Respect, Integrity, and Dignity

This has been a tough week or two for all of us at work. I know I am suffering. I've left my keys and wallet unattended twice this week. I've put my foot in my mouth so often I've becoming used to the taste of shoe leather. Everyone is very sad because one of our coworkers died in a domestic violent tragedy. Media coverage of this event has sharpened the pain and put salt into the wounds. So much is said and written about the victims of domestic abuse. It's true that their loss puts a HUGE hole in the fabric of our society and the ripples from that hole cause us all to flounder. What worries me is that some foolish bully will point to some news article and use it like a scary weapon to further intimidate their partner into staying in an abusive relationship. I wish the media would focus on what the foolish bully has lost. He can't go to work. He can't drive his vehicle. He can't see his daughter - at least for a while. He can't walk around the block or go to his favorite bar. He can't drink alcohol. He can't even breathe fresh air or open a window. I've listed eight things he can't do but the stark fact remains, the victim can't do those things anymore either. The abuser has acted in a foolish, short-sighted and violent manner and has lost much as well. He has lost the respect of the peaceful people in our society. Respect is something we all give each other and it is a huge honor because to loose it you must demonstrate with your behavior that you do not deserve it. The abuser has lost his integrity, another priceless commodity because it is the essence of our souls. He has lost his dignity. Maybe if our society focused more on important things like respect, integrity and dignity, we'd have a more peaceful world in which to live.

Not Giving Up Hope Yet

I'm not giving up hope on my steps yet. I bought a brown sharpie at Michael's Craft store yesterday and tried it on the lowest tread. Things are looking much better. There is still a chance to avoid paint. I'd prefer to avoid paint because paint wears off when you walk on it.

Last week I had two days off. One day was to have fun and the other day was dedicated to household repair (steps, furnace tune up and duct cleaning, etc). One day was bad weather and one day was nice weather. As luck would have it, the nice weather happened on the day dedicated to household repairs. On the fun day I took off on my motorcycle because the weather forecast was for a slight chance of intermittent showers. My goal was for a leisurely ride around Mille Lacs Lake. As soon as I arrived in Ogilvie (50 miles away) the intermittent rain started and did not let up for the next 8 hours. I'd call that steady rain, not intermittent. I turned around in Ogilvie to head home. I looked for a place to wait out the rain but was unable to find anything inviting. I've never driven very far in the rain before. Rain is painful. Rain drops pierce and poke at your skin like little needles until your jeans get soaked, then it doesn't hurt so much. I got very wet. Water funneled down my legs and into my boots. When I tipped my boot down to change gears the water rushed to the toe section of the boot. When I stepped on the brake, the water rushed to the heel section. I've been airing out my boots since Thursday and they are still damp. I had many layers on - a t-shirt, a turtleneck, a fleece sweater, a winter leather jacket and a rain coat over all that and I was freezing! Because of the rain I traveled 10 mph below the speed limit. Driving in soaked clothes at 45 mph is bone chilling cold. My head was dry and my upper body was dry but everything else was soaked. I made it home and was happy to be there. I took off my boots and poured them out. After shutting the garage door, I shook off my socks and jeans and let them drip dry in the garage. I jumped in a hot tub of water and the water turned cold. I must have acted like a human sized ice cube. I was still cold so I cranked my electric mattress pad up to high and jumped into bed. After two hours the feeling returned to my limbs and I was comfortable. Despite all the adversity, I had a great ride. Even miserably wet and cold, riding a motorcycle is lots of fun.

