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A Bubble Pops

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Today’s post comes courtesy of a moment of gauzy wakefulness in the midst of a nature-induced state of torpor, from Bart the Bear – a beast of the forest who found a smart phone.

Bart Blackberry2

Yo.

A little groggy here but had to say h’lo while the wind is whistling over my head and the snow is finally here and deep and packed all around. This is the coziest spot for hibernation … ever! I’m kinda hoping it goes on for a long longer. Winter I mean. I’m into it – the worse it gets the more I like it. Don’t know what the groundhog said about Spring and don’t care. He’s an idiot.

Noticed there’s a story about the universe – how some big thinkers say it could be unstable and just destroy itself at random for no special reason. The whole universe! It’ll just POP like a bubble and poof, we’re gone. Something to do with the Higgs Boson. Knew that thing was no good when they were looking for it. Some stuff isn’t worth finding.

Like a bottle of hot sauce, for example. Somebody dropped one out of their bag at a picnic. Was hoping for a bag of chips but you take what you can get. Yeah, I drank it. Yeah, the whole thing. Hard to think that any asteroid strike or universe-bubble popping could hurt worse than that.

Bring it on, I say. I’m pretty sure I’ll be asleep when the next new universe comes to call.

Send berries,
Bart

What have you found that you wish you hadn’t?

54 thoughts on “A Bubble Pops”

  2. Good morning. When I worked as a crop consultant, checking fields for farmers, I found pests and diseases that the farmers would rather not have in their fields. Now the only plants I check for pests and diseases are the ones I grow myself. I would be happy if I didn’t find any of these destructive forces in my garden. Unfortunately I do find cabbage worms, flea beetles, aster yellows, early blight, and a number of other unwelcome enemies of my plants.

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    1. Eeeewwww, Jim, sounds gross. None of that stuff can be found in MY garden. Ahem. NOT. However, one year we had a gorgeous yellow corn spider in an intricate, artistic web nestled in our iris bed. it was fascinating to watch.

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      1. Yes, there are some garden visitors that are welcome. One day I found a toad that had hopped into a pot hold a plant and had made was itself at home partly buried in the potting soil.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    There have been many things I have found that I wish I had not: the check or charge I forgot to write in my account register, the dead mouse in the Christmas decorations stored underneath the stairs, my son’s forgotten homework assignment in the school backpack. However, none compare to the lump I found in my breast in late 1989. I was 36 years old, a single mother with a lot of responsibility to bear. I rushed to the Dr. She aspirated the lump–nothing. The mammogram showed that it was not problematic. I was too young, had no history that pointed to cancer. It will probably go away.

    It didn’t. 5 months later the biopsy revealed infiltrating ductal cancer. The surgeon with great surgical technique and lousy bedside manner, woke me up by pulling on my big toe. “Jacque, it’s malignant.” It probably had spread. It probably was stage 4. The oncologist explained to me what it would be like to have advanced stage cancer. I would probably die within the year.

    That is a diagnosis one does not wish to find.

    Later, I discovered there was a mistake. Somehow the malignancy had not spread. It was not stage 4, it was an estrogen dependent stage 2 tumor contained to the site with an OK prognosis. Good News? followed by a mastectomy, 6 months of chemotherapy, and tamoxifen for 5 years which induced early menopause and hotflashes.

    Twenty-three years later, here I sit typing this story. Still having hotflashes. The vulnerable 8 year-old son I thought I would be forced to leave when I was age 37 is now 31 years old and thriving in South Minneapolis. I married Lou three years after finding this undesirable lump, convinced he was a great guy after he requested endless Morning Show dedication songs for me during the last 3 months of chemotherapy. I would march myself off to the chemo treatment lab in the morning after hearing an inspiring song.

    Lou and I celebrate our 20th anniversary on May 29, 2013 :).

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    4. Glad you lived to tell the story, Jacque. You wonder how someone with bedside manners that bad could make it through medical school, and how that kind of diagnostic mistake can happen, but I know it does, a lot more frequently than you’d think.

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    8. THank you all for the nice feedback. BTW, I fired oncologist #1 after “the mistake” and hired one who is still practicing Downtown MPLS. Dr. Margaret MacRae. I cannot say enough good things about the care she provided which was a lovely antidote to Oncologist #1.

