Hey NASA, Was That Space Junk?

We saw something last night. Did we see what we (now) think it was?

It was a trip coming home after dark from buying more paint and supplies, heading west along Peoria just as we hit Sun City. The commercial area was gone, so lights mostly consisted of the occasional street light and holiday  decorations still up. One home along that route every year wraps two very tall palm trunks in ropes of white miniatures, turning them into what appears to be almost solid white poles. We had almost hit that spot when there was a sudden red and white giant "sparkler" sailing through the sky to our north. The term sparkler describes its appearance, but belies the speed and power exhibited as it crossed the sky.

Rich was in the passenger seat, his window giving him a longer view of it than I got. It came from behind us on our northeast, and ended in black just ahead of us, still above buildings or trees, from my perspective.

I referred to it as a sparkler because some kind of fireworks was my first impression. It was a single ball  of white sparks flying off in all directions from the front and sides, red ones from the rear. I had enough time to be furious that some idiot would set off fireworks (because Christmas? Quanza? New Years? pure mischief?) in a place where everything was dry enough for a fire to grow way beyond expectations despite some recent rain, when Rich pronounced it to be space junk.

We discussed our different impressions after viewing it for about three seconds, when it went dark while still airborne. Rich had a better and longer view than I had with the car roof in my way, and thus he perceived it as much farther away, as well as traveling much faster than any fireworks could achieve, especially sideways. Tossing around ideas and literal viewpoints while continuing on the way home, his idea tended to win out. I cannot recall actually seeing any firework traveling horizontally at that speed, much less having red sparks shooting out the back like  a propulsion system. I was also so relieved it hadn't landed and started a fire, that I didn't feel any need to push my initial view of its identity. 

With a day's reflection now behind me, I am left with curiosity. Was it in fact space junk? Could a meteor not of human origin shoot out sparks in two colors? Above all, is there a way to find out what it was, whether others saw it too, and if so, could that pinpoint how high it was before presumably disintegrating?

NASA, I'm looking at you guys. Any answers?

Winding Down, Cutting Ties

Having a long time to prepare to leave can have interesting effects on both emotions, seesawing between about every emotion except anger, and behaviors, switching between bursts of industry and total down time. The first place those are showing up are in the club.

Let's start with obligations there. Rules require 8 hours of volunteering each month you are there and using the facilities. For most people this means monitoring, being the person who greets people walking in the door. Members get reminded to check in on the computer and put on their name badges. Visitors either get attention in the store or if interested, a tour of the club and its possible activities. In "spare time" the monitor wanders around and makes sure equipment is being used properly, both for the well being of the members and the equipment. Whoever takes the opening shift has other duties, plugging in certain equipment, making sure particular water levels are correct at different stations, noting what's been cleaned or ignored, etc. It's a long list. Final shift involves overseeing proper shut down, unplugging certain equipment, turning out the lights and escorting the last person out before locking all the doors. 

Note that I don't know all this because I monitor. I've been an officer for most of my years there, since before I was mobile enough after knee replacements to wander around all over and stand long enough to, say, make a sale in the store for a dawdling, fussy customer. Before then they needed to find a way I could volunteer while on a scooter, and one place that doesn't work is in a tiny room full of glass cases, aka the jewelry store, so I became an officer. It is assumed that officers put in well over the 8 hours a month in volunteering time and are excused from monitoring except when nobody else is available. No, I know all the duties because I wrote the most recent now-laminated list of duties, and teach them to new members. It says plug or unplug the pickle pots, for example. They need to learn both what/where those are, and how to refill the chemicals when low. That's just one thing on the two-sided full pages list.

My first position was secretary, not just taking minutes, but keeping track of rules and schedules just because I kept track of any changes in the minutes as they were decided, and kept getting asked about them. Two years ago I became the 5th person since I joined the club to be president. There was Gary, Terry, Mary, Becky, and now me. Next week it will be David. It changes with the calendar, unless something happens to a serving one. I've known that to happen once to an officer, when the care of a spouse demanded total attention at home. We've had former officers move or die, just not while serving. Several former officers remain in the club, working on projects they didn't have time for while serving. Several of those teach other members. Some of us teach even while serving.

So here I sit, seeing endings. I'll remain  in the club no more than 2 1/2 months, because my rec center membership expires March. 15. I may be in town for some short time after that, or the house may sell quickly like the one next door did, in 3 days, with "we want possession next week" in the deal. However it goes, it would cost $575 for the next year or whatever tiny part of it we'd be here. That won't happen. I have a finite and shortening time to use the club, and plan to make the most of it, despite needs at home for sorting, packing, selling, tossing, cleaning, etc., plus supervising painting and repairs others do.

With the books out of the library, the shelves are currently being used for organizing club stuff, formerly scattered over four different rooms, and impossible to locate what was in my hand two minutes before. (Repainting those shelves will have to wait.) There are a lot of unused remnants scattered all over, whether stones and beads, sheet metals or wires, instruction sheets or booklets, and of course glass. I plan to use up every scrap of glass, and I do mean that literally. All those small scraps get cut into tiny pieces, popped into a kiln, and turned into hemispheric pieces to be fused to larger pieces of glass. Larger scraps, the ones which manage to avoid filling my current needs for projects, will get donated to the club. Or in one case, to a good friend who happens to be having health issues resulting in financial issues and thus can't afford to buy her own. I made it simple, giving her all the 90 COE glass. I'm still busy with a lot of 96 COE and the two cannot be mixed. She's been working with 90, so having everything new match it prevents possible disasters. I showed her a few new techniques I've picked up since she was last in the club so when she does feel well, she can try those and have more fun.

We occasionally have vendors receive the club's OK to bring their wares in on an advertised day, spread them out on a table, and sell - no pressure - to anybody who is interested. One sold all turquoise, then promised us everybody who walked into his store wearing their club badge would get a certain percent discount. Another couple of people have come in with faceted gems. Prices tend to be very low for us, since we're wholesale buyers, and often the person bringing items in is cleaning out a relative's house and have no other ideas where to get a reasonable price for "all that crap". Often what can't/won't sell is simply donated to a club the original owner belonged to because the thrift stores won't touch it and much of it really is crap. We always thank them, set the low value items (plastic) out for anybody to pick through. That can include teachers who start pupils out on very inexpensive materials while they gain skills, or members making jewelry for small children who will lose or destroy it rapidly anyhow. Workshops always start in copper before our skills justify graduating to sterling. The irony there is copper wire is more difficult to work with than the sterling is, kinking more easily in your hand, and keeping us convinced our skills are still pretty lousy. So once you believe you're ready for sterling, you likely actually are. If you can afford it and make what sells, likely you won't go back. Unless you're into coloring your metal, and there are lots of interesting ways to do that with copper.

Where do I fit in to this? First, I made two sterling sales to another member, things I'll never use. One is scrap sterling, as we are taught to keep even the tiniest bits we cut off a piece of wire, for example, for later sale. My one pill bottle held, at today's prices as weighed in the club's scale, nearly $150 worth. I know somebody who is doing lost wax casting and can use it. She also happens to be the previous president to me. I offered her first right of refusal, and she took it on the spot. A few days later I found a chunk of sheet silver. When it got weighed, since she'd just bought the other, she couldn't match the price, but since she'd bought the other, I offered her a "garage sale price" and she bought that as well, just so long as I'd wait a couple of days for her to have the cash. I've already cleared it with the incoming president to come in next year as a vendor and offer leftover supplies to members in an on-site garage sale. That way they don't have to find the house, nobody needs to help set it all up, and I'll have an educated market who can appreciate my low prices. I just ordered small ziploc bags to separate quantities of beads, or cabochons, or rock slabs, or findings, or metals, or chains, or.......  I wonder if the hundred will be enough bags.  Rich says he has need of the clear plastic divided sorting boxes that I'll be emptying, since hardware is just as full of categories as jewelry supplies are, so he'll get those I don't still need.

It won't be everything. I just bought a spool each in copper chain and wire for projects I can do in the living room while watching TV, wherever we live, needing no club, though maybe replacing a few hand tools for better quality bought from the club store before we leave. I will keep some beads to work with too. But as far as the glass is concerned, much as I'm still totally absorbed in working with it, anything still not fused will be donated to the club for its raffles. All labeled 96  for them of course. It won't be just sheet glass. There'll be stringers, named for their resemblance to a skinny piece of straight string in glass, stored in a clear 17" long tube so they don't break, in many colors and a labeled with their COE so they get paired with the proper type of glass. There will be jars of frit (itsy bitsy bits of glass down to powder size) left, and those little glass hemispheres I've not used, and decals. If there's any kiln paper I haven't used, though very doubtful, that will get donated as well.