When Home Improvement Goes Awry

Have you ever experienced the frustration of home improvement projects that have gone awry? Welcome to my world. Once upon a time I had a leaky bathtub faucet. I thought I could fix it myself. It's a simple matter of replacing a washer, right? I went in fully prepared. I took a community education plumbing class first. I spend 3 hours learning about faucets and connections. I took a 2 handled faucet apart and put it together again. I took a ball headed faucet apart and put it together again. I even soldered a copper pipe together with a propane torch. I took my new plumbing skills home and set to work. I already had the plumbing wrench. I stood in the tub, removed the faucet cover, and cranked on that baby to loosen it. To increase my leverage, I leaned my formidable backside against the tiled wall. It caved. No, not the faucet, the tile wall. Suddenly the leaky faucet was an insignificant problem. My main problem was a rear end sized hole in the bathroom wall. True, the wall had problems before I leaned against it and in the long run, it was better to get that fixed right away. That brings me to today. Several months ago I had some floors replaced with laminate. I like the laminate. The set of 8 stairs between the laminated sections remained undone. Putting laminate on stairs is difficult, expensive, and ends up looking different because quarter round is needed around every single step. I found out that the tread on the steps was a nice oak wood. My plan was to stain and varnish those steps to match the laminate - a golden oak color. Sounds simple? I removed all the nails and carpet tacks. I sanded those steps to a polish. I counter sunk the nails holding the stairs in place. On Friday, I filled in the nail holes and other slight imperfections with plastic wood filler. Plastic wood filler comes in colors. I chose golden oak to match the stain. I put that plastic wood filler on ever so carefully. Yesterday I stained that stairs. I thought it seemed a little dark and as I left the house, I hoped the stain would lighten up. If not, that would be okay too because the kick board around the stairs is darker. When I got home last night I was appalled at my stairs. The stain color was okay and it went on smoothly but every molecule of plastic wood filler showed in brilliant contrast to the stain. Every nail hole I covered and every imperfection I tried to conceal stood out like stars in a black sky. My stairs looked terrible! Why did I use so much plastic wood filler? Why was I so generous with the stuff? Who cares if there is a slight depression in the wood? Those slight depressions wouldn't even be visible to the eye or the bare toe except now they were because I had filled them with the dreaded plastic wood filler!!! This morning I tried scraping the evil plastic wood filler off with my fingernail, scraper, a screw driver and my sander. I worked on the bottom tread for about an hour. Then I restained it to see how it turned out. Although the stair looks better, the remnants of the plastic wood filler remain plainly visible. I'm off to the home disimprovement store to buy some paint to cover those stairs. It's only stairs, right? How important are they? I think I'll buy a nice dark walnut brown and paint over the wood and the plastic wood filler and the stairs will look good as new.

Eagle

I've seen the eagle nest at the Sherburne Wildlife Refuge a couple times. And I used to watch the nest at the northwest corner of Hanson Blvd. and Hwy. 10 before the trees were taken down, but today I (thanks to the help of a observant sibling) spotted another eagle nest. This one is in the southwest corner of the Hwy. 36 and Hwy. 61 intersection. Keep your eyes open for it but pay attention to your driving too.

Sleep Positions

Mosaic

Here is a small picture of the glass mosaic patio table I made in community education class. We finished them last night. Mine is a sun face in case you can't tell. It was really simple to make. To complete the project I had to break glass into pieces which is lots more fun when you do it on purpose than when you have done it by accident. Has anyone else here accidentally sat on a storm window carelessly laid on a bed? Anyway, after drawing the design on the plywood, I glued yellow and orange little squares and triangles to make the sun and the rays. I glued a border of yellow squares. Then I took a big square of turquoise plate glass (14"x14"), covered it with a towel, put a pair of scissors underneath the glass and the towel, and hit it. Wow, what fun. I love being constructively destructive. I glued the shards of glass into the remaining background space starting with the larger pieces and ending up with tiny slivers. Last night we took black grout and smeared it all over the table. I really ground it into the crevices and empty spots. Then we took terry towels and wiped the excess off. Voila! The table looked so much better with the black grout. We set our tables together to admire them. Five other students made dragon fly designs. The only man in the class made a geometric border with black and white tiles and a small sun face in the middle. His wife drew a loon free hand and surrounded it with this milky blue glass that really looked like clouds reflected on a lake surface. She cut a tiny piece of red glass for the eye. She is giving hers to her father for his birthday. That is one lucky Dad. I'm keeping mine.

