You buy a desk…you need a chair, right? And not just any chair. I wanted an old banker’s chair. I found one on Facebook Marketplace. I went to pick it up Saturday. The woman I spoke with over the phone was lovely. I felt comfortable meeting her to pick up the chair.

The house was back away from the road…the quintessential farm house. White with green shutters, a long covered porch. As soon as I drove up to the house, the garage door opened and I was greeted by a middle-aged woman. I’ll call her June. June directed me to the chair and helped bring it out to the truck. We stood in the driveway and chatted for the longest time. This was her parents’ place, she told me. Her dad died in July and her mom is starting the daunting process of downsizing. I told her my heart is with her in her loss…then I told her about Mr. Virgo. Suddenly her eyes lit up and she said, OMGosh! You write a blog! You’re Marshmallow Ranch!

One of the happiest places in the world for me is a kitchen. I used to bake competitively and had a huge kitchen back then. My last house had a rather small galley kitchen but I still managed to bake several times a week as Mr. Virgo had a sweet tooth. When I sold that house after his death, I lived much of the next three years in my camper. I don’t know if you have ever tried to bake in a camper oven but they are nothing like a home stove. The bottom of everything burned and I gave up trying to bake anything. There is a big country kitchen at the farm, but I traveled so much this last year, I really didn’t cook all that much. I kind of got out of the baking habit.

One of the hardest jobs I ever had was one I didn’t seek out. Mr. Virgo had lost his job at a historic hotel when his position was eliminated due to budgetary cutbacks. It wasn’t a week later when he came to me and asked how I’d like to manage a luxury boutique hotel on 4200 acres in Pagosa Springs, CO. We had discussed the possibility of buying a bed and breakfast someday so I was working the front desk at a Best Western in order to learn the ropes of the hospitality industry. Mr. Virgo was SO excited by the opportunity to move back to Pagosa. He had lived there years earlier but went back to Florida when his dad got sick. Always up for an adventure, I said “Sure!” The next week, we drove through a whiteout blizzard to the interview.

Mr. FixIt and I graduated from the same high school class. Our classmates started gathering once every two or three months for dinner. We are “of an age” where loss is too real and we want to enjoy each other while we can. Last night was just such a gathering…and it was wonderful. There were forty-two of us…our largest gathering yet outside of an actual class reunion.

Being the social butterfly that I am, I went from table to table to visit so I could speak with everyone, at least for a few minutes. Some of these people I’ve known since first grade. They are all Important to me, whether I’ve known them forever or not. Some of my dearest friends were talking about Mr. FixIt and I. One of them mentioned I’m in a new phase. She wasn’t crazy about my “I downsized so you all should too” phase. lol I don’t blame her…I can beat a subject to death sometimes.

I was rummaging around in the basement out at the farm the other day, looking for painting supplies, when I saw the old stove in this great light and had to stop and capture it. I’m not sure why my Grandma did most of her canning down in the basement.  I know this past summer the basement was so humid mold was growing on everything. I had to buy a dehumidifier to put down there to keep the humidity below 50%. When she got this baby cranked up with a canner full of boiling water (not to mention the wringer washer) the condensation literally ran down the walls.

I have a longtime friend…I’ll call her Betty. Betty is retired. She was a child and family counselor…and a darned good one. She is kind, gentle, tender in her approach. She was an intuitive therapist. She raised a beautiful family. She had struggles along the way, as we all do. Some of hers were really difficult. But, in the end, she is still with the same loving spouse, and her children are thriving.

I saw something yesterday that totally melted my heart. Daughter #1 is at Disney World with her family and her brother-in-law’s family. She was standing with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. There’s a long story why this was so touching for me.

I was a single mom with #1 by the time she was two years old. It was not easy. We lived in HUD housing. We got WIC and food stamps. There were roaches and the people downstairs abused their kids. I looked in the open door one day when I walked by and my neighbor yelled at me to keep moving or she’d “come up behind me and slit my $&@?ing throat!” It was NOT a healthy scenario and if I had been any brighter or bolder, I would have packed up my stuff and hightailed it back to West Virginia. But that wasn’t what I wanted for my little girl. I wanted her to have every opportunity that I didn’t have growing up and I knew if I worked hard enough, I’d get her out of there. We would have a good life.

This is the part I hate about home improvement projects…living through the mess till it gets finished. I have done this countless times in my life. You can’t avoid it if you are a homeowner. I did this and then some when my mom died and I prepared to sell her house. She wouldn’t let me do anything to her house when she was living because it meant she would have to throw something away. I completely redid the kitchen and bathroom, painted the whole house, and refinished the hardwood floors…all by myself. It’s ever so much more fun to do a project with someone…especially if you work well together as a team. We took yesterday off, went to church, then out to the farm to feed cats. And today we are back at it.

We survived the first day of painting…barely! It wasn’t a problem working together. That part was awesome! We put on ‘70s music and be-bopped around the living room, dancing and singing and having a grand time making each other laugh. Till we had to move the treadmill out of the corner and into the middle of the room to paint around it. The part you walk on folds up and you pull back on the entire thing to make it stand on two wheels. This allegedly makes it move easier. Well, not so on carpet. I bent down and grabbed the front legs and helped Mr. FixIt move this thing several feet. I’m not sure what happened, but when we set the front end down, it came down like a shot and the handles slammed me in the side of the head so hard it literally knocked me off my feet and sent me flying about six feet. It didn’t hurt as bad as it surprised me. And of course, scared Mr. FixIt to death. I laid there on the floor for a couple minutes to let the bells stop ringing in my head and got up. I’m fine, thank God!

Sometimes it’s hard to walk the talk. And sometimes it’s even more difficult to talk the walk. I shied away from Christianity for many, many years after being frightened by a little ol’ banty rooster of a man. He was a circuit preacher, all hellfire and brimstone. As an adult, I can appreciate where that style of preaching is coming from and what affect it has on my spirit. But, as a seven-year-old, it literally scared the pee out of me and I ran in the opposite direction. I walked a long journey away from Jesus. I couldn’t be an atheist because I knew God. It was this Jesus guy that gave me fits. I rectified that by becoming Jewish for 27 years. It wasn’t till I was 51 that I became a Christian. And, even then, I was a closet Christian.