If we weren't moving, I'd still be in the club, finding new things to learn and play with, because that's what creativity is: play. I'd still likely be president next year. I fit well in that role and it's the hardest one to find new volunteers for.  I do not plan on driving 40 or more miles each way to either of the two glass studios available in the Twin Cities to continue working with glass after we move. So I will be doing everything I can to finish up my glass projects in the next two months, which actually involved a couple new purchases in order to accomplish that. I'm buying a pair of draping molds that the club doesn't have, matching ones so I can made simultaneous matching pieces. They will work best as presents in matching pairs. This means the new large kiln can run more efficiently with more pieces in at the same time on the same heat cycle, I can finish my projects faster, and other people can have their kiln time even as I'm cramming everything I can into any available open time slot. As with other molds, and following other people's examples, once I finish my use of the molds, the club will have them. They already have three slumping molds I donated, two of which are frit molds for making your own (larger) beads. The third is an oddball piece upon which you lay a square sheet of glass and it melts a pattern in one side as if it were cut glass. I then flipped that over, filled those patterns with contrasting color frit, and in effect turned it into its own frit mold. After that, pieces were cut off it and made into pendants - not, I'm sure, how it was intended to be used. But play, right? I think I'll teach our newer glass people that before I leave.

I'm already listing what I know and can pass on that members aren't getting elsewhere. Because that's my last contribution to the club, perhaps a legacy if you will. I have learned to do about half a dozen things really well. Nobody else does them, at least not for sale in the store, except for the way I taught myself first to make wire spirals as links in a chain. They don't do my wire tree ornaments. Nobody does celtic braiding with wire and beads. My herringbone weave, learned with an adaptation from another club member, is beginning to get used, either in bracelets or earrings. But at least one member now is taking off from how I taught her to make wind chimes, and making them with decorations added, for sale in the club, which in turn is teaching me how to do new things . What I'm doing goes past what she started and I'm showing the possibilities to my students, inviting them to pop in once they learn the basics and watch to learn it themselves. Once you have the idea, it's all accomplished with basic skills and patience. It's the best part of the club, each growing off the ideas and skills of the next. I just finished a two-day wind chime class, two students.  I showed a couple newer ways of wiring them together than when I was first taught. Since I spent a few months just making as many chime pieces as I could cut glass for last year, I'll be taking them north along with wire and chain, plus new glass pieces to hang them from instead of branches vulnerable to weather, and keeping busy with those.

In all these things, I'm winding down, have a goal for each and a timeline to stop. Good-byes and thank-yous are being exchanged, questions are being answered. I'm hearing I've had value there, which is very gratifying, particularly after the chewing out months back I received from one member who needed to have a behavior stopped immediately and wouldn't listen so it had to be done publicly. Supposedly I was the reason the club membership was dropping, not covid, not another club in the system opening and doing much the same things. I made discrete inquiries of people cited and heard in one case that emergency home repairs had them relocated for a few months, unable to attend. They're back now. In another discussion, the new similar club opened much closer to where they lived and offered slightly different skills, more in tune with both travel needs and new interests. But there is a request to come in as a visitor and learn wind chimes from me. So the good feedback has been heartwarming. I'm realizing the cutting ties part, at least with people, is more of a process of solidifying many of the ties, making reasons to keep connected. It's with things where ties are getting cut.

The winding down also has me sorting through things and making choices of more things not to hang onto. Getting rid of 95% of the library at home was the first big one. With club supplies, if I don't have a specific job for something in the future, out it will be going to somebody who can use it, and with luck a little of my investment will be coming back. Yes, I'm talking money here. Meanwhile there'll be presents for at least the next two years for all the family and friends who get them. (Preferably hand delivered of course. Postage is.... !!!!)  Much of that is planning the packing. Since I'm working with glass, and shapes are getting more elaborate, the pieces are more fragile, not at all stackable. I just ordered 8 cubic feet of packing peanuts. That should keep Steve's walleye mount safe to travel, and protect my glass so long as the box walls are sturdy. Oh, and cardboard separates the layers.

The online order was about half the price of what I found in a store a week back and chose then not to buy. That's helpful since Rich and I are heading out later to buy lots more paint, brushes, and so forth, so making the house more presentable can continue in a timely manner.  It's good to have plastic in the pocketbook!

Does Christmas Make You Feel Old Too?

Our celebrations of the holiday are about traditions these days. There is the usual nostalgia in stories we tell each other about what we used to do, like caroling door-to-door. The support group where Steve and I met and became best friends had on a couple occasions gone out caroling in St. Paul. The group was fairly small, perhaps a dozen of us who could carry a tune and remembered by heart one verse of the standards. (Nobody, but nobody, knew more than that single verse, or at least didn't admit it in a crowd which didn't. We'd wind up singing solo and that wasn't to be dared!)

Trees were always a part of it, and presents, of which certain ones still hold memories, some good, some not. Church services not so much, since the holidays mostly were occasions to stay home, with services on the nearest weekend, though that same group which caroled also knew which church had a great musical midnight service where everybody could sing along with the choir, and a few of us were able to attend. 

The Nutcracker was a part of it once my kids arrived, and I'm talking about actually going to the ballet, including with a nursing infant, which totally scandalized my mother. The best of those Nutcracker memories came later, down in southern MN at the in-law's farm, just after an ice storm. My daughter was old enough to sit in a toboggan dressed head to toe in a snowsuit and all the extra layers for warmth, while I pulled her down the driveway in a combination of farm-lit ice and fog, making the whole trip magic, its silence penetrated only by the crisp-crisp-crisp of boots and rare vehicles passing on the highway. We were transported back in the heart of that ballet, away from stresses and conflicts back inside the hundred-plus-year-old farm house with alcohol flowing much too freely.

Winter weather was a part of every memory, whatever the individual reality, and we'd try to rival each other in tales of how cold and how much snow, and how big the snowmen were or how long the sledding hills. All from long previous years of course since those activities are long abandoned by old bones and, more to the point, no longer having snow in our winters at all in the south. There aren't even warm jackets or boots in the house. We're also on the cusp of little to no snow for white Christmases back north, as we hear from the younger generations still living up north whom we'll be joining for the next years. Climate change and El Nino are pushing winter weather into the past for many of us, though the TV news will always find snow somewhere, mostly accompanied by huge pileups due to drivers unused to the need to slow way down in winter conditions. Those of us who put up with many decades of ice and snow this time of year tend to shake our heads and assert our certainty that we'd never get caught in one of those pileups.

But there was a singular event today which really made me feel much too old. It involved an annual tradition of putting up old fashioned bubbler lights, the kind, for those who don't know, that heat up in the bulb and a long thin tube of boiling colored liquid bubbles up from there to the tips. I grew up with them, Steve also. When our kids were young, each of us were able to locate and purchase new strings of them when they were back in fashion for a short time again, with the foresight to invest in replacements bulbs as well. We combined our supplies when we combined households. During the years the trees got smaller, most of the decorations got sent to new generations with children, but the bubbler lights stayed here. One recent year there was no tree for them but they got taped to the front of a glass display case - the outside, since the case was full - though the bubbling lights were reflected by the rear mirrored surface.

 The next tree was much smaller, and bore only one or two ornaments, but two strings of bubbler lights. This year the tree left in a garage sale, but never, ever, the bubblers. There were still two replacement bulbs for the strings... until the bubblers got put up this afternoon on a stand jury rigged to a tree shaped triangle, supported with wire shaped to hold each light in place, top and bottom. Much of the household is packed and we agreed to have a nice dinner rather than more "things" requiring more packing this year. Presents will be back next year, and a new tree as well, in our new northern home.

But there likely will be an issue with the lights. The last two spare bulbs broke in the process. Next time one breaks, we'll be down to one string and some back-up bulbs. I went online after the tree was finished to see if more strings were available anywhere. OK, how about more bulbs, then? After half an hour and a whole lot of things which came as close to being bubbler lights as printed "blueprints" could come, and that's assuming the tiny print actually was of the real thing since I couldn't tell, and even more things which had no relation to them whatsoever except having "bubble" in their name, I located one bubbler light. Not a string of them. Not a supplier of them. One single light.

It seems they now have the status of "antique". Good for them. I don't need old ones, replicas would be delightful if somebody were so kind as to start manufacturing them again. Especially since that one bulb would cost $35. Plus $15 shipping.

I guess we're antiques too. I'm pretty sure our replacement parts prices will  have gone up by around the same percentages. But would our value? And will we break as easily?

What I Found On Christmas Eve Day

Whoa! Tamp down those big expectations. It wasn't a big present, nor any present for that matter. Nobody dropped anything, from a secret to money in my path on the ground. In fact, this is more about what I didn't find when I went looking.

And, of course, my personal thoughts and opinions about it. C'mon, you know I do that, and you know you read it. You're here, right?

I was online, and decided to check my financial balances. I was thinking about spending some funds, and wondering whether it would be best to go with cash or credit. Knowing the cash balance to avoid an overdraft is a painful lesson I learned a long time ago. What's come in recently? Should I transfer funds? Has _____ come out yet or has the holiday delayed it? Did _____ get canceled? What have I forgotten? And the good old favorite, are my security measures still secure? For that last alone I pop in to check my financial information every two or three days.

The credit union comes first, always. Real money before wishful money. So I entered my information to secure access and... None of the columns and categories I usually see. Just an otherwise blank white page letting me know the site is not up today. They're doing scheduled maintenance on it.

What? Really? They picked Christmas Eve to shut down? They're making people work on what for many is a sacred holiday? Perhaps worse, depending on where you're coming from, they're making people work instead of being out there doing their last minute present shopping or hosting-the-holiday-party shopping? Because people do wait to shop, you know, with busy lives and lots of obligations, plus for many the need to play Santa without giving away the game... yet. And there just might be that last minute close-out deeply discounted sale item, right? Or worse yet, that person you forgot till now: OMG!!!

