Bye Bye Birdie: The Rest Of The Story

Our 'Broken Bird" has flown, if that expression isn't too off the mark for a person missing a leg. It wasn't of her own volition - or should I say it wasn't because she thought there would be actual consequences for her actions Monday night.

I didn't realize it until Tuesday morning taking the dog walking out front, when I passed a pile of collected things at the corner of the yard. It wasn't recycle day, though it is recycle bin location on those days. Dim as it was so early, I had enough visibility to make out a folded walker in the stack. Shea's of course.

Once the dog was done, I went in the back of the house to wake up Rich. He confirmed she'd gone, while fighting waking up so strongly that I decided to let the details wait till later. I  knew he'd been up late in pain from an abscessed tooth. I didn't know why else he was so tired.

Since the last post about her, there have been some changes. Broken Bird has had problems getting the right kind of insulin prescription. It seems, if I have this right, she needs a combination of fast acting and slow release versions. Her doc sent the wrong scrip in, and as a result she spent a day sick to her stomach in the back of the house.  Rich explained that her blood sugar levels were too high, and spent most of a day keeping her hydrated and cleaning up after her. 

The dog got walked elsewhere all that day, apparently as revolted as we would have been by the smell she would have to have passed through on her way to the back yard. While concerned about Shea, we found the dog's reaction somewhat amusing. I guess I won't expect canine company if I ever get the stomach flu.

When  Shea was well, many of her days were spent with a woman friend, sometimes here, sometimes out and about since her friend has a car. Shea's pharmacy transportation and other trips became the friend's responsibility, presumably voluntarily. Her mother also picked her up for a few hours, but returned her. There is apparently some conflict there.

When I woke the morning after Shea was sick, it was in a bit of a panic. I hadn't seen her go through the house to the bathroom the previous day, hadn't heard her at night, as I have done on most others. Were either of the two making sure her blood sugar levels were OK during that time? Might I find I needed to call an ambulance for her after whatever I saw of her when I took the dog through that now clean(er) space? However, she was sitting up and busy on her phone, either texting or surfing. I didn't ask, just let her know I was glad she felt better.

That was Sunday. Tuesday she was gone, her possessions at the sidewalk. I immediately woke up Rich. I hadn't gone out that way with the dog because Rich spent Monday working on the rollers on the patio door and the way was blocked.

Around 10:00 he rose, and came into the living room and talked to both of us. He had kicked her out the previous evening. She had informed him she was going to quit taking the medication which is the equivalent of methadone but for those addicted to fentanyl, keeping the body from withdrawal but denying the high. 

And here I thought just having diabetes was scary enough!

As soon as she finished passing on that information to Rich, she proceeded to start smoking something she called "blues". (More ignorance here: I never knew there was a smokeable form of fentanyl.) Rich immediately kicked her out of the house, then packed up her belongings, meager as they were, and hauled them to the curb. He informed her that this particular location is a traditional location to anybody passing that whatever sits there is available to anybody wishing to claim it, and if she wanted any she needed to pick it up before they did. As he was explaining this to us, he glanced out the window and noted that most of the pile had disappeared. We have no idea with whom, Shea or somebody passing. Her wheelchair is gone with her. The folding walker and a tote of clothing remained, and I went out and pulled both into the carport. They will be donated locally, per Rich's directions of where, presumably in the next day or two, or perhaps Steve will find he needs the folding walker and it will stay. His balance is getting worse these days.

Rich's Broken Bird has chosen to remain even more broken than we knew. We are left wondering how much of what we "knew" was true: the flu? The reasons for getting kicked out of other places? Was it abuse aimed towards her? Or defense against her version of self abuse? Or are they even mutually exclusive? Did the friend become supplier? I do know we all tried to be kind. She seemed appreciative. But we couldn't fix her even temporarily, just kept her safe from the elements and prevented her diabetes from winning this round. We are a little sad, yet a little not, disappointed but not angry. I guess we've seen too much by now to be angry.

Rich is doing his best to deal with his tooth. Our lives go on.

With A Nod To Pat Schroeder

I listened to her obituary in the car this morning. She was a pioneer in a time when women were supposed to have their place, and it wasn't in Congress. A much quoted retort of hers was, "I have a brain and a uterus, and both work!"

