I started this blog in July, then added Part Two which is current.

Mom has me using my turntable to record her old records onto CDs so she can listen to them again.  It took me a while to get this show on the road, like months.  I had problems working with the music files, so I asked two separate teen aged boys at different times to fiddle around with things. I carefully picked out a Huey Lewis 45 for a tester, thinking it was better than “We Are the World.”  One played the B side, not knowing any better.  Both were amazed that it only had one “track.”  It is just as well I didn’t get out a 78!

I finally had to call the company to get help.  The guy who helped me was patient and had a quick solution.  Mom has about 70 or so albums she wants transferred to CD.  This could take a while. 

I always thought of Mom as a “Classical” music listener, like Bach not Bacharach, however I am having some second thoughts about this.  She started me out with Shawn Phillips, who was one of those acid tripping 60s guys, then Itzhak Perlman, both of which I was expecting.  Next she handed me a stack of 45s.  Have you heard this music?  The Four Preps, the Four Lads, the Crew Cuts, sheesh.  The woman owns Liberace, no wonder she objected to Van Halen!  This little exercise has re-enforced in my mind the simple fact “the music that should endure, does.”  Nat King Cole kicks butt, even on side B.

Mom was kind enough to let us play her 45s on our record player when we were kids.  She said they were hers, but I think they must have come from a garage sale, because I didn’t recognize many of them in her collection, except Jail House Rock, and that one looked like it had a bite taken out of it. 

I had to play The Chipmunk Song pretty loud, but I attracted both of the girls - then mom came running up the stairs, “Are you recording that? I don’t want that, I don’t know where it came from, but it’s not mine!”  I think the lady doth protest too much.  It made a nice touchstone for the ladies when we watched Ice Age 3 this weekend.

Part Two

I find myself at Mom’s when she is not here.  I brought my turn table again and this time I get to choose the music to record.  I am going to give it to her for Christmas.  How cheap is it to give someone something they already had as a gift?  It would be a lot more efficient time-wise if I could remember all the little tricks to running the set-up.

I started out with An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue which I doubt she would have chosen, but I like it.  Then I recorded Aaron Copeland, which once again, I probably like more than she does.  Next was Roberta Flack whom we both love.  She is going on my ipod.  Now I am jamming out to Gould playing Bach Partita #3 in A Minor.  She must like it, she had it laid out.  The trick is going to be putting things back where she had them.  She is a librarian and a little too organized for my taste.  I am banking on the fact that since her record player doesn’t work she doesn’t dig around in her albums much.  I am hoping I get a chance to do one more album tomorrow before I leave…The Goldberg Variations or the Brandenburg Concerto?

Of course the kids got into the bath beads while my back was turned.  It looks like the aftermath of an orgy, with colored rubber blobs decorating the bottom of the bathtub.  Did you know you could use enough bath beads to actually repel water so you don’t get wet in the tub?  The number appears to be around seven.  So three of my kids smell like a French whorehouse.  Guess what they are giving Grandma for Christmas?

Something somebody wrote on Xanga made me think that I should share my filing system with you. 

I have a hard time staying ahead of the mountain of papers that come my way through the course of daily life.  I feel like I should keep certain things but what and where?  A boss once told me that if you haven’t looked in a file for a year you should toss the contents.  This seems pretty harsh to me, but I bet his kids will thank him for this when he dies.  Several years ago my husband’s boss gave me $100 so I bought a used four-drawer filing cabinet.  The bottom drawer is full of maps and AAA guides.  I have maps of China and the ocean floor and the moon and public lands of Wyoming and places you might find arrowheads and private lands you can hunt on without asking permission.  “I have a map for that.”

The next drawer is full of owner’s manuals for everything we own, some things we have sold and probably some things we have never owned.  The drawer above that is for our farming business.  I was happy to discover that this end of farming requires keeping a lot fewer papers than the government’s end.  It has folders for our bull’s papers with their names; Mac and Brad, (we name our bulls after the guys we bought them from, you might want to keep that in mind if you sell us a bull) and one entitled “Pets and Vets” where I keep the vaccination records and info on the three different vet offices we use; the one that won’t come out on Saturdays and the one with the cute vet.

The top drawer is reserved for family stuff.  I have folders for each kid I fill with pictures and artwork and their shot records.  That is the idea anyway.  Paul’s folder is pretty much empty and I haven’t added anything to the other kids’ folders for years.  I have one marked “Fun Stuff to Try” which I also haven’t opened in years.  Maybe we should try some fun stuff this winter.  The rest of the files are a hodgepodge of things I should hold on to but am not likely to need.  

When I used to work for the government they would send out these forms every six months that I knew I should keep, but I knew not where.  Finally I made a folder entitled, “Personnel Papers (those one forms they send you).” We were required to maintain about three different passwords which were to change every two or three months.  I still keep my master list of passwords in a folder entitled, “Top Secret Information - Restricted Use.”  I have a “Hate Notes” folder where I file my correspondence with the local post office and our Representative, and a “Love Notes” folder where I put correspondence that makes me happy.  I have a file for “Letters from Grandma” and one called “Useless Junk” which is full of… well at least it is organized.   

I don't believe my brother plans to have any children.  That's okay, I had one for him!  Check this out, and don't laugh at the 1976 attire. Okay, you can laugh, it is funny.  My brother would have been four, and Paul is just two.

For some reason Paul thinks that when you squat to take his picture at his level he should squat too.