visage with you all.

She is very proud of this broach. It belonged to her mother (and those of you familiar with “Ruby’s Mother” as depicted in The Waitress should know that I “cut her out of whole cloth”, as Ruby says - in fact, her nose is a little out of joint about that part of the story, because her mother was nothing like the woman in that story. I have promised to make up for it by posting Ruby’s “Real” Mother in another post, and I will, ‘cuz she was quite the lady, too.).

Anyway, it was Ruby’s idea to take the picture of the broach, to “tease” Mushy with. So, Mushy, there you have it. My Landlady is a great big Tease, with a capital “T”. Merry Christmas.

This particular post should have gone up on Christmas Eve - Christmas Day at the latest - but, as usual, I’m behind the times. I considered “cheating” (gasp! Me? CHEAT?!), and back-dating it, but that would be, well, cheating, wouldn’t it?

I wanted to know what Christmas was like for Ruby, when she was a girl growing up in Northland. That’s a real place, by the way, and if I even mention it to her, the stories start flowing…

Oh, our Christmases weren’t nothin’ like what you get nowadays, let me tell you! We didn’t have none of this buy, buy, buy, like the kids expect now, no Sir! I don’t blame the kids, mind you - that’s all their parents’ fault. Buy ‘em everything under the sun, and then expect them not to be spoiled and cranky… Ha! Fools.

We did have a Christmas tree, though. My dad would go out into the bush and cut one down and drag it home. We’d decorate it all up with bows and popcorn strings, and sometimes we’d hang coloured paper-chains off it, if we had the makings. It’d look right pretty, too. No lights, though, on account of we didn’t have any electricity back in Northland way back then. No way to run it in, you know.

Me: Did you put candles on it?

Good God, no! My mother would have had a fit! She’da been afraid the place would burn to the ground, and it probably would’ve, too. No insurance, either, back then, so no. No candles. Still, we had the tree and it smelled so nice! Sometimes, we’d have branches strung over the tops of the windows, too, for the smell, but that was only if the tree was too big and my dad had to trim it down. Made a right mess to clean up - needles all over the place!

Me: Did you make cranberry strings?

What? No! Where’d we get cranberries from?! (laughs like I should have known better)

And we’d only get one gift. Sometimes, it would be a doll, or a skipping rope. I still remember the year I got the plaid snowpants. Oh, they were wonderful snowpants - red plaid, and real fancy. They were all the rage that year! They were fashioned after “britches” with a big flare coming down off the hips, and they tapered down tight at the ankles. I’ll never forget those snowpants ’til the day I die.

Me: Did Santa come?

Of course Santa came! Santa was Christmas when we were kids - that’s how my mother kept us in line. None of us wanted coal in our stockings, now, did we? But, that’s what we got, was a stocking - and it wasn’t stuffed full of toys and money, neither. No, it wasn’t “stuffed” at all, just lumpy-looking in the morning, and we never knew for sure until we stuck our hands in, whether or not it might be coal we’d pull out, after all.

We never did get coal, though, so we must have been pretty good kids. We’d get an apple, and almost every year we got an orange, too, which was a real treat, ‘cuz oranges were hard to come by in the winter up here back then. And we always got a couple of handfuls of those little hard striped Christmas candies. That’s what Santa brought.

After breakfast, we’d go out tobogganing if the the weather was fine, and that’s how we spent the day.

We never had a turkey, either. Seems strange, doesn’t it? I can’t truthfully imagine Christmas dinner without a turkey anymore, but we raised chickens, and my mother would kill two or three of them (and not the way you wrote her killin’ them, either!), and that was Christmas dinner, along with potatoes and turnip and the Christmas pudding.

Sure is different nowadays.

I can just see that little house all decked out for Christmas, the table lit after dark with a coal-oil lamp, and a dim but pretty popcorn-laden evergreen in one corner. And I can smell it, along with the peanut brittle that Ruby’s mother always made, just like the little box of brittle Ruby gave to me and Ky for Christmas this year.

I’m sorry this was late - I would have rather had it posted when we were all in the spirit, instead of relieved it was finally over again for another year. Next year, God willing, Ruby will add to the story.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Silent Night” - Ruby’s Favourite Christmas Carol

“…when she
didn’t
come out
for her supper,
I got
some nervous.
When I went to
check on her, I was sure she was dead.”You noticed “Ruby” in the header, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here. My stats go waaaaay up when I post about Ruby. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that the other week. Grinning to beat the band, she was.

And then she told me she didn’t think she had any more stories in her. I told her I didn’t believe her, but she insisted that, rack her brains as she might, she couldn’t think of anything she hadn’t already told me.