But somebody or -bodies are in their offices, on their computers, programming something for the system, today of all days. Did the company give plenty of warning about the workload? They didn't inform me with their usual disclaimer banner across their site, and they usually do that a few days ahead. Did they pick out employees whose holiday wasn't going to be spoiled because it's not their holiday, or they had nobody to celebrate with, and this just  might possibly be a better option than being alone feeling sorry for themselves and/or wondering how early the bars closed?

What about those still shopping? Do their cards still work right now? If I can't find out my balances, do the ATMs still know? The stores?

Now mind you, the question of whether I can shop is purely theoretical. I have plastic independent of my real money, and from a different institution. In addition, I have no plans to go buy anything today. It feels good to simply stay home, putter when I feel like it and/or when a certain pile of clutter somewhere points to a corresponding box and demands to be Packed! Right! Now! Last time that happened was two days ago. I successfully ignored that one because I was busy getting things to the post office. But we just might have company tomorrow and the house's level of packing clutter is way beyond my tolerance for public display. Today Rich will be continuing painting doors and trim in my bedroom, but all the supplies are paid for, so that's no reason to go shopping. There's enough food, and then some. I don't need gas for the car even if I were going somewhere. That's not happening till tomorrow when I promised to open the club for two hours in the morning in case anybody wanted to get in then, and the car is plenty full of gas and then some for that two mile round trip. Very little else would be open anyway. 

So while what's spendable in my real money account is theoretical, the  question of security is always valid. Although, by now, there would be no way to connect with somebody with any authority to do anything like put a stop on my account. But hey, it's an excuse to write something anyway. 

What was your excuse for reading to the end?

Have a Happy-Merry-Christma-Hanu-Quanza-kkah-New-Year!

Now About That Glitch

If yesterday wasn't stress enough, my blog post caught a glitch. No, it's not there any more, and my reader's counter - the one only I see as the author - tells me that only two of you encountered it before I finally figured out, not how it happened, but how to fix it. Not that I have any clue of the how or why it went from nothing helping to finding a fix.

 I was going through my fourth or fifth proofreading. That's very typical. I'm a terrible typist, or as they call it now, keyboardist. I read it first in the format I write it in, looking like a standard blank word processing page. When I preview it, I see what you see:  the format  changes to very narrow, the colors change, and what I see of the text is more likely to be what is really there instead of what I thought I wrote. Don't ask me why, but it works. It also tends to point out silly grammar, bad phrasing, even plain stupid ideas.

I'd gotten about 3/5ths through, and suddenly everything disappeared beyond the spot I was at. The only thing I had done just before that was delete a stray lower case "a". I had no idea why it was there, how it got there, what on earth I might have been trying to say. It had no context, sitting alone between a completed sentence and the next line. In deleting it, everything after it vanished!

I panicked, of course. I'd been interrupted for a bit between writing and proofing. I couldn't reinvent the ending. My mind was blank. And yet, somehow it had gotten posted, so it was sitting there for anybody to see, dangling like a long lost participle. I switched between my rough draft, the one I can still edit, and the public copy. There were times I had it all in the editing page, but that pesky "a" was dangling there again somehow so I tried to delete it.  All the text below it vanished again. Somehow it was there but not there. 

I thought I'd try a copy-paste to a word processing sheet, but even at the page with my power to edit, I couldn't highlight anything for copying, much less pasting so it would be recoverable. Back and forth, back and forth, here, then gone, then back.

Eventually I scrolled way down on the public view page, and after about eight times the total length of the whole post, there again was the text I thought lost. Back on my editing page and it sat right where it ought to be, almost. The pesky "a" was still there, and the beginning of the next paragraph was indented about halfway across the page. I tried again to delete the "a" and again lost the tail end of my blog post. I tried other stuff, and nada. No improvements. Besides my laptop power level was redlined. Time to plug in, give it a rest, go do something else. ANYTHING ELSE! 

Unfortunately, somehow when  that post had gotten published, I couldn't remove it. Weirdly, on the public page, that little "a" didn't exist. Boy, though, the endless space did.

That "anything else" lasted only about ten minutes. I just wouldn't let go, not after the day I'd had. There were a few more cycles of kill-the-"a", hunt-the-tail-of-the-post, kill-the-"a", etc. Steve got a phone call from a good friend, and these days those are loud and on speaker while he sits 3 feet away. Totally distracting, and while I often chime in, it just wasn't the right time then. I picked up my laptop and went down to my bed, returning when the call ended. Leaving the room hadn't solved my problem, nor kick-started my brain into an idea. In fact it was totally stupid since my laptop still needed charging.

Plugging back in, I decided to put a disclaimer on the top of my blog, the one two of you, plus Steve, read. I say it that way because he reads all my posts but his doing that never reaches my counter. We suspect it's because both machines bounce off the same wifi so the machines are programmed to count him as me. I don't count either. No cheating on your count levels, you bots! Anyway, since the gap in my post was so long, I needed to explain there was a glitch I couldn't fix, and please continue scrolling down (forever)  to get to the end.

There was some TV to watch, conversations to have. And yet I couldn't let it go. I just couldn't.

When I came back to it, somehow that pesky "a" was missing. No clue how or why. Might as well credit Santa. Hmmm, changes are possible then. I fiddled a bit, but that gap was the equivalent of about 8 pages long, so I couldn't tell if there was any progress. At least anything I did wasn't flipping me into nothing-on-the-screen-land. And somehow on the editing page the gap was gone, the two pieces of post were at least visible in the same general space. There was a bit of a space between them, so I just tried deleting space between them. 

Lo and behold, my cursor moved without kicking me into blank space hell and kept traveling across the page. Maybe there were no shortcuts but I could delete the space one character at a time! I tried it for a while, always starting about 3 characters from the right border and stopping before hitting the left border, trying to avoid whatever was fubar in that post, then placing the cursor back on the right side, deleting its way across to the left. Over and over and over. Then over again. Thank goodness the delete button doesn't need a tap for each stroke but can be held down!

About every three minutes, I'd save my (thus far imagined) progress by hitting "update". I'd go back to the public page trying to detect any progress. but there was still so much space in that gap it was undetectable, if it was happening at all. I kept going back to it. What else was there to do? My silly pride kicked in. I wasn't going to leave myself open to ridicule by not fixing that glitch. It's the same thing which prompts me to proof my posts  4 or 5 times before publishing. I need them perfect. You don't need an annoying reason not to read them.

I guess I persisted as I did for so long because it's the season to be operating on faith. Faith that the sun will come back and the world will again have long days which can grow crops. Faith that all the extra lights decorating everywhere will be cheerful and not bankrupt us with our electric bill. Faith that we'll warm up again. Faith that wars are elsewhere, just like nearly all the other terrible things on the news. Faith that whatever our individual religious beliefs are, they are correct.

By about half an hour into deletions I could finally see progress on the public page. It didn't take me quite so long to cross that great empty divide. Now was not the time to give up, even if it was tomorrow officially. Delete, delete, delete. Update. Delete............

After another 15 minutes or so I finally could see a line of text on both the top and bottom of the Big Blank! The progress was real! Were I younger and had the day been better I might have been dancing with joy, but it was simply time to keep plugging instead. 

If you've read it, you know the gap has closed. You can't tell where it was. And after 5 hours sleep, here's another post. It's part apology to the two of you (plus Steve) who had to scroll wayyyyyyyyyyyyy down to finish.

Uh, you did, didn't you?

It's also me wondering why nothing helped correct it and then suddenly that little "a" disappeared and everything worked again. And maybe a little plug for sympathy, right?

My Week Long Four Hours

Ever have one of those? 

The day started very well. I spent the morning in the club, putting together four specific glass projects which I had in mind for specific people... for next year's Christmas presents. It's about step three in them, with at least one final one to go, which can't start till tomorrow and that depends on whether anybody else needs the specific kiln then which can handle them. Yes three kilns, different sizes, somewhat different functions programmed into them. But fun all the way. Throw in some time teaching a brand new enthusiast what I'm doing and why, and it's even more fun.

Then I left. I had errands. The idea was to do all three in one stop. 

Silly girl!!!!

The first stop, in Walmart of course, was the photo section. We finally got Steve working with Rich to figure out how to pull a particular photo out of his library and pop it onto my thumb drive so I could put it in my file and work on it. It is, after all,  X-mas card time again. Steve asked to be the one whose photo went on the cards this year, and his specific message. It only took three weeks to get the file to me. Now it was time to get it on cards, with his precise message on it: "Peace". Just one word. No "Love, Joy and..." No "Happy Holidays." No any of the myriad other messages printed on cards everywhere. (He caught it from me.)

You'd think you could find a card saying "Peace" this time of the year, right? Something that could take his whole photo on it. Something that was 5x7, horizontally aligned, not requiring a collage effect with 7 other miniscule other photos. OK, maybe you've been out and about and already been looking, finding out what I spent the afternoon finding out. Everything else but that is out there. And good luck finding a chair or stool while you spend half an hour at the kiosk fighting your way through the system to get what you want, maybe finding what you'll settle for, and not locating a cooperating machine, making it moot anyway. 

