A New Way To Connect Glass!

I've been running out of sharp drill bits - the high quality kind, that bite right in and, when new, can drill the glass through in 3 minutes. Not 20 or, worst case, even more, including never.  Going online my sources of high quality brand bits have dried up. There are still lots of pieces to drill, and I just bought more glass.

Go figure, right?

 

 I hadn't started cutting and baking them yet on Friday. I had time to try something different. I knew just whom to ask. While we have lots of people in the club who make fused glass jewelry, I'm the only one currently making wind chimes (and preparing to start teaching). But we have a couple - literally, a married couple - who do lots of different things with glass. I had gotten a suggestion from Mary on a different way to get baked glass to connect to other pieces, back a couple months ago. I hadn't paid  more attention than to note the possibility, as my glass on hand had all been baked already. They still all had to be drilled, dang it! This new  option gets done between cutting and baking. With my newest glass delivery, it was time to seek her out and find out the details.

She had two ideas, one of which was more work than the other. It involved cutting a narrow piece of a special kind of foam that goes across the glass and extends on past the ends, then laying a short piece of glass lengthwise over it so that when melted/fused the top small piece of glass touches the large piece on both sides of the foam. The work comes after baking, inserting a stiff wire or something to poke all the remaining foam away, leaving a channel for a string or wire or whatever to go through. That wire or whatever would then hook up in whichever way one wants to the next whatever. I say "whatever" because possibilities are limited to imagination, materials, skills and desired end product.

Mary warned me that poking out the foam was very time consuming. I was looking to avoid both the cost of new impossible-to-find diamond bits and the time required to drill them. A typical morning in the club gets between 6 and 10 pieces drilled, depending on one or two holes per piece. How about something faster?

 There are small U-shaped wires specially designed to tolerate kiln temperatures. You put two drops of a clear glue on the end of your glass where you want to hook it to something, set the wire on it so the loop hangs out past the glass, then cut a tiny piece of either the same or clear glass with the same COE which covers all of the wire which is on the glass and a little bit past. Glass fusion in the kiln leaves a lump but securely holds the wire in place once cool. Mary let me use her clear glue for my first set-up tray, and also let me buy her package of the wires since the club didn't have them. Her husband is now in charge of ordering supplies so they will be available for anybody, and once she gets a price for them I'll pay her for hers and she can get more. Right now she's not using them, though she brought a sample project she'd previously made using them, just to show me the result.

I've reserved the kiln for the next 4 days. We have other kilns, but this is the one where I don't need to climb a ladder to set the program (whose silly idea was that in a club with all seniors?), or have to press 15 buttons - and that's if you stop at exactly the correct program number. It's very easy to get frustrated and lose count, tapping three extra buttons before having to stop, delete the bogus instructions you've programmed in, and start over. After a couple deep breaths, of course. I need easy in, easy out. Put in a ceramic slab 8"x8" covered with kiln paper supporting whatever glass pieces you can fit in without touching each other (or the wire sticking out past) during the baking, each day until you're finished. My first load is out, washed, ready to put into some more wind chimes. 

Two more chimes have been requested for presents. One will be on display in January at a community wide event where new residents get informed of everything wonderful that Sun City has to offer. Part of that is a stage presentation by the Rec Centers organization. The other is where tables are set up, on either side of the auditorium, one from each club which wants to be there, with displays of what they produce or do, along with literature to take home. A couple of people sit there to talk about the club. Some tables even offer a dish of candy! (Maybe they think they can bribe new members?)

After all that I can finally make the wind chimes I want for my own house!

End Of Another Year In Haiku

I've done this before. Each year end brings up different stuff. I will again credit the idea as coming from Rude Pundit's blog, here on Blogspot as it happens. "Rude" means he freely uses language NSFW, so be warned, but I pop over there regularly. If you  want to see/hear him he is usually on the FSTV network on Monday mornings on the Stephanie Miller Show, so yes, liberal politics.

I wrote these haiku while in a dark frame of mind over bad news from the year that doesn't seem to be going away, just getting worse. After giving them a couple weeks to settle and get reevaluated and/or rewritten, here they are.

The red wave turned blue,
Their real red still spraying from
Bullets, more bullets.

Plankton, first to die,
Cooked in their oceans, none left
To feed all the rest.

We hope each New Year
Will be better, but the earth's
Rotisserie burns.

Riding A Bicycle, 1960s Style

These days, and even back then, most kids got started with the three wheeled versions. The first were called tricycles, but by the time my kids came along, Big Wheel seemed to have the market. They graduated at various young ages to 4 wheels, better known as a bike with training wheels, then gained their independence from the training wheels. Often around age six or so.

I don't know when my brother got his bicycle. I just know that by age 12 I had no bike and didn't know how to ride one. The family was visiting Aunt Agnes in Minneapolis for some summer event. I can't recall why, just that it wasn't our usual Christmas visit, driving south 200 miles to see all the cousins, aunts and uncles that we could, on both parents' sides. This certainly wasn't that, because everything was green, sidewalks were bare, and I finally learned how to ride a bike.

I was bored, went outside, and found some neighborhood kids to play with. Or maybe they found me. I was restricted from wandering. They had bikes. I didn't. They were astounded to learn I didn't know how to ride one. 

But it's so easy!

Really? Looked scary to me. 

They tried to show me, and I finally gave in and got up on the seat. My feet were still tip-toed on the sidewalk, my legs being just that long. I tried to push on a pedal and the bike fell over. Repeat, same results. This bike had no training wheels, these younger kids being skilled riders, but they decided to become my training wheels. With a proper start, and encouragement to keep pedaling, I made it about 25 feet.

It felt great! Scary too. They encouraged me to go again, but I was nearly out of block to go down. That's when they suggested what was to them the obvious, that I could turn the corner, keep going, and get all the way around the block and return to them with the bike.

Well, I knew I wasn't allowed to cross the street, but surely nobody had said I couldn't go around the block without crossing any streets. Right? So off I started, half petrified all the way. Corners were scary, almost making me fall, but somehow I didn't. Each upcoming corner was still just as scary even though each time I'd had another one successfully navigated. Some of the sidewalk blocks were missing, cracked with holes, or tilted leaving a bump either up or down to the next one. I navigated them all without incident, terrified to stop for anything because I knew I'd never get going again without somebody to hold the bike for me to start.

I was lucky there were no pedestrians out walking during those few minutes. Not on this block at least. Finally arriving back, both relieved and reluctant to hand the bike back to these new friends, exhilarated and proud at my accomplishment, I knew I needed my very own bike. Right now!

I'm pretty sure I returned to the house in just a tiny bit of trouble, though I don't recall the details. Most likely it was my failure to understand that not crossing the street also included not going out of eyesight. That kind of thing was parental logic as I grew up. I was supposed to know ahead of time what I wasn't allowed to do. But I wanted a bike and stood my ground, reminding them I was completely unhurt. And besides, my brother had one, didn't he? He didn't have to stay within eyesight in our small town up north.

If you think I was persuasive, you'd be wrong. He was a boy. I wasn't. As if that settled anything in my mind. My best friend across the street, Charlene, had her own bike already for a while, her younger (male) cousins had their own bikes, and just about every other kid I knew had one. Once I told Charlene what was going on, she offered to let me ride her bike. It didn't have training wheels either, but she helped me start it. Without sidewalks, the only place to ride was the street, but there was almost no traffic ever, all the other kids rode there, and frankly, I didn't bother my working parents by asking permission. One only bothered them at work for emergencies, and things like getting picked on by one's older brother I very early found out DID NOT MAKE AN EMERGENCY!

So off I went on Charlene's bike. I went from her corner  about two blocks, turned around  carefully, and started back, no problems. Neither of us counted on her cousins. They were pretty mischievous, but mostly in trouble with their own parents for incidents between each other. I clearly recall once when Charlene's dad was butchering one of his many snapping turtles in the back yard (as good Catholics, there were meatless Fridays and turtles weren't officially "meat") and watching him butcher one became frequent neighborhood entertainment for us kids. One of the boys picked up the severed turtle head by poking a stick in its mouth. Being dead didn't mean the turtle heart couldn't beat in a bowl of water for another day, or the jaw muscles couldn't clamp tightly on a stick. Or the kid's finger, as it turned out. The whole neighborhood heard him when the head he'd tossed straight up in the air by the stick in its mouth managed to land exactly on one of his fingers and he ran screaming home.

I was given reason to remember that fondly. As I was returning to Charlene with her bike, the boys ran out into the street, thinking it would be fun to watch this novice cyclist once they stuck a couple sticks in the front spokes of the bike. I went head over handlebars, scraped my knees and elbows, and hit something just under my mouth that went through my lower lip and into my jaw just under my teeth. The bike needed repairs of course, but that was settled between Charlene's dad and her uncle. The boys were soundly punished, and I was absolved of responsibility by both families.

But not by my own! When I arrived home bleeding, there was hell to pay. By then I knew to expect it, regardless of the cause of whatever disaster I was involved in. My parents backed off a bit when the neighbors came to apologize for my injuries. It still didn't do anything along the lines of getting me my own bike.

A year or two later I wasn't letting up on my demand for a bicycle. The answer was still no. I'd begun to observe, however, that my brother wasn't riding his any more. He had a couple of friends who drove everywhere they wanted to go, or at least that was my younger sister's perspective. I figured maybe my parent's objection was financial, so I came up with a plan. 

