Updates, The Love Boat, and Mom

     I had an epiphany last week!  What if there's more to these ancient heat registers than meets the eye?  In two of the rooms in the 89 year old part of the house there are black heat registers that sit on the floor and connect to the wall.  They have been black for as long as I've lived here (40 years!) and I never really thought to consider that perhaps they were not originally black. 
     When I took them off the walls to paint and looked really closely at them I saw a "promise" of a shiny metal.  So I went to Ace Hardware, my now most favorite store, and bought a cleansing paste especially made for metals such as bronze.  It took a couple of afternoons of heavy elbow grease, as they say, and lots of the cleanser using a scouring/brillo type pad and look at the results!

Before the cleaning

After the cleaning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 WOW!!!   

     So now I'm wondering if the same is true of all the doorknobs in the old part of the house.  I'll work on them at some point and let you know!  I've decided that scraping the popcorn ceilings are easy compared to washing off all the plaster residue and repairing the cracks before I can paint.  The "prep work" is a pain!  I used to hate painting, but now I welcome it! ha!  It's a breeze once I finally get to that point in each room.
     You're probably wondering how "The Love Boat" got into this blog and I'll tell you about that later.  First I want to share some memories of my mom.  Last week was the one year anniversary of her passing and so, of course, she was in my thoughts a lot.  But they were funny, random, silly memories for the most part.  Many of our old photos include our dog, Pom Pom (never let your 7 year old name your dog!).  So thinking of our miniature poodle and my mom made me smile.  Here are a few memories:  My mom never wore slacks and certainly not jeans.  However . . . she did have few pairs that she wore only when we went camping.  As soon as Pom Pom saw Mom putting on her jeans, he would race to the camp trailer and sit inside it until we were ready to leave!  He loved going camping; didn't realize he wasn't a mountain goat.  He also made good use of my mom's lap on our 3 day road trip to Ohio every summer. 
     My mom was a great cook.  Oh, not a chef by any means, but she made wonderful meals for us.  My dad's favorite was her special pot of brown beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread.  I always tried to make Mom's beans but they never came out tasting like hers.  The same is true with her potato salad!  She could even be sitting right there telling me what to put in and how to do it and it still didn't taste like hers. 
     I love the story of how my mom and dad met.  My dad was stationed at Peterson Air Force Base here in Colorado Springs in 1944.  My mom, at that time, was working at Smokey Hill Air Base in Salina, KS.  She had a good friend who lived in the Springs and invited her to come visit.  This friend happened to volunteer at the USO.  Mom said she didn't remember meeting my dad that first night, but Daddy certainly remembered her.  He saw her walk in wearing her lovely red dress with her beautiful black wavy hair, turned to his buddies and said, "See that pretty girl in the red dress?  I'm going to marry her someday!".  And 4 months later in September of 1944 they were married.  They were married almost 60 years when my dad passed away in 2003. 

The inset was taken in 1947.  The larger photo in 2001  Aren't they beautiful?

     OK, now to "The Love Boat".  I have come across a couple of TV channels not listed in my TV guide.  One of them plays reruns of "The Love Boat" on a regular basis.  The other one plays reruns of another of my favorite shows from way back when, "Hart to Hart".  So I find myself changing channels from the one that plays the "Golden Oldies" rock and roll to "The Love Boat" to "Hart to Hart" and remembering how fun and so much more innocent the TV shows were 30 years ago.   All of these channels keep me motivated to get my work done.  I challenge myself to see if I recognize the song or the actor's voice and usually I'm right! 
     Well, this post seems to be a hodge podge of random thoughts for the week.  I could talk about all the snow we've had, but I think at this point we're all rather tired of all the snow.  But, I shall close for now, go feed the dogs, and get back to my ceilings. 
    Once again, I thank you all for reading my blog and joining me on my journey.  Merci!