Hiatus

 I decided to step back for a bit. It's not that my first impulse wasn't writing a long scathing rant, because I've still got the partial rough draft sitting here, multiple pages, untouched, unfinished. It's that there's a lot to work through since the election.

I'd like to ask what happened? How on earth could we do it? But one comment that keeps repeating in discussions about it explains quite a lot. Voters overheard their fellow voters' comments about not even realizing that Biden wasn't on the ballot! How the hell can we be so ignorant?

We did this. We brought in an administration headed by a conman, Putin puppet, narcissistic man-baby  Hitler admirer, FOR THE SECOND TIME !

I wanted to think we didn't deserve this. Now I have to think we do. Unfortunately what's coming will be very painful for the people who voted it in (Surprise!), and with his vengeful nature, even more for those who didn't. It will also hurt everybody else, not just Americans, not just adults. Not even just people. 

I'm stepping away to grieve for a while. I need to organize, to plan, to try to find sense in the world again. I need to ask myself questions, both about surviving what's ahead, but whether I want to, whether I even want our species to, much as I so dearly love some of the newest members of it who have no say is what's coming.

We have been warned, those of us who bothered to listen. To read. There is a playbook out there, literally. It's very long. It's not fantasy. It could have been, had enough of us been playing attention. Yes, I know, busy lives, price of eggs, all those excuses. It just mattered more this time.

But all too soon, very little will. Matter, that is. Too many tipping points being blown past already, with no returning.

I need to go figure out how to deal with it.

Remember: No Flushing Now!

The plumbers were just here for the second time in two weeks. They're very good at what they do.

Now we've had some interestng plumbing problems in our lives. The first I can recall as an adult and responsible for paying the bills is frozen water pipes. Yes, they had heat tapes on them. But no, they decided to stop working when it hit 30 below. and of course it happened right on Thanksgiving Day when we were hosting the dinner. We had to cancel, of course. 

Plumbers are expensive on holidays.

When I was Mayor, the city had some interesting issues. If you think your house plumbing is expensive, try having to replace a full lift pump needed to bring all the city waste up a level or three to dump it into the sewer ponds. Granted it was a city of under a thousand people at the time, as development was just starting to take off at the turn of the century, but some criminally negligent resident had flushed a whole basket of baby clothes, diapers, cans and bottles into the system, slowly enough that each item wound all the way down the path until they all jammed up the lift pump. 

And they wondered why the city had to increase rates! 

For an educational tour I once got to follow one of the public works employees around along the path of the neighborhood sewer line, watching him raise a few manhole covers and see what might have accumulated along the path which needed to be removed. At that time, things were pretty good. A single penny was found and removed, to be washed and spent of course. Other objects from previous inspections were mentioned during the process, including other money and possibly valuable jewelry, on up to larger line blockers. As far as I remember from my terms there, this vandalism was a one-off. Newsletters and other notices blanketed the town of course. Nobody ever confessed. Everybody paid. Those living closest to that part of town with backed up sewage in their basements paid extra.

The newest issue is for the third mobile home I've lived in (though we refer to it as modular) or the fifth for Steve. We've found a few interesting issues, like need for painting, electric work, and similar things my son Paul can do, raising or lowering closet bars for hangers, a replacement carpet (professionally done), and even an indoor plumbing issue. A lot of decorations have been hung, along with an expanding hat rack. As soon as the kits for them arrive, we'll be taping 3M film storm windows across the insides of our many huge, extremely thin and somewhat leaky windows so the furnace can get longer rests. (They're due today.) There's been furniture to assemble or reassemble, depending on how they arrived here. Light bulbs have been replaced, nightlights installed, wifi and cable put in, a better ramp for Steve's scooter in the shed, and secure bracing for the railing on the front stairs. Paul even put in new working doorbells after we told him we didn't actually need them, but the "Big Ben" tolling is actually a comforting sound.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. but there was always one thing needing to wait to be checked out, and it had to be done by a specialist: Checking or replacing the heat tapes and insulation under the house for the water lines. We've had our first snowfall, about 5" of very heavy wet stuff that melted the next couple days, including what the park's plow shoved across our parking pads along the streets. I contacted the park's person for the heat tape job, and last night, with a flashlight in pitch dark, another problem was found, needing an immediate fix before he'd head under to deal with heat tapes and insulation.

