All posts by reneeinnd

Family, Technology, Travel

The Trouble with Ratchets

56 Comments

Today’s post comes from Chris, Reneeinnd’s husband.

Due to an anomaly at birth, I am partially ambidextrous.  I learn to do simple tasks with my left hand and complex tasks with my right.  I allow other people to demonstrate their mechanical prowess while I stand aside to lend assistance.  Attempts to tackle jobs with moving parts commonly end in frustration, absurdity, or disaster.

In July, Renee and  I traveled to see our son and his wife in Brookings, South Dakota so Renee could do a therapy presentation and we could help the kids move into a new apartment.  The new place was quite a step up: it had three bedrooms on two levels, with two and a half bathrooms!  Son and his wife had bought new furniture and had it delivered to the new apartment.  They had to leave several pieces of furniture, including a huge, dilapidated sectional sofa, in the old apartment so it could be removed and hauled to the landfill with my pickup.

We arrived on Friday evening, delighted to see the new apartment. Renee and Son would be at the presentation the next day.  After a pleasant meal, the four of us went to the Lowe’s to get what would be needed for the big move– a big tarp and a set of ratchets with straps.

Son and I went over to the old place and proceeded to load the bulky pieces of the sofa into my pickup and cover them with the tarp.  The next step was to secure the load with the straps and ratchets.

Son and I usually work well together, but he has dexterity problems of his own.  Secretly, I didn’t have a clue–I’d let him take the lead.  Neither of us knew how to spool the straps through the ratchet.  Son used the expedient of the young–he looked up the procedure on YouTube.  By this time, it was getting dark and he  had to use his phone as a flashlight.  He figured out what to do, and we threw the hooked end of the strap over the top of the load.  At that point we inadvertently violated the cardinal rule of ratcheting–always keep the strap straight!  If you don’t, the strap will  twist and get stuck in the spool while you’re tightening it with the ratchet.

Of course the strap got tangled, and the strength of two big men was not enough to unwind it.  Fortuitously, Son’s upstairs neighbor, a veteran  of multiple collegiate moves, arrived.  He was able to pull out the strap so it could be spooled back in to the ratchet.  We tried again, secured the load, and drove the truck to the new apartment, tired but satisfied with a job well done.

On Saturday, Daughter in Law  and I got to do the fun part–driving the pickup to the landfill so we could dispose of the sofa.  We gleefully flung the cruddy pieces onto a smelly pile of rubbish.  We were very careful to wind the straps back into ratchets without twisting them.  I had not repeated the same mistake and was proud of my newfound competence.  I could now use a ratchet on my own–without help!

We showed Son the neatly spooled ratchets when he got home, only to find that the straps were horribly stuck! You’re not supposed to rewind the strap through the back of the ratchet!  Son pulled with all  his might and was able to get one of the spools unstuck.  He had to resort to cutting the other one.  A mysterious third strap was involved.  Although  Son remained calm and patient, he was  clearly disgusted by the situation.  He advised me to ask one of “my mechanically inclined” friends for assistance in the future.

The straps and ratchets are stored in a compartment of my truck.  I am too embarrassed to show my incompetence by asking a casual friend or neighbor for help.  I vowed never to use an  unspooled ratchet and strap again– if I can avoid it.

Have you ever had a guilty secret?  What did you do to conceal your shame?

 

gardening, Kids, Nature, Science, Uncategorized, work

The Right Amount of Stress

34 Comments

It is hard to know in a drought how much supplemental water for the vegetable garden is too much, and how much is too  little.  We err on the side of overindulgence. Our recent water bill is testimony to our generosity.  I worry that our pole beans, full and tall on their poles, have yet to produce flowers due to our over watering and not allowing them to feel stress.  I worry our peppers are responding the same way, with very few fruits as yet. Here is a photo of the pole beans with potato plants in the foreground.

Babies born to diabetic mothers often have underdeveloped lungs due to  the  glucose-rich uterine environment  which lacks the normal “stress” of less sweet amniotic fluid. Children who have few expectations don’t fare as well as their peers who have expectations.

It has been stressful at my work due to difficulty hiring staff. I can’t believe that the stress is doing me any good.

I think that a  little bit of stress is necessary for all good development, be it for plants or people.  The trick is discerning the right balance.  Oh that we could thrive without stress!

What do you consider the good stress in your life? The not so good stress? How do you find a balance?

News, Uncategorized

Public Notices

44 Comments

One of my favorite sections of the newspaper (besides the section in the Sunday edition that lists District Court proceedings for who got convicted of what and what their sentences were) is the Public Notices.  I don’t know if the big papers like the Strib or the New York Times print public notices, but our paper does. We have to vote every general election if we want the notices published in the local paper.  It always passes. As a local district judge told me, it is the best place to find out what your friends and neighbors are up to.

By public notices I mean foreclosure announcements, city and county  commission proceedings, school board minutes, bids for government contracts, summonses for parents to attend juvenile hearings, divorce related interim property rulings, and name changes.

