All Things Anne

Just the other day I was thinking about how we hadn’t had any watermelons this summer! Well, last night Ben brought home two. Did you know, the Japanese grow square watermelons so they don’t wobble in their fridges and fit better? Makes sense to me! Easier to cut, too!

There was a sweet old widow lady (who had a pool, which our church group used for parties!) who was in the same fellowship as us when we lived in Oregon, and her name was Mrs. Aker. She lived with her 19- or 20-pound cat and drove this huge, long boat of a Cadillac. This old lady ate the most watermelons out of anybody I know! (She’s been with the Lord for a few years now, and I have yet to hear of any single person eat as many watermelons as this lady!) I think her record was 12 watermelons in a summer. By herself.
I think her cat’s name was Sammy…nobody remembers, so I’ll call it Sammy! I don’t ever remember seeing Sammy, but I do remember a story of him…he climbed into her dryer, and she turned it on. He made three thumping revolutions (imagine! 20 pounds of cat going BLUMP BLUMP BLUMP in the dryer) before she opened it. I think the cat learned his lesson after that!

We know another very nice lady (a little weird…but nice weird, we decided!) named Mrs. P. She had some raspberries she needed picked, and since her youngest kids are the same age as…well, us oldest kids, only…no longer at home, she thought of us to pick her raspberries! She said if she wasn’t home, to just go in her house and the groceries she had for us would be at the end of her table. She called us “nice burglars”!
So us seven oldest kids (me, Ben, Joe, Eric, Beth, Em, and Kate…Mom has strict instructions from Dad to not have this baby before he comes home today, and preferably not until Monday night so he gets more days off!) went down to her house. So anyway, she had us come in and showed us where the water and cups were, because she was leaving. (She’s also the lady that said anytime I want I can go to her house and even if she’s not there, go in and play her upright piano! Speaking of her piano…what do you call pianos that are uprights that don’t have the…upper portion?? Eric says they’re called compact pianos…Ben says squished-up grands.)
Anyway.
So we went back outside, and we were all walking along pretty much single file, and Mrs. P.’s Mom was on the porch of her house, saying how nice of burglars we were…how we smiled! and there was too many of us to count–only twice the size of a normal family, the seven of us were! and Mrs. P. showed us where the raspberries were. She is a great talker, and was going on and on about how she goes out and eats so many raspberries she throws up. “I’m an adult, you know, I should have some like self control, right?”
So anyway we were given our marching orders and she left. Pretty soon she came back and said if we needed to use the bathroom we could go in her house as well! “I know you probably think I’m weird, but–!”
After she left for real, we decided she may be a little weird, like Beth…but nice weird! (No such chance for being a nice weird for Beth…but they were only joking!)

Well, I’m not exactly sure how much of raspberries we picked. (Yes, that was an ungrammatical statement. But who says writers have to be perfect in their grammar?? That’s what editors are for! Hey, at least I can detect my own ungrammatical statements, right?) The reason being…I think combined, the seven of us ate more than we saved! Not quite as many to make us throw up, but some of us went home with stomach aches! (Yes, including yours truly…even after I got a stomach ache I kept eating them…they were just SOO tempting to refuse! and SOO good!)

Well, so ends my post on cats…oh yeah, and watermelons and raspberries!

And I’ll leave you with this direct quote from Eric, because it’s just…so Eric, and so boy!…”I just want to shoot something that goes bang bang bang really fast.”