I understood his hesitation completely!

The sewer pipe was both disconnected at a joint by just a bit, and blocked somewhere after it dipped below ground level. Need I mention there was a "lovely" mess over the ground? We have no idea how long it's been that way. With the house up about 3 feet from the ground, give or take because of the slight slant of the hill down to the lake over its 28 x 66 footprint, we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We got an immediate referral to plumbers who could fix it, who turned out to be the same company who'd just fixed the inside problem. They open up at 6:30. I called at 6:38, and at 1:32 this afternoon the problem was fixed.

This was an old problem, with a bad repair. We know what company because they left their company name down with their repairs, so we could use them again, I suppose.

Ummm, no thanks! No really, you've done enough. Truly!

They'd had to snake out the drain previously, sometime before we bought the place. It had clogged at least once back then, but in order to snake it they had drilled a hole in the pipe (!) across the top where it hangs horizontally under the house floor studs. When it plugged again the water backed up to that hole and sewer water "escaped" all over the ground under the  floor. It was bubbling out the top of the pipe at that spot, spreading lord knows where, and mostly just sitting on the  ground. 

Now just a note here. We watched the entire process when the new home next door was moved in, ground graded repeatedly before the concrete slap was poured,  the two sections connected, the whole thing braced up on the slab by stacks of concrete blocks, utilities added, stairs built, a shed in process, furniture moving in etc. I took dozens of pictures. Apparently all of that from building up the ground to level and pouring the very thick slab is legal standard these days. Our house went in back in 2001, and we have seen no evidence of a slab under it. I won't swear there isn't one, just that we haven't looked for one. In fact, I just learned how to open the sections of skirting (they have clips)  to see underneath. What I did see the night the problem was discovered was a ground cloth of some sort, with puddles sitting on it. Oh yes, along with oodles of pieces of pipes, cords, and who knows what else stored underneath inside the skirting. Usable? Or somebody saving on construction materials disposal costs?

The first thing I heard this morning when I called the plumber was to not use any water until everything was fixed later this afternoon. No showers, no laundry, no washing dishes, and above all, no flushing!!! Good thing I'd already figured the last thing out!  I mean, not so good when I walked back in the bathroom, but good for the plumbers. There was one trip to the nearest gas station.... but the gas tank is now full, and there is now antifreeze in the washer fluid tank. Besides, I bought a lottery ticket that'll be as useless as all the others over the years. I think of them as a cheap entertainment tax, the basis for fantasies of "what if".

We can use water now. The house probably smells better but I can't tell since my nose hasn't improved that much after all.  Or perhaps it's in rebellion. Whatever gasses filtered up inside while the problem was developing we both have become nose blind to, but the timing is great since we're hosting Turkey Day this year. Now I have to contact the Park guy about the pipe heat/insulation job, but I won't blame him if he decides to wait a couple days. 

It's forecast to be in the low 50s for the next week anyway.

Tricks? Or Treats?

How much do you like snow? I guess that makes a difference in whether you find the accumulating snow outside as a treat or a trick, keeping in mind that it was 80 a couple days ago. I was planting the last of the bulbs then, and covering them with a bottle-plus  of granulated coyote pee, "Guaranteed to scare squirrels yada yada yada."

It was colder yesterday and I took a long chill. The coyote pee didn't keep the squirrels out of the newest bulbs either. So it was off to the local hardware store for hardware cloth to spread on the ground, after cutting it in half down its entire length so it would cover both sides of the bush in the middle. After that, it was investigate the shed for pieces of lumber that "might come in handy someday." If yesterday wasn't that someday, I have no idea what was. Of course the lumber wouldn't have held the wire down without some extra weight, so the the day ended with my hauling all the rocks I could physically lift out of the east yard, one or two at a time only, since many were about gallon size and those puppies burn calories! But they covered the boards to add weight, covered the middle to add weight, and so forth. Thus the chill. There were periods of just sitting to recover, where I got the most chilled. 

Note to self: get rid of all of that as soon as the snow/ice melts in spring!