I carefully pointed out how my brother no longer had a need for his bicycle and hadn't been riding it for ages. I promised to take good care of it. Steve tried to argue it was his bike, but amazingly, I won the discussion with my parents. I had a bike! It was a boy's bike with the high center bar across. There were balloon tires, making it capable of going practically anywhere. My favorite part was the fact that the brakes were engaged not by weak fingers, but by pedaling in reverse with my strongest muscles. It had a single gear, which meant my speed was controlled by my legs, and it coasted beautifully just by backing off the pressure on the chain. In practically no time I was riding hands free, using balance shifting to steer. Suddenly I had a level of freedom and a means of exercise like never before.

I managed to ignore the fact I also had won myself an angry brother.

I could ride to school, and did so as often as possible, weather permitting, and despite dress codes mandating girls wear skirts to school. I didn't snag my hems in the chain or embarrass myself with my skirt up on the bar. That was easy to figure out. There was one mishap however, that I believe I successfully hid from my parents.

I had to go home over lunch break. I left important homework behind that morning, if I recall correctly. With a very short lunch hour I was in a hurry and let that rule my choices. I was on the sidewalk, just hitting the downtown area, and had an alley to cross. There was a building flush with the alley and the sidewalk on the side I approached from, blocking my view. I reached it at full speed at the same time a pickup truck pulled out, and crashed into the front door of it. The driver was terrified, particularly when he saw the tiny bit of a scraped knee I had. His aim was to get this poor kid some medical attention, or clear himself from responsibility, or everything else one does when vehicle meets bicycle.

For my part, I needed to get back to school. I was still in a hurry, still fully functional, my bike unfazed for practical purposes, and all too aware of this being my own fault. I brushed aside the driver's worries, ignored any need to retain me, absolved him of all harm, and dashed off on my bike. No way was I giving him my name, as for sure it would get back to my parents. I got back to school successfully, cleaned myself up, and pretended nothing had happened. Once home I was totally ignorant of any possible reason for a little scrape on my knee. There may even have been a tiny tear in my red and black striped dress I had no knowledge of once questioned some days later.

In '64 the family moved to St. Paul. The bike came with us. I have wonderful memories of riding south to nearly the end of Snelling Avenue, steering hands free down the street between parked cars and impatient traffic which never managed to hit me by some miracle. My cycling memories end when my parents found out just what my favorite route was and put a quick stop to it. I would have loved a good bike in later years but there were never any like it around by then. Brakes migrated to the handlebars, gears were added, tires became thin, and seats were impossible to find a comfortable place to sit on for more than 15 minutes. No matter what I tried, nothing compared to all my memories.

By the way, I can still see and feel that scar under my lip, both from inside and out.

2022 Holiday Card & Letter

Some of them are delayed this year, going out with cards packed in boxes with presents. This lingering cold is draining my ambition to finish, wrap and mail the last boxes, and shopping trips are limited despite my masking to avoid exchanging all the various virus particles others are already being overly generous with this holiday season. I'm not one to brag about all those family "We're so proud..." moments, showing off to the world that one's life is so amazing, one has the best  children accomplishing the most extraordinary things in the most amazing places (that money can buy, usually), but everything below is from this past year. I thought I'd post both the card and letter here:

 

            

                                     Cherish The Moments
The card photo captures a very unusual moment. It lasted perhaps 2 minutes, late last August, right after sunrise at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. We’d gotten our pass to get in at 5AM and did, drove to the end of the road in the dark, headlights just showing the curves in the road and the stripes for parking in a world of black. We sat while more cars arrived, a few intrepid hikers laden with expensive equipment headed in to take the dark trail, and light gradually grew on the eastern horizon. At just the same magic moment, about a dozen cars emptied out and many of us gave it our try. Steve opted to sit in the car. I made it just to where the trail turns west along the north  side of Bear Lake, trying various shots while all the other hikers passed, when I looked up at the sky. The clouds were orange on a blue backdrop, and I took different  exposures to capture the orange rather than washing it out. I’d just finished that with some success when I looked down at the water. This photo is the best result of my shooting. I could have continued the hike, but I knew nothing I could shoot along the path now the sun was fully up would compare to that moment. It was mine alone.

We have learned to cherish those infrequent moments, whether it be a photo, watching an elk herd wandering past the door to our motel room, a meal with family and friends, a flower blooming for a single day, the oriole teaching its fledgelings to fly into the cherry tree laden with ripe fruit. It’s when that new experiment with a recipe works out for Steve, the tug of a fish on the line, the hours spent sharing the river with your good fishing buddy, seeing another friend coming out of a years-long depression and reach back out to you, watching young children compete jumping off lawn chairs. It’s the day you’re no longer sick enough to have to quarantine, the hummingbird drinking from your backyard bush, the laughter when the door blows open at the same second you bend over to move a block into place to keep it securely closed, and your head and doorknob meet unexpectedly. It didn’t hurt, honest. Not much. It’s that moment you find a very old favorite TV program on some cable channel and set a timer to record it for later watching. It’s trying to watch a wedding you can’t attend over somebody’s brief attempt to send it from their phone, and getting it just well enough and long enough you can tell the people involved you love them.

It’s the few moments you have the privilege of spending with your best friend of 40 years during her last days in hospice, bending over to give the hug she can’t quite rise up for. It’s seeing the bubbler lights on the tree again for the first time this season, finding that they still work. It’s the moment you solve that pesky problem, or find a new enthusiasm, or share a hug in the kitchen as you pass each other. It’s finding that special silky spot in the dog’s fur and her deciding to let you stroke it for 20 minuses.

It’s realizing you are blessed enough to still recognize the value of those moments, and retain the ability to call those memories up later whenever you want or need them. And it’s knowing you can share them with other people you care about.

Notice and enjoy your special moments.  Cherish them in memory. Share them.
Steve & Heather

Still Loving Christmas Music

You know, if you've been following me, that I'm not religious. Raised Methodist, turned staunchly agnostic. Not atheist, agnostic. I don't buy into much of any theology, finding it more useful for threatening followers than being useful. It's political, paternalistic, and patronizing. Many of the basic ethics from my early education are well rooted, like treating others as you would like to be treated. Basic kindness and helpfulness, in other words. The bit about "needing to know the right words in order to be saved" is total crap as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I met somebody who spent hours trying to convince me he knew the right words and I didn't, so only he would be saved, spoken in that smug way of the unjustifiedly prideful.

However, for a few days of the year, I love listening to carols and other traditional songs. I don't pay that much attention to the religious part, the "virgin Mary"  stuff, but most of the music is beautiful. People were their most inspired when they wrote those. They tried to convey love, hope, and magic, projecting light into a season when the planet was at its darkest and people weren't yet assured that light would return. Now that we know it always does, it's less hope for light than celebration of the season's turn.

I used to sing all the singable Christmas songs. All of them, in school choir, in church choir, listening to the radio. I memorized them, learned the new ones, enjoyed the stories of my father singing "The Messiah" and wished I could have had the same experience, and even went out caroling from house to house with a group of friends.

"Silent Night" still chokes me up the first time each season that I hear it. "Nutcracker", while not singable, has become a Christmas music orgy, returning me to some of my best memories with my young children of a time of Christmas magic, a full theater experience followed by a nighttime toboggan ride for my two-year-old when farm lights lit a wonderland of ice coated branches until everything disappeared in thick fog. The traditional carols take me back to a childhood when Santa was real, love was universal for a couple days, and I still believed in magic.

The old voicebox, unused for years, still is impelled to croak along in the privacy of my car or covered by the noise of my shower, running through my treasured catalogue of music from this season. Hope lives again for a bit, a welcome distraction from the onslaught of news of cascading climate change, racism becoming overt again, gun violence, homelessness. Beauty still survives.

Pretending Not To Freeze

Phoenix area, right? Heat zone of the continental US of A. We come down here to avoid snow, ice, blizzards, and all the nasty other things the cold temperatures can bring you. With global warming we even expect milder winters than the ones we enjoyed when we first arrived here.

You'd think, eh?

First, we do worry about freezing temperatures. Shortly after we moved in the house had a "slab leak". Water pushed up from some broken pipe into the floor of the house. Our choices were no water at all, contracting somebody to excavate out under the concrete slab the house sits on for mega bucks, or reroute the water pipe from the meter near the street to the water heater. Only mega-buck, not mega-bucks for that choice. But nice new copper, guaranteed to outlive us and then some.

Just a small hitch however. The new route goes through a dirt trench from near the street to the carport (filled over on top of the pipe once connected), then up along the outer wall of the carport, into the attic and across 3/4 of it until it descends through a hole in the ceiling to connect with the water heater.  Despite insulation in the attic, there really is no climate control. Seven months of the year no cool water enters the house whatsoever. One month of the year we get cold water from the tap.  The other months are potluck. We don't worry about those. That one month, however, the copper pipe is exposed to outside temperatures, which we have recorded at least once as going down to 17 degrees. 

Would you believe in these cool nights we get "no burn" warnings? Can't burn longs in our fireplaces. It seems they worry that the cold temperatures trap the pollutants from combustion close to the ground. Too bad nobody warned our ancestors, eh? They might have inhaled all kinds of nasty stuff from those cold night fires. Better they... uhhh... froze with healthy pink lungs?