Longing for Boring and Normal

I'm out of my comfort zone lately because too many strange things have happened. Today I was walking through the lobby at work when a friend gave me "the eye." This friend and I have sat through many meetings together where she would communicate, with her blue eyes, things such as, "I dare you to laugh," or "Can you believe what he just said?" or "That was a bald-faced lie!" or "I didn't see that one coming." And I am able to read and interpret all those blue eyed looks. I am fluent in her blue eyed silent communication. Today the lobby was crowded with people milling about. Some were buying candles that were for sale; others waiting for the elevator. My friend gave me the eye that said, "Look at that girl." So I did look. This young, Caucasian woman with dark shoulder length hair, dressed casually in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, had a freaking squirrel on her. No leash, no harness, this small gray squirrel was running the length of her arm from neck to fingertips to neck to fingertips. She had her arm extended and her fingers flared while the squirrel nervously ran it's course, tail twitching. My eyes bugged out and I stepped back. I would not have noticed this squirrel if my friend had not given me the eye. People were milling behind me and I couldn't get away as quickly as I wanted to. The squirrel woman was telling people that she could never release this squirrel into the wild again. People were standing there and listening to her. I moved to get away as quickly as I could. I rounded the corner and just about plowed into the building security guard who was going into a room - probably trying to escape the squirrel terror just like me only he was faster. Later I wondered if another security guard would not have hurried into a room to escape but would ask the squirrel lady to take her squirrel OUTSIDE! Pets are not allowed in the Blaine Human Services Building so one would assume wild animals are not welcomed as well. I have a problem with squirrels inside buildings. After watching the disaster in Chevy Chase's Christmas movie where a squirrel ruins the holiday, I freak out at squirrels in the house. Once, almost 10 years ago, I came home from work at the end of a long day. One offspring casually mentions there is a squirrel in the house. "What!" I shout, "Where?" They tell me it's downstairs on the brick of the fireplace or at least that is where it was the last time they saw it. "How long has it been here?" I shout. Turns out the squirrel was in the house when they got home from school, several hours ago. "Wouldn't that be a time you would want to call me at work? Don't you consider this an emergency?" They didn't think it was an emergency. I did. I went downstairs and sure enough, a small red squirrel was perched on the fireplace brick. I wasn't sure what to do. I panicked. I called my mother for advice. She said, "I don't know what to do but you'd better get it out before you go to bed." That wasn't helpful. I put the phone down, picked it up again, and dialed 911. I explained my emergency. The central communications operator was extremely helpful. She suggested I take the screen off a window and herd the squirrel out of the house. That made a lot of sense to me and I thanked her kindly. I took a screen off a basement window. I went to the garage and got 2 rakes and 2 shovels. I called the offspring together and a teen aged boy who was visiting at the time, handed out the implements, and we advanced upon the squirrel. When we got close the squirrel got nervous. The closer we got, the more nervous the squirrel became. I am in panic mode and my offspring are amused which only made me panicked and resentful. I think the visiting teen was more freaked out by my panic than the squirrel. The four of us, shoulder to shoulder slowly inch forward with our shovels and rakes. We got within few feet when the squirrel leaps off the brick wall, lands before me, runs between my feet, and scooted into Offspring #1's bedroom. I screamed. I swung my shovel in the air luckily missing everyone. Offspring #1 would not allow this crazy group to go into his sanctuary. He wanted to handle this on his own. We block off the space below his bedroom door with a table. I ran outside to take the screen off his bedroom window. Once I had the screen off, I wanted to watch to make sure the squirrel really did exit. These kids did not know an emergency when it was staring them in the face so I had to see that squirrel exit with my own eyes. So I watch, shifting my weight from leg to leg, wringing my hands, and wait. We hear banging noises. We hear things tumbling around in there. The squirrel is chattering loudly. More banging and tumbling. I see the little red squirrel come flying out that window chattering to beat the band. My panic does not decrease in the least. Now I have the screens off two windows and more squirrels could enter at any moment! I dash around the house returning screens to the window and making sure they are secure. The kids have gone on to their activities in a frustratingly ho-hum manner. I have to lie down on the couch to recover. Forget about making dinner, I got to relax before I have a heart attack. The squirrel, now perched in the black walnut tree, is still chattering and scolding. For the next several weeks, every time I go out the front door, that same squirrel yells at me. I never did figure out how that squirrel got in the house. The fire place doors were shut. The dryer door was shut. It remains a mystery.