I'd have loved to have had a bumper sticker with that one it. I still would, it it didn't need to say, at my age and after all this living, "I had a brain and a uterus, and both used to work."

Sighhhhh.

Thoughts On An Italian Festival

This was a new event to Sun City. The group putting it on has been making these presentations in various places in the larger metro. They coordinated with our rec center offices which coordinated with our craft clubs, asking if we wanted to be vendors for the event. 

The downside? Before anybody got inside the area to buy food, or inside the auditorium to sit and eat that food while watching the stage entertainment and do some possible shopping, they had to buy tickets at $10 a head. Before they got as far as our club's booth, they had to get past a lot of outside vendors and a long line of indoor ones. Once they did we had a limit of 3 6-foot tables to set up on. Several members of the club decided they wanted to do this anyway, one took charge, and I mostly just passed along emails.

I became just another club member for the event, sending a small selection of my pieces in exchange for  6 hours of volunteering over two days. Mine was a sit-down job, taking the tags once a sale was made, attaching them to the card which gets filled out for every store item before going to the treasurer for payment of our commissions, 80% of the sale. The club gets 20%.

I did a special project for the club to sell there. We were encouraged to create things with Italian themes.  I already had earrings made with wire wrapped millefiore beads. Since that theme wasn't required, I also sent other items. In keeping with the theme, however, I discussed with the supply room head pulling out several pieces of glass from the half price sale last month. These were already pre-cut in small sections appropriate for making wind chime pieces, three strings each in each chime either all green, white or red, the colors in the Italian flag and in the order they show on it. With a couple issues and a limited supply of the glass (like red turning orange in the kiln) there was enough to make two chime sets to sell there. Since I didn't pay for any of the supplies, by arrangement the total sale of the items went to the club.

Both sold.

Another member made glass plates with a flag pattern, and both of hers sold there. A third member and one of the organizers for our club has a special style in twisted sterling hearts that all sold out the first day. She got a very nice check. The rest of us generally sold a couple things here and there.

So much for our participation in the festival. I promised to provide thoughts on the event as a whole. I can sum it up, short version, in a single word: LOUD! When you have to yell to be heard, to talk with customers or among yourselves during all the slack times, it makes the time spent there less than wonderful. Ironically the best entertainment was also the quietest, with drums and applause being the loudest things going on.

The first time I watched was a surprise. My Saturday shift started at the beginning of the festival, and while I sat I people watched. There were several youngish men wandering around in costumes that I took to be heraldic uniforms of some sort. Don't ask me - I'm not Italian. They were also carrying square flags in similar patterns on long poles. Instead of looking over any of the wares as they passed they were purposeful, going from here to there in twos or threes. I figured more was to come, some purpose to be revealed. When the drums started up outside, several older men with fancier uniforms entered, followed by our flag carrying crew, moving in a pattern through the clusters of tables and chairs up to the cleared central open floor in front of the stage. That's when the entertainment began, twirling the flags in grand swoops, tossing them high and catching them, tossing them to another who tossed theirs back. I never saw a flag drop. The highlight was when they started making towers of men (and at least one woman I finally saw), standing on the head of another while twirling their flags in new patterns, and finally a tower of three tall. The applause punctuating various high points was very well deserved.

The rest of the entertainment was the LOUD! part, music at full volume. A lot of the songs were familiar even to me. There were sets designed for dancing and the floor was occupied, once a very skilled dancing couple broke the ice. The three go-go-girls up on the stage shaking their tinsel tiered dresses looked silly but very familiar as something from my very early adulthood. Other long sets of music were just instrumentals, including a solo accordian,  with a couple selections with a trio of tenors singing one of the most famous arias from an opera I couldn't name but have heard often on AGT  competitions. It's a favorite of Steve's as well.

The irony is that when the MC got the mic, he couldn't be heard. I could see him talking, caught soft snippets of sound occasionally, but sincerely hope he wasn't telling the crowd anything important. Should he ever have to clear out the crowd in a hypothetical emergency, nobody would know.

I didn't try any of the food. Prices were a bit high for my budget, but several club members bought pizza from a nonstop open air grill/oven, and others a dessert that wasn't called gelato but looked like it. All of them encouraged the rest of us to go try some. Even if I'd wanted some, the pizza line kept a couple of our members away from the table for over a half hour each. Besides, there'd be plenty of pizza at the club volunteer recognition party on Monday.

