Old People Drivers

It came in the mail this week: my first Old Geezer driver license.

It's official. I've joined the ranks of the old geezers terrorizing all those young whippersnappers on the road. In two days, I'll be 65 years old, which means I was required to update my current license.

I don't know how it works in other states, but Arizona doesn't have a whole lot of reasons that force you to get a new license. A name change or an address change, basically. OR AGING. Now that I've achieved Geezer status, I'll have to update every five years.

I about died of sticker-shock when Sarah got her first license. The expiration date stamped on it was her birthday in October of 2054. That's when she'll turn 65. Which happens to be exactly eight weeks after my 100th birthday. That was too large a dose of reality for me to swallow. I'm pretty sure I'll be a distant memory by the time Sarah gets her Old Geezer driver license!

This was my second driver license ever, when I was 18-going-on-19.

I look like a juvenile delinquent. I think they confiscated my first license.

Being born and raised in California, my first three licenses were obtained in that state. In those days, we were required to renew our licenses every four years and, I believe, we had to take the written exam each time. It was stressful, but it ensured that we were regularly updated on the rules of the road.

This was my second Arizona driver license, when I was almost 31,

having obtained the first after we moved to Mesa in March 1980.

Apparently the Arizona rule was license renewal every five years at the time we'd moved to the Grand Canyon State. We didn't have to retake the written test every time, though. As time went on, the need to renew was relaxed more and more, right up until the 100-year shock I received when Sarah got her first license in about 2006.

(I used to think that potty-training was the worst nightmare of parenting. Then I had teenagers who needed to learn how to drive. Horrors!)

The next license(s) should have been in 1989 and/or 1990, when I got married and my name changed to Carter, and then a year later moved to the White Mountains and began teaching at Blue Ridge High School, but I don't have that one. I seem to remember that I renewed after getting married, and then they just stuck a sticker on the back of that license to show my new address.

How I hated this picture. I was turning 42, Sarah and Jacob were six and five,

I'd been teaching for six years, and Dylan was born ten months later.

Obviously I wasn't much for smiling in photographs. Due to ridicule from key people early in my life, I believed I looked grotesque when I smiled. So I learned to keep my emotions off my face. Many people over the years (who later became friends) told me that their first impression of me was that I was cold and distant. In reality, I suffered from a crippling fear of rejection.

I think the MVD employee who snapped the above picture made me laugh just as she pressed the button. I hated it, but imagine my surprise when I had to show my license at the post office one time, and the worker told me, "That's the best license picture I've ever seen!" I could tell by his voice that he meant it. When I voiced my disagreement, he insisted that he loved how happy I looked, whereas the people in most license photos look disgruntled.

New license when I remarried and name changed (temporarily) to Reynolds.

I probably would never have needed to renew my license again until I turned 65, but I blew it when I remarried in 2010. (Stupidest thing I've done in my entire 65 years.) Since I chose to change my name, I had to get another license.

Then when we divorced, after three miserable years and another seventeen months battling it out in court, I had to get another license to reflect that I'd returned to my previous married name. I toyed briefly with going back to my maiden name of Butler, but it made more sense to keep the Carter name my children share. The last thing I wanted was to bear the name of the man who hated and abused me and my children for three years.

I wasn't too thrilled with the picture below, either, so I wasn't too unhappy to renew my license this month. I prefer the current, top photo in this post...even though I now look like a geriatric delinquent!

Going back to the Carter name was worth smiling about. Age 60.

Return to Owens Pond

August 10, 2019: Sarah and a young friend at Owens Pond.

A year ago, our church members gathered for a ward picnic at a local recreation area called Owens Pond. It was well attended and a lot of fun, so we hoped to get another good turnout when our bishopric announced another picnic for August 2019. 

We were not disappointed. Despite an ominous weather report, a flash flood warning, and gathering dark clouds scudding in from the east, more than eighty people (probably closer to a hundred of us, but I lost count) showed up for fun in the water, good food, and great fellowship.

Gathering the picnickers for a blessing on the food before we begin.