The attic does not freeze our pipe. Enough heat rises from the house to keep it thawed. We wrapped the outside pipe with that foam tube one does in cold climes to keep pipes from freezing. Heat tapes would be extravagant. But being Arizona, the tape which holds the pipe wrap together decomposes quickly, the wrap decomposes and gaps, so on those really cold nights when a freeze threatens, somebody runs water periodically. Luckily between the three of us, somebody is usually awake at any given time. I could have gone to the store and resupplied, but by the time it was needed I was again mostly stuck at home from whichever bug this time.

Our weather experts continually told us we wouldn't have a freeze here these last two weeks when there are warnings for outstate. They lied. Last night supposedly it only dropped to 39. I did my most scraping so far this morning. One thing I was smart enough to do when moving down here is keep the car window scraper/squeegee. It's been getting used. There are early seniors-only grocery store hours. I'm due at the club by or before 9 AM to unlock the club door on my assigned day of the week. I don't have to stay, particularly when I might be contagious and noticeably coughing. But I do have to unlock the door. So I have to drive there. This means I have to actually see out my car windows. All of them, since I back out over a sidewalk loaded with dog walkers onto a street with regular traffic, none of which seem to have either manners, functioning speedometers, or sense. (I even get passed when I stop at signs or red lights!)

You guessed it, windows frosted solid. It takes time to warm the engine, the wipers only do so much even once ice becomes water. Rubber does not like our heat. But once all 6 windows have turned white and need scraping, no local weather-geek can convince me we didn't have a freeze overnight. The ground may not have frozen, but places with no warmth source did. Lucky for me, by the time I get to the club, park and go in, leaving the car sit in the sun, it's almost pleasant inside once I get back in it.

Almost.

OK, OK, I recognize most of you are dealing with polar vortexes lately. My sympathies. For the snow also. But hey, gotta entertain myself somehow between 3-hour coughing bouts, right? And fyi, I'm getting better. I've been able to spend the last two nights sleeping in my bed, totally horizontal, rather than out in my semi-upright recliner with a dog warming my lap from under the blanket, well anchored by too-long-ignored toenails, gripping my skin through my PJs. I would have dealt with that too, just before... well, you heard that already.

Just A Little Mischief In The Dairy Section

Steve and I often go to the grocery store together, but since we each get our own groceries, on our own budgets, and to our individual tastes, we go our separate ways and meet back at the car. I use a regular cart, he uses a battery powered one. It's rare when we meet inside the store.

I was just selecting some cheese when I heard a couple of women saying, "Thank you for your service," sequentially to a customer coming up the aisle behind them. It happened to be Steve, wearing one of his military ball caps. He needed room to get past me so I pulled over to allow his shopping scooter a chance to pass. After a glance to see which cap it was this time, I chimed in with my own "Thank you for your service, sir." Just a tiny smile covered  my imitation of a lack of recognition.

When Steve had passed the first two and came up even with me, he stopped, leaned over, tugged on my shirt, and asked, "Can I come home with you?" Two heads snapped sharply up.

I moved away microscopically, saying, "We'll have to discuss that later," and now having room, proceeded to pass the two women and continue towards the next thing on my list.

One of them whispered at me as I passed, sounding concerned, "Do you know that man?" Was I in need of protection? Being coerced? Pestered?

Options flashed through my head. "He seems so harmless, doesn't he?" Or,  "(Big fake sigh) You know, I see him here occasionally, and every time he wants the same thing."  It would have been true. Misleading, sure, but true.

I opted for honesty. "For about 40 years." Whereupon Steve chimed in that we were married. After a bit more conversation, we went our separate ways.

We might have to do this again.

Can YOU Prove You're Not A Robot?

My email company dumped me onto Yahoo several years ago. They must have gotten tired of carrying email from former phone customers. It was enough "fun" dealing with the new format (though the address stayed the same), and adjusting to losing my archives. File was there, just empty. Apparently not everything transferred. Let's just admit too, that as a geezer I'm increasingly irritable at being presented with changes in software being sprung on me with no notice, no training, no knowledge of the new lingo and different techniques needed to accomplish the same things as before. Even worse when some of the things from before that I'd liked no longer have equivalents.

Not all improvements qualify as such.

Yesterday was one such example. I'm used to getting the "prove you're not a robot" challenges that spring up periodically. Usually they confine themselves to websites I'm not familiar with. I'm free to decide whether it's worth my time to continue on in my task or skip it. But this time it was just logging in to my own email. From my own computer. The exact way I've been doing it for... well since I was dumped over here by Frontiernet.net. So far the only real issue with the "dump" - since I don't even remember what I had archived so don't know if I miss it - is that more and more places do not recognize my address as valid and put up their own firewall. That particularly happens if I use a mail link. If I can get a full email address instead of a short link, I can get through. Otherwise....

Suddenly Yahoo demands I prove I am not a robot. (I've got a cold right now. Would a juicy sneeze do it?) What they give is a small  box of 9 pictures, 3 rows of 3. They are kinda dark, and pretty fuzzy. Really poor quality. It wouldn't matter if all the objects I am supposed to click on in the category requested were fairly full sized in the boxes. It does happen. But more often the object is a tiny piece of the background. Palm trees were a good example. You'd think living surrounded by them in neighbors' yards I'd be able to pick them out, right? I flunked. There were a couple shots of whole bunches of trees along a street, and there may have been a palm somewhere in the cluster. I couldn't tell. I couldn't find all the boats either. When they asked for cars, I had to dither for a bit wondering if some trucks in a dock area (I think) were technically considered "cars" or not. Or whether the front bumper of a school bus which squeaked into the next box of a picture counted as a bus? I thought yes. Apparently I'm a robot.

Anybody got some spare batteries?

I have had the misfortune of getting familiar with live chat "help" when I have a problem online. I gave it another try. When I got a window to type in I tried to complain politely, concisely, and clearly. I got a Brittany. She demanded to know my account number so she could help me.

Account number? What number? So far as I know I have no account number with Yahoo. Never seemed to need one. Could she explain?

It was on my bill.

Bill? I don't get a bill. Email is free. At least so far. So she wanted the old phone number - landline - my email was originally set up with. I knew the area code, the exchange, but the last 4 digits???? It's been well over a dozen years since all in the Minnesota house switched to cells and dropped the landline.

What was my email address then? (She couldn't ask that first?) I gave it to her, for whatever help it did.

I also asked why we had to go through that robot stuff. Couldn't we just chuck it? Waive something to get it removed? Nope, no joy there. She suggested, in that kind of a superior tone one hears when they know they are being talked down to by somebody more knowledgeable (true) that it would be a good idea for me to just zoom in on the boxes to see them better. 

First, why can't they send out clearer photos? Second, zoom in?  I added about 11 question marks after that to indicate my inexperience with zooming in on anything within my mailbox. Or my laptop, for that matter, aside from very particular websites. Her solution was to go use another search engine. Which did I have?  Keep in mind that she'd already told me not to leave her window. I was wondering how I could do both simultaneously, like the dilemma of when the cops tell you to keep your hands up and get out of the car at the same time, when first you had to unbuckle, turn the key off, unlock the door and push the handle. It was moot anyway, since I only use one search engine. It's the KISS version of using a computer, emphasis on the last "S".

Some of my answers / return questions to Brittany took a couple minutes. Invariably she'd send a "You still here?' while I was in the process. Finally I just sent her another long reply, informing her I was trying to keep my temper in our communication. Moreover I'd been raised to be polite and would she please stop asking, I'd let her know when I was going away. She finally suggested I do go away... just to try logging in to my email again. Use another tab while keeping her window open. (Already done.) So I went back and this time I found all the hydrants. Apparently there were no tiny ones hiding in the long distance street scenes. I'd never have spotted any if there had been. But lucky me, I got in! Good to my word, I returned, gave her my progress report, and encouraged her to pass along my strong negative feedback. Then I said "Good-bye." 

Now that I wasn't a robot any longer, I clicked on the X up in her corner and went back to my email.

Who knows about next time?

Another Scam In Wonderland

My cell rang. I answered. Pause. Click.  (We're off to a good start here. Typical pattern. Everybody buckled?) 

Me: "Hello?"

Another click. Hum. Then a male voice, unidentified accent. "Hello?"

My turn. I'm not giving anything away. "Hello." We could do this all day.

"Is this  ____________?" using my full name, though so many of them still haven't figured out that Heather isn't pronounced  Heee-ther, with a practically sibilant "th." I never bother correcting them.

"Yes." Make them work for it. 

"Hello, my name is "________ ______" ( entirely forgettable but sounds very American, in contrast with the accent) "...calling you from ______________" (medical sounding business name) "...about your diagnosis of _____________" (something I definitely don't have, never worry about, never had tests for, but hey, sounds scary. Must need immediate attention, right?)

Some days I play. Some days I just hang up. If I feel like playing, it can go something like, "Excuse me, but where did you get my medical information from?"

"It's right here in our records."

"What records?" 

"Your medical records."

"Those are supposed to be confidential. Who gave them to you?"

"I'm looking right here at your records, Heee-ther."

"I never gave you permission to see them."