We went back to the crossword, both a little depressed.

Me, befuddled: What’s a 7-letter word for a “cream-coloured dog?”

Ruby, in the blink of an eye: Samoyed.

Me: How the heck do you know that?!

I had one. We called her Sanya. She just showed up on the doorstep one night. She was one big mess. She sure wasn’t cream-coloured that night, let me tell you.

Me: See?! There’s a story right there!

Bah! About a dirty ol’ stray dog? No, she wasn’t much. Well, I guess she was a good dog, alright; I sure thought a lot of her, I guess. You wouldn’t believe the life of that dog! One day she got into antifreeze in the garage and darn near poisoned herself to death. That was the only time I took a dog to the vet, I thought that much of her.

She couldn’t even stand up, and we had to carry her to the car. All the way there, I figured we was bringing a dead dog to the doctor. She hung on, though; cost us a fortune in room and board while they fixed her up. Finally, we took her home on account of she didn’t seem to be getting any better, and the vet said there was no point in having her spayed, because even if she came around, she’d never have puppies anyway, on account of what that antifreeze did to her…

Anyway, when we got her home, we hefted her up on the couch and the next day she ate a little, and got herself back up on the couch. Day after that, she ate a lot more and got herself up and down. One more day, and you’d never know she’d been sick.

After that, she got real nice, always wanting to hang around at my feet, and snuggly-like. She’d spend her days out in the yard, tied to her dog house, and come in and sit with me in the evenings. She was a right nice dog, Sanya was.

One day though, I looked out the kitchen window, and there that dog was, sittin’ out in the pouring rain! Wouldn’t go in her house to save her skin. I thought, ‘Now what’s got into that stupid dog?’, and I went out to find out. She wouldn’t go in that dog house no way, no how. She just sat there in the pouring rain, crying.

Finally, I figured there must be something in her house, so I stuck my head in and you wouldn’t believe what was in there!

The dog house was in a little dip in the yard, and the rain had all seeped in and made a great big puddle… and there in the puddle was five puppies. Drowned.

Well!

I felt about as miserable as poor ol’ Sanya looked, let me tell you, and she looked as miserable as a wet dog can. That’s pretty miserable. I got her into the house and dried her all off. She just looked depressed, I tell you, and I felt guilty as sin. I let her up on my bed, that’s how guilty I felt.

She stayed in there for the rest of the day, and when she didn’t come out for her supper, I got some nervous. When I went to check on her, I was sure she was dead. She wasn’t though. She was nursing a puppy!

That was a cute little pup, but I didn’t want two dogs, so I found a good home for the little one when the time came. Sanya didn’t like that, I don’t think. She started breaking her chain and taking off. Every time she’d come home, she’d have a face full of porcupine quills.

You ever have to take the quills out of a dog’s face? Nasty job. Hard on the dog, too. You’d think she’d have learned, but nope. Two days later, she’d be gone again, and come back with another face full.

Finally, we decided to put her down. She just wouldn’t learn. There was some happy porcupines after that, I’ll bet.

Anyway… Sanya was a cream-coloured Samoyed. Write that down.

Random Song for the Day: “Palm Of Your Hand” - Cake

My Dad calls this “Fish Eyes”

And
at
the end
of the week,
the government
didn’t hand those
men a paycheck, either.After my Saturday Walk-About to my parents’, I trotted back chock full of stories: “Aunt Blanche” stories… “Jimmy Prentice” stories… stories, stories, stories. I think my parents may be jealous of the “Ruby” stories getting all the blog-time around here, because I get one memory after another now, without even asking. I was all set to tell my mother’s “Aunt Blanche & the Peddler” story, or if not that one, her “Jimmy Prentice & the Radio” story, or even my dad’s “Let Me Tell You About the Time I Fought the Bear and Still Have the Scar to Prove It” story, but Ruby blew them all away because of tapioca.

I will tell those others, but Ruby sure does seem to take precedence around here (seniority, maybe…?), so I’ll have to tell hers first, or, I guess let her tell it. Her “voice” is easy to fall into…

Did you have supper with your folks, tonight? You’d think you’d be a little fatter by now, with all the big meals you’re getting there on the weekends. But you walked there and back, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so skinny, you know; it’s ‘cuz you walk too much. Did you at least have dessert? What’d you have for dessert?

Me: We had tapioca.

Tapioca! Well! Don’t talk to me about tapioca! I ate tapioca as a kid, ’til it was comin’ out my ears!

Me: My Dad calls it “Fish Eyes”.

(Laughing) Well, it does kind of stare up at you, don’t it? ‘Course, now it’s all that instant stuff. The stuff *I* had to choke back had eyes as big as peas, it did.