I haven't been back to see if the squirrels have attacked the bulbs anyway. I had to be out for my job at 6:30 this morning and it was raining, enough to make it not worth the extra walking, especially since it would still be dark for an hour and a  half this last week of Daylight Savings Time. Can you see little black holes in black dirt under a black sky in the rain? No, night vision goggles would be cheating!  Anyway, I don't own any.

I had to take my client to the store for some holiday shopping, plus groceries, early this morning. Extra small customer base in the store would be less risky for their health, and I could pick up a few things for the home pantry myself. It was a bit extra entertaining this morning, with a scattering of costumes on parade.

First was a pink fairy, shopping for others, pulling a two-lever wheeled platform around with large baskets to hold somebody's pick-up order. I asked her if she granted wishes, but she assured me she wasn't that kind of a fairy, a moderate disappointment to both of us.

Another notable one was a 4-year-old Super Girl with a double red frilly cape. She was helping Mom shop, going straight to the the stack of baskets, and short as she was, picking the one off the top of the stack, on her super tippy toes, of course. After getting the basket down, she got one handle up easily, but Mom had to help with the second one. I guess even superheroes need sidekicks.

My client had to wait for something to be ready at 8 AM, so we took what we'd paid for out to the car in a much heavier rain than when we arrived, and returned to the store where there were a pair of benches near the entrance. It was cold enough that refrigerated items would be just fine in the car over the wait. While my client went to get her final item, I practiced my story in case anybody asked me what my costume was: I was a customer done with my shopping and waiting for somebody else to finish theirs.  Personally, I think I was dressed the part perfectly! Borrowing the bench temporarily for my costume was genius!

After helping carry bags into my clients house, it was raining even harder than before with warnings of snow on the way, so I headed home. I decided I could leave all of my purchases in the hatch. It made a perfect fridge  for what needed it, and things like peanuts wouldn't be bothered a bit. I needed to get inside, under a blanket, and catch the morning news I'd missed.

      Just starting to accumulate, across the road...
 

                    and in the yard.

I also caught a bit of a nap once I warmed up, and when I opened my eyes just after noon, the first thing I saw was snow. Not the earlier "maybe that was a couple flakes... Nope, just small leaves. How about now? No, but now?" This time it was unmistakable. Steve had asked me to wake him around noon IF it were snowing, since he wanted to see it after all those years of missing it. (Not missing it in the I-want-to-see/play-in-it way, just in the we've-lived-in-the-heat-to-avoid-it-for-a-dozen-years kind of way.

     Maybe this will put the rhubarb patch to bed. 

The snow's been busy making it up to us big time. In 3 hours there are 3 inches of accumulation. Yes, the camera has been out. Yes, it will again, soon. I checked the anticipated low for tonight, and decided a few things had to be brought in from the car after all. Cheese does not freeze well, not if you want it to resemble slices instead of crumbs. I like my pepperjack as slices, thank you. So there was a trip to the car.

 

Our stairs are painted wood, so my steps out were very careful to see if they were slick. Not yet anyway.  The sidewalk hadn't yet frozen, so that part was easy. The hatch door, however, had an inch of snow on it, and refused to stay open. Now I'd already had fun with clunks on the head with it dropping once opened, no snow required since AZ seems to wreak havoc on rubber gaskets (I presume that was the issue) so I lifted it carefully about 4 times before giving up and letting it settle slowly across my shoulders while I searched the bags for the ones needing to come in, then a final lift before I backed out and let it slam down to close. 

Alright, yes, I got my hand out in time this time, as well, OK? There is still enough of a bump to remind me, just in case I got Alzheimer's in the few days post stitches or something. This time the rest of what's inside really can stay, down to and past the expected 25 degrees overnight.

                            More snow accumulating.... 

Tonight around supper time it's supposed to have stopped both raining and snowing. The goblins, witches, and superheroes will head out trick-or-treating with coats and boots, but not at our door. The management asked us all to contribute a bag of candies, which got collected daily, and at least three people signed up to manage a table along the street to hand out goodies and keep the goblins out of the hair of the rest of us. 

 Tomorrow it promises to be 45, likely not enough to keep the squirrels in their nests. I do have fond memories of how tasty their fried legs are. I wonder how much that depends on whether they're harvesting my parents' garden and apple trees many years ago, or if bulbs affect the taste.  Just saying....