I heard today that Facebook was full of comments on the festival. The one getting the most reaction in the club was from somebody complaining that the antique cars weren't there. They came for the cars. Where were the cars? Now I don't follow these things, but we all chuckled when one of our members informed us that the car show was last weekend.

In A City Of Volunteers...

Sun City prides itself on its volunteers, to the extent it's our nickname. You've heard me talk about my time spent in the club, which depends on volunteers as well. If it didn't we wouldn't survive a week. Next week we have our last membership meeting before our snowbirds scatter, with pot luck and a pizza party which we are throwing to honor our volunteers. Being current President I get to (have to) set the agenda for these meetings, and they open with timely comments.  For example, when we came back from our months long closure from covid, there was a long moment of remembrance for all those lost to us from whatever reasons. October is often welcoming old friends back. November tends to be acknowledging those who served in their country's military, not just ours because we come from three different ones to spend warm winters here. February was remembering loved ones, here or not, and thinking about that special smile or other favorite memories.

In thinking about Monday, I'm planning on having everybody give a show of hands if they have volunteered for this club in various ways. We all think of monitoring, since that is a requirement. It's a position as both greeter and periodically wandering around making sure equipment is being used safely. If no monitor signed up, everybody leaves. Period. That call out usually brings somebody to volunteer to monitor for a couple hours to keep the club open. But we have also closed the doors.

There are a lot of other ways we volunteer, and I started a list. By the time I get through it Monday I bet there will be more than a few sore arms from going up and down, up and down.  FYI I did decide against having people stand for each one they've done. I'm not the only one who hasn't been or no longer is in a position to be bouncing in and out of their chair. I'll ask them to raise their hands if they have ever:

-been a club officer
-monitored
-served on the jewelry selection committee
-taught a formal class or workshop
-showed another person how to do something they didn’t know
-told another where to find something either in the club or from a different supplier
-greeted somebody walking in the door and made them feel welcome and at home here
-showed a prospective member around the club so they can see what all we do here
-worked at a festival in any capacity
-worked in the jewelry store
-worked in the supply room
-cleaned up somebody else’s mess
-repaired club equipment
-shopped for club supplies
-bought something another club member made, encouraging them to keep going
-donated anything to the club, money or something else
-administrative duties like membership, tracking volunteer hours
-preparing flyers or business cards, sending notices to the papers,  
-made signs,
-organized the calendar board for the next month
-worked to make or improve club forms or bylaws
-reorganized club space
-mixed chemicals like pickle or saw lube when they were needed
-given a ride to another club member, either to/from club or elsewhere when they needed it
-planned or set up for a meeting, event or party, cleaned afterwards
-made something that sold in the store, bringing in funds to the club
-helped design this club space before it was built
-built something for use in the club

Once you start thinking about how we help out, the list doesn't seem to stop. It will be longer by Monday's meeting. Most of it we don't get credit for volunteer hours from doing, but it all gets done and keeps us going. When enough of us chip in, we don't get burned out. Combined, it makes the club feel like a family, the very best kind.

A Little Weather Report

 Weather has been in the news now for weeks. If it isn't politics, or shootings, it's weather. Most often weather leads in the headlines. I thought I'd send you a little report, as of noon, MST.

Shafer, MN today: Wind out of the north at...  (checks again) ... zero mph.  (So how can they tell it's from the north?) High today, 34. Current temperature, 35.

Sun City, AZ today: wind out of the east at 3 mph. High today, 78. Current temperature 80, but to be fair, it only feels like 79.

Bemidji, MN today: wind out of the north at 1 mph. High today, 34. Current temperature 35.

Draw your own conclusions.

"Broken Bird"

Her name is Shea. For a couple weeks now she has been living with us.

Rich tends to have what I refer to as a "broken bird syndrome".  These aren't literal winged creatures, rather the two footed kind. Or in this case, one. Rich befriends and helps people who need it, to the best of his ability. All too often it backfires on him. His "friends" haven't tended to let his kindness stop them from stealing his things, or damaging the house, though to be fair, many times the ones doing the damage have been those connected to his "broken birds" and are the reason these "birds" have been or remain broken. These "birds" can be male or female, including one homeless gentleman named Paul who likes occasionally to trade a little work for either cash or a piece of jewelry which he hopes will gain him the favors of a female companion. A lot of weeds have gotten pulled in his cause.

