“Oh no, you don’t.”
She ignored me and did what she came to do—add yet another item to THE PILE in my home office.
Allow me to explain.
THE PILE is exactly what its name suggests: an oversized pile of random stuff that spontaneously sprouts up here and there in our house.
While the home office may be mine, the pile is hers, which speaks volumes about whose space this actually is.
This time, what she added was a big box of pots and pans.
“Where did that junk come from?” I asked.
“You wanted me to start clearing out the storage locker…”
“So you dump it here?”
“Where else am I going to put it?”
“In a dumpster?”
“These were my grandmother’s,” she said, somewhat shocked and a little hurt.
“That’s the solution!” I told her. “Why don’t you do a grandma’s giveaway?”
In a flash, a realization struck home.
“I could.”
That’s when she got excited.
The box of pots and pans was cast into a giveaway pile, soon joined by a small flurry of plastic grocery bags, each containing a unique set of treasures.
“This can go to Shelby, this to Nick, and this to Maddie.”
But you have to understand something. What is treasure to her is not necessarily treasure to Shelby, Nick, or Maddie. In fact, none of the grandchildren ever seem to see the same utility in these things as she does.
I suppose the emotional attachment she holds for each precious item isn’t quite a shared value. It’s like watching Antiques Roadshow with a ten-year-old. What’s worth millions to one isn’t even worth a trip to the trash bin for the other.
“You sure they’ll want that stuff?” I asked.
“If they don’t, they can toss it.”
A half hour later, she finished loading the car.
“You sure you want to head over there now?” I asked. “They’re probably sleeping.” The grandkids all work third shift together and sleep during the day.
“That’s okay, I’ll just put it on their porch.”
“Remember last time, when the screen door was latched?”
“I do, and who does that in the country anyway? But if the door is locked, I’ll do what I did before—stash it in their cars.”
And off she went.
A bit later, she came back looking perplexed.
“The screen door was locked again. I knew they were sleeping, so rather than ring the doorbell, I went to put the giveaways in their cars…”
“And?”
“They locked their car doors too!”
I guess the grandkids are catching on.
Almost Iowa 
I love your wife’s attitude! And I’m going to copy her method, at least until my kids catch on and begin locking their porches too……
Don’t forget the cars and porches are not a bad bet either.
still trying
To work out the commenting issue… For a while they were telling me I had to log in to comment, even though I clearly was logged in. I think I have a headache.
I have been on the other end of things – trying frantically to find a gremlin that pops in and out of existence like the Cheshire cat.
I’ve often said, somewhat seriously, that I want the Cheshire cat’s grin on my tombstone, with these words: “She varnished from our sight.”
I didn’t know anyone else who’d be as interested in this as I am, but you might be. After being sent a link to the GitHub page where the commenting issue’s being worked on, I received helpful information from a WP guru:
“[Being able to post a comment on a second try] suggests a potential cookies mismatch or validity issue. Once the browser finally sorts it out (possibly by re-authenticating), things seem to work fine again.
This is just an initial guess, but it sounds like some part of the cookies is expiring or malfunctioning over time. The system recognizes you—it knows it’s you—but it’s like it can’t fully verify your identity anymore. Think of it like showing an old hotel key at the front desk. It proves you were a guest, but it doesn’t confirm you should still have access to your room.
Cookies might be expiring in a way that affects authentication across different domains. Your browser likely has one cookie for all blogs ending in .wordpress.com and another set of cookies for your actual WordPress.com account, which gets pulled into every WordPress blog you visit. That’s why it might act funny in *.wordpress.com sites sometimes and custom domains at other times.
We’re actively looking into this, and I just want to reassure you—it’s not something you’re doing wrong. If this is a cookie-related bug, it’s proving to be a tricky one to pin down.”
For all the griping people do about this site, it’s clear that there are some very nice people trying to keep it running.
At first I was not having problem commenting, now I am. For instance, I am responding to your comment from my dashboard page, but cannot do so from the post.
I wonder if the solution is to clear cookies. I might try that.