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  4. i have found time and again that my best laid plans have gone astray, i wish when i did something there was no one in there to mess with it afterwards but that isnt the way the world works. i feel like i am building sand castles sometimes and i am trying to figure out how to do mt rushmore instead. i work to get a right answer to the question in front of me and what i fail to realize is that waht is wrong is the question, i do something and jealous jerk sabatoges the effort to make himself look good and lay a path for his own success. i am glad to say i have never considered this and cant understand how people who build o this type of foundation are alowed to continue after they are found out. instead of being appalled the world seems accepting. sickos.
    what i am sorry i have found is that there is not all goodness and well wishing people. after yesterdays study in russian paranoia i remember one of my favorite bumper stickers.
    just because i’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me
    its a shame you have to be cautious of the slimeballs out there who make life less than perfect for the rest of us just because the opportunity is there.

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  6. Morning–
    I’m afraid I’d have too many stories of walking in the barn and finding a dead calf or sick cow. The cow I didn’t expect to calf so soon but there was the calf cold and wet on the cement or in the gutter. Sometimes it would be alive yet. Sometimes it would be dead. And that’s a feeling of failure that’s hard to get over. “If only I had been here sooner”. ‘If only _________’.
    Or in the winter, if the snow and manure got packed too deep in the cow yard I’d have cattle get into the feed bunk and cut their legs up. Finding pools of blood is never good. (understatement, ya think??)
    Or a broken water pipe. And it was always the same thing from my lips; ‘Aw Sh**….’

    Writing this reminded me of both cold winter days with the cows and warm spring days spent hauling multiple loads of manure out of the cow yard… definitely some things I don’t miss about not having cows.

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    1. I visited a farm where they were in the process of pulling a dead calf out of a cow. They were hoping to save the cow and I’m not sure if the cow did survive. That was an educational experience for me due to my lack of experience and training in livestock production.

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    2. Ben, I can only imagine what kind of heartbreak that would be. Don’t know how farmers do it. Must be a lot less squeamish than I am. Bless them.

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  7. i knew cancer was coming form the group. cant imagine anything more tramatic. life is a tricky enough proposition while you are trying to go forward, cancer makes another part of the equation that changes everything.
    i used to think having pets helped. a dear heart pet dying every 10 years is a good practice at life. easier than a parent or spouse but maybe not. i love my pets in ways very similar to people except without getting pissed about their malace. pets never are vindictive. lets not talk about my sister. i hate the news that my pet died unexpectedly. frisbee kitty and such. my dogs live to a ripe old age and i get time to grieve. my dad gave me time to miss him as i watched him fade before he died. it the quickies you have to figure out how to deal with. i hate that. for sure.

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    1. I think you’re right tim – pets give us a chance to practice grieving and understand it. The folks I know who deal better with death almost invariably grew up with and/or live with animals.

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  8. Morning — completely OT. Saw “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at Guthrie last night — excellent, excellent rendition/production. Very well done. If you have the chance to see it, I’d recommend it. Of course, it’s O’Neill, so if you’re already down in the dumps, this won’t perk you up!

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    1. Oh my…. I thought you knew me better than that. Sunday night a friend of mine called me to ask if I wanted to come — he had gotten the tickets from a friend and it was his treat. He wouldn’t even let me pay for parking. There is no way I could cough up $68 — even for an excellent Guthrie production!

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  10. Some years ago I managed a bookstore, and one morning while I was doing the sales recap I came across a charge slip showing that one of the employees had issued a credit to her own charge card. That was kind of a sinking feeling. I don’t know why, but I took it sort of personally. It was a chain bookstore, so I’m sure she thought $35 was just loose change for them and they’d never miss it.

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    1. Unfortunately this is way too common. Back in my Software, Etc. days, there were only a couple of us in the “Operations” department, which included Loss Prevention. My friend Alan (whom some of you have met) was the head of LP and so I got involved in several of the investigations over the years. Staff crediting their own cards was one of the most common of the things we found. Hard to imagine how they thought they could get away with it. In one store the young manager had credited himself for several large packages over the course of a few weeks; unfortunately those packages weren’t in the store when we audited and there was no record of their sale either.

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      1. At the time I knew that sort of thing happened, but it was surprising what a difference there was between the view of it you get from a distance and the reality up close – this person who I interviewed and hired and trained did this. The bookstore group was close-knit – I still keep in touch with half a dozen of the former employees there, although it has been 25 years or so since we’ve worked together.