You know I grew up in Northland, right? During the Depression? My Dad was the only man drawing a paycheck there then, except for the one hired hand he had, and then the extras he hired on in the summer - that’s when most of the maintenance on the track was done. We picked berries up the track all summer, and if we were lucky, there’d be a crew nearby and we could get a lift, berries and all, back home on a hand-car.

Well, my Dad was the Section Foreman. He had the 8 miles from Bellevue Bridge to Glendale, then it went on to Searchmont. We had the Searchmont Section Foreman to supper every now and then; he and my Dad were good friends.

Everybody else was on “relief”, but Dad got $2.35 an hour from the railroad. We did alright, on account of that, and we had the farm. My mother planted a huge vegetable garden every year. We had chickens and a couple of cows, and every spring, my Dad would buy two little pigs to raise for the summer. He’d slaughter them in the fall and we’d have bacon all winter.

Back then, being on relief was nothing like welfare is now. No, they had to work for it. The men had to work on building the road into Northland. Up ’til that road was done, the only way in or out was on the train. And at the end of the week, the government didn’t hand those men a paycheck, either. No, they got paid with a box of groceries.

Every week, all these groceries would come in on the train, and my mother would have to sort through them on the kitchen table, and divide them up into boxes for all the families to pick up. They didn’t get anything too fancy, either; canned goods, mostly, and stuff that’d “keep”. They’d get dried goods, like beans. And tapioca. There was always tapioca.

Now, my mother felt bad for anybody worse off than us, and really, we weren’t doing that much better, when I think about it. But some of these folks she felt real sorry for, and so when they wanted something a little different or needed something extra, they’d come to her and ask if they could trade for a pound of butter, or some eggs, or lard. And they always brought beans and tapioca to trade.

My mother needed more dried beans or tapioca like a hole in the head, but she never said no. She’d just put the beans and the tapioca in the pantry and hand over what they was needing. She had a little money to buy groceries at the store, but I don’t remember her ever buying beans or tapioca, not even once.

I swear, by the end of a year, there’d be a hundred pound sack of dried beans in that pantry, and we ate tapioca every damned night after supper.

Well! (Laughing) Don’t talk to me about tapioca!

Random Song for the Day: “The Man Who Sold the World” - Nirvana

“Dewy”
Taken October 2, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

Ruby has been upset this year because the weather has been bad for her flowers. She spent our second-last visit alternately complaining that her flowers all looked “drug out”, and sighing over the fact that she has too many tomatoes left to “put down” (sometimes she says “put up” instead of “put down” - both times she means “preserve, jar, can, or stew”.).

I told her I thought her flowers this year were lovely, and wished that I’d taken some pics. She said, “If you want pictures, you’d better get ‘em fast.” So I went back yesterday afternoon, and was delighted to find that the finished macros hardly made her flowers look “drug out” at all. The two pictures in this post are my favourites of the bunch I took, and I plan on getting them printed and framed for her.

You can see the rest of the day’s shots at “Photo-Play”.

“Elegant”
Taken October 2, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

Random Song for the Day: “Ev’rything I’ve Got” - Ella Fitzgerald

Ruby’s nephew, Satch, is a lot like she is when it comes to being funny. Just like Ruby, he sometimes comes out with incredibly hilarious one-liners, and then wonders why everybody is laughing.

The last time I saw him, we got talking about Sudoku, and how it both fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time. Ruby won’t even attempt it. Satch, on the other hand, is fairly addicted. During the conversation, where he was trying to extol its merits to Ruby, and explain the fascination part to me at the same time, he made me laugh out loud by saying, “There’s ‘easy’, ‘medium’, and ‘hard’, and even the ‘medium’ is hard.”

When he and Ruby got talking baseball, though, that was all the cue I needed to beat a retreat. Ever since that time when I was a kid, and I got hit in the face with the ball and managed to hit myself in the head with the bat, all in the same play, I’ve considered baseball to be both a dangerous and a boring sport. Apparently, to think that way, you must be me. At least I am unique.

Anyway, as I was putting my shoes on to leave, Satch and Ruby got discussing a particularly tall player in the major league to whom some “rule” should not be applied, simply because of this player’s unfortunate (in this case, anyway) height.

And Satch said, “They keep striking him out below the knees. And it ain’t fair, ‘cuz his knees are way up to here!”

I think I was still laughing at that one when I unlocked my door.

Random Song for the Day: “Think I’m in Love” - Beck

Look what Ruby found…

“And when
I
went out
there, this thing
was sittin’
on top of
the paper…”I know, I know, Suzi - I told you she was letting me take her picture. Which she did. Sort of. It was the most I could talk her into; sorry.