Like last year, the bishopric provided water, burgers, hot dogs, and all the fixin's, while the ward members brought in side dishes and desserts, potluck style. Everything looked delicious, although I confess I didn't even bother to look at the dessert counter, since I knew nothing on it would be low-carb. (It's all good. I made a sugar-free cheesecake the next day to soothe my sweet tooth!)

I'd signed up to provide a green salad, which is what I ate, along with a bun-less hamburger patty topped with cheese and tomato. It made a satisfying lunch, but the real draw was the opportunity to  relax and visit with friends.

The skies darken, thunder booms, and the water-babies begin to desert the pond. 

On the right, Sarah and Chris walk down to the water with a friend's two toddlers.

I always start with good intentions, meaning to take lots of pictures of the activities at these gatherings. Dozens of youth and young adults were cavorting in and around the pond. Men gathered at the horseshoe pits to challenge each other. Younger kids were swaying in the swings under their parents' watchful eyes. Volunteers manned the enormous grills and condiment table to be sure everyone was well fed. Adults of all ages sat in groups all over the grounds, chatting amiably and eating their grilled fare.

The crowd thins after rain starts sprinkling on our picnic grounds.

However, as so often happens, I got so caught up in visiting with members of my church family that I totally forgot about the camera waiting under my hand. It's not like we don't see each other at church every Sunday or have ample opportunities to see each other at other events, both in church and out (small town and all). But we are often very busy at church-related events, so it's nice when most of us can just sit and enjoy each others' company. And we're grateful to those who volunteer to take on the bulk of the work so the rest of us can relax.

By the time I remembered to go capture some photos, the threatened storm had rolled in and started sprinkling on our heads. The kids wisely fled the pond when thunder began rumbling in the distance. Eventually, cleanup began and families started collecting their kids and loading up their cars. Surprisingly, the picnic that began at 4:00 didn't break up until 6:30, despite the weather, so I'd call that a huge success! 

Thunderheads hang over the last of the picnickers to leave the area.

When Sarah, Chris, Mark, and I said goodbye and headed to our cars, the rain was pouring down in earnest. The little road passing over the creek at the entrance to Owens pond, which had been dry when we arrived, now had water from the creek below flowing over it. We knew then that it was time to leave, for sure!

Doors

August 16, 2019: A bright, new door on our old shed.

Last week, on August 14th, my son Jacob made another of his surprise visits and spent a few days with us. Five days earlier, when I posted pictures on Facebook of the wasp nest in our broken-down shed door, I had jokingly asked Jacob if he wanted to drive up and put in a new door for me. Since nearly every door in the Mesa house had been trashed by our squatters and required replacement, Jacob has become well-versed in the art of door installation. 

While I really did want him to replace the door for me eventually, I was just joking about it at this point. However, unknown to me, his brother Dylan took the ball and ran with it, calling Jacob often and urging him to come up and see us. So Jacob and one of his roommates, Antonio, arrived at Dylan and Jake's place last Wednesday and called to ask me what I was doing. Surprise!

I love it when Jacob's car is in my driveway (dark blue 2019 VW Tiguan).

My life is complete when I get to be with all three of my children at the same time. We got to have dinner together two nights in a row, and it truly warmed my mother-heart. On Wednesday, Jacob made us all Jalapeno Popper Chicken Casserole, which was delicious, with a big salad prepared by the boys' sister, Sarah. On Thursday, Mark grilled steaks and chicken, while I made buttered green beans and steamed asparagus/chipotle mayonnaise on the side.

Jacob also spent one morning hiking a trail out near Heber-Overgaard with Dylan and Jake. On his last night in town he spent time with Sarah and Chris at their house, where they enjoyed visiting and a few hands of their favorite card games.

The old door removed from the laundry room

(more of a laundry "closet," actually).

In the midst of the good times, there were the doors to be dealt with. Yes, doors, in the multiple. I decided that, as long as we were doing this, I wanted my laundry room door replaced, as well. It had already been replaced once, after the original door fell apart, and then the second door fell apart after a few years, too. I'm not even exaggerating. 