Rich's last serious relationship, back in Minnesota, was with a woman who left an abusive marriage, and theirs wasn't a very good relationship because she hadn't learned how to trust - or better said, how to know whom to trust - so she couldn't commit to this one. It was on again, off again, up until Rich finally left and came south. She died from melanoma a year or so back.

Even some of those relationships limited to basic kindness and friendship haven't done well, with many of those people unable to abandon abusers or being abused by those unwilling to let them go in the slightest ways, including a few minutes of friendly conversation. A notable one I won't name was the kind of friend whom he just talked to casually, but offering support. The abuser was also a pimp, it turned out, and the abuse heaped on her finally contributed to ending her life about a year ago. With her death, her abuser's attention to our family abated, thank goodness, but I still haven't quit wondering if he's behind other things like the periodic presence at night of a drone in our patio or carport caught on cameras. (Security systems can be both great and their information unsettling.)

Rich travels these days via a bicycle, often toting a trailer behind it which he built out of scrap pieces and rescued wheels / tires. The latest iteration (he keeps improving them)  is strong enough to haul another person behind his bike, provided they are not too heavy. It was on one of his outings with that when he passed by Shea. She'd been abandoned by the person who'd dropped her off and promised to pick her back up  later. They never returned. She was also without her wheelchair, any extra clothing, and any personal items or supply of food from where she'd been staying. She was simply stuck. Rich couldn't just pass her by without doing something.

The wheelchair was necessary because the piece of trash she'd been in her last relationship with had kicked her out of a moving car during some kind of argument, then driven over her. Before you ask, she hasn't gotten up what it takes to overcome her fears and tell the police exactly who he was. It wasn't his only abuse of her. It did, however, cost her a leg. The short thigh stump has healed in the meantime, and she's almost ready for the next step, putting some kind of a constricting "sock" over the stump to start squeezing out excess fluid to shrink it before fitting a prosthetic leg, one that will transfer her weight to be supported by her hip, not the bottom of her stump.

For the last couple weeks she has been sharing space - very cluttered space, because Richard - in our house. She's warm, safe, fed. I've driven her to where her clothing and personal effects, few as they are, were being stored, with Rich along to give help getting her in/out of the car and supported by a walker, which was the very first thing we did for her, a small purchase from the local thrift shop. It's a nice one, wheels and a seat, and we'll keep it when she doesn't want it any more. Which will be soon. She has a non-wheeled walker, which is more stable for her and easier to get through, say, the bathroom door. She also has a wheelchair, which Rich helped her pick up since it was being stored (by a friend?) a couple miles away. The trip  to get her two small bags of clothes was impossible via bike/trailer, about a 110 mile round trip. I didn't mind getting out and getting the car going for more than a two minute run. It needed it. As a bonus we all got to see snow covering the tall mountains about two ridges out from "the valley". A few of those  atmospheric river dumps on California have lived long enough to bless us as well.

Shea celebrated her 33rd birthday here yesterday. Rich baked her a cake, but we didn't load her down with presents because that would just be more stuff to find a home for in an already very crowded location, and to haul around to wherever her next stopping place will be. We're working on a women's shelter, and I doubt she'll give out that driver's name until she's got long term safe shelter with all the connections to social services she needs, but they are crowded and have waiting lists. She does get food stamps (whatever they are called these days), and a little bit of child support even though the kids for now are with their father, another in a line of abusers. It can't be helped for now. She has a couple of friends who come and pick her up for a few hours here and there, for company, food shopping or food shelf visits, hunting for more clothing, etc. Right now one took her to a medical appointment.

She is quiet, shy, and we almost never know she is here if not for a trip to the bathroom, or having to pass by her on the way to letting the dog out in the back yard. She makes sure to thank us for anything, from hygiene items to a ride, and helps by cleaning the bathroom while sitting, or getting Rich to toss some of his clutter which he, until then, remained convinced would be useful... someday, some way yet unknown.  The space is getting organized and a garage sale is actually planned for this weekend. It should be in the 80s then, and she can sit out in the carport and make change, proffer bags, chat up the customers, though that latter is Rich's forte. Since it's forecast to be in the 80s for almost a week, we hope she can soon enjoy more backyard time comfortably.