The first one of the three wasn't working, period. Next one got to the point where one could put text on it but only where the machine thought it should go, and insisted on keeping the word "text" as part of the printed message. And again, a different size and color, overlapping the first "text". And not realigning the lines, or in fact, giving you a way to drop to a new line. I did catch the eye of the single person working in the entire electronics department for half a minute. She did something without explaining what it was, so nothing of any actual help to me. I gave up and left, since the line at her counter never dropped under 5 people deep. I wasn't one of them. (Walmart will be  getting more feedback, especially since I MIGHT be the one whose name gets drawn to win a thousand dollars! Wheeeee.....)

I need paint, a basic one gallon exterior latex white paint. Nobody in that department either. No visible bell or buzzer or phone to call for assistance. I wanted my paint shaken. After five minutes, I left my cart there in disgust and went to complete my third errand, heading to the pharmacy for my RSV shot. At least that went well. My needle wielder reminded me that my feedback would be about his performance, not the never-happened stuff. (He gets 5 stars.)

I called Steve from the car to let him know why things were taking so long and what I wasn't finding. I had changed my plans to hit the Ace Hardware closer to home, and then the Walgreens photo department. Never mind lunch. As I passed Ace, there wasn't a car anywhere in front of it. Must have just closed. On the plus side the post office next door had finally reopened after a few years, so I can do  my holiday mailing about 3 miles closer to home. On to Walgreens.

They at least have a chair in front of each of their photo machines. What I couldn't find was the right card set-up. I tried for half an hour before heading home, feeling something a far cry from "gruntled".

Rich had an idea. Why not put the text we wanted on the photo file myself and put the whole thing on a card, just printing out a 5x7 and getting envelopes? He looked in his phone and informed me that Office Max had a deal where they'd do that plus envelopes for $.99 each. 

Of course I had no idea how to do that. I could do a lot with my photos, but add text?  Sounds like a $100 upgrade to me. He talked me through it, over and over, stumbling all along the way, backtracking, misunderstanding what each was saying, until finally.... Success! I've already forgotten most of it except for the possibility, of course.

So, where was an Office Max? That far?  Oy! Well, at least there's a Home Depot in the same parking lot so while I have to pay more for it, I can at least get some paint while I'm out there. 

First the Office Max. Huge building. So glad my legs can handle all the walking and searching, and I haven't been running all over Walmart or standing in front of useless photo kiosks, or.... So I just stood there looking for a human who wasn't shopping. Not finding one, I started my hike, making a note that when end of packing time arrived I could get huge bags of packing peanuts for a mere... OMG! THAT MUCH???? I was only in aisle 3 but decided to turn around, head back to the front and find an employee. Nothing looked like a photo kiosk yet. One customer left with bundles, and seeing the person she'd been working with was now free, headed that direction. Yes, they did have that cards offer, but, didn't I know? It had to be done online. Since I was there I asked about mailing tubes too. I'd need one in a couple days.  They'd be in aisle.... but as I headed that way she finished with "but we've been out for two weeks."

Now to Home Depot. Exterior Paints had a large sign on the proper aisle post, easy peasy. As I went down the cands, they read interior, interior, interior, interior... and I was at the end of the aisle. Coming back up the next aisle, all were interior paints there as well. OK, guy at the counter then. I asked him where the exterior paint was really hiding, so he led me there, asking a few questions along the route to find exactly what I needed. A couple minutes in the shaker then, and off I went. Uhh, that's the paint in the shaker, by the way, not me.

Pulling into the driveway, I asked Rich to pull out the paint while I went back in to grouch a few minutes before Googling Office Max to find their holiday card supply. I did locate them after 4 other tries, first kicking me off to Office Depot, then to Amazon, then to... Walmart, of course! But once I found Office Max, and  finally locating the blank make-your-own option, I popped my file in. What shape did I want? I picked the square one, so they poppd my file in that one... squeezed vertically so it would fit. No way to rotate it. It's a goddammed horizontal scenic photo!!!!!! Does nobody else on the entire planet go for that option? It's a single page card, just a 5x7 photo. What can't they put it in as such? It's not like a folded card where it has to match the orientation of the inside message, right? 

Oh, and did I mention they wanted me to click on a QR code before proceeding?  AARRRRGGGHHH!!!                       

 I was out of the house in a shot. Not only did I not need to explode all over everybody here, I didn't need to deal with any more crap AT ALL! It might cost me more, but at least at Walgreens I know there are two employees there, chairs at the kiosks, and they can talk me though the steps of how to print off my number of photos. Just photos. It comes with all it needs except envelopes, and I can talk my way through getting those even if I have to buy them separately!

Once there I was talking with both employees. "Just 5/7 photos plus envelopes! Can you do that?" She wasn't sure, he said yes of course,  she went with me to the kiosk, and we both found out how it's done. 

Ahah! You're thinking now that next  year it'll be so much easier,I'll know how to do it all and where to go to get it  done, right? Well, yes and  no, so maybe. I guarantee you the program in the kiosks will have changed, not just the cards but the procedures as well. there will be a new way to get from A to B to C next year, and trying B won't work. Not at all. There'll be a giraffe in the middle, eating al the tall, obvious leaves of reliable data before anybody puts the software together,

But right now my cards should be ready to pick up. We'll do it on the way to pick up Steve's grocery order. There is ice cream in it and it shouldn't melt on the detour home. He's getting a nap right now while I'm  writing this. By the time I finish I should be feeling close to human again., in a proper mood to start addressing envelopes and digging out the stamps from wherever that was I tucked the unused ones from last year. Before sealing, however, there's the annual letter to write. At least I left plenty of printer paper so I can do that myself. There's even an extra toner cartridge on a tall shelf should the old one balk. The (original) plan was to pack the printer after those letters were printed. Maybe even soon after, eh?

I did mention the main message of the card this year is "Peace", didn't I? I'm waiting for some.

The cards will be late.

Wandering In Blueprint Jungle

Four more boxes got packed, and the shoulder needed a break. I tried spinning my wheels for a bit but decided that having breakfast would be a more productive use of my time. While cleaning up from that, I got some help from Steve in taking the shower curtain - the pale green one with (dusty) white lace ruffles and tiebacks, a green which has never quite matched the paint - down from where it was wedged outside the real shower curtain, so I could shake off dust, fold it, and after a while tote it and a bunch of other stuff we'd never get rid of at a garage sale, down to the sidewalk along with a "free" sign. It has to go anyway, since we have major plans for making that bathroom functional again before putting the house on the market.

Steve decided between his knees hurting and my shoulder getting enough abuse for a good while, it was time for a change in direction. Time to take a break and look at the information which was emailed to him a couple weeks back on the floor plan for the double-wide we settled on. It  may not be everybody's choice, but with the minor adaptations we plan for, its flow of traffic and amount of space will suit us perfectly. Well, after an ADA ramp and a deck of course, both outside.

We found it online a few months back, made some inquiries, were assured they could meet most of our needs, and spelled out which ones we'd have to put in ourselves.  For example, no carpeting, no problem. We'd just get one uniform solid floor like would be found in a kitchen, no joints rolling up at the edge of each room. We presume a time will come when Steve is more on wheels than not. Already tripping is a major concern, not just in what happens when landing, but once he's down it's a 911 call to get him upright again. (Knees sure were handy.) I can't do it. Many times even Rich, presuming he's here, can't either by himself. And he won't be up there.

Another example is bathrooms. The plan has one close to each bedroom. Both come with tubs. Both can have showers replace them. The master even gets the bonus of a linen closet to fill that extra space. But we also need higher toilets, and we'd have to put a hold on their factory installation and provide our chosen ones once the home is in place. After that we'll just put in the bidet attachments we find so handy. Oh, and all the grab bars we'll need all over.

Not every option is for accessibility. The blueprint shows a large kitchen/dining/living room open plan, everything else to the ends. We want the island we can get in the kitchen. Steve wants a dishwasher, of course. Can we get an electric stove? Wall oven? (Well, likely no on the oven, handy as it is on bad backs. Try one some time if you get a chance, and imagine yourself pulling a 14 pound turkey in a roaster pan straight out to your chest, then twist to the counter to set it down, rather than lifting it up out of a standard oven on to the counter.) 

Then there are sinks. Is the kitchen sink one big one or two smaller? I'm used to two smaller just because one always fills up, but we can usually take that as a clue to transfer to the dishwasher, or if it's full with empty bottles, to squish them for the recycle bin. But a whole large sink full... Oofda!

My personal biggest problem with the blueprints is, when they come in an email, they are pretty unreadable. This little square at the end of the kitchen counter: "smudge smudge".  Is that optional Microwave? I hope not. I prefer sacrificing counter space for a low microwave where I don't have to reach up high for the in/out. Especially where I tend to be a little wobbly in the right arm (they always open on the right!) and I could very easily be dumping hot coffee on its way out! Does "smudge-smudge" mean they are moving extra cabinets here? Or the stove? Perhaps a broom closet? I can't tell. 