It might be a cookie issue, but it seems to be on the back end. There’s this, from the GitHub page re: the issue:
“I think this is likely a bug surfacing from a bug we fixed. In the past our check for the nonce was not failing properly AND was not actually checking the nonce. Last week we fixed this and this is the error we are seeing.
We have battled nonce issues in the past with comments and it is usually caused by a mismatch between logged-out and logged-in. Meaning somewhere a logged-in user nonce is being used and the other place a logged-out nonce is being used.”
All righty, then!
That make sense.
Bugs like that are notoriously hard to track.
I cleared history, cache and cookies from my browser (not ever a bad idea) and the problem cleared up, or so it seems.
I don’t know if you have encountered github before, but it is a wonderful thing, a repository to archive, collaborate and share code with the world.
Think of it as WordPress for developers.
I didn’t know about GitHub. The WP people sent me a link to the page where the issue’s being worked on — just so interesting. In fact, one of the developers on that page just commented on one of my blogs. Huzzah!
You’ve described a problem I have, as well as several of my friends. All that linen, crystal, china, and silver that was so important — and ubiquitous — in the 1940s-1960s is completely out of date now: like dressing up to get on a plane or go shopping. Even the consignment shops won’t take the stuff. I finally gave up and started using it for everyday — and running it through the dishwasher despite the gold trim.
“Oh, look it’s an antique.”
“What? No, it isn’t. We had those when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, it’s an antique.”
Just because our ancestors owned stuff doesn’t mean it deserves to be kept as an “heirloom”! Thrift stores, baby!!
I suppose there is a difference between what our ancestors owned and what they prized. Sadly, they had so little, they prized so much. Now we have so much, we prize so little.
Dat da truth.
We have what is called memory boxes and they are filled with the stuff you describe. There’s not a grandchild who would be interested. I don’t mean there are no grandchildren I just mean none would be interested.
Betchya “the girls” like to sniff around them. 🙂 🙂
They do and that is why they are in the garage.
They have definitely caught on. She needs a new plan. I’ve tried three times to post this comment, but it won’t work. I keep getting an error message. Maybe I need a new plan.
Not sure what WordPress is doing, but it has been known to misbehave before.
If the message was “Sorry, this comment cannot be posted” or some such, it was happening to me and to others I know. I got in touch with the WP gurus and they’re actually exploring the issue: got an email tonight with additional questions. There’s one workaround that’s a little cumbersome but it seems to work. If I leave longer comment, I do the ol’ Ctrl C. Then, if the comment doesn’t post, I just refresh the page, paste, and it almost always goes through.
Yes, that is what happened, and the copy and paste is what I ended up doing as well. It doesn’t happen on every comment so I forget to copy and poof it’s gone, and I start over again. 🙂 WordPress keeps us on our toes that is for sure. 🙂
WordPress is on it. It may not be solved for a while, but it’s gotten bumped up the chain of issues to be resolved. Huzzah!
Linda, I think you might like this: I just had to share it with somebody. 🙂
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short.
https://aeon.co/videos/starlings-swoosh-like-brushstrokes-across-the-sky-in-this-dazzling-short
Enchanting. Mesmerizing. Beautiful. I’ve seen relatively small mumurations, and always stop for them, but this is ‘murmur’ raised to the level of aria, or something. Thank you! Once I decided to stop with the birds, I noticed the article on subspecies before I closed out the home page, and read that, too. I think I might have known about Aeon in the past, but it’s in the rotation now.
As I look around, I don’t ee many things our daughter is ever going to want. Did the pile get reassembled in your office?
The Pile is always in a state of assembly and reassembly.
Isn’t it the worst when all of a sudden people are on to you?!
It is humiliating and the last thing I need is yet another lesson in humility.
This sounds like my husband. He wont throw anything out but he’s happy to give it away… the problem is finding a willing taker.
😉
In our small town, people just put things on the curb and soon they vanish.
You certainly captured the dilemma of those old treasures! We have only one child so I’m writing stories about the “treasures” that have stories, so he and his wife (and daughter, age 7) can decide which ones to keep. The only thing better than an heirloom is one with a story!
LOL