"I have them right here on the desk in front of me." They never have a better answer than that, apparently hoping I'm panicked enough, or just plain stupid enough to buy into whatever they're trying to sell. I never have taken it far enough to find out. There are better things for my time. A hangnail, perhaps. Studying floaters in my eyes in bright light. Practicing a controlled belch, depending on my recent diet. Three dog hairs on the front of my shirt. Five more on my sleeve. No, the other sleeve. OK, both of them. I just checked. See? Important stuff to do.

Of course their scam never works. I have a firm grasp of my personal medical issues, who my Primary Doc is and what he may have referred me for within recent history.  (Practically nothing. Ever.) I also know whether I plan to follow through on some of those rare referrals if they're minor annoyances and/or intermittent. ( A definite maybe. Still thinking about it.) This company's wannabe scammer is definitely not on that short list. The only medical calls I do not personally initiate are scheduling ones from an imaging company, like when a mammogram is due, or a surgery center for something I'm very aware of. Those are more likely anyway to be via emails reminding me to call and schedule whatever. I always know the company name. And the surgery center is more likely to tell me what to bring, how long before the procedure I have to stop eating and drinking, which room to report to.

Today I wasn't quite ready to play. My cough was starting to signal me it was ready to kick in again, since I'd been talking a whole couple minutes. I pushed it back just long enough to snap, "Stop bothering me!" 

I'm sure that'll be effective, right?

Put it down on the calendar for expecting a repeat call in two or three months. Hope springs eternal in the scammer's breast, I guess. Likely another few dozen suckers will have been born in the meanwhile. With luck they can keep my scammers entertained during the interim.

What A Cold Feels Like

Stupid title, eh? Don't we all know what a cold feels like? For like the ten thousandth time already? 

Then again, I haven't actually had one in ages. Even before covid came along I'd quit being exposed to them. No toddlers around, those adorable little germ-wagons lovingly sharing everything they'd picked up in daycare, greeting you with wet kisses and sneezes every time they could. For years I'd lived in an extended time between generations, away from working where I'd interact with two dozen people a day or even more and at a time when nobody thought anything at all about going to work sick, because it was all just a cold, wasn't it? We got our flu shots, so it really was all just colds back then.

Once covid struck, hitting seniors the hardest, the world shut down. Masks got worn, mine still do mostly, special hours at stores were restricted to seniors, and we sheltered in place as much as possible. Shopping happened online whenever possible, and eating out was really drive through and taking home. Movies were whatever played on TV. In avoiding covid we also avoided the common cold.

We didn't miss them. Like a lot of things, if they're not present they do not exist. They need a reason to be noticed. It would almost be tempting to say they decided to find their way back to being noticed... with a vengeance. Our well refurbished immunity fell aside without exposure, and any returning cold had full rein in our bodies to do what it pleased.

Or at least that's how it feels. Maybe it's just that I'm this much older now and none of the above is true. Even though it is. But this latest cold is a humdinger. My nose is an unendingly dripping faucet. In two days I've gotten into my second box of tissues as well as my stash of fast food napkins in the car door pocket when I'm out and about. There's a hint of a sore throat, an occasional spike of about a degree of fever, a headache which wakes me up  from an otherwise sound sleep. My upper lip is so chapped it's split, and chapstick is barely helping. I started with four tubes of it laid in, left from last year, so at least I'm prepared. 

But since Steve got his cold first, I had to go out and buy 4 more boxes of tissues, and we're well into the second. Cough drops too. I buy those ahead, the sugarless kind because I can tuck one in my cheek as I go to bed for soothing and not worry about them rotting my teeth in the process. I returned south at summer's end with the two full bags I took north, ordered two more from a service Steve gets which provides him a budget each quarter for free pharmacy supplies, and still had to actually buy two more large bags yesterday. It's not that they stop the coughing. Any deep breath, or a normal conversation, will set it off. I presume because it needs to be done, clearing out the lungs of whatever is working to fill them up if one doesn't. Coughing is necessary. Mostly the cough drops just make it feel better I guess.

I'd forgotten the bit about those two or three days in a cold's life where you can't taste anything. Eating is done from habit. I might as well clear out the pantry of everything I hate the taste of now while I can't actually taste it. Of course I still pop that chocolate mint in my mouth or sprinkle extra garlic on something anyway. I even drank some of my very favorite diet root beer which I'd finally found on the store shelf after it disappeared back in September due to supply chain issues, then had to remind myself to use up the stuff Steve gave me because it was the wrong flavor for him too and now I won't even notice. It'll be just wet and fizzy either way. At least there's no temptation to stuff myself with holiday goodies at the moment.

All in all, aside from tonight's headache, possibly a side effect from the Nyquil I bought this morning and have been dosing myself with all day, and I almost never get headaches these days, all my symptoms are just inconvenient. The piles of soggy used tissues need dumping to make room for the next pile about every half hour, and I can't chat long with people I'd like to talk to, including Steve, Rich, and the dog. I have to remember to go to the bathroom more often than I think I need to because of the coughing. It's a very good reminder when I forget. And I try not to feel sorry for myself because I missed the club party last night. I don't know yet if my tree won one of the prizes or whose trees did. I emailed my very brief speech to a fellow officer (assorted thanks, that kind of thing)  to say in my stead, and didn't have to wrap the things I bought for the present exchange because they are still here. Somehow, I was smart enough to buy things I'd actually like to get for myself instead of coming home with something I have no use or desire for, so that's actually a win, I guess. Last year what I got was a string of Christmas lights with a battery to wear as a necklace. Seriously. So another win, staying home, right?

But I still won't know if one particular woman drank enough wine that, like last year, she got the courage to join a group of other women on the dance floor for some fun. (Why don't the men dance?) She had a particularly good time last year during "YMCA" with all the right arm moves, so much that it was repeated until they all ran out of steam. I had noticed that that song was on the request list in the club last week for songs from our hired DJ. I also won't know how much of a problem another member's husband may have been because of combined severe short term memory issues and his loud voice "compensating" for increasing deafness. It happens. Several members use the club to get temporary respite from caregiver duties. Most of them become widows after a few years or find a way to afford long term care. Or both. Few men lose wives the same way, but that happens as well of course. The annual party is often the only time we meet the spouses, though a few couples both join, and some members simply are single.

I do hope all had fun. I'm sure the potluck was fantastic, since it always is. Since I have a key I'll pop into the club during a time when nobody is there to bring home my tree without sharing my cold, and see what's what there. With luck and good self care I should be back in a week and find out how it all went.

Annual Hair Pulling

I have to be careful, as there is less hair to pull these days. But I go through this every year, under the delusion that it just has to get easier this time, right? I should be experienced. The process shouldn't change.

As if!

I'm referring to the annual holiday cards. The photo was picked out as a top contender the second I started shooting the very brief scene. The only other contender I've already posted here, so what would be the point? And, no, I'm not duplicating the card's photo here, even though I know how. I'll just tell you about the frustration.

I started out in Walgreens. It's closest. There is one photo machine, and it has a chair, which is a bonus. It also became apparent very quickly that it had super high prices for the amount of cards we want to send out. While I was letting the cost sink in, I got a recorded phone call from Walmart that my prescription, ordered just two hours earlier, was ready to pick up. That's my excuse for that decision being made.

Note that I've caught Steve's bug, though managed a milder version. It's enough that we'll all be missing the club X-mas party tonight, because I won't share it. One of the people I'd be closest to caught covid early and has had ongoing lung issues ever since. She can't be around people coughing , and by evening, I can't stop. Typical cold for me. Hospital for her.

We've also run nearly out of sugarless cough drops, tissues, and several other things needed to handle a second cold in the family, so Walmart was a planned shopping stop. May as well add photo cards to the list. After getting everything else on my list, and still managing not to cough inside the store yet, and not having my nose drip all over inside my mask, I headed to the photo department. Cool: 4 machines. Not cool: no stools or chairs. I decided to head home and not push my luck avoiding sharing my germs. While driving I finalized my plan for how it should look and what it should say in my head.

Now that is always an invitation for frustration. They never provide what exactly it is I want. The first thing every year is to avoid Christmas themes. We celebrate, but culturally, not religiously. A tree with decorations and sending gifts is fine. We even listen to some traditional music, with Nutcracker top of the list, and anything else for the nostalgia of it. We watched "A Christmas Story" on TV last night. Somehow it was much funnier than when I watched it the first time. But anyway, the card theme can be winter, or Happy Holidays, or whatever. Much is celebrated this time of year, including the New Year. So something for everybody.

Once that is selected for, I needed a 5x7 option rather than a 4x8 one. It's a single photo, not a collage. The photo is squarish, so the 5x7 had to be vertical. A horizontal presentation cut the photo in half and not the best half. Everybody insists that text goes across the top and/or bottom, leaving a narrow slice of the photo. I had to find something else. Up to this point is wasn't too difficult, although the Walmart website kept insisting on offering boxed commercial cards instead of something from the photo studio no matter which option from their menu I selected for. Eventually I decided to start my search by department and not item.

You think I'll remember that for next year?

I thought I found the right card - right enough, anyway - and started trying to put my text on it. Everything went wrong with that. It wouldn't give me a way to delete existing text. I couldn't type new text, or get it in the right place. It's default setting was to place it over the photo! My only choice was to shut down my laptop because there was no option to exit or cancel otherwise. After cooling off, waiting, then turning my computer back on after a forced quit, it returned to the exact same page. I just needed to go back to my Firefox menu and pick a totally new site to visit. Weather was a good choice. It's quit raining, for a while.

