Three Cents For Three Tomatoes

I wasn't feeling great this morning - so wallowed in my laziness.  Then the phone rang.  Mom was aggravated about her house phone.  She was ready to get on her cell and let some phone employee have it hard to both ears.  Something needed to happen fast to get between my mom and the phone company.  When I called them a few days ago to report she was having trouble with her phone, the lady walked me through and eventually reported there was no problem in the phone line all the way to her house.  Ahhhh, makes sense to me that the problem was from the switch to her phones.  So, I stuffed my feet in some shoes and went down to assess the situation.  After some tinkering, adjustments, disconnecting all of her phones and replacing my old standby for emergencies if our power is off phone into each of her plug-ins one at a time to assess the situation, etc., some things became clear:  I was too old to be tugging large pieces of furniture, too big to be stuffing my body in teeny spaces, I am still not happy to be in close confines with a big spider, and an old female geezer can still luck out to fix a few low-tech items.

Long story/short description:  I fixed the two problems I encountered.  She had a few loose screws in the sockets and the ringer on one phone was turned off.  Ahhhh, so if the main phone set-up was connected to a socket which did not have a good connection therefore wouldn't work in addition to a ringer turned off on the only other single-unit phone, she wouldn't know she was receiving a call.  Fixed those and you'd think I was the favorite child.

I decided a long sit-down with her would be a good idea to make sure her anger had subsided which it did and I still lingered for a long chatting session.  Sometimes mothers just need to know their children are available.  Thankfully, I'm not working now and had the time to spend a leisurely day with her.

She was also frustrated over another issue - a flower arrangement in a hanging basket that she didn't like.  So, I plucked out half the flowers, rearranged the ones left and interspersed some other fall things she had in her house.  She found a beautiful bird which was in some sort of arrangement she had used years ago and had kept the bird. Nope, don't know the name of the bird, but it is brownish and has a long graceful tail. Pheasant maybe??  So, that was placed near the top with its long tail feathers sticking out the right side of the basket.  Subtle and nice if I say so myself.  With the addition of a few sprigs of fall grass, pine cone type flower, graceful curling fall leaves, it looked impressive.  I hung it where she wanted it - on the wall side of her screened porch.  She was impressed and kept telling me thanks for all I did today.  Sometimes it just doesn't take much except some time.  She's been there through thick and thin with me and it's the least I could do to salvage her day. Would have included a picture, but didn't take the time to grab my camera on the way out the door.  Remember, I was in a race to defuse a volatile momma situation.

Since I didn't sleep well last night, I took a short nap which was just what I needed.  When I got up, I had a bowl of tomato soup and a few animal crackers with a cup of hot tea for supper.  Ahhh, a perfect meal for a cool fall night.

My brother emails me constantly teasing me about our cherry tomatoes.  He said he found 3 pennies in the church parking lot yesterday and wondered if he could buy some of our cherry tomatoes.  So, I took a picture to email him.  I'll do that later on tonight if I don't forget.  Senior moments are becoming more frequent.  Huh?  Whatever.