Sands of the East Coast and Sands of the West Coast Mingled in My Office
Knowing the weather was going to turn bad, I had decided several days earlier that I would get the flower beds taken down for the winter. So Saturday morning when we got back from the Temple, I got my clothes changed and outside fairly quickly to begin the task. Since Ruth was in the house (David was preparing to come outside and mow the front lawn) I felt I didn’t need to lock my office door. Ah yes, you see where this is going I suspect!
I grabbed the wheel barrow to put the trimmings and clippings and pullings into, trimmed the peonies down, the ‘Just Joey’ rose in the center of the yard, the miniature roses by the front porch and pulled every errant weed I could find as I went along. Well, just as I was beginning on the front porch flower bed out popped Ruth to help. She was loading the wheel barrow (and then dumping it in her trailer) so we were working in tandem. Great way to do things-you get twice as much work done! Out the front door pops little David-“Can I come out and work with you too?” Ruth, “Sure, get your shoes and a coat on first and then you can come outside.” What’s wrong with this picture? Well, let’s see… I’m an adult, I’ve raised six children and I have been around my grandkids enough to remember that to have a 4 year old on the loose equates to doors have been opened and the two year old has followed! Moreover-if the 4-year old has finally found you (in the last place they’ve looked-which means they’ve looked in other places first) then they probably opened other doors in the meantime and that means the 2-year old (who is not currently on the heels of the 4-year old) is up to some 2-year old mischief. Simply translated, that means the 2-year old is in to something he’s been told “NO!” to so many times, he’s relishing and playing hard and fast while he can-hence the saying, “While the cat’s away the mice will play!”
Grandpa David had the weed whacker out and was going around the edge of the flower beds and lawns in the front yard, the garden lawn and the back lawn in preparation for mowing the front lawn while Ruth and I did all the other flower bed work.
After we finished the front porch flower bed we began on the driveway rose bed. I got the roses trimmed down and Ruth and I pulled weeds and annual flowers out of the bed. Then I began trimming the climbing roses along the highway side of the backyard fence (they were getting in the way of pedestrians walking on the sidewalk and sorely needed to be cut back). About halfway through the trimming the roses in the back yard, my car horn alarm started going off. Nobody and nothing was near the car. So it must have been turned on through the panic-I can’t find my car in this gigantic parking lot-button. Sometimes when Grandpa David isn’t careful he bumps the alarm when he has his keys in his pants pocket. Not this time. He was using the edge trimmer and I could see him-he wasn’t bumping up against a thing. So it must be my key-in my purse-in my office?!!!!!!
NO!!!!!
I got David’s attention to turn use his key to turn the alarm off. Shortly after he realized what I was saying, fished it out of his pocket and got it turned off, the alarm came back on. Ruth is looking at us like, “What is going on?” Then I holler to her-I think Babers found my key in my office and is playing with turning the car alarm on and off. She went to take care of the issue. She came back with some interesting news.
I collect sand. Beach sand. (No Jacob didn’t think to get me any from Iraq or Afghanistan and I never asked-all I wanted was him to be safe and come home in one piece-without extra metal embedded in him). I had a friend bring a small vial of sand from Hawaii. It’s orange and coarse, like this:
Paul brought me a water bottle half full of sand from Miami Beach, Florida (it’s fairly white and very coarse), like the sand in the bottle on the left:
I had another friend bring me a small vial full of sand from Tel Aviv, Israel (it’s very light and quite a bit finer) like this:
I had a duffel bag of sand from Santa Barbara, California (it’s darker than Miami sand but very, very fine-the softest sand I’ve ever experienced).
And I have a tiny bottle of sand from Nauvoo, Illinois. The Nauvoo sand has a lot of organic matter (rotted tree leaves and other 'nature' type stuff) and is quite dark:
Janele, about three years ago asked me what I was going to do with all my sand. Well, I didn’t know and said so. The question got me thinking and eventually I came up with something-which I never communicated to her. My answer to her question got her thinking and she started saving fun and decorative jars from DI and anywhere else she could find them for about six months or more, cleaned them, put colorful tissue paper in them and presented them to me for Mother’s Day about two years ago-for my sand! I dutifully filled them. I had them in the kitchen window sill until Ruth and her boys moved in. It was much too much of a temptation for her boys so their new ‘safe’ home was my office window sill.
You see where this is all going, right? Long story short? The sands of East coast Miami mingled with the sands of West coast Santa Barbara on my office floor! As I was sweeping it up to return it to the jars, I could actually tell the difference between the sands and so was able to keep most of it separate. For the most part one can still tell the difference between the two sands. The Tel Aviv, Hawaii, and Nauvoo sands were NOT in the window sill. An earlier incident had taught me to not be that dumb/trusting. So it was just Miami and Santa Barbara that was mingling.
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