But she is still doing a whole lot of recovering, physically and emotionally. She startles easily, an extreme reaction, helping Rich learn he needs to redirect his frustration into anything that doesn't remind her of previous violence. Even snapping his fingers sets her off. Steve and I have come to an accommodation with our unexpected guest and stopped asking Rich regularly just how long she'll be here. Things have been started, like applying for space in a women's shelter. She doesn't bring trouble, and is doing her best to be useful, is providing her own food, is absent when she can be, safely. We are hopeful that by the time she leaves she can begin to trust that not everybody in her life has to be abusive, and she can start down a healthier road.

Pounding Glass

It wasn't how I intended it to go. I'd spent hours awake in bed on multiple nights figuring out how best to use a particular glass. There wasn't a lot of it, but it is exquisite in its blend of red and flashes of rainbow colors, transparent so light will go through and highlight every nuance. The two small pieces I had were not something I could duplicate from some other source, so I had to be careful. 

I finally found a plan. The larger piece was cut into 4 identical rectangles, the smaller one in two, both matching each other but smaller than the first set. The larger ones were to be corner pieces cut our from a white square, all sitting on clear glass and fused. The second process, slumping, would raise each corner up into the light so their colors would show. The two smaller pieces were to be set aside for another idea, somewhere, sometime. I held on to that plan for weeks, waiting for my skills to come up to the precision needs of the cutting required.

Turns out it wasn't my skills needing to improve, at least not that much. The cutting wheels needed new wheels. If you ran them with pressure over the glass and couldn't hear a thing, your glass wasn't getting scored and would just randomly break - the exact opposite of precision. Early this week our supply person replaced the glass cutters. Suddenly it was almost like cutting butter: score, apply the special tool, and snap! Straight line where you wanted your line to go. It was time for the special project

This morning I did my measuring of each smaller piece to fit the cutting plan and piecing together of my pattern. 7 Pieces of glass on top of my very last precut piece of clear in the right COE so they'd fuse. I did some light grinding on a tiny corner, scrubbed the cut pieces so all the markings (like COE so they wouldn't get confused with the wrong kind and shatter)  and fingerprints and even gummy residue from a piece of masking tape were gone. After fitting them on the base piece for a final check, a tiny bit more grinding was needed, scrub, rinse, repeat. 

Then I took them over to the board they'd stay on until tonight when their kiln was free for their fusing cycle. Do I blame the person who called out my name while I was in the process, urgently enough to  distract me from my task? Or just blame myself for not moving it in pieces and reassembling it on the board? Or both perhaps. At any rate, one of the precious corner pieces slid off and shattered on the floor.

Note that the club floor, despite all the arguing at the time the building was constructed, is a solid slab of concrete covered with a very thin coating of one of those semi-plastic multi-colored pour-on finishes, which, being back, tan and orange, is perfectly designed to hide absolutely every single thing that ever drops on to it. Maybe not a large piece of blue, perhaps. It also is as hard as the concrete which supports it. That small piece of glass  became - if I counted correctly - 17 tiny sharp shards of multicolored glass. Emphasis on sharp.

Now we do have a tiny dust pan in the glass room. It's about 4 1/2 " across with a rubber edge that manages to bend out of the way of whatever it is meant to scoop up. It does not have a matching whisk broom  or similar to help scoot said pieces into the tray. Luckily we have a large supply of old toothbrushes next to the sink for cleaning glass which do the job quite well, so long as one is sufficiently intelligent enough to realize that three complete passes over the floor is still going to leave several shards of glass on the floor. At least the stools which are too short to do anything comfortably while sitting on them are just the right height to keep one's butt or knees off the floor to get the clean up accomplished reasonably safely. 

And in this case, recovery. I had a use for all those bits. I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise, but since the glass was already in small pieces....