The old door was removed and set out on the porch, 

damaged and punctured with multiple holes.

Part of the problem was the fact that both of those doors had hollow cores. Having a houseful of kids, who (like most kids) were impatient and always in a hurry, meant the door was often thrown open hard enough to hit the little shelf on the wall beside the door, making an ever-widening hole in the door. When I installed little stoppers on the hinges to prevent the door from opening so wide, the rubber-tipped stoppers simply pushed more holes into the thin layer of wood!

The other part of the problem is my old wood-foundation house (44 years old this year), which constantly shifts with changes in the weather. Doors that close and latch nicely in the dry, cold winters may not do so well during the warm, humid monsoons of summer, and vice versa. These shifts didn't really affect the laundry room door in the early years, when the kitchen flooring was the original very-thin linoleum squares installed by our predecessors. However, when we put in thicker, sturdier flooring, bringing the floor up closer to the bottom edge of the door, the shifts caused the bottom of the door to sometimes drag across the flooring. It didn't take too many seasons for the friction to tear the thin board off the back of the door, which grew progressively worse as the now-loose press-board scraped across the floor each time it was opened. After going through this process with two consecutive doors, I said, "Enough!"

My new laundry room door before the trim went on.

So this time I made sure to purchase a door with a solid core. To my surprise, it cost less than $10 more than a hollow core, which was more than worthwhile to me! Jacob and Antonio had their work cut out to make the door swing freely and evenly above the flooring of my lopsided house, and then getting the latch of the doorknob to line up correctly with the strike plate was a chore, but in the end they had it working perfectly.

I LOVE my beautiful new laundry room door!

I had the guys tear out the existing baseboards before they put up the trim. When we painted over the wood paneling many years ago (a house with all-brown walls is too dreary to me), I wanted to do the kitchen in a cheery yellow, but we were so poor in those years that I couldn't afford any more paint to do this one wall in a different color. Instead, I had to use the leftover blue paint from the living room and hall to paint this kitchen wall. It's been okay--certainly better than one more brown wall--but now I'm ready to do more painting in the next few months, and this wall will be yellow when we finish! The door and trim will also be painted (white), and we'll replace the baseboards at that time.

I can't even express how much I love my new laundry room door. It's so solid, opens so smoothly, and closes with such a satisfying "thunk" instead of a hollow sound. I couldn't ask for better!

This eyesore on the shed desperately needed replacing!

(Cleaning out the shed is on my Sept agenda, when it's cooler!)

Once the laundry room door was completed on Thursday, it was time to turn our attention to the shed door. It's the same door that was there when we bought the house twenty-six years ago (1993), and it wasn't in great shape even then. 

Again, it was a hollow core door, and the harsh elements of monsoonal summer rains, snowstorms, and below-zero winter temperatures took their toll on the outer shell of the door, leaving the inner honeycomb of cardboard and thin wood slats exposed. It became a perfect nest for critters like wasps and spiders, which came to a head two weeks ago when Mark was attacked and stung by wasps nesting in the door. The door-dwellers were toast after a visit from pest control but, clearly, the only permanent solution was a new door.

Jacob works on removing the old trim and door while I shop for doors.

While Jacob took down the old door and ripped out the old trim, Antonio and I checked out both Lowe's and Home Depot (right across the street from each other in our small town). Home Depot won out, since they had a wider selection of the doors I was looking for. This time, not only did I go for a solid core, but I also made sure it was a steel door. No critters were going to take up residence in this door!

The trashed old shed door is off!

The installation of the shed door presented its own problems. The biggest issue was that the door was too tall for the opening, by an inch or more. 

This is one of the problems we found with homes built in the 1970s, compared to newer construction. Mark's grandma's house in Mesa (which I inherited and have spent a fortune repairing, after evicting the people who'd moved in after her death) was built in 1979, and several of the doors and cabinets we replaced were not the standard sizes now available. So, to avoid the outrageous costs of special-ordering the sizes needed, we learned to find creative solutions! 

The color I selected for the shed door was brighter than I expected!