I decided to try Walgreens online. $Ouch! Then Target. Slightly cheaper $ouch! Back to Walmart then. This time I got into a different selection of cards, finally found one that would do. and fought my way through it. I do mean fought! It still didn't want to put things where I wanted them to go, made me fight for the size of font which reset my previous choices of where and what to say as well as sticking it back over the photo. At least this time I could detour back to a previous page, work my way through again, and eventually make progress.

Final choice: home delivery? Or store pick-up? I thought home delivery would be fine,  until I was just about ready to pay. That's when they got around to letting me know it was guaranteed to be here by... January 11! Luckily it let me change my mind. They want to text me when my order is ready in the store, but I didn't provide a phone number for a phone which doesn't text. It should be done right about now as I finish this. I plan to have lunch first, hungry or not and with no taste buds functioning at the moment, Then I'll ask Steve once he wakes if he's interested in coming along. Finally I'll see if my nose has dried a bit in the meantime or not. 

But cards should be out this week. That will be the easy part of all this. Until the bad addresses come back. It's always people we can't contact any other way. One would think the list gets shorter each year, but it gets longer. Kids grow up, move out. New friends are made. If you think you are missing your card from us after another week, send one with a GOOD return address. We haven't moved.

"Dog-Boning"

While in the interim between the club's Fall Festival and next Monday's X-mas party (where official duties are I basically just attend and say a few words), I have been back working with glass. The pieces needed for me to finish the latest wind chimes for gifts are ready for assembly, one needing some wood finishing for the top support (saguaro rib) and the other with a circular top needing its plan for putting it together.

I had a good supply of glass left in large pieces, along with a request to teach wind chimes to fellow club members. With the newest diamond drill bits performing up to my standards, I was ready to take advantage of the hiatus by finishing cutting and baking pieces of glass to finish off the supply. 

Or so I thought. But the person asking me to take over the class she'd been teaching also donated a huge amount of large glass pieces to the club to work with for the classes. The original reason wind chimes had been developed as a class was a way to get rid of quantities of donated glass. The club had been doing glass fusion in small pieces for jewelry so far, but for that you MUST know the COE of the glass, aka coefficient of expansion. Glass expands and contracts during heating and cooling. It is after all, a liquid, just a mostly very slow moving one. It's long been noted that 100-year-old houses with equally old windows in them have glass that's thinner at the top, fatter at the bottom. It flows. Downhill. Wherever that piece of glass on a flat horizontal surface thinks that is.

We speed that process along at kiln temperatures. The glass goes into the kilns with cut edges, sometimes ground ones with the right equipment. But in the kilns, glass has a mind of its own as to where it is going to flow while it melts,  expands, and contracts. It flows, sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes comically, cartoonishly. A straight cut piece can curve into a crescent. Another piece won't move at all, won't get a top gloss, just sits and hardens, keeping any jagged bit that was left unless ground down later.

With all those different reactions, the second rule of glass fusion is to NEVER EVER mix pieces with different COEs. (The first is everything you need to learn about safety.) If you put a 90 on top of a 96 and hope they fuse together, most likely they will shatter upon touch once cooled. Or a 96 on top of a 90. It's not guaranteed, but very likely, so why waste time, glass, and the energy to run a liln to risk it?

Donated glass almost never comes into the club with any COE notations. We buy ours from a manufacturer's catalog to be sure, and mark it immediately before setting it out for sale. We can't combine unknown with unknown, so have to find uses for single pieces of it. Wind chimes are great for the task. We might also do slumping, where a large piece of glass sits on top of a coated, hollowed out ceramic form and slumps down into it, making a candy dish, candle holder, or whatever else the form was designed for. 

But even with flat cut single pieces, you get whatever the glass gives. Sometimes it's "dog-boning", forming whole new shapes. A long rectangle might contract in the middle and expand on the ends, like a dog bone. Hence the name.

The blue piece in this photo is a very mild version of this, barely enough to notice. The purple and cream again is very mild in reshaping itself, but also shows how, with known matching COEs from purchased glass, one piece laid on another can just sink in smoothly. Note that the "smoothly" part is not guaranteed, sometimes they just stick to each other and maintain height differences. The three green pieces are extreme examples of dog-boning.  The two with narrow necks and wide opposite ends originally were trapezoids, slight difference in width top versus bottom. The bottom left one was cut in a diamond shape. Everything shown had four straight line cuts before coming out of the kiln. You learn to live with a level of chaos. That, or go do something else.

Oh X-mas Tree, Oh X-mas Tree

 It's finally done. It's not as good in real life as it was in my brain as I put it together, but it's taken all the time I plan to put in on it. Tomorrow it'll be taken over to the club - Rich will carry it gently while I open the doors - and I can drop it off in relative privacy. It'll be identified, like all the other trees, by just a number for the competition. I just hope everybody looks and doesn't touch, since the tiny chain I used to simulate tinsel tangles in EVERYTHING! I've seen a couple of the early trees already entered as of Friday morning, and really like one of them. The other seems to rely on having some kind of light on its bottom for its special something. Not sure if that will show during judging, since that lasts over 4 days and batteries have limited life spans. The red paper at the bottom is the list of rules for everybody.

Here's the basic form:

 

Shadows turned out to be an issue, not noticed until I was taking the completed-tree shots, so there was no chance to do a better image of the form than this. It's 4 wires stapled on to a wood form, wired together again at the top, and curled around at the top with enough curve to prevent scratching while handling and hold any decorations added. One of the first entries submitted has 5 wire stars at the top, one hanging from each loop.

This is my final, horizontal wires rounding out the tree, colored wire chains winding around to define (loosely) the tree shape. A double facing wire poinsettia ornament is wired onto the top of the tree. Under that, a first wire garland is wound top to bottom as an impression of colored ornaments on green tree. A "tinsel" garland overlies that, and some wire stars and red/white wire candy canes are secured here and there on the tree.

Finally, a close of up the base, now covered with felt in two layers with cutouts in the bottom one to eliminate bumps from wire and staples. Then a fan of more candy canes, a box with a red wire bow, and a sleeping cat on the bottom, emerging from my Acoma pottery effigy collection  for a spot more welcoming than a plastic stand on a shelf.

I still haven't decided if this will be the holiday card photo for this year. Had it matched my imagination, no question. Even redoing the decorations a couple times didn't correct for what the mind demanded should be. It takes up a space about 16" tall on the dining room table, much more comfortable for me there than still inhabiting my mind as I try to fall asleep making mental improvements. 

I still have wind chimes to put together. And mail.

Finally Relaxing... Until...

The Fall Festival is over. Sales were just a tad behind last year, not bad considering inflation's kick on spending this year versus folks coming out of the woodwork after finally feeling covid-free last year and finally able to spend money. But everything went just fine, things are back in their places inside the club, checks are written (not my job) to those who sold items (like me), and we can take a deep breath. Unless we're one of those sick right now from covid, RSV, pneumonia, etc., like we're hearing about from several of our members.The new tablecloth/banner looked great except for the people hanging it over a pair of tables instead of one, not understanding it was extra-wide because the sides were supposed to drape to the floor off the ends of the table for privacy of whatever/whoever was under there.

 Thanksgiving cooking is finished, and as I do every year while making my stuffing muffins, the three days of work cooking drive home yet again my determination not to actually cook anything again till next year. Sure, I'll make sandwiches, nuke water for instant coffee/mocha or prepared food in the microwave, even including scrambling eggs in a paper bowl lined with margarine or stored bacon fat. While that may seem like cooking, I don't define it that way, mostly since there are no pots and pans to clean up afterwards.

Glass drilling has progressed far enough that I can proceed to make wind chimes needed to go our for X-mas presents, possibly even in time to arrive for the actual holiday for those who didn't get them ahead last summer to save shipping. (OK, so I'm cheap! Get over it!) Last night as I hung the latest one, I took a look at it and instantly decided I have a better way to use the wires to connect the glass pieces of they can swing freely. I think I'll redo that one... later. (If you need a re-do on yours from last summer, let me know and I'll bring enough wire and tools. Just give me a couple hours.)

The Christmas Tree Challenge still has a few days before it needs to show up in the club, and I think a few revisions in concept and a couple new skills will actually give me the concept I want to execute. The insomnia has retreated once I came up with the latest how-to, so now it's just the long haul of actually implementing all the minutia of wire work - in time.The basic form has been filled in with more framework giving proper shape to the final product, and should be completely covered rather than open to some kind of internal webbing of wire and hung beads like the first two samples to show up back in the club have been showing. Then after that, the basic tree will have jingle bells, candy canes and a tinsel drape added to the outside, with a tree topper in a variation of my wire poinsettias, and underneath on a green felt "floor" will sit a fancy box with a red wire bow on one side and a sleeping cat on the other. I have all I needed already prepared. It's just a matter of wiring things in place now. Or gluing in the case of the floor. It will take till Sunday night, most likely, but it doesn't have to show up till Monday morning. In fact, it won't, as I don't want to give anybody else any ideas.  

Steve looked at the form, listened to my concept, and watched me start putting things together, and commented, "You're a bit competitive, aren't you."  Ya think? It caught my imagination, and anything giving me insomnia needs resolution. It grew from there. My most recent idea sprung up last night on my way to bed, and is easy enough to avert more insomnia. I just need good glue....