There is a very expensive product out there for decorating your glass called frit. It usually is very finely broken bits of glass, though it can come is various actual shapes. Colors are anything you want, including dichroic, meaning there is a side which is sparkly  - probably prismatic - and sparkles light all over. When one is (lucky?) enough to come up with a supply of broken glass with no other purpose, but which comes from a source with a known COE so you know where to use it, one is advised to save it. Safely, of course. Most of us already have enough holes from working with glass and don't need more, especially combined with whatever was on the floor and decided to hitchhike to somebody's wannabe work of art by way of a quick sip of blood. Listen, the stuff may be very fussy about how fast it expands/contracts in a kiln. It has absolutely no preferences as to blood type or various kinds of contagions therein.

Anyway, you have two sources of frit. A little jar of it can cost close to $100. Your broken glass shards were already paid for. They just need something better in the way of uniformity. In other words, you have to figure out how to smash it safely. Either source should, once sprinkled over the surface of pre-kiln glass, smoothly get absorbed over the surface of said glass sheet as it bakes. Dichroic frit is a whole different headache which I've already been coping with. But this was ordinary fusible glass, and already was to have been a part of this project.

I needed advice. No, the club doesn't have frit-making supplies, although they are out there. We rely on our members coming up with our own frit. Since my project is scheduled for baking tonight, I needed to come up with a substitute. All my broken pieces for travel home were wrapped up in multiple layers of paper toweling and then inside a zipper baggie. I was advised by our two premier glass workers in the club to get a pair of paper bags and a hammer. A really hard surface was implied.

Let me throw this at you. How would you feel if you went to the food shelf and came away with several empty folded paper bags? Fortunately for the person I took to the food shelf that day, they also did get a typical supply of food, including the nearly dead produce that needed to all be eaten within a few hours or tossed out. I'd suggest making compost but AZ isn't the best place for keeping enough moisture in it to work composting magic. At any rate, I wound up with the empty bags, and never got around to recycling them. They have been sitting tucked between the wall and the dog food all these months. They are very heavy duty bags, and I finally found a use for them.

With Rich's help I got the use of a 2 pound sledge, a comfortably reachable wooden table surface, and a flat low-lipped plastic container sans lid that the glass could sit in while being pounded. I started out with the glass bits in the paper bags but that was ridiculous. And since those two leftover original pieces had gotten mostly repurposed to replacing the one larger piece in the corner, I added the otherwise unbroken but now much much  smaller leftover bit into the smash-me pile. Instead of glass inside the bag, I emptied it, then folded it over into a size that nearly filled the flat bottom of the plastic container. The glass was piled under the bag, keeping nearly every piece from relocating from sledge strikes more than a couple inches from where it had been sitting. A few tiny pieces did pop out from the edges where the bag didn't quite cover, but they'd lost most of their intertia by then, and mostly stayed inside, landing on top of the bag instead of out on the floor or in my face. I had my glasses on anyway. About every eight or nine blows, I'd stop, examine the glass, scrape (carefully) the larger pieces back into a central pile, then feel through the bag  where the now covered pile lay before the next set of whacks. 

A two pound sledge is a damn heavy thing after half an hour!!!! 

Not all the pieces are as tiny as I'd wanted. Largest dimensions are about a quarter inch now. Lots are pepper grain size. It's all random, which is just fine with me. Tonight I'll head back to the club, remove the piece now fusing (in black, white/purple, and a diagonal band through it due to figuring out how to use a very irregular piece) from its kiln to finish cooling, spread the frit from its current home in a small jelly jar onto the white parts of glass and spread around randomly with yet another one of those helpful toothbrushes. (Gotta keep those fingers from getting blood on the project: it's the wrong shade of red!) It'll bake / fuse overnight, while today's fusing piece will get slumped tonight in a second kiln. Saturday morning the first slumped piece comes out, gets replaced by another fused piece to slump, and tomorrow night the last piece goes overnight into the slumping mold. Sunday I bring 3 new square bowls home. 

The stacks are growing. Decisions will get made as to which Steve and I'll keep, and which go out for presents. (Oops: did I spoil the surprise?) Well, since you haven't seen any yet, they'll still be a surprise, right? I'm looking forward to seeing how the one with the flattened marbles turned out. We'll all be surprised by that one. They are supposed to sink into the glass they sit on and leave a round piece of different color, flush with the rest of the top surface. And there's still more glass, more marbles, more ideas, and before I get sick of glass, I'm absolutely positive there'll be more homemade frit. Now that I know how. And why.