The fridge is easy to read, and so is the gas stove symbol of 4 circles. But if we look in a certain corner of the space designated for dining, there is what looks like very narrow cabinets along the wall. Except in one of the options where they are wider. What the heck? Did they build in shelves? A buffet? A whatchamacallit where you set the food out to the side instead of on the table? Hey, I don't eat that fancy, except in restaurants, and even there it's a pain getting up-down, up-down. Who needs a trail of slopped food across the floor when you can just as easily leave it slopped across the table, and make sure nobody tracks it all over the house before you get a chance to leave the table because you're stuck playing hostess? So maybe it's not that. But it's some thing drawn there, not even bothering with having a label on it. 

I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out where the fans were in the ceilings. There are little symbols which look like a squared octogon with 4 short lines sticking out, one each up, down. left, right. Is that a fan? A light in the ceiling? Both? Does anybody even bother with fans up north  if you can't move them around in their box? A check of the bathrooms, for surely those have ceiling fans, just to pull out the humidity, gave the same symbols. Sigh. If those are all ceiling lights, then where are the bathroom fans? The master bath is in the middle of the house and doesn't even have a window for venting, or light, so what's going on?

It did occur to me to try to Google blueprint symbols. Ever tried that? I get a whole page of little rectangles, each representing some set of symbols, blueprint or not because why should Google get fussy now about what it sends. Each little rectangle is a chart, just big enough that if you pick the correct one out of 36 or however many charts fit on your page, and hold the page half an inch from your eyeballs, they are even blurrier than the emailed blueprint we've already been going over. Click on one and it's the wrong one. Click on another and that is too. Or at least I think it is, because I still can't find any of the symbols I'm looking for.

Even when I can read the blueprints we got, and can clearly see "opt wsh" and "opt dry" in the utility room inside the back door, so I know this is where laundry will occur, but does the completed home come in with the plumbing and special wiring installed without ordering? They do say "optional".  Do we get their appliances? Or do we add our own? I'm actually hoping for the latter, like the toilets. I prefer a few simple choices in type of cycle, temperature of water, size of load. I've seen dials with 18 choices! Holy shit, when did laundry get that complicated????? It gets dirty and smelly, water and soap get it ready for a warm tumble. Done. 

I prefer my fridge/freezer to be a side-by-side instead of top/bottom type, and cold water from the door is great. But I'm still fussy after fighting with the one here for ten years. It has an ice maker built in the freezer which sends them out the door when you push the right lever. That is, until about the second or third batch of ice has been made. Then the excess water spraying all around inside coats everything and jams it up. Our plumber couldn't understand it. After all, the water pressure here is only 60 PSI. Pulling the unit away from the wall, he declared it had a reducer in the line and there was nothing more to do. So there is a lot of wasted space inside with the ice maker turned permanently off, in addition to more shelf space being wasted for ice cube trays. After all, we do still like our ice! So I want to choose the right machine! 

Actually, all of them! Whoever buys this house gets the washer, dryer, fridge/freezer, dishwasher, gas stove, wall oven, wonderful ceiling fans everywhere, roof AC/furnace  and solar panels. Don't let me forget the gas fireplace. We've never used it, and it needs a cleaning before we can turn it on.

We're toying with the idea of leaving the TV and stand behind. It's time for a new one of those, right? This one gives great TV but doesn't hook up to another dozen machines. It's going to be hard to pack anyway. On the way down here we still had its original box. We "didn't need it" after that. It's unwieldy at its best. It's already going to be hard enough getting a proper box to fit Steve's taxidermied walleye so the fins don't break. No, leaving that in AZ is not an option!

As Promised, I Got Louder

You may have read about my frustration with Walmart. I tried to be patient with them for about a week longer. Or perhaps by then I was so pissed off with them I wanted even more excuse to be pissed off with them. Does it matter? They still had about $50 of my money while I had nothing to show for it, over two weeks in.

After another week, I went to the local store's customer service counter. I figured I better hit them before the X-mas returns season kicks in. I don't really enjoy hiking in from the far corner of their parking lot, or even having to find parking in somebody else's parking lot across the street. It's a truly nasty time to try to get their attention. So I went a bit after supper. The crowds were just a bit above normal. Better yet, I was next in line to talk to an actual human, an English speaking, helpful, human.

They couldn't help me. At least, not directly. However, they called over whoever on the floor was the big-wig-of-the-day for their department. Over the phone system I plainly heard him complain, "Do you really need me to come way up front to the counter?"

Yes.

We did. Their rules, after all. The guy calling him didn't have the authority to help. Today, only he did.

He was only 5 minutes away from the customer service counter. I hadn't realized the store was large enough for it to take a reasonably healthy young man to take that long traversing it. I do freely admit he may possibly have been doing something in a dark recess that involved other preparations before he could emerge into the public eye again. Maybe wash his hands too. I didn't choose to ask however. I was busy gathering all the details in my head in order again, trying to be sure I had dates right, order prices correct or reasonably so, and knew which delivery was which, or rather, how many cases failed to arrive each time they were ordered.

Young Mr. Bigwig looked me up in a special computer which handles internet orders. He couldn't find either of my orders. Now had he been a jerk, he might have challenged my truthfulness and sent me packing. Instead he wrote down an 800 number for me to call to straighten it out after I got home. (I've kept that number, by the way.) His department still couldn't have given me either refund anyway, so I guess his special authority was for passing along the magic 800 number. The folks on the other end of the phone call could give the refund,  provided we could actually understand each other. These were not calls to anywhere in the good ol'  Yoo Ess of A. So it takes my ear a minute or two to catch up to what is getting said.

First there was Charles. (Righhhht, sure, "Charles".) OK, call yourself whatever you want to if you can help.

Thanks to coaching from young Mr. BigWig for the day, I knew to have looked up my orders and get the bazillion-digit order numbers - both of them of course - before I started my call. "Charles" quickly located them, listened to me tell him which pieces of each order had not arrived, and was talking about sending a refund to my credit card, when my phone died. Yep, out of juice. Forgot to charge the dang thing. It takes about ten minutes after it dies and I start charging again for it to be able to connect a call.

Hmm, must be something to eat around here, eh? Yogurt looks good. Took the right amount of time as well. The phone worked again so long as it stayed plugged in, so I called back.

This time I got Emanuel.

I apologized for seeming to hang up on Charles, but explained what happened. He claimed he understood. Not necessarily doubting him, just thinking at the time he's well trained to try to establish rapport with likely 99 angry customers daily. Back to business then. I knew what order numbers to give him, hoped Charles hadn't gotten far enough into fixing my problem that it'd look like I was trying to double-dip my refunds, and proceeded with getting my money back ASAP. Apparently Charles had done nothing that actually stuck in their system. We just hadn't gotten that far. So Emanuel took over, explaining the refunds, and that usually each went through in a week's time. But since I'd already been out of pocket for significantly longer than that, he was going to push them through. In this case, "ASAP"  turned out to meaning 4 days. They showed up as credits on my card before I went to bed last night.

I still would rather have gotten Steve's Brisk Ice Tea instead, though. Apparently that's not an option. Considering what I went through to try to get  seven 24-packs of cans delivered, getting only two plus a ton of excuses, perhaps that's a wise choice on their part.

Steve is already shopping elsewhere for more of his favorite drink. It doesn't come to us for free like it would on a Walmart order over $35. But we do actually get it when we leave the house.

Now, Just A Habit

Heather Too is gone, re-homed if you will. I sent out a plea and got an answer, had a meet-and-greet with the potential new owner and her other little dog in a park for over an hour and a half, and left satisfied that she will be well cared for and her idiosyncrasies tolerated.  Though it's been a week now, I am also convinced she will still be waiting for me to come through the door, for a while at least. But she will adjust well, as she did for us. The new owner had the information needed in the plea I put out online, and best, both she and her husband love lap dogs, and even invite them into their bed at night. She will be warm in every way.

We also miss her, and yet don't. My allergy symptoms are subsiding, and I'm comfortable most days at half the medication dose I'd increased mine to when I needed to try to compensate for her presence. I will start trying to decrease it more to "at need" instead of "daily routine" and see how that goes. I do have other allergies after all. 

We're both glad she's in a home instead of at the county shelter. Driving home from the club just this morning the radio informed its listeners that the shelter currently has 600 dogs in it! I've toured it and I have no idea where they keep them all! Usually their load drops just before Christmas as dogs tend to be high on the gift list. It hasn't happened this year. I would be heartbroken if my allergies resulted in her being there.

As I look around, many things are missing. They left out the door with her, including her kennel and its fuzzy blanket, her dishes, food, treats, the folder with paperwork from vets, her flea control, sweater, leashes with poo bags attached, and whatever else was in there that I can't recall. The hallway no longer is accumulating black clumps of her hair, nor are any other floor sections, though the hall is where they really stood out because they drift toward the walls and you see them on both sides as you pass. More places still need sweeping but I just found where I left the broom and dustpan last time I used it but didn't put it away. (I had intended to keep working, but....)

So now what's left of her is the habits we formed around her. Coming in the door we look for her greeting, check to see she hasn't run out while we bring in groceries. She's not on the top of the sofa looking out the window as we pass by either direction. When we sit down there is no dog waiting to be invited into that newly formed lap where we can keep each other warm, though habit demands we look for her each time, before reaching for a small blanket. It is winter after all, even though our coldest nights so far are in the 40s. 