Steve announced he found that glass table/chair patio set we've been talking about since we moved in here. We came down with a wicker set originally but it's not doing all that well in Arizona sun. After my Monday club duties we hit the thrift store that set was selling for me to check it out before he bought it for me. I had one question for him: once you sit in one of these chairs, can you get out again by yourself? I knew it would be an issue because it was a  swivel rocker style. After my knee surgery years ago, we spent time at the neighbor's patio and I sat in one of those. Anything that rocks has the front drop as you lean forward to stand. Any bad knees need steady high support under the knees for standing to occur. Two helpers barely managed to get me out of that chair back then, and only after several tries, some rethinking, and a lot of pain. But I let Steve check it out for himself. It took two other people to get him up from the chair that went with that set. However...

There was another glass table next to it, even prettier, sold alone, and some steel patio chairs sold separately a few feet in the other direction. We had him try one of the steel chairs, and normal effort was all it took. Even better, they were having a half-off day, bringing the total down lower than his original planned budget even including delivery. Rich had the area cleared and the new set plus cushions laid out where it catches the morning sun and afternoon shade, and we gave it a tryout last night. Other than a temperature of 48, it was a very successful excursion.

The wicker set, minus one very nice piece as a side table holding Steve's pipe set, is curbside with a "FREE" sign with it. If nobody wants a painting project, it'll be chopped up and fed into the landfill via regular trash pickups.

The living room X-mas tree is up. It's what is now our usual, a 4' artificial white one with white lights already in the branches, small enough to sit on Steve's roll-top desk, sturdy enough to hold a string of bubbler lights. We have two strings plus spare bulbs, but figure one string in use means all the other bulbs stay available for replacements regardless of what the market chooses to provide in the future. After the club Christmas party I'll being my challenge tree home and it will become an annual decoration as well, no matter how it scores in the competition. The jingle bell wreath went on the outside of the security door like every other year, once the new door was installed. (It spends the rest of the years on my closet doorknob. No particular reason beyond sticking it there once until a better location came along.)

So with all that holiday stuff taken care of, or under control at least, what disrupted my peace of mind? Sunday night, I happened to look at the calendar. There is a Board meting this Friday! I totally spaced it, somehow thinking (OK, not thinking, alright?) that I still had an extra week to prepare for it. It's every 1st Friday, because it comes before the Membership meeting, this time being our party, but falling on the 2nd Monday of each month through the "winter" season down here. I have to set the agenda and I hadn't given it a single thought since the last one. Been kinda busy, you know? I started obsessing about whether our secretary had gotten me a copy of minutes from the last Board meeting, as that's my starting place for each next agenda, before adding whatever has come up during the month. It finally dawned on me that of course she hadn't. She was sick last month. So I, as former secretary, did double duty last month, running the meeting and recording it as well. I am the one with the copy of the minutes on my computer, dutifully sent out to the rest of the board the day after the meeting. I'll resend it along with the new agenda by Thursday, aka tomorrow. But right now I gotta go wind the ten foot multicolor wire thing around the wire form to make the body of my challenge tree while I listen to the TV.

The New Front Door!

 It's in!

 No more air leaking around missing gaskets, no blowing open with a whisper of wind, no cold surface on the inside because of lack of insulation in this fiberglass beauty. No stacking up every portable heavy object inside the house against the door before going to bed so we don't wake up to the the door wide open while the furnace runs. No warping if a little rain blows that far under the front overhang because this isn't a hollow core interior door installed against building codes way back when. No doorbell that nobody can reach because it would have been behind the dead bolted security door that one can knock loudly on anyway, like that young man early this morning who pretended to see roof damage and offered to go up for free and take a look. No need for a second set of keys because it matches the deadbolt on the security door. No more dark corner because this one has an actual window, just low enough that Steve's eyes can see over the bottom of the window to see who's out there. My eyes are a half inch too close to the floor to see out of it, of course. And that's with wearing shoes, even. We can paint the frame in two more days if temperatures decide to cooperate when somebody (ahem!) is awake. We can also step on the threshold instead of past it then as well. Something about putty and insulation needing to set first.

Did I mention no more spare in the budget now? Good thing some of you who read this already got your X-mas present last summer when I didn't have to mail them.

Oh, and I accidentally figured out how to drag a photo onto my blog so it doesn't jump back to my desktop the instant I release a finger.

Wonder if I can do that again someday. We'll find out together, eh?

Eulogy For Joan: Four Decades Of Memories

She grew up on a Minnesota farm with 4 siblings, all but one of them sisters. She divorced an alcoholic, not necessarily because of the alcohol but because it enabled a long history of abusive behavior. They had one daughter, well grown and gone by the time I met Joan. In the first few years I knew her she lost her mother, a particularly difficult time for her, and had to watch a sister succumb to the ravages of ALS. She worked at the University of Minnesota Hospitals in an office position. Besides venting about the frustrations of office politics, she found the irony in their putting up braille signs in the parking ramps on campus in places where presumably only the drivers would need the information on the signs. She also had invested in a duplex in Minneapolis and rented the top part, kept a garden in her back yard while growing beautiful lilacs and many other flowers around the house and yard edges, along with a patch of huge raspberries from which she shared starter plants with me when I finally had my own yard with space for them. Inside she had a large south window full of thriving houseplants, and lived with a pair of very affectionate cats.

When I spoke with her  recently she had forgotten much of that beautifully tended yard. By then she had forgotten much that I remembered from our early years together, but I can share (some of) those memories for her.  We met at a support group for resingled people - separation, divorce, widowed -  where she was a facilitator. It happened to also be where I met Steve, and her future husband Bob. We all became facilitators, and each of us at various times wound up on the management board for the parent organization. She first became important to me and our actual friendship started at one of the workshops put on by that organization. At the time I was an attendee and she was facilitating the group I had been assigned to. Something she disclosed about her own life made it finally safe for me to disclose something about my own life, and move forward from there in dealing with it. I remain grateful.

We became the kind of friends who could call each other up, after half an hour start making our excuses for needing to hang up, but still finding things to talk about for the next half hour or more. One memory that just popped into my head this evening was of one the annual Halloween parties the support groups put on. Most of us went in costume, though they weren't mandatory. (I once showed up as a courier, still in the uniform I'd worked in all day.) I had worked hard at designing and sewing mine as a red crayon. She went as a can of beer with a foaming top, shown by a very silly and very curly pale wig  for the foam. She won a prize for hers. That might be the same year Steve won one, coming as a... well, nobody quite knew, but some guessed a kind of space alien, wrapped in layers and layers of mylar wound around and around him. I'm not sure he knew just what it was either, but as long as we were intrigued by it, he didn't care how it was defined.

Joan and Bob began dating after several years in the support group, and it became serious. Work transferred him south, and it became a commuting relationship. They finally decided Joan would relocate to Arizona to live with him. I overheard her worrying about whether her stepfather would be a safe driver for her moving truck, so I volunteered to drive it instead. I'd had experience with one ton trucks, and this was upgraded to an automatic transmission, so even easier. Plus I knew the route, since my then snowbird parents brought me down there a couple times a year to help them out, including driving their car back and forth while they flew.  

Joan had another friend, Carol, share driving duties for her car, and meals and motels were paid. Mostly that trip went smoothly. The glaring exception was after a supper stop where it was full dark when we emerged from the restaurant. Note this was before cell phones. As we were getting on the freeway ramp, a semi had parked on the ramp and I had to wait for a couple minutes for it to move enough that I could get past it in the truck. Of course Joan and Carol were first, having no problem getting around the parked truck in their car. It never occurred to them I would be delayed. I worried about finding them for about ten minutes until I finally passed a car on the shoulder of the freeway which blinked its lights at me, pulled out and swung in just ahead of me. It took that long in the dark for them to realize there was no moving truck behind them!

Before hitting Phoenix, Joan led us off the freeway to Montezuma's Well, which we all enjoyed exploring. We even all saw our first roadrunner along the road in. We had plenty of time to kill for that excursion as Bob's unloading helpers weren't scheduled until the afternoon and we were making good time.

When Joan and Bob got married, it was a Las Vegas wedding, and I flew down with another mutual woman friend from the same support group, shared a motel room with her, plus a trip to Hoover Dam on the bus, and a stroll down the strip to see the variety of casinos. I believe we spent a total of five minutes inside one, each putting a quarter in a slot machine promising somebody would win an enormous amount. It wasn't us. But the wedding was lovely, the reception delicious, and the red-eye flight back exhausting.

Until she retired she worked in Arizona for ADOT. I'm not sure in what order each retired, or when they moved to Sun City West. I know they lived there before my parents quit snowbirding, since I easily memorized the short distance between the two homes while I was visiting, and we had plenty of time to visit and for them to show me different parts of the state, including an introduction for me to Thai food, a favorite of Joan's. At one visit I expressed an interest in relocating down there myself, so they spent a Saturday taking me to see several versions of more affordable housing in the area, most having open houses that day, but one being lived in by a friend of Joan's and open to a visit from a stranger.