 

The Journeys Of Little Bird: A Christmas Tale

 It started when we lived in Georgia, back when my youngest, Paul would have been three. My parents, way up in Minnesota, started it off. 

Instead of mailing presents, which likely would not have been anything three kids actually wanted, they sent money. Twenty dollars for each kid. But it came with rules, both for them and for us parents. None of the kids could spend even a single penny on themselves. Instead they had to go shopping, buying presents for the rest of the family. They were to buy anything they wanted so long as everybody else got something, even as small as a candy cane. If so much as a penny was left, it went to charity. There were bell ringers outside every store, after all. This task required at least two shopping trips per child, because when they shopped for Mom, Dad had to take them, and vice versa. Of course the presents had to be wrapped and opened as a surprise for everybody on Christmas Day.

The rules for the parents were simple, if sometimes hard to follow. They could not make suggestions about any present. Everything had to be the kids' ideas. They were allowed to assist with each kid's budget, letting them know how much was left after each purchase, and helping be sure nobody overspent, while nobody was overlooked.

It was an interesting challenge.

Now this was back in the days when my kids watched Sesame Street. There was Big Bird, of course. The show had also recently introduced Little Bird to the cast of characters. While I cannot for the life of me remember any of the other presents anybody gave anyone else, except remembering somebody did actually get a candy cane, I will always remember unwrapping my gift from my youngest: a Little Bird toy, all yellow and soft. Now I could have laughed at his choice for me, a grown-up, but I knew he'd picked out something he valued highly. He was properly thanked, and Little Bird was put on a shelf where he was very safe and out of mischief's way.

Presents were given at Easter in our family. When my youngest opened his present from me, out popped ... you guessed it ... Little Bird! My son enjoyed it for a while, but at the next family gifting event Little Bird traveled to another family member. Then to another. And another. It became a good-natured family joke, wondering who would unwrap him next.

I'm not sure what finally happened to Little Bird. Probably like most toys it got worn out, ragged, dirty...  and the joke had had its day. Or years if you will. The kids outgrew the toy and the joke was no longer that much fun. Little Bird finally left the house the way old toys usually do, and eventually became forgotten.

Until today, that is. I had to deposit a check from my part time job, and in the process get a twenty changed into a pair of tens for a pair of granddaughters with close upcoming birthdays, one party to celebrate for both. The fun will be the wrapping, since the youngest just loves to have her very own boxes. So the bills will be rolled up inside old pill bottles, with a bit of wrapping paper and a name on each. Together they will go inside a little box inside a larger box inside an even larger box inside a really big box. I checked with their mother and the older one won't care a bit if the younger takes possession of all the boxes after the "real" presents are found. 

I was describing this to the teller who got a kick out of it while finding new-looking tens. Her reaction tripped a long ago memory, about 45 years old now, and I shared that with her as well, since there was no waiting customer line. I think we'll be giving those granddaughters a shopping trip this December... with an old set of rules for how it gets accomplished. Maybe they'll get  some memories almost as much fun as the journeys of Little Bird.

"God Don't Make No Mistakes!"

Ignoring the appalling  grammar of that statement, and the double negative, both often present in those I hear this from, how often have you heard that stated? I never hear anybody argue with that idea. God the All Powerful, God the Creator, the Omniscient, Ever Present, Omnipotent, and definitely a "He". No mistakes. Everything has a purpose, whether or not we mere humans, wicked from birth, can understand it.

Seriously?

I mean really, do you take that seriously? No mistakes... really? 

Mistakes happen in nature all the time. That there are two-headed snakes or calves is well known,  or animals with too many legs, or many other deformed creatures who usually live very short, likely very confused lives.

Ever seen or heard of birth defects? Who's God punishing if he planned those? Is an anencephalic  baby to blame for the absence of a brain? How about cleft palates? Perhaps you've heard of or seen conjoined twins, even seen pictures of them through fairly recent history since cameras have been invented. I can assure you they are not the recent  product of AI, since they've been known through history. Until recently we called them Siamese twins despite no evidence they happen more in that part of the globe instead of others. They often earned their living, if they survived, as freaks in sideshows. A lot of "mistakes" did. How about the bearded lady or the person with hair all over their body?  If they weren't mistakes, did God make them for our amusement because we didn't have enough entertainment, or needed a reason to feel better about our own minor imperfections and somebody else to feel superior to?