She isn't in her kennel over by Steve's desk, though we still look for her there, black fur hiding in shadow, nor in her favorite corner of the sofa either. When we stand up and start to move around the house there is no tripping hazard to be watched out for, though we still watch, especially Steve. And I catch myself sometimes not calling out "bedtime" to signal it's time for her to head for my bed and under the covers. Coming out of the shower she's not laying across my pile of clean clothes laid out on the bed, but I still notice.

I catch myself almost reminding Steve that his plate with crumbs on it sitting next to his chair needs to be put out of her reach, remembering it no longer matters. She's not there to sneak whatever off it when backs are turned, sometimes dragging the (paper) plate off into her kennel to hide with her blanket. I no longer have to pick the kennel up and shake everything out since I can't get down on my knees and reach back inside to clean it out.

There are already days when I realize I haven't gone out into the back yard for over 24 hours because I no longer need to, though I have plans once I finish this for a final popper-scooper patrol. I wonder how many rabbits will now be out there nibbling dropped leaves, and whether it will be any different without her popping out since they never really minded her anyway until she came within about three feet of where they were. They were safe before. Are they safer now? Do they still keep an eye out for her wanderings like we still do?

The habits revolving around her are slowly dropping off, getting more infrequent through the day, just not quite gone. We only realize it as we realize something didn't happen, wasn't needed. There is almost a physical absence we still notice. It won't be too much longer until she's really gone, and like other dogs in our lives, just a memory, a tiny smile as we flip through pictures and there one is again, now enough of them that we sometimes have to ask, "What was that one's name again?" I fight the thought that it'll happen with her. Will it be because we share my name? Did she dig her way into our hearts more firmly than some of the others? Or is everything still just too recent, the pain reinforced by the knowledge that there won't be another one because my body finally rebelled and cried, "No more," another ending in an increasing list of endings as our awareness of our own mortality looms out on the horizon.

Timing Is Still Everything

Last weekend I had an opportunity to be helpful to somebody who needed it. As the title suggests, timing was everything.

First I had to pull up at a stop sign at the right moment. I noticed the slowly oncoming cars were over a block away still, so I made my turn. I was just far enough away from the problem that I had time to see it, react, and pull my car over with my flashers on to notify oncoming traffic there was an issue. They really needed to stop, and I quickly crossed the street with my hand out in the "stop" position so they didn't make matters worse.

The street in question is a boulevard along the south side of our local recreation center, my ultimate destination. The center of the boulevard is an overflow parking lot, separating parked cars from traffic by rows of concrete bumpers. An elderly woman was sprawled on the traffic side of one of them, apparently having tripped on it as she tried to cross the street. Her several bags were scattered out around her, and, still sprawled, she was vainly attempting to gather them up closer to her. She was unable to stand up.

Part of my good timing is that I knew exactly what kind of difficulty she was in. The next person along may not have had knees so incapacitated that they couldn't roll over on to them and get themselves up from that position. Never mind the complication that she was sitting on one of her legs crossed under her. No leverage whatsoever, just the hope of surviving her dilemma without any (further?) injuries.

The first person on the scene, aka me, has been there. I've also been present when Steve has had his own version of the same problem, getting up from what has become an impossible position. So I know how to get out of it. I am also way too familiar with the ways "helpful" people try to fix that kind of situation which only cause more pain and embarrassment, so I know how not to get out of it. (Lucky me.)

I wouldn't be able to do it by myself. I waved down a passing pedestrian, while another driver coming the other way pulled into the parking lot and up to us to add his muscles to the task. We had to get her up off her bent leg first, and semi erect. From there we could assess her situation better, find out if she needed medical help. The other motorist and I each grabbed an arm, one hand under her elbow, the other under her shoulder. The pedestrian put his hands from behind on the sides of her ribs just under her arms. Together we lifted her to sitting on the concrete bumper she'd tripped over, both legs now forward. We gathered her bags while we all caught our breath, and I waved the waiting cars past.

Now came the questions. Did anything hurt? Could she move? Did she think she could stand? She was strongly affirmative in answering all our questions, so we were ready for the next step. Taking our same positions, we lifted her to her feet and made sure she was stable. We weren't ready to leave her quite yet. While still offering support, and making sure she again had her bags, we had her take her first steps. 

Thanking us, she insisted she was fine. Yes, the same kind of hesitant one is at her age and presumed normal level of frailty. But nothing hurt, and after waving on the next group of waiting traffic, we all went our separate ways. She finished crossing the street towards the rec center once cars cleared, and I returned to my car, shut off the flashers, and turned into the rec center parking lot by the door where I'd been heading. She'd gotten off the sidewalk by then and was walking in the same place I was driving, so I rolled down my window and asked one last time, now that she'd gone about a hundred feet, if she was still OK or needed any more help.

Since she still maintained she was OK, thanking me again for the assistance, and was showing no signs of pain , upset, or weakness, I parked and got out of my car. A quick glance further up the parking lot showed she'd already disappeared.

Pity The Poor Garbage Men

And they are men, young and strong, with good muscles. Those are all good things, because Monday morning they will have about 80 pounds of trash to haul away. If we add in the two large boxes of dead spiny agave from the back yard where the last big blue round ball of it died over the summer, making the total weight somewhere between 90 and a hundred. I know this because I've been sorting, packing and hauling the segments of it out to the curb. Because there hasn't been enough other stuff to do. Or something.

The lightest parts are ordinary garbage, living room, bathroom, and kitchen wastebaskets, one plastic grocery bag at a time with the handles knotted to keep it in place, fitted down in the can that Sun City residents have buried in the ground, with a lid that either lifts up or off, depending on whether one is just adding something to sit until it's picked up, or doing the actual pickup, which involves removing the full metal lid and lifting the whole can up and dumping contents into the huge plastic one on wheels. Every time that one gets full, it's rolled over to the back of the truck, lifted and tipped into the back, then rolled to the next yard, and so forth. 

Additional bags of refuse are set outside on the ground, one main reason to keep the food down under the ground where stray dogs, mostly of the coyote variety, can't shred the bags and strew crap all over. So the large bags will have yard waste and such in them. At least, so long is they don't have thorns poking through.  Those need tougher containers, like boxes. Like the two of those we'll also have out in the morning. 

But we have much more this time than just that. About 2/3 of the weight will be all the non-recyclable remnants of having gone through the decades of photos which have accumulated in the family. I've been working on sorting through that, three full cabinets' worth, for a couple weeks now. 

Frankly, I ache!

It's not just the weight, of which there is plenty, and has filled more than tomorrow's haul. It's all the reaching, pulling out, lifting, turning of pages, pulling individual photos out of plastic sleeves or off papers they were semi-stuck to or even fully stuck to, setting keepers in this stack, trash in the next bag, recyclables in a third location, and a whole lot of miscellaneous stuff in other locations. Reorganize, package up and throw, stack and replace, haul back to a chair to do the above with your feet up, take stuff back to cabinets and start on the next stack. 

I'm amazed at all the other things included. Somehow a few fossils got thrown in, and some idiot (ahem) thought a good spot for the seashell which fell off a nightlight my parents made as a hobby decades ago, leaving rock hard yellowing lumps of glue behind, would be in the same bag as several larger of the fossils. Because, why not? I had managed to forget these cabinets are where I kept the plaster-of-Paris hand and foot casts of the little ones back when those imprints were two to three inches across. Each single one is still encased in functional pink bubblewrap, after all these years, but otherwise unboxed. That will be fixed. Boxed puzzles made it into the cabinets, totally forgotten.

There are  something like 6 times the empty picture frames in the cabinets as filled ones, and nearly all the filled ones have identical photos in other frames in another box right now where they have just been removed from the walls in various room for packing up to take north. Any given favorite baby picture of my kids had at least two other framed versions and a handful of multiple sizes of identical ones unframed. Steve doesn't have quite the same numbers of framed photos of his kids, but he has them, along with several of himself while he was growing up, along with, now, photos of the two of us. These are just the photos. We haven't started on the artwork on all the walls yet. But even among the framed photos are surprises, like one of my mom's parents I never knew I had, or one of her sister, likewise. I'll have to ask a cousin if she wants either originals or digital files of any of those, but not until perhaps a year from now when we're settled in and looking for something to do. 

I am convinced every relative we ever sent baby pictures to, some time before dying when they went through a very similar process, found their files of my photos and just knew I needed them all back. If my count is correct, I actually needed about 20 of the photos, mostly grandparents and uncles and aunts. My descendants will know what their ancestors looked like, or at least some of them.

Most of the picked-through albums are disasters, totally unusable. Those are also full of pages of thoroughly stuck-on pictures, binders more of oddball spiral varieties rather than 3-ring ones. Those are curbside in large numbers.