There were years when our friendship slowed to occasional long distance phone calls. My parents no longer traveled, and I couldn't afford to. Eventually Steve and I changed our long term friendship into what it is today, and we made our own retirement plans for Arizona. Still, we were busy, they were busy, life moved on. When I got an invitation to join a small group of demonstrators, a local branch of Grandmothers For Peace, it meant a time to both sit at a busy corner in our folding chairs, hold signs, and chat with Joan in the small breaks between traffic noise. The first year or so I was in my scooter, and Bob needed some exercise, so we would travel the square of the walking lanes of the major intersection with our signs until Bob had gotten enough exercise. Once he wasn't up to that, mostly we sat, Joan and I, amongst the others, and talked to each other. We'd go as a group to a local restaurant for brunch afterwards, and talk about the day and our lives, getting to know each of the protesters, occasionally changing restaurants, trying new menus.

Then Bob died. A while after that, covid killed our get-togethers. Joan's larger car held all the signs we set out or held, and some were heavy. Joan recently had been diagnosed with some rare form of leukemia, but stubbornly insisted on being strong enough to show up early and put all the signs up. After covid quarantining pretty much ended, the job became too big and we were out of the habit of protesting, still not sure we were safe in a group. Some of us connected via email, but none as the group we'd been, and no more brunches. During that time she kept me and others apprised of her brother's epic motorcycle journeys, connecting us to his photo blog. We also saw pictures of a grand niece, and photos of new pets in her daughter's and her husband's lives.

Covid did bring Joan to our house once, when she came as a witness (and camera person) for Steve's and my wedding.  The legal one, not the commitment ceremony we'd had in Minnesota years earlier before heading to Arizona to buy a house on our honeymoon. That one had all the bells and whistles, but she and Bob couldn't make it up. This one was out in the carport, 5 humans total present, socially distanced, casually dressed, everybody seated, sealed water bottles and cookies for a "reception". She came with us into the back yard for a couple photos in front of a bush in full bloom at the time before leaving, nobody that day letting covid fears stop us from exchanging those long supportive hugs from back in support group days.

When Joan began to get worse, she and I instituted a daily afternoon phone call wellness check. Suddenly we were back in the hour long phone calls, often ending because light was fading and she needed to get out to feed the birds while they were still up. The calls got shorter after several months, and suddenly I heard from her daughter that Joan was in the hospital. Once she was able to be home Pam would be taking care of her mom's needs until she was better. The care included making sure Joan got her sleep in the afternoons, and between having a full time on site wellness checker and more naps, the calls pretty much stopped  again for a while. I managed to visit Joan a few times after her daughter went home, but by then she was needing a walker most of the time. We'd gotten used to her needing a cane to get around during the last of our demonstrations, but now it took a long time to get to the phone, to even schedule a visit, and might even require a call back later if she had been in the process of taking food to her chair in front of the TV to watch her favorite political news shows. 

 Joan and I had a spring visit this year where I saw her X-mas tree was still up and decorated. She tried to apologize for being too tired to take it down and I assured her it was all about her own personal pleasure and all the wonderful memories from previous years with Bob the tree held, and not about some arbitrary calendar. It was still up last time I stopped by the house this fall to see Pam. That particular visit Pam had located a few things I had given Joan over the years, after asking if I wanted them back. I did, now treasured as memories of our long friendship. One went way back to when I had come down to visit/help my parents, a photo I'd taken on a trip with them. That location was open desert then, a very rare rain puddle along the road under a saguaro reflecting it and the sky, the area now long since developed. I had forgotten it over the years until seeing it again.

I began to hear that her computer was broken, and she couldn't get my emails. All summer I'd been sending out shots of flowers from the Minnesota garden, or a nature preserve, or whatever. She'd had her IT guy, the son of a mutual friend Rosemary whom she loved referring to as "Rosemary's Baby", out to fix it but it still didn't work. Neither did her phone quite often. We heard later that they worked just fine, but her brain wasn't able to comprehend them anymore. It happened with the TV remote later, and that became hopeless for her once she was in hospice. It turned out she had something called "white matter disease". 

The  difficulties that added to her life and self care regimen put her in the hospital once more and brought her daughter back down to stay for a while. It was that which pushed her decision to stop taking her chemotherapy meds and to go into hospice. She lost some of the side effects of the chemo, which actually made her final months more comfortable for her in a few ways. She also decided to ignore her celiac disease and spend her last weeks enjoying as many of the foods she used to love as she could tolerate, so she and her daughter would plan on which treat Pam would bring her the next day to eat. The list included spaghetti, pizza, various sandwiches, sweet rolls and breads. She merely had to think of something and Pam would spend the time needed to locate and buy what Mom wanted, making sure any leftovers went into the refrigerator at the hospice home and not into the mouths of any hungry staff or other residents still mobile enough to get to it, once Pam had a chat with the management.

Joan nearly always had one or more cats in her life for as long as I knew her. This time was no exception, but once in hospice a decision had to be made. The aging cat had its own health problems, and was considered unadoptable. Before a vet was called to the house for a gentle euthanasia, Joan came home on a final visit to her own bed. A photo exists of the cat on the bed with her one final time.

I did manage to get a few visits in while Joan was in hospice. The first time Penny, another friend from peace demonstrations, was there, who later brought Joan her ballot so she could vote in this final election. She's also been my go-to person for information on judges and other lesser known candidates who can be hard to find information on. Another visit one of her sisters from out of state was there along with Pam and a big pizza which they shared. I did manage to coordinate with Pam a day to visit when I could have private time with Joan. Groups can be exhausting, visits needed to be short, and Pam welcomed some time off. By now I'd spent a couple of hours with Pam over several brief occasions, and each one gave me more respect for her and appreciation of all she was doing for her mother. I mentioned as much to Joan on that visit.

The fourth visit was much shorter, as by now Joan was tiring easily. She couldn't manage to stand up for a good-bye hug, so I leaned down to her for what turned out to be a very brief one. The fifth visit didn't happen. Pam got hold of me before I was to leave and let me know her mom wasn't up to a visit, also adding her opinion that there wasn't much time left. As a retired nurse, Pam's seen her share of patients dying and I respect her educated opinion. Still, it was a shock to open her email last evening and find out that Joan had died just over an hour before I read it. She had told Pam when she left her house for hospice not to pay the hospice place for more than a two month stay. She lived two months and one day there.

Joan wasn't religious. Somewhere between agnostic and atheistic covers it, according to our conversations.  Bob was a devout Catholic, and she commented to me once that one of the reasons they got married was that she got tired of being something Bob had to confess on a regular basis until they were. I don't know if she believed in some kind of afterlife where she would reunite with Bob. Only she can know that now. If it's possible, I'm sure they are, with the strong connection they had. I'm not much of a believer either, but it's one of the things I kept telling Daddy in his last days, even his last night, that Gladys would be there waiting for him. He believed. At the very least it brought him comfort. Joan deserved that kind of comfort too.

Rest in peace, my friend. I will miss you. You will always be treasured in my memories.

November 20, 2022.

The Christmas Tree Challenge

I have another new project. Our club has a party/potluck every December. We dress up for this one. There is lots and lots of food of course, plus music, a present exchange ($10 limit) via whatever game they dream up this year. A very brief business meeting installs the next year's slate of 5 officers. A committee volunteers to do the work of planning, decorating, and even cleaning up though we all are expected to clear our table space and take leftovers home. The BYOB policy (we can't serve) means there are always a few people having an extra good time, and last year the dance floor space was filled for a bit with some who found "YMCA" especially entertaining. In my times there, alcohol has never been a problem. Many of us have spouses or partners with physical or memory issues, and people remain thoughtful.

Our volunteer committee chair this year is a talented and energetic woman named Jeanne - pronounced with two syllables. After consultation with another couple of people she came up with and made the actual frames for the tree challenge. A small wood square supports 4 pieces of sturdy copper wire - I'm thinking 14 gauge - which spread out at the bottom and rise about a foot to connect at the top with a flourish. We can sign  one out, individually or as a group, take it home, decorate it however we wish using our club skills, and return it by a deadline. Then the club members get 5 days to vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice for the best. Top three places get prizes and recognition. All trees become table centerpieces for the party, and we take ours home afterwards. The penalty for not returning a tree is your table gets decorated with one of our old, ratty, never-tossed, artificial poinsettias from bygone years. Very bygone years.

Of course I signed one out. I knew before I even saw the final form that was devised what my tree topper would be, how I'd hang decorations, and - what I hope is my piece-de-resistance - how to devise and hang "tinsel." I have all the needed bits now, some taking up room in the house for years. I made one trip to a craft store for the tinsel-to-be, and luckily they had something even better than I envisioned. 

All I need to do now is the actual work. Some supplies have been made already and have just been sitting around waiting for a home - like a pair of ear wires, for example. Only now they've been diverted, since I have way too many earrings in the club already looking for customers. Other things have been shaped and need to be connected, some items have been long abandoned because people just don't wear them - ever! But they sparkle, or have color, or just will look great on a miniature tree. I hope.

Of course I'll still be slightly over-busy. The fall festival is coming up and that takes both administrative duties and actual service time on site. I have my third November workshop to teach later this week, and it will involve typing out instructions and assembling  supplies as well as the actual class. Thanksgiving cooking is always labor intensive. My Christmas gift projects (some of you already got yours this summer to save postage) are finally proceeding after giving up and buying the really expensive, American-made diamond drill bits which last about 8 times as long as the cheap versions, which lose their diamonds after their second hole. But hey, I'm not bored!