Antonio and Jacob tackle the issue of the door being 2 inches too tall.

My house was built in 1975, and we found that the old shed door was a full 1.25 inches shorter than the standard 80-inch height. To make it work, first the guys chiseled out the thin particle-board flooring where it extended over the door step. That sheered off about a quarter-inch. Then they removed the aluminum threshold attached to the bottom of the new door frame and sawed off the ends of the left and right casings.

The guys work to make the door shorter so it will fit into the opening.

 It was a tight squeeze, but it worked! They got the door stabilized and securely attached, ready to be finished up. But the problems didn't end there, unfortunately.

Jacob installs the doorknob on the new shed door.

When it was time to install the hardware, the deadbolt went on easily but didn't line up with the strike plate. Again. Apparently, all the work to get the door fitted into its tight space had thrown off the overall alignment.

Time to get creative again! We all worked at chiseling out a larger space for the strike plate, so we could move it up. Once we got that in the right position, Antonio installed the doorknob, only to discover that the latch was upside-down. When he disassembled the knob to turn it over, the outer knob just fell off, ker-plunk! And it wouldn't go back on. It just kept sliding off.

Next, installing strike plates for deadbolt and doorknob.

By this time, it was late afternoon on Friday, and Jacob needed to head back home. I told him to just leave the hardware as it was. Mark has experience with installing doorknobs and deadbolts, so we'd deal with that later. Jacob and Antonio finished up getting the door trim on, which went smoothly, thankfully. Then they grabbed some lunch, loaded their stuff into the car, and headed down the mountain to Mesa just after 3:30.

It's always hard to see Jacob go, but I'm so grateful for all the hard work they did on my behalf. I love both doors!

Antonio and Jacob get the trim in place around the door.

Since then, Mark has taken apart the shed door's hardware and packaged it up, and we returned it to the place of purchase to exchange for a new deadbolt-and-doorknob set. Sometime today or tomorrow (his days off), Mark will install them. Hopefully it will all go well on the first try. Fingers crossed!

Another Bride and Groom

Newlyweds Tiffany and Marcus

Last night we got to attend an open house for newly married couple Marcus and Tiffany. They were married in Salt Lake City (where the bride is from) a few weeks ago, but they had another celebration yesterday here in the groom's hometown. 

Those of us living la vida low-carb appreciated all the yummy vegetables!

(But I had to pass on the eclairs and cream puffs...)

Marcus and his brothers are friends of both my sons, and they've been close ever since they were all young children. They spent many hours in our home, and my sons spent many more in theirs. In fact, Jacob still considers their mother to be his "second mom." So we couldn't miss out on this celebration!

And plenty of fresh, cold water, too!

The larger main wedding reception was held in Utah, of course. This smaller open house was set up at a small pavilion on the property of our church building. It was beautifully decorated and well stocked with enough food to last the entire evening. It was fun to meet Tiffany, who seems to be more than a match for our impulsive Marcus! 

This portrait of Tiffany is amazing. It will hang in her parents' home.

Jacob was sad that he was unable to drive up from Mesa to attend, but he already knows Tiffany. Marcus was one of Jacob's roommates while he still lived in Utah, so he got to know Tiffany when she and Marcus started dating.

Sarah arrived after the rest of us. I thought it was sweet that her brother

Dylan walked over to meet her at the car. (She has lost 37 lbs so far!)

An outdoor reception in August would be a miserable affair if this were Mesa, where temperatures have been in the hundred-and-teens. Fortunately, our daytime temperatures have been in the eighties, with even cooler evenings, especially with the current cloud cover of monsoon season. Luckily, there was no rain during the open house, but there were some good gusts of wind, enough to send paper plates and napkins flying, and knocking over picture frames. After the first half-hour, though, the wind died down and the night was calm.

Violets and portraits of the happy couple adorned the tables.

We had a good time, being together as family and getting to visit with many of our friends from church who also attended. It was a beautiful night to celebrate the start of two lives together!

The Carters at the reception: Sarah, Mary, Dylan, and Jake.

Mark was behind the camera.