Am I done yet? Are you kidding? There are three rows of stacks of computer discs with who knows what on them. This already old laptop has no slot for CDs any more. I still have an old one which functions and does have the slot, so it will definitely be heading north. Again, some year when total boredom sets in, they'll be gone through. Somewhere in those are also some old cases of video camera tapes, the little mini ones about 2 x 2.5 inches across. A few are actually labeled. Unfortunately, they need the camcorder to play them and then the right amount and types of cables hooking up to the right other tech in order to read them. Let's start with the fact that I had two types of camcorders which used the same tapes, and - guess what? - one got broken and the other was stolen over a year ago in the break-in. Imagine the odds of them ever being viewed.

Then there's a whole boxful - once it gets into a box - of written or writing paper of various sorts. Start with postcards, collected on nearly every trip ever taken in case the hundreds of photos weren't as good. Because of course not. I've just gone through all those from years back, so trust me! Then stacks of all kind of Christmas cards. Know how long it's been since I gave up other people's ideas of holiday cards and sent out my own photos and greetings? Amazingly most of those were in there as well, including some cards I remember fairly well (always better than the actual cards were, of course) but thought long since lost. I always order extra cards when I make them. I believe I have enough old ones to send something out to the entire list. But I won't. Only one of those has me scratching my head wondering what in hell was I thinking when I chose that particular photo? So it's a flower, and it has red and green: big deal! What the heck kind of flower is it, anyway? The tree frog in the wren house was a delightful surprise because I've been hunting for that one in all the wrong places for a dozen years now. The whales one as well.

Among the cards are all kinds of pads of cute stationery. Some comes with envelopes, most not. There are some large, exquisite art cards I bought in Alaska, each of which could be sent out with a message to somebody or framed. Of course I have plenty of frames, I now know. But wall space? I could consider using the old stamps tucked in with them. They aren't "forever" stamps, instead having a price of $.37 each. Not sure what Forevers cost now, but I presume doubling the stamps would do for an ordinary card. Or I could just save them, thinking they   will someday be as surprising to the finder as the old $.03 stampI found on a very old letter - say early 50's - was to me. I still clearly recall Mom at the Nevis P.O. complaining how the price of stamps had gone up so high!!!

I found some old newsletters from FRL proving I was on their board back when, in case I need evidence. You know, like to go with a resume when I apply for my next... oh, nevermind. Someday my heirs will go through them and wonder what they are and fill more garbage bags than I've got out right now waiting to be picked up in the morning. Those, and the actual stack of old resumes I also found will be as relevant then as the paper they're written on, in case somebody needs to start a bonfire somewhere. I'm just not ready to toss them yet. It's kind of nice to read them and think I was once somebody, had a history, developed skills, showed up, meant something to others. Just like I keep the old autobiography my dad's mom wrote before she married my grandfather. She was once more than an old woman who stayed in our house for a few months when we lived up in Park Rapids, and made me promise to her that I would never start smoking cigarettes, shortly before my 4-pack-a-day father had his first heart attack and had to stop smoking cold turkey.

Did I mention I ache? Time for some ibuprofin... and supper.

Walmart's Failure To Deliver... Squared

Steve loves Brisk. I can't see why, but it's his taste preference, his to choose. It's been on sale here and there lately. It's just been a problem getting it.

First was Fry's. Steve ordered a bunch of 2 liter bottles for us to pick up from the store. The ad price did not give a limit. But you had to buy 5 to get 5 more free! He placed his order, we drove to the store to pick it up. Just a few bottles were available. While a disappointment, they immediately discounted the charge so he only paid for what he got.  No real problem. We could return. The carry-out person informed us of likely days when the trucks came in.

A few days later, in the next store sale cycle, the same offer was published, so we repeated trying to get enough to stock up nicely on. Same low amount of stock available, explained as being high demand, and again, lowered the charge on his order before we drove away. So again, not an actual problem. We still had time to keep trying.

Then I needed to order some things I wasn't finding anywhere else, and decided to use Walmart's online ordering. If you order $35 worth of anything, it can be delivered to your door with no shipping charge. It may take a day or three, but they let you know when you place your order. They also have their drivers snap a photo of the goods outside your door. 

Seems pretty foolproof, doesn't it?

About a week and a half ago now they had a deal on Brisk. Theirs wasn't on the 2 liter bottles that Fry's had, but a case of 24 cans. I ordered three, enough to push our total order price to double the minimum for free delivery. Steve would drink it quickly enough. When I got the email photo of the package outside our front door, it was our door, alright, and a package was sitting there, but it had no Brisk cases with it. Just some plastic hangers and a couple other things. I immediately put in an online complaint, since the order claimed to have been completed. The slow reply was that I'd get a refund, even though I requested getting the three cases of Brisk instead. I'd checked online and they were still listed as available and at the sale price. The free delivery is earned on the total price of what you order at one time, not how many tries it takes to bring it to you.

Since they insisted on refund as their solution, I went ahead the next day and placed a second order of Brisk, again, still at the sale price. This time it was for 4 cases, instead of three. I decided since I was getting a refund, supposedly, I could afford to add one more into the order. This time we made sure to be outside when the Walmart truck drove up. Rich was out front doing some work, and also keeping an eye out with me. 

The side door slid back. The driver rummaged around, put one case next to the door, then a second case by the door, then hopped out.

What? Two cases?

When he reached us I asked if he was going back for our other two. Four at once without a hand cart would be a heavy load, after all. He just looked at me and said he'd only been given two to deliver. He suggested maybe the others were coming from a separate store. They will send from wherever your ordered goods are in stock at the moment. But evening came. No additional driver did. So I wrote another complaint to Walmart, this time a bit more teed-off than the day before. I was given another email reply: sorry, refund.

By this time we'd ordered 7 cases, gotten two, but paid for 7. The Brisk was STILL advertised online and at the lower price. WTF!!!

I've been waiting 11 days now, since this started the 26th. I check my credit card statement twice daily, seeing if anything has come in since. You read my title, right? So you know the answer to that. Tonight I sent them another pair of bad feedback reviews, since they claim those are of value to them. So far they've been of no value to me! It was time to go a little more public.

I'll let you know what - if anything - happens to correct the problem. Meantime Steve went back to Fry's and picked up some more bottles of Brisk there, before their sale ended yesterday. I'd still rather get our order filled instead of a refund, but WallyWorld needs to get off their asses and make good one way or another! I will get louder and LOUDER until they do!

Trust me!

What Do You Mean, No Common Ground?

The chat rooms are all afluster about Liz Cheney appearing on Rachel Maddow last night. The two politically are polar opposites on practically everything, so (the alleged reasoning goes) how could they possibly sit down together amicably and discuss anything? The fact is, they did.

Did you meet with extended family and/or friends over Thanksgiving? If so, was your polar opposite there, freely tossing out opinions all over the place that made you wish it wouldn't be totally rude to get up and wrap your dinner napkin around their mouth for an hour or two? You think you have no common ground?

There are things we all agree on. How about our need to breathe air? Anybody care to argue that one? No?

Let's find more. How about gravity? Hating potholes deep enough to break your car axle? Thinking puppies and babies are cute, especially if you're not the one stuck with caring for them 24/7? Liking a spectacular sunset? Liking a comfortable bed even if your definitions of exactly what that means are different? Hating being sick? 

I could go on and on. You know I can. I usually do. But let's recognize that some things about humans are universal. It won't be politics, or religion, or sports teams, or condiment choices. So start a conversation and find out what those things we can agree on are.

Bitter Tea

 Before you skip to the poem, there are some things to know.

It was written July 31, 1989, during a workshop on Creativity, held in northern Minnesota at a YMCA camp called Camp Northland. At the time I was in a support group called We Care, for people dealing with the myriad issues following losing a loving relationship from separation, divorce, and for a few, being widowed. By this time I had become a group facilitator, and been elected to the management board, Fellowship For Renewed Living, or FRL. While on the board I was mostly a Programs Chair, the head person planning and overseeing workshops, such as the one where this was written. They covered a variety of topics, like sexuality, looking at our childhoods, massage/touch, creativity, and more. All were about personal exploration, healing, and growth. Emphasis was a combination of bringing in professional presenters, and breaking into small groups to look at ourselves and our feelings, the ones we'd all been thoroughly trained to stuff away. Through the United Way, our organization was assisted by the St. Paul YMCA. Primarily that meant we had a professional assistant, and one week a summer, a location to get away to and hold a week-long workshop at, Camp Northland. It is near the edge of the BWCA and abuts  sister Camp du Nord, along Lake Burntside, near Ely.

I've been cleaning and tossing, packing what should go north with us, recycling papers, going through seeming tons of old photos to save what still has some value, both for me and to pass down to younger generations. I might be halfway through the first purge of photos, which will need a second one once I know all that is there and decided how many shots of the same kids doing the same things on the same day are really needed to give them a sense of their history. So many are now red-on-red anyway. Most of the photos I shot of places and things have been duplicated by now with shots years later which are amazingly similar, except perhaps for weather, so I know my eye hasn't changed much. A few will need to be duplicated in e-files. 

Occasional surprises pop up.

This poem is one,  It was in the Creativity Workshop folder, one of several workshop folders hidden between albums, written, filed, and forgotten. It was a moment in time, an exercise to write without self-judgment, without censorship. It is a mood without documented reason, and you should know, a process whereby those things could be written down so they might be looked at for a moment where you could decide what they meant for you. Something in my brain back then said the writing process meant I didn't need to hang on to it any more.