Less well known are malformed genitalia. Doctors occasionally couldn't identify clearly a baby's gender and assigned one at birth. Some times men have an extra testicle, or people can have multiple sets of nipples. Ears can be malformed. Almost any part of our bodies can. So ask yourselves, if none of those are mistakes, why do so many of us ostracize them, punish them, hate them as evil, especially if they were declared one gender and they grew up knowing themselves to be the other? Ever stop to think that we're the mistakes, with all that hate and fear?

How about evil tyrants, are they mistakes? Was Hitler a mistake? If you believe God makes no mistakes and we just don't understand why he allowed Hitler to live and kill millions and millions of people, what could the purpose possibly have been? It my be popular among certain hateful people to claim the Jews earned it because they killed Jesus. Despite knowing the Romans did it, and despite knowing Jesus was a Jew, if you blame Jews, which one of those six million murdered ones did it? How did they manage to live for 2,000 years afterwards? Why did what you think of as a proper punishment fall on the heads of 6 million of them? And why add the Roman Catholics to it? Or the Romany? Or any other human deemed imperfect, like those with Down's syndrome? 

What could your version of a mistake-free God, creator of everything,  have been thinking?

What kind of a horrible, cruel, fickle, arbitrary creator do you worship?

Weird Ads Online

You see a lot of weird ads in between paragraphs of what's posted that you really wanted to read. They just jump out at you. It might be bright colors, or some improbable description of that you might want to look at. For a while they all seemed to be revealing big secrets about celebrities, because who doesn't want to know the dirt dished on somebody famous?

I mean, other than me, because I just don't care. If I had to support whatever is driving those, they'd go bankrupt. Oh, I did try one or two, but there were problems. What was promised never quite made it before the whole thing ended. An arrow would lead off to... nothing. A link wouldn't. Link, that is. The promised thing never made it in. The story was left hanging. Two or three times of that, and I have no interest in who has or was the most beautiful baby. Somebody married cojoined twins and was ready to dish. I'm not interested, but wish them well, whatever it is.

Then there were the medical ones. One secret food to make you thin/younger/healthy/happy/whatever. Or the one meat to never feed your dog. Why to never eat blueberries for breakfast. Even if my curiosity might be peaked, I have the patience for about three words in answer to the  question they raised. It would be a video, maybe half an hour long. I never lasted that long. They just weren't that good. Twenty minutes trying to prove they had some kind of special research, or education, or knew more than my doctor, or listened to this ancient wise.....  If they were a bit speedier in their presentation I might hear they had been miserable before....

Click! Off. 

Why couldn't they ever just say avoid meat X when you fed your dog, plus a sentence about why? Nope, 45 minutes... or more, I never lasted... to permanent unfulfillment. I love blueberries for breakfast, and if you truly have a reason to discourage something harmful, why not just blurt it out? I will continue to add them to pancake batter or cottage cheese or yogurt, because you are just too damn slow off the mark. Obviously you do not care about my health. My dogs through the years have eaten about everything and none dropped dead.  Heck, they even eat the shit off baby diapers, and if that didn't do it....

There's the one about THE REAL exercise that can keep women of a certain age from having incontinence. They show a woman around 35 - so not the "certain age" they claimed to target- on the floor with her legs straight up but spread in a "V". OK, do you just hold that pose? How long? If not, how do you move in and out of it? If it works, why? I mean, I just might need to know this stuff some day, right?  After 20 minutes of telling me everything doctors have told you is wrong, and all the exercises you've ever done (you have done exercises, right?) are exactly wrong... the phone rings and I find I don't give a shit about any of what they haven't gotten around to selling. If it's a simple exercise, why the hell not just show it for 10 seconds?

There's supposed to be a way to infuriate your doctors by pushing on the side of your face near your ears to stop tinitis. Do you press hard or lightly? Do you tap? Wiggle your finger? Hold it there for two months? Who knows? Who has the patience to find out? If I get tinitis, my fingers will be plugged inside my ears to close out all sounds and whatever you wanted to sell will be too late.

Do I need a financial planner? Hmmm, let me see how big my fortune is.... Nope. I don't.