Am I overworked? Finding myself once again delaying sleep after head meets pillow several nights in a row while my formerly sleepy, suddenly busy brain starts going over the mechanics and how-tos and what-withs of the tree challenge tells me it just has to get done and I'll make it work! All of it. The deadline is soon enough that if I like it when completed there will even be time enough to make it THE X-mas card picture this year, even though I was planning on that one special Bear Lake  sunrise shot where colors from clouds and bouncing down the mountain to the lake turned everything a unique shade of red. Of course there is no reason I can't do both, I suppose. You'll find out if you're on my list.

The Eyes Have It

I found something new to worry about over the summer. So far the experts have no explanation.

It started when I was watching the dog out in the back yard on her bedtime duty call. It's pretty dark out there at night, in a small MN town where every yard has tall trees blocking neighbors' lights and street lights (as well as satellite TV signals) since they've grown so tall. It didn't help that the dog is mostly black. I could see her most of the way, but when she got small enough she disappeared! If I looked a bit to the side of her, I could make out where she was and what she was doing. There are some white hairs on her after all. Switching back to looking straight at her... gone!

I wouldn't have made anything of it but an interesting (to me) footnote, except for the fact there is a history of macular degeneration in the family. I started to wonder, since this was limited to my very central vision and only when it's very dark, does it start by affecting the rods in the eyes? Could it be possible that we live in such a light polluted world nowdays that people just haven't had an actual chance to notice? It never gets that dark here in my well lit Arizona suburb, unlike the Minnesota back yard where at night all color is erased and nothing exists except black and grey, with stars actually sprinkling the sky again. It takes that deep a dark for that tiny bit of central vision to go completely black.

I had an eye doctor appointment coming up in October, so made a mental note to discuss it with him. While I waited, I tried to "make" it happen again in AZ, but it never did. There was always still color, even inside with doors and windows as blocked as they get. I couldn't reproduce the effect. While musing over it back in Minnesota, in the bedroom it got dark enough that I could stare at the wall at night after having had my eyes closed for several minutes, and for ten or fifteen seconds that black spot would come back. I'd do it one eye at a time, and the left eye made it slightly more distinct than the right eye. With slightly lighter walls than the depths of the back yard, I could determine the black spot was the shape of a fat football, just a hair off of being aligned to my head's horizontal axis, angled just a bit higher on the left. Curiouser and curiouser. That was true for both eyes. With my pillow being about seven or eight feet from the wall, the spot was about the size of a fat football as well as its shape.

Come appointment time, my regular eye doc had no answers. They did the eyedrops to expand my pupils, shined lights, took pictures, had me look at graphs with lots of tiny squares in a grid to see if any of the lines wiggled. Nothing. My eyes are fine except for a small nevis, although he's suggesting my right eye could qualify for cataract surgery any time now. (Since I see fine by my standards with glasses, no thanks. Not yet.) 

Just to be sure, he sent me to a retina specialist. "See them within a week." When I questioned the speed, I was reassured that a real emergency like a detached retina would have me over there that same day! That exam was last week, and much like the other one except with one additional machine and more lights to follow plus brighter flashing lights for their pictures.

The conversation with this doc was... reassuring, I guess. At least as far as anything they can see, my eyes are perfect. But he had no explanation, had never herd such a thing described, and (therefore) found it nothing to be concerned about. So I walked out of there... reassured, I guess. But I promise you, with or without the dog to take out at night, next year back in that dark bedroom, I'll be doing the black football hunt again. Are they still there? Bigger? Blacker? Or gone, just a figment of an aging memory, a mystery never to be solved?

What's For Dinner?

Visits to my friend Joan in hospice care have developed a definite pattern. Her best time for being alert is late afternoon. Once my schedule and energy levels open enough to plan a visit, I call her daughter, currently down from Minnesota, living in Joan's house for months now,  and putting everything in order ahead of her mother's death, as much as possible. My reason to call is first to find out if she knows of anybody else who plans to visit this day. A crowd is very tiring for Joan, and I like one-on-one conversations in the brief time that works for her. Pam knows who's got plans, and today is a day when she was the only one planning to go. I'm informed she relishes some time when she can plan her own supper at usual supper time, not at 3 before she goes visit her mom, or 8 after she returns. She also respects others' wishes for private conversations.

But could I stop by the house on my way? Joan still had my house key from several years ago when they could come over a couple times in the summer and check on the house, maybe water something in the yard. I've come to like Pam the more I see her, and it's easily inserted into my plans. Once there, she hands me a couple other things that either she or her mom (I can't be sure these days) believe I would appreciate. She's absolutely right. I depart not only with those but a note from Pam to her mom that Joan can read over and over in her leisure to help her remember the various pieces of information contained in it.

Pam also gives me the shortcut directions from Joan's house to the hospice home, which I really like, not just because it shortens my route but takes me on the 303, through a few miles of undeveloped Sonoran Desert. I see it won't be that undeveloped for much longer, more reason to appreciate the drive now.

Our visit lasts less than an hour but longer than expected. She's disappointed that I can't figure out the TV remote any more than she can, but there are no tutorials and only one staff person on site who seems to be taking her own break for a bit. So we switch from family news to talking politics, a favorite topic of both of us, particularly so close to the election.

On my way home, part of my attention is on the spectacular colors in a sunset covering just a sliver of the western sky. The rest of my mind not needed for traffic is planning where to stop and pick up something I should actually enjoy. Every possible carry-out food franchise in the state has a location somewhere along the way home. Do I want egg rolls? A burger? Mexican food? Chicken? My mind settles on Arby's for a French Dip sandwich, and I take that exit. It also covers in a small area a burger & chicken place, Mexican food, Subway, all on my way to my goal. Just as I'm ready to make the next turn, traffic is stopped while four fire engines with lights and sirens rush past in the direction I want to go. 

Could I be that unlucky?

While sitting waiting, I glance through an opening between buildings to where my goal sits. Yes, I can be that unlucky. As it turns out, I missed the first engine heading in that direction, as five wind up there. Dang!

OK, burger it is tonight. Good enough, just not the choice. But I drive past my original goal on my way out of the area because it's where there is a light I can safely use to get back on busy roadways in heavy traffic, which suppertime certainly provides. All 5 engines are scattered around their parking lot, none close to the building, no sign of fire, nor water being used, nor any kind of urgency whatsoever. In fact the fire personnel are standing around in small clumps and appear - are you kidding me? - to be eating their suppers there.

I don't expect to ever hear the rest of that story. I guess that leaves me free to make up my own version.

Happy Halloween... Sort Of

Want to be scared? You might have been celebrating in South Korea and gotten crushed in the crowd with over 150 other young adults. For most it seems they were finally out and about after a long period of covid quarantining and distancing. But hey, the "treat" after that trick is the government will pay for the funerals and medical bills.

You might have been celebrating a newly repaired footbridge across a river in India which didn't exactly get repaired correctly, broke, and killed  over 130 people. The "treat" after that trick is expected to be prosecutions. Can't wait.

You might have been the 80-year-old husband of a widely and unjustly vilified politician, 3rd in the line of succession to the Presidency, who was attacked with a hammer and with repeated questions from a not totally unexpected wingnut looking for his wife instead. For a "treat", he's recovering in the hospital after surgery for a depressed skull fracture while the wingnut is behind bars, likely for the rest of his life.  Of course, if you don't look at the particulars too closely, "recovering" sounds just peachy, but how well do 80-year-olds actually heal from that kind of trauma?

If you are reading this, you weren't any of those people. You might instead have held a party, or be handing out candy, or escorting your young children around the neighborhood in a choice of numerous costumes that are nowhere near that scary anyway.

My Halloween hasn't been near that interesting, thank goodness. All that candy gets expensive, so it's nice to live in a seniors community where no trick-or-treaters show up. It's also nice not to walk the neighborhood with rowdy kids on their annual humongous sugar high, watching to keep them out of traffic, soothe tears after somebody doesn't share properly, or wears a too scary costume and delights in bullying littler ones while wearing it.

But there was a party. Costumes were optional, and everybody took the option not to wear one. Go figure. It was at the club, and included choices of slices from 4 different pizzas, of which one was both gluten free and vegan. Yes, we have those members in the club. They were delighted to have an option they could actually eat. I, of course, got to research pizza stores, make the order, go pick it up and bring it to the club just at noon. I do get reimbursed.

The party had an extra reason for bringing us together. We were honoring our volunteers, especially those who contributed their time and efforts above and beyond the minimum club requirements. I got to poll the rest of the board and together we all added names to the list of those we'd noticed. As each name was called, each got unanimous applause.

Of course, that party was just a couple hours in my day. It turned out to be extraordinarily busy. I had to complete the paper work on ten items to submit for sale in the store which meant four hours of early work, put one volunteer who'd just come south to do some much needed and long delayed computer work so a late report could finally be turned in to the management company for all the rec centers.  Once two conflicting reports were printed out, I got to take them home, compare them, and turn the correct one (except for three notes) in to a building across town. That errand wound up as also a shopping trip for Steve's needs, and a different one for mine.

As I was checking out on my last one, I asked the cashier how she liked my costume today? I announced I came dressed as a tired old senior citizen. She smiled. We both agreed that the costume was such a good one that it couldn't be distinguished from the real thing.