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        1. So true, Linda, you really feel personally betrayed. Seven or eight years ago, the small, family owned business that husband works for, was struggling terribly financially. They had to lay off several employees and implement all kinds of cost cutting measures, all to try to stay afloat, but they continued to struggle. In a small firm like this, where everyone knew and cared about each other, they were devastated to discover that the problem was their bookkeeper. Within a few weeks of being hired, she had systematically siphoned funds into her own bank account, getting bolder as she discovered that the firm’s trusting ways (and poor internal controls) had left them vulnerable to her cunning ways. Over a period of two years she had embezzled $700,000 from the firm. This was a woman who everyone liked and considered a friend. With some regularity she’d bring in bagels and cream cheese as a treat for everyone who worked there, and regularly held parties at her house to which everyone from the firm was invited. She ended spending a couple of years in Shakopee, and is now free to ply her trade elsewhere. The sense of anger and betrayal was almost palpable when this was discovered.

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        2. This happened to a dear friend, only the business was one she had created and the embezzler was her best friend (who lived across the street from her). The embezzled amount was enough to bankrupt the business and make five people unemployed, with my friend also being in debt. Two years ago when the embezzler was dying of cancer, my friend was not able to show up at her bedside to forgive everything. Just couldn’t.

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  11. Something I discovered quite recently that I wish I hadn’t was what it was like to live without heat during 12 hours of sub-zero temp. Early this last Sunday morning, I was blocked from my route home after dancing by a host of police cars. It seems that where the country road comes to a T, some guy who blew a .25 alcohol level had driven straight into a power pole, knocking it and the power to 500 homes out. The cottage was getting colder by the hour, so I donned a parka, hat, and gloves to endure sleeping. I was certain I’d awaken to find the heat back on. I was wrong!

    I awoke to find the temp outside -12 and inside 38. I’d called the electric company three times over the span of several hours, only to be told, “It’ll be back on in two hours”. This left me with the dilemma of calling several near-by friends to secure a place to warm up. No one was home, of course, so I decided to heat up my car and drive to the scene of the downed pole and ask the repairmen directly when the power would come back on. I was shivering so visibly that one the guys urged me to sit in the running trucks for as long as I needed in order to thaw out. He even offered me a cup of coffee from his thermos.

    Twelve hours after losing power, they finally got it running again but the mild hypothermia I’d descended into hung on for about four hours longer no matter what I did. I wrapped two blankets around me, cranked the heat up to 75, and laid on the couch with a small space heater under the covers. Since this incident, my kids (who live about 1/2 hour from me) scolded me for not going to their homes and a few friends have asked why I didn’t just build a big fire in the fireplace. I’d considered this, but the firewood is outside, buried under the snow and I just couldn’t tolerate the notion of getting even colder in order to warm myself.

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    1. CB – I can completely commisserate (sp?). We were two days w/o heat right before Christmas. Nothing as exciting as someone taking out the power – just a bad thermostat and some bungling by the first Xcel technician. Looking back, the funniest part of the whole thing was having to buy a heating pad to keep the fish alive!

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    2. It never occurred to you to go to a local coffee shop or restaurant, or perhaps even a library or shopping mall to stay warm?

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  12. Lately? Messes in the basement (and thankfully only in the basement) left courtesy of our geriatric cat. We think she might have a bit of “pussenheimers.” Until we figure it out, though, it’s a stinky mess. Though easier to clean up than the data messes I’ve had at work – those are harder to un-mess and un-tangle (if less aromatic).

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  13. We once were entrusted to take care of a lovely home on the banks of the St Croix River while the owner, a friend, traveled through Europe with her family. We took a four-day trout fishing trip during one of the hottest July weekends in Minnesota history. While we were gone the garage freezer had vibrated until its plug worked its way out of the outlet, which caused everything in the freezer to thaw . . . and then spread out over the garage floor . . . and then rot in that jungle heat. The largest item in the freezer was a gallon of ice cream. So what I found that I wish I had not was a gallon of ice cream that seeped all over the floor of a two-car garage and then underwent various biological transformations. The stench would have staggered a vulture. I haven’t been able to look at chocolate chip ice cream since 1969 without my tummy lurching.

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  14. It is no fun to drive to a small, rural school to do an IQ test, and discover that the administration manual is back at the office and there is no way to go and get it and you have to recite the exact wording for the test administration from memory.

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    1. Renee once discovered I had made an error in administering an IQ test that required me to go back and redo about 35 of them. Only part my fault really, partly there overly tight rules.

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  15. I have now met five Baboons in person. Thanks Barbara; nice to meet you and Linda. Sandy had a wonderful time.
    tim the books are at Barbara’s.

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  16. I remember when we lived in Winona and Joel was 2, thinking he’d gotten too quiet. Found him in the dining room at the top of the (admittedly funky old) basement stairs, where Husband, in his wisdom had left the rest of a can of white paint. Paint can was at the bottom of the stairs, which were… mostly white!

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