routine

Routine is good, I am told.

As much a free spirit as I have been in this life, there still is some routine that is really dear to my troubled heart!

The galley (kitchen in a house) in the bus just has to have a certain amount of organization, some routine and a lot of discipline.

In the house we had a small pantry, as well as an actual pantry that held bulk foods, the flour grinding mill and our fruit jars, both full and empty.

The galley in the gus has no such riches. There is a 6” deep cabinet about 18” wide that is the main pantry, plus a little space over the small refer. There is a cabinet over the built in toaster and a long, very narrow space above the dinette. And, under the couch is a drawer that can hold some bulk items, as long as it is not too bulky.

So, rather than buying groceries for a month, once a month. Now I buy every week or so. I try to not buy cans of stuff I won’t use for a while, the can storage gets full very quickly.

And talk about routine. When we have a meal I jump up from the table and put all the stuff away that has a home, put the teakettle on the range to heat dishwashing water and clear and organize.

I found a plastic box that is sold as a shoe box. It is about 5” high, 6 or 7 wide and about 13 long. It is my dishpan. I some soap in the box, some cold water and add the hot water from the teakettle.

It is easy and fast to get the dishes all washed and stacked.

In this size space, there is no room for last meal’s dishes. Besides, probably I will need to use the same dishes for each meal!

It is fun though.

Charlie the fish scientist and fisherman.

memory keepers

I was watching Antique Roadshow.

I know, but there is not too much going on here in this evening, and I did read a book today.

Someone came to the Roadshow with a coat that they thought came from the Civil War. Turned out it was made just after the war for the Confederate Veterans.

Which got me to thinking of my great great grandfathers, who were alive during the civil war era.

One was an officer with the Union Army, one was a soldier in the Confederate Army, I don’t actually know what the third was doing during that time, but he probably was in the war somehow, and he was from the south and the right age.

But tonight I was thinking of my mother’s grandfather. There was a war going on between his country and the one next door. That is between Germany and Denmark, Grandpa Jens home.

Guess he was not really mad at the Germans. Any way, he copped the draft (I think there was one) and came to America. He sent for his girl friend later.

I remember Grandpa Jens. He came to live with my grandmother (his daughter) for a while when I was young. Earlier, during what Grandpa Howard (grandmother’s husband) would always call the “hard times” and what we would call “The Great Depression” Grandpa Jens came to Idaho, bought a few acres on the edge of Boise and seriously grew vegetables which Grandpa Howard sold door to door to the better homes in the area.

It wasn’t a big living, but it did keep the wolf away during those rough times.

My friend Charlie is a fish biologist. He has been invited to talk this week about what has happened in the fish farming industry in the last 50 years. Those are the years he was working in the fish business.

We are the old guys, the keepers of the memories, if they are kept at all.