Something outside today triggered some memories from when I was a child. I must have passed near a restaurant that started up their grill, and due to the smell in the air, my subconscious picked it up and went into the past. Smoke? Childhood? What sorts of memories? Burnt ones.

The first smoke memory was being awakened in the middle of the night and being told to get dressed. I might have been in second grade. We were living in New York City in a one of a series of multi-family row houses on the edge of Spanish Harlem. It had to have happened after I turned six as we didn’t live there very long after the fire. I don’t remember snow so it was either early fall or spring of the following year. I had started first grade shortly before my 5th birthday and we moved in the summer after 2nd grade and the fire.

Anyway, I was awakened and told we might have to go outside if the fire reached our building as more than one of the buildings were on fire. We were living in the 3rd or 4th building of the row. Luckily, the fire department stopped the fire on the roof of the building next door. The fright of being awakened and told about a fire left me with a lifelong habit of waking up around 2am and sniffing for fire. At age 77, I still do this. If I don’t smell smoke, I can go back to sleep.

If I do smell smoke, I have to find the source. When I was married, the smell of smoke, and a record playing the same track over and over meant my husband had fallen into a drunken sleep, usually with a lit cigarette between his fingers. I was fortunate most times to catch the cigarette before it burned a hole in the arm chair.

So back to burnt memories. My mother, at some point, became the world’s most distracted cook. She would put pots of food on the stove and walk away. We didn’t have smoke alarms in “the olden days,” so the smell of food burning was the signal that dinner would be served shortly. The char would get scraped off the meat or the skin peeled off the chicken and if we were lucky, whatever rice or vegetables that burnt wouldn’t be too crunchy or black. There was always gravy to cover the taste. The pots would be put to soak for a few hours and then scrubbed until the char was gone.

I was in college when I discovered that the yolks of hard boiled eggs weren’t supposed to be green and that you didn’t need a knife to cut scrambled eggs or pancakes. I also learned that meat didn’t need to be sawed apart and take a long time to chew. Another amazing thing was that mashed potatoes weren’t chunky grey and gravy wasn’t lumpy and chewy.

The college food tasted amazing. The other students would complain about the food, but I thought it was marvelous. They thought I was insane. Even the jello was great. It didn’t have a chewy thick skin on the bottom. None of the food was burned, even the mystery meat looked appetizing. I think the mystery meat was supposed to be a cutlet of some sort. It wasn’t burned so I ate it.

In all my years of cooking, I’ve only had one serious mishap. The stove in my first house had a burner that had a thermostat that could be set by degrees. I decided to make a corned beef brisket. Easy-peasey. Ah, no. I used my largest pot, filled it with water, put the brisket in the pot, set the thermostat to 170 degrees and went on a quick errand. I was gone less than an hour. I had done this more than once and when I would return, I would adjust the thermostat to finish cooking.

However, this time, the thermostat malfunctioned. I returned home and smoke was leaking out my windows. I ran inside and there was no water in the pot and my brisket was a three inch block of charcoal. I know you’re thinking I must have been gone longer than I thought. Nope. The flame which had bern just barely visible under the pot when I left was a roaring blaze surrounding the sides of the pot to about 2 inches high. If it hadn’t been the front burner, I might have lost the house.

I opened every window wide and put a fan facing in the back door and the other facing out the front to get rid of the smoke. The pot with the unsalvageable corned beef briquet was tossed outside to cool off and then disposed of. The other casualties of this mishap were my computer which had been running at the time, and my washing machine which died just before spinning out the last load of smokey laundry.

I really didn’t want to file an insurance claim, but did so for the computer to be repaired. The data was recovered and all was well. Lemon oil on the hard surfaces took care of the smell and most of the greasy soot. I’ve only ever made corned beef brisket in the slow cooker since.

This is the first year I haven’t sat around my fire pit. I usually have a wine cooler or two while I’m out there and when the two or three small pieces of wood burn down, I’m done for the night. But these days, I’m on various medications so having a drink is out of the question. It might not do any harm, but why take a chance. And drinking alone has actually lost its appeal.

I should have been posting more. I’ve been working on a project for my eldest granddaughter’s upcoming wedding. I’ve made macrame jar covers for the tables at the reception which is being held in a barn. I don’t care about the venue – I’m not one of those “poke my nose in your business” people. I’ll admit to being opinionated but not about things like this.

They need a bit of finishing and I will ship them off later today. I made a total of 7 as requested. I haven’t done macrame since its heyday in the 70’s. I do still have a few plant hangers, but the macrame decor managed to escape over the years. Now my house is adorned with my inept art.