But isn’t that a freaky-deaky whatever-it-is? *I* know what it is - La-la-la! Ahem. I know, now, anyway, but it took forever to get it out of Ruby. She was right stoned on coffee last night, I swear.

She found it day before yesterday. Er… Saturday. No, no; it was Friday… oh, let’s let her tell it.

I hardly slept a wink the other night. What night was that…? I don’t remember, now - that just drives me crazy.

Me: What the heck is this freaky-deaky thing?!

(laughing)

That’s exactly what *I* said! Isn’t that the cat’s whiskers? Guess what that is! You know where I found that?

Well! I went out to get the paper on Friday- that’s the night I couldn’t sleep!

Me: Friday night?

No. Thursday night, which was why I was so late gettin’ the paper in on Friday. The paper boy always leaves it in the breezeway there, on the table, you know. And when I went out there, this thing was sittin’ on top of the paper…

And I thought, What the heck IS this thing?! And then I saw it was the sports pages out of the Toronto Star it was sittin’ on top of!

(laughs and claps her hands together)

Me: I’m sorry; I don’t follow…

Well, Satch had been here to mow the lawn! And I was so tuckered from the night before, that I was sound asleep and I didn’t even hear the lawn mower, can you believe that?

Me: You mean, your nephew, Satch?

Yes! (laughing) Well, he always brings me the sports pages from the Toronto Star! So, he’s the one that left this thing, wasn’t he? It was on top of the sports pages, and the sports pages were on top of the regular paper that the paper boy brought!

Me: Aaaah! So… what is it?

That’s what I asked Satch, didn’t I?

Me: So, you did see him, then?

No, I didn’t see him! I told you; I slept right through the lawn mower! So I called him on the phone, and I said, “What the heck is this thing?!” (laughing)

Me: Well, what the heck IS it?!

(more laughing and hand clapping)

GUESS!

… and that’s what she wants you to do.

Random Song for the Day: “Unplayed Piano” - Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan

“And didn’t
some
ijit come
around that corner
and run
right into my dad?”Blueberries, that is. Yep. My fridge is now home to a 3-quart basket of blueberries that I bought for 20 bucks. That is not a complaint in any form, either, even after Ruby’s latest foray into yesteryear, shortly to follow. 3-quarts of blueberries that I didn’t have to pick, clean (well, rinse, maybe, but a single stem on nary a berry can I see), or get sunstroke for. These ones were picked by Ruby’s granddaughter for 5 bucks cheaper than the stranger-picked ones at the grocery. I’m happy. Ky will be purple in a day or two.

Anyhoo… Ruby said tonight:

My mother picked blueberries every summer. Every dang summer, she packed us all up and made us pick blueberries, too, there was no way out of it. She was still picking blueberries when she was 80, and she was better climbing those hills than any of the grandkids.

One summer, when my daughter Mary was just little, I had to work all day, so I got out of it. Mary was old enough to pick, though, so my mother made her go. All the kids had to pick blueberries, but they got to sell what they picked when they got back. And Mrs. Keach down the road would pay $2.50 for a 6-quart basket, can you believe that? ‘Course, $2.50 was different in them days, too.

Anyways, one day that summer, my mother couldn’t go berry-picking for some reason, I don’t remember why, and I was working, so she sent my dad off with the kids. My dad hated picking blueberries, but he wasn’t about to argue with my mother, so he packed them up in the car and away he went.

Well! They picked that car full of berries! That was a good summer for blueberries, not like this year, which is why you only got 3-quarts instead of the 4-quart basket I thought was coming… where was I?

Me: They picked a car full of blueberries…

Right. They come home that afternoon with all the kids balancing all these baskets just full of blueberries on their knees, and braced on the back seat of the car. That was down back behind Bruce Mines, and my dad had to drive down a steep hill on a dirt back road with a sharp turn at the bottom of it. And didn’t some ijit come around that corner and run right into my dad?

Well! You know how blueberries are…!

Pause in story while Ruby laughs.

And laughs.

And laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs - I’m not kidding, I didn’t think she’d ever be able to stop. But I do know “how blueberries are”, and I could just imagine the state of that car after the ijit run into Ruby’s dad. So I got laughing, too, and it was some time before Ruby got to her dad having to break the news of this accident to her mother…

Well! My dad had to come home and tell my mother that the car was banged up, all set to reassure her that at least nobody was hurt, least of all any of the kids.

Not once did my mother ask after the kids, or my dad, or the car. But she was fit to be tied over all those wasted blueberries. Can’t say as I could blame her, really, at $2.50 for a 6-quart basket, though.

Random Song for the Day: “Eulogy” - Tool