LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 9

We shared an apartment with Avanelle and her three kids for only about a year or a little less. Our apartment was the whole downstairs and it had a living room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room and three bedroom. My bedroom was in the back off the living room with its own outside entrance. In theory, Tammy and Buddy shared the room with me and Buddy usually slept with me, but Tammy slept with Mary and Debbie in their room. Avanelle had her own room. Gary Dale, Avanelles oldest child, slept either on the couch or on a rollaway bed in the big, central dining room. I think he was the only one not happy with the arrangement.

That Thanksgiving, Avanelle and I decided to cook Thanksgiving Dinner and invited our entire family, including my parents and brothers and sisters from Indiana. That was the first big dinner I had cooked...or helped cook, since I had left home...and it was a tremendous lot of work. Luckily, Avanelle was a super cook and liked to cook. I was a mediocre cook and got out of it whenever I could. Still...I helped with all of it. While Avanelle was at the work the night before, I made pies...apple, pumpkin, chocolate, lemon, butterscotch, and cherry as well as a cake. When the day was done, Avanelle and I both just crashed. We were exhausted. But, for both of us, it was exhilerating. It was the first big dinner we'd either ever cooked...and we had fed 26 people!

Once, for another dinner we held for the family...Avanelle had to go somewhere and told me to make the dumplings for the chicken. Now, I had made chicken and dumplings before...many times. So, I got out the cannister of flour and mixed them up...and mixed and mixed.....I could not get the dough to thicken. I kept adding flour from the cannister...and mixing....until I finally got the dough barely thick enough to drop spoons full into the chicken....but it melted...just melted!

I met Avanelle at the door when she got back...nearly in tears. I told her something must be wrong with her flour...it just would not thicken into a dough. When she went into the kitchen to check, I thought she was gonna split a gut laughing. Seems she kept her powdered milk in a flour cannister...and I was trying to make dumplings with it!

In March or April, Avanelle got married and even though she and Bob said the kids and I were welcome to stay there, I felt they needed privacy...and Bob needed to bond with her kids...so we moved.

I found a little apartment in Denton, just a few miles from Ypsi that I could afford. It was just three tiny rooms and a bathroom. The bedroom was so small, the bed took up the entire space. Tammy and Buddy got the bedroom and I got the couch.

For some reason, Tammy and Buddy got it in their heads that we needed a man...or rather that they needed a Daddy. It was probably because now Debbie and Mary had one. Anyway...our apartment was behind a small store. One Saturday afternoon I let them go over to the store to get a candy bar each. When they came home, they had this man with them. The story went...Tammy was five and Buddy four....when he saw them alone, he asked if they needed help. Yes, they said. What are you looking for, he asked. A Daddy...they answered. Then they went on to tell them how pretty their mom was and that she really needed to find a daddy for them. So, he followed them home to meet their Mom! Now, I was in Saturday cleaning mode...still wearing pajamas...hair not brushed...no makeup...barefooted...wielding a mop when they walked in with this stranger! I had never been so embarrassed. He got a big laugh out of it..while explaining to the kids that he already had a wife and children of his own.

He gently chided me on letting them go to the store by themselves...and I explained that we lived so close, with no streets to cross...besides, knowing the owner who ran the store...that I felt it was perfectly safe. And I could watch them, out the window or the door, all the way there and back. Yet...I never let them go to the store alone again...hard telling who they'd have brought home the next time!