Then there are a set of recent ones about how to retire comfortably on 7 Million. Dollars, I presume. I'm retired comfortably, aside from the consequences of old age that no millions are going to fix. That's just as well, since I don't have 7 million, nor hopes of acquiring 7 million, and cannot figure out for the life of me why anybody thinks they need 7 million at retirement to be comfortable. Is "comfortably" some new code word the uber wealthy use to convince themselves if they have to downsize to 7 million that they can still manage to survive? And if so, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I have a place to live, enough food and entertainment to not want for it, things to keep me busy, friendly people in my life, affordable health insurance to deal with whatever comes along that's fixable. My brain stays busy... though often wondering about silly things like who thinks 7 million is a hardship?

A (Yummy?) Tip For Saving Tools

A couple decades ago I had a neighbor whose non-work life consisted of family and gardening. He taught me a lot, and I've slightly expanded on what he taught, out of desperation and cheapness.

In his back yard, inside his shed, he had a plastic pan like the kind one washes dishes in. However this one was filled with dirty looking sand. I asked about it when I saw him running this tools through it either before or after using his yard tools. I can't recall which since I've seen him use it both ends of a job. He happily explained that the sand looked so dirty because it was, with old car oil. (Apparently he was a handy auto mechanic too, at least with the small stuff.) Running his shovel, hoe, or whatever through it before he started kept the dirt from collecting on his tools, and afterwards replenished the coating so they wouldn't rust in normal months of Minnesota humidity and severe temperature changes while they just sat. Occasionally he had to replace a wood handle. But the metal stayed whole and strong.

So why do I call this a yummy tip? Obviously not for the old 10-30 or whatever his vehicle needed. In my case, I've been spending a lot of time pruning a couple bushes ignored for years and badly in need of some sharp-edged TLC. Branches crossed, rubbed, tangled,  overgrew, and choked each other out. All that was even before they tried to invade the house and windows whenever the wind blew, or blocked the sidewalk or the lawn mower.

Said bushes are limelight hydrangeas. Their sap, even this late in the fall when leaves are dropping, is very sticky. Pruners, whether hand held or lopping shears, both of which are required for the job, operate on a pivot around a nut and bolt. Or at least they do until the sticky sap stops them in their tracks.  What is already a challenge, though satisfying and fun, now becomes hard labor. What is open stays open. What is closed stays closed. All the muscles which I'm developing this planting/pruning season then struggle with the tools, and that's even without taking arthritis into the equation.

No, I don't do my own oil changes and I do not save nor harvest used car oil. I tried something different, something which I have in abundance in the house. The refrigerator, to be precise.

I use margarine. The soft spreadable kind.

With the tool as open as I can force it, I smear it all over the rubbing sides of the blades. I had no interest in trying to force the bolt off and greasing that area, then trying to reassemble it tightly enough it would stay together with use. No worries with my muscle power about getting it too tight, but others might. So I smeared it as close to the joint as I could get as well as along the whole touching sides of the blades. Force it closed/open a couple times, and set it aside on a paper towel or something overnight. 

The first time, the hand held ones needed a second day to move easily again. The second time overnight did the job. I was surprised to find that the loppers, which even combined full arm and leg strength had trouble moving yesterday, were silky smooth this morning. Something in the margarine almost oozes up inside the joint while it just sits on the counter, or across a cardboard box, or wherever it sits. Even better it takes a lot more cutting to make the hinge freeze up again after its first treatment.

That's a good thing since cooler temperatures are moving in and my time per cutting session will be shrinking accordingly, so I don't chill. 

A final note while writing this: our view from this room is out the window facing the street. We can see neighbors pass even though the blinds keep them from seeing us. Everybody reacts to the new look, which is admittedly VERY bare. Some sticks didn't fit into the garbage can last night, but it's empty again so they'll go in as soon as it's warm enough for me to head back out. A few neighbors frown, even though anybody who bothered to stop for a chat while it was in process got the 15 second tutorial on what was needed and why, and knows what to expect next spring. After all, once upon a time I did this for a living. I know the whys and the wheres of each needed cut, though I didn't bother to explain that. Who needs to know?

And thanks to a long ago neighbor, I know how to keep the tools going for the job. 

It's so much cheaper that way.