Mukilteo Musings

Crazy Old Lady

I am following in my father's footsteps. When he turned 50, he told us he had spotted an old car in the Madison River. The rancher who owned the land had given him permission to haul it away. My Dad said it was Model T Ford and he had always wanted to restore one. Dave and I went with him to pull the vehicle out of the rushing water and this is when I thought my Dad had lost his marbles. A rusty piece of unidentifiable junk was loaded onto a trailer and off we went. Within a year, my Dad had a refurbished Model T and a couple of years before he died, he and my Mom drove it in a Fourth of July parade in Absarokee, Montana.

Not that I am going to accomplish restoring an old piece of metal into an antique car but I am becoming happily eccentric. Maybe I have lost my marbles. My family teases me about never being more than a few inches away from a pair of binoculars. I know a lot about orcas because learning about them has become a hobby and I happily participate in the Orca Sighting Network. After the winter Olympics, I, a person who is not athletic nor interested in sports, became a fan of short track speedskating and our hometown Olympic gold medalist, Apolo Ohno. We even named our dog after him. And I kinda like this computer thing, keeping a blog and visiting other blogs. My family is merciless in giving me a bad time. And today, I was mentioned along with my son in the morning paper--not the small hometown Mukilteo Beacon but the bigger Everett Herald. And was the blurb about something brilliant or wonderful I had done?

No, I was mentioned because of laundry. I hate doing the laundry and I am not good at it. My kids never have clean underwear and dirty clothes spill out of hampers and cover the laundry room floor. Apolo loves to get into it and rip up filthy socks. Laundry is my biggest failure in life. How ironic that my name is in the newspaper because of my nemesis. But, one day at Christmas time, I washed one of Lucas's shirts and turned it into an angel. (See Jan. 3, 2005 entry below) And our Christmas angel was of some interest to an Everett Herald columnist who wrote yesterday about the image of Jesus on an Everett woman's closet door.

My husband about spit out his coffee this morning as he read the paper. He just shook his head and looked at me, "I hope my name wasn't associated with this...this...shirt!"

"You know, you took a vow a long time ago to stick with me for better or for worse," I replied, "and that includes my 'crazy old lady' time of life."

So, folks, here it is--my claim to fame:
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/01/19/100loc_fyi001.cfm