I have way too many bad watercolor paintings. Grandma Moses, I’m not. Actually, some resemble a fusion between Picasso and a 2-year toddler. They’re probably not even that good. They probably look like I might have had my arms in casts while wearing a blindfold – very art nerveux, not nouveau.

I hate naked walls, so there is art everywhere – toddler art, my art, a panting my son did in 4th grade picturing his dream of living in a house and not an apartment. That dream came true, by the way. And my first house was even yellow like the one he painted.

Unfortunately, I made a bad decision, took a massive pay cut, sold my house and moved out of state. Eleven months later, I was back living in rentals for the next six years – nice rentals, but still, not mine. The last one was a 2-story, 100 year-old duplex owned by someone I had worked with.

There were two not great things – okay, three not great things. The worse was my landlord, who instead of calling to talk to me, would let himself into the apartment. It got to be a creep factor. The second was the oil heat. When I moved in, heating oil was $.99 a gallon. By the time I moved out it was up to around $3 or $4 a gallon.

It was mandatory in the lease to maintain a half-full tank, which meant I had to buy oil every three to four weeks. A half tank was 50 gallons so the cost of oil wound up becoming $200. Occasionally, I would ask the company to put in only $200 worth of oil and I kept the thermostat at 63 degrees.

Actually, I still have the heat at 63 degrees between 9pm and 5:30 am. I’m under 100 pounds of quilts and blankets to sleep so the only time the cold bothers me is if I drink too much water late at night and need to get up.

The third not great thing was riding with this guy and his partner during the 45 minute x 2 daily commute. The morning ride in wasn’t that bad, but they would never tell me we weren’t going straight home, so I’d get to wait for them to take care of their errands.

We did do grocery shopping at the same time. Apparently, they were wary of fresh vegetables and fruit. They were both doing this high-protein, high supplement diet. When I say high supplement, I mean they had the same size toolbox that I use for my hand tools to keep their vitamins and medicine bottles in.

The nice things about living there were the garage for my car, they were willing to feed my cats, and I didn’t have to pay them for the commute since the two of the three of us worked on campus and we had to pass the partner’s work to get there. Addition pluses over the years I lived there, were not having to clear my sidewalk and my part of the driveway, new windows, a remodeled kitchen

However all good things must end. The end for me was two instances. The first instance happened when I was home after surgery. I was in my underwear in the way to the bathroom, when a man poked his head through the doorway at the end of the stairs and called up “Bug man.” I had not been told he was going to be there.

The second instance was when I got out of the shower and went downstairs and found a package on top of my portable dishwasher. That meant not only had the landlord let himself in, but he walked from the front door through to the kitchen. I decided it was time to move. Three months later, I was in this little doll house that is all mine (and the mortgage company’s) and doing just fine.

Do I take the air conditioner out of my bedroom window or do I leave it in until the end of the week? The really hot days seem to be over, but temperatures are still high. I’m not one for much cool air unless it’s natural. So I generally keep the windows open until it’s time to turn on the heat or unless rain is blowing in the windows.

I should have taken pictures of the four huge piles of cuttings and wood from the lilac trees. I don’t think anyone would really believe an old lady with a chainsaw made those piles. I’m not really an old lady – only in my middle 70’s. Parts do seem to be failing, but I can still lift up to 40 pounds and carry it up stairs. I used to be able to lift more, but my strength has faded some.

I had loaned a friend my tiller, but it came back dead. She’s offered to buy me a new one, but I’m going to take mine apart to see if I can fix it. That’s another thing I do – take things apart to fix them. I used to do a lot of the maintenance on my cars, but now I leave it to the pros. Too many electronic connections now.

I had to give up my baby and find something less manual to drive. I had a 1998 Saturn that I got new and had to give it up at 251,708 miles because my shoulders and knees don’t like certain positions required to shift and steer a manual car. While I can still lift heavy things if I need to, certain body parts would lock up in the Saturn and I’d have trouble with turning to look over my shoulder or moving my foot to the needed pedal. To say nothing of trying to steer out of tight spots.

Now I have a pre-owned – what a great term for a used car – 2013 vehicle with bells and whistles and lots more bits to go wrong. So far, it’s an okay drive, but compared to my Saturn, it’s a tank. It’s taller, higher off the ground, longer and wider, and almost too big for my garage. I have to be very careful to watch my mirrors when I go through the entry.

Enough complaining. Upcoming projects include teaching more 6th graders how to sew and supervising a group of 8th graders in sewing pillowcases for a charity. There are also my 3 classes for members and the public at the maker space. I find I have more fun teaching the kids than the adults, but I wouldn’t want to be a full-time teacher of either.

I’ll try to remember to take pictures. You can tell I’m old by the fact that I don’t record every waking moment of my day, or what I do, or eat.