Tea

Come, drink.
Know your cup is bitter tea
While others here sip honey.
For all the years
You’ve cultivated flowers,
Never swatting at the bees
When they buzzed near,
For all the honeycombs
Where you’ve scraped off the wax,
Now watch while others’ fingers
Dip the golden prize.
Your cup is bitter tea
And you will drink it
“Till it chokes you,
While others here sip honey.

A couple more things to remember. Things for me have gotten much better than that moment, whatever forgotten thing prompted it. And I've learned that the outward faces of others often do not reflect their inward truths. Mine was not the only cup of bitter tea that day. Or for that matter, any other day.

The Dog's Version Of The Story

 I need a home.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Heather. When I was adopted my new lady was asked if she wanted to change it. She's a Heather too. The vet she took me to changed mine for us to Heather Too.  It really doesn't matter. I also answer to Girl, Pretty Girl, Good Girl, Good Dog, Sweetie, the sound of my food bag, and kissing noises. I'm easy.

My exact origins are unclear, but at least one of my ancestors was a chihuahua. I’m told I look like one, mostly black with some white here and there. The white around my nose is getting bigger, and I’m starting to get what my lady calls white “chihuahua spectacles” around my eyes. Somebody else claims there’s schipperke in that proverbial woodpile, because there’s a bit of a ruff at the back of my neck and I’m just a little larger than my snooty “pure” peers. I’m not sure what they’re talking about, as I’m generally only 16 pounds when I check in at the vet. The vet says that I’m perfectly sized because I have a nice waistline. And while I’m eleven, whatever that is - 77 in my years? - I’m supposed to have some good ones left.

By the way, what’s a waistline? My lady and the vet just laughed when my lady said she wished she had a nice one too.

My current owners don’t care about my parents, just refer to my breed as a “rescue-huahua”. It’s always said with a smile, so it must be a good thing, right? They found me at the county shelter during the start of the covid outbreak. I’d been having a tough life for a while, but somebody found me running around in Phoenix, hunting for what food I could find, drinking what I could find on the ground or where trees were getting irrigated, grateful to have that much, though I was down to a very svelte 14 pounds when I was adopted, after they’d fed me for a while at the shelter. I was also happy to have so little fur that the hot summer wasn’t totally awful. They put me in isolation for a while and tried to find my former owner. They had a metal thing they held over my neck and said they knew who I belonged to. I don’t know what happened to her but she never answered the phone. I don’t really know what happened to me either to make me lost. But I was truly alone.

Then a new lady walked in, and my keepers took me to a room where we could get acquainted. She smelled like she needed a dog like me, so I went over and offered my ears to get scratched. I can tell a lot about people that way. Soon I was in her lap, then in a portable kennel for a ride across the city to my new home.

There are three welcoming laps in this home, all on people who know where I like to be scratched and where I just want to be rubbed. Everyone knows how much I love laps. When somebody with a new lap comes in the room, my tail starts wagging really hard. Maybe I can get an invitation to that lap as well! 

My new lady takes me to the groomer, which I don’t like, but my toenails are much more comfortable when it’s time to leave and she’s always there after with a treat. (Shhh, don’t tell those other dogs. They’ll get jealous. They even have to get baths and haircuts!)

It took me about two weeks to learn there would be water in a nice clean bowl inside and I didn’t have to hunt for where people water trees. There’s a nice fenced yard to explore, which had plenty of shade and several rabbits which seemed to know from the day I arrived that they could ignore me, at least until I get within two feet of them. That’s closer than the birds let me get, but I don’t really care. People are the best friends anyway. I always keep an eye on whichever of my people is out there with me.  They say they’re keeping me safe from coyotes. Silly people, there’s a big tall fence out there! I know they’re just keeping me from being lonely and remembering the bad times. For some reason they always tell me I’m a good girl for doing what I went out there to do anyway. Sometimes I can’t figure them out. But I’m just pleased they’re happy.

On the couch with my minty dental bone

My lady takes care of feeding me. I get breakfast and supper when she does, just different food. She calls it kibble. Funny name! But breakfast is served with a couple little pieces of freeze dried liver on top, once she learned it made toenails stop splitting like mine did when we met, and grow in strong. Supper has a minty dental chew on top, and I love that so much I grab it and go run to the corner of the couch where I gobble it up. No mess left, I promise! I eat every single crumb. After that the handful of  kibble isn’t such a treat, but I faithfully come back and thank my lady by eating every crumb of that too. Just as soon as she tells me to go eat it. I try to be polite, though it’s hard to wait with the treats. She has learned to put shoes on before feeding me because sometimes I get so excited I accidentally jump on her feet. I know the sound of those containers opening from all across the room!

I do have a carry kennel with a soft fuzzy blanket inside and a door to keep me safe, but I seldom use it. Laps are so much nicer! Even bedtime means I get to sleep with my lady in her big bed. She makes sure I hear the word “bedtime” before she heads down the hall so I know it’s not just to that other place she calls a bathroom. (She thinks she doesn’t need me there, but I usually check it out anyway.) Sometimes she forgets to lift up the blankets from the bed for me but I know where to squeeze between them and the sheet to wiggle into the place  where she bends her knees. But I know my duty once I snuggle her to sleep, and make sure when she wakes in the morning that I’m perched down at the corner of the bed, guarding the door to the hall, making sure nobody sneaks in without permission. I’d never bite them of course, but I’d make sure my lady is awake if somebody strange comes. I do that at the front door too, when some person we don’t know comes. If it’s somebody with a bunch of tools, I usually get to go sleep in my kennel then, but - shhhh, don’t tell - I don’t sleep until they’ve gone. After that I get a spot in my favorite lap anyway.

I used to be pretty scared when I first got here and my lady had to leave. I knew what it meant when she told me to be good, but it took a while to learn what “I’ll be back” meant. The couch is right next to the big front window and I could watch her leave. I could also hear her car and watch her return. Eventually I quit watching for her, especially when anybody else’s lap beckoned. I still remember those bad days, though, and if she’s been gone for a day or too, usually returning smelling of medicines and other stinky things, I am sure to let her know I missed her because I cry when she comes back in the door. Again, I do my best to be polite, and wait until she is back in her chair and invites me up into her lap before I jump up. If I’m really not sure, it takes her patting her lap and making kissy sounds, saying “up” a couple times, before I jump. The second her laptop comes out, though, I know there’s no room for both of us and jump down again. There’s usually another warm blanket sitting somewhere for me. It might even be on somebody else’s lap, the best of all combinations.

Sometimes I’m the one who gets to leave for a ride in the car. I love the back seat. It always has a very old blanket on it with interesting smells, one of which smells a lot like one of my people, only like a kid instead of a grown-up. It’s a very old smell now but my nose is very good. When we go on long trips to a place that’s colder, I get to get out on a leash and smell lots of other dogs who like to get out and do exactly what I like to get out and do. I don’t get to meet them too often because our people have leashes to keep us apart. I could tell them the other dogs mostly are friendly, but I don’t think it would matter. Anyway, I’m mostly glad since there was one dog that really scared me. When I told my lady she picked me up and we went away from him.

Me outside a doggie door in that cold place

Sometimes that colder place we visit in summer scares me too. They have noisy thunderstorms there which I almost never hear here. They also have a thing my lady calls “Fourth of July”. Everybody makes lots of loud booming noises for long times. My lady says it’s supposed to last only one night, but everybody seems to make them boom for weeks. They also have something called grass with something else called dew on it. It’s really cold, and tickles. I hate it on my bare tummy. They make me go outside on a leash when it’s dew or rain, but they have to catch me first! It would be a fun game but they always win. When is it my turn?

My lady has been sad lately. I can’t figure out why, but there’s a new word I’m hearing. “Allergies.” It’s something about how they’re kicking up again after many long years. I don’t know what they are, and I never see anything kick her or I’d be sure to protect her. I’m still getting lap time and pets and scratches in all the right places, even sleeping in her bed, but she’s sadder. And she’s started scratching herself, even though she won’t let me do it for her the way she does it for me. I think she’s caught a cold too, because her nose has been running a lot. At least she calls it “running”, though again, I never see that happening. Where would it run to without her? Mine never leaves. How can hers? She says it’s different, and worse than before, and she looks sadly at me when she says that. Is there something wrong with me? Am I sick? Do I have to go to the vet?

Uh-oh. I was listening to a phone call about me. I hoped I’d find out something wonderful, because usually when my name gets mentioned it’s with lots of love and praise. I pretend I’m asleep so nobody knows what I hear. This time it wasn’t good. They have to get rid of me! Why? I’ve been good. Apparently it’s something about this thing called allergies. My lady is getting sicker, and taking more of the medicine for “allergies” than this doctor thinks she should.  She wanted to send me back to where she got me but they won’t even let her talk to them until next year, whenever that happens. Other places she looked up only seem to want to give away dogs, not take any more in. I think that’s good because I can stay longer, but if that means she gets sicker because I’m here, isn’t that bad? I don’t want to go and I know she doesn’t really want me to go, so what do we do? So I thought I’d send this out to you. Maybe you can help us both? I know she loves to drive and she’d be happy to bring me some place I’ll find the same kind of laps and scratches as she knows how to give.