Imagine That

Things have been crazy at work, again,
and we're shorthanded, again,
and I'm working too many hours, again,
without downtime between workdays, again,
to really rest up and recharge, again,
but I'll get through this week and next, again,
and things will change, again,
but I'm off today, and that's a very good thing.

I started a beef stew in the slow cooker around noon so I'm guessing I'll be able to dig into it sometime tonight in 6-8 hours or so. I filled the pot with beef tips, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes and beef stock. Once it cooks down and gets tender, I'll transfer it to a larger pot and add green beans, corn and maybe some peas. Yum. I'm making myself hungry.

I pulled the footstool that matches my faux-red leather, swivel recliner and the little, cherry-colored table off my faux-oriental, mostly red carpet and ran the Dyson over it, pulled the throw rugs out of the kitchen and steam mopped it, did a few dishes, chatted long-distance with two friends, washed my bed linens and other dirty clothes, and played Facebook games.
Now I'm ready for a nap.

I passed some of my neighbors in the common area when I went up to do my laundry. They wanted to know if I was joining them for their twice weekly exercise session.
I snorted, "Yeah, right!"

I didn't think it was necessary to tell them that after four straight nights of eight hours on my feet, waiting on 200-300 customers a night, washing windows, cleaning the deli area, mopping the entire store, throwing buckets of ice for fountain drinks, bagging even more ice, straightening up the shelves, putting out overstock, and training a new employee, plus a little bit of grocery shopping and cleaning my apartment, I was too tired to bend and stretch.
My friends already know that!

I think it's obvious to them that I'm stretched to the limit because they've seen so little of me lately. I go to work, come home, eat and sleep, and do it all over again the next day, and will have to do so until the rest of the new crew has been hired and trained, or transferred from other stores. I'm soooo ready to get back to my normal schedule of 2 1/2 days a week. I'm too tired to write, even though the dreams that fuel my blogs and book keep coming.

I was talking to my best friend last night about imaginations and how much fun we used to have when we were kids--without all the toys, computers, cell phones, Wii's and whatnots kids have now. I don't really think kids have time to play any more, unless it's in organized sports and I think those are more fun for the adults than they are for the kids.

We used to get one big gift for our birthday and Christmas and not the deluge of toys kids now expect as their due. One year it was a baby doll and a Howdy Doody, the next a dollhouse and a train set. (That was a big year; we spent days moving dollhouse furniture in the box cars.) Another year it was a fancy doll and a homemade barn (by Dad) and tractor set.

Yet another Christmas it was two-wheelers. One the typical, open-frame girl's bike in blue and the other was a boy's bike in red with the cross bar. I still remember that mine didn't get fully assembled until the day after Christmas, but I named it Cheyene and rode that bike for a long, long time so it turned out fine after all.

I remember playing farm under the big old oak tree in our front yard. We scraped rows in the dirt with sticks and then ran the tractor with its plow over the loose dust and stuck grass in to look like my uncle's crops.

We played in the creek with leaves and sticks and the waterwheel my dad made for us. We walked in the woods and did all kinds of things with few or no toys and without our parents watching our every move.

Mom wouldn't hear the words, "I'm bored" from us. We were expected to entertain ourselves until lunch, dinner and bedtime. "Go play," was all she had to say for us to take off on another adventure, or at least get out from underfoot until she wanted us back inside.

In cold or wet weather we had plenty to keep us busy. We had cards and board games. My brothers had cars and I had a box of different sets of paperdolls. I preferred the books that only had one or two dolls because those had more clothes.

Mom would take out her long, black handled scissors and snip out the curves and ruffles in a way that never ceased to amaze me. It never occurred to me that she didn't get to have paperdolls when she was my age. I guess she didn't mind playing with me that much after all.

Maybe she got to cut out the models in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, but those aren't as much fun because their arms never match the other clothes. I know because I tried it once after she said something about it and got in trouble because it was the new catalog.

Mom made lots of clothes for my real dolls, and my friends and I tried it a few times, but weren't very good at it. I got my last doll when I was 13, much too old for a doll, although 12 was just fine. I still have her. Mom's sorority ladies made clothes for her and held a raffle. We won.

I named her Teresa, I think after a singer my mom liked, and she was the most unusual doll I'd ever seen. To begin with, she wasn't a baby. She had pierced ears with little pearl earrings, high heel shoes, eye shadow, lipstick and breasts!

Keep in mind this was long before Barbie.

I think she originally came in a wedding dress, but the ladies made her a wardrobe of different kinds of dresses. The one Mom made was a beautiful, green, strapless evening gown. I wish I knew what happened to all those clothes.

All I have left is a tattered pair of green striped, cotton overalls, a mouse-chewed, flannel nightgown, and a stained, white, crocheted lace gown. The shoes are gone as are the earrings, but I thinking about correcting that situation. So far, thinking about it is as far as I've gotten.

I cannot say that I would want to be a kid again in today's world. They are usually so buried in heavy schedules of organized sports and school work, computerized games and communication systems, they don't have any free time left to just be a kid.

When I was growing up we had a lot of time to play, and we had to figure out what to do for fun with not a lot of resources.

Ewww! Echoes of old parent laments..and, we all know how those go, but I think this bears saying again--kids these days don't have as much fun as they did when I was growing up, and I think it is because their parents are doing too much for them.

Parents give their kids things they would have liked when they were young. They work hard to one up their parents, and often mistake the value of the material things they can buy for the value of things money can't buy. Kids today not only do not use their imaginations (much, if at all), they are encouraged to use someone else's in a game program or whatever. They are pushed and prodded from one activity to the next and never have time to lay in a wheat field and imagine that the ocean would sound just like that.

Our world was safe enough to take off for most of the day on foot or on our bikes to find tadpoles and beaver dams and the open road without our parents thinking we'd been kidnapped. Talk about the ransom of Red Chief!

It is true that all work and no play makes one dull, and, in my family, we were anything but dull! Still true today.

Another thunderstorm rolling in tonight, another workday tomorrow. Stew turned out great!

I'm snug in my cozy abode and tonight
Life in the Midwest is wonderful.