One of my friends was surprised to read that her sister’s house was in foreclosure.  “I’ve been sending her money for the mortgage for months! What has she been spending it on instead?”

Public notices provide access to unanswered community questions. ” How can they keep that new restaurant open when hardly anyone goes there and the prices are so high?” That is answered by seeing the notice that So and So construction company is placing a lien on the restaurant in question for not paying the construction bill.

Our local paper prints the following:

WHAT IF AMERICA DIDN’T NOTICE?

Public notices help expose:

Fraud in Government!

Dishonest businesses!

Unfair competitive practices!

PARTICIPATE  IN DEMOCRACY.  READ YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES.

 

How do you participate in Democracy?

 

Family, History, Stories, Technology, Uncategorized

Long Lost Relations

61 Comments

I received an unexpected request for family tree information last week from a woman in Canada.  According to Ancestry. com, she and I are DNA matches and are likely 5th to 8th cousins. Her great grandmother and my Great Grandfather Lunzmann were siblings. I never knew he had siblings, but there he was on her tree, the youngest of about six children. I had never really ever looked for his siblings, and searched  instead for earlier ancestors.

I am very happy that my long lost relative contacted me, since I know very little about the Lunzmann family.  I know about my great grandfather’s life after 1900, but not in the 30 years before that and not his family life in the small village he came from in Mecklenburg , Germany.

This is one time that I welcome the intrusion of new technology in my life . I don’t always feel that way about it.

What about the latest technology do you find charming? What do you find alarming?

 

 

books, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Wandering Thoughts

52 Comments

I heard Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition last night, and a convoluted trail of thoughts led me to Baba Yaga,  Jack and Jill magazine, Lloyd Alexander, and the first time I tried to buy a book by myself.

My mother subscribed to Jack and Jill magazine for me when I was a child in the 1960’s.  I was fascinated by the stories in the magazine about Baba Yaga, the Russian witch who flew around in a mortar and pestle, and who lived in a hut on chicken legs. Mussorgsky portrays the witch sailing fiendishly through the air in her mortar, and  the hut walking around just like I imagine such a hut to walk.

There was no book store in my home town, and Sioux Falls didn’t get one until I was a teenager.  My mom always let me buy books at school from Scholastic, Services and I took out as many books as I was allowed  from the public and school libraries.  I discovered a wonderful book series by Lloyd Alexander called The Prydain Chronicles one summer in the public library when I was in Grade 4. The stories are based on Welsh myth, and I was disappointed to find that the library was missing one book in the series.  The librarian told  me that she had no intention purchasing  it, either.  Without telling my mom, I found the name and address of the publisher (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston) from inside one of the books in the series that the library had, hand wrote a letter in my horrible handwriting asking about the price of the book, addressed and stamped the envelope, and mailed it off.  A couple of weeks later I received a very nice reply kindly letting me know the price, which was more money than I had at the time, and thanking me for my inquiry.  I dropped my search, and finally found the missing book a couple of years later in the book store that opened up in the first mall in Sioux Falls.

My love for Jack and Jill magazine prompted me to subscribe to it as well as Cricket magazine  for my son and daughter. We found Baba Yaga stories in Cricket, too.  Imagine my delight when I saw that Lloyd Alexander was one of the editors of Cricket. Both children loved The Prydain Chronicles, as well as other stories by Lloyd Alexander. Funny where listening to Mussorgsky will take you.

What magazines did your family subscribe to?

Family, Stories, Uncategorized

Chasing Tales

52 Comments

It is almost a year since our youngest cat came to live with us.  She was found by our son,  abandoned at about 8 weeks of age in his neighborhood.  She is one of the nicest cats I have ever met. She is loving, affectionate, and playful. She always thinks inside the litter box, and has excellent manners. She fetches paper balls and carries them back to us so we can throw them again.  She follows us around the house like a dog would. She is utterly charming. If she were a middle school girl, she would be the one who you hated because she was pretty, everyone liked her, and she seemed too perfect.

Daughter recently got a new kitten, a real terror, who was bottle fed after being found abandoned in Tacoma, and who demands constant attention and loves to attack and scratch. She even jumped into the bathtub with daughter one night.   Daughter won’t listen to tales of our kitten, and says “I know, mom. Luna is the perfect cat. Don’t remind me!”

One of Luna’s more endearing games is to sit on the arm of a dining room chair,  reach her paws under the chair arm, and try to catch her tail. She appears to derive a great deal of pleasure from this.   She is oblivious to the silliness of it, playing catch and release with her tail and then attempting to catch it again.

PG Wodehouse wrote some terribly funny stories about cats. Luna reminds me of one who Wodehouse described as being owned by a C of E bishop, and who liked to sit in the pools of light that streamed through the stained glass church windows and listen  to the organ play. Such perfection is always a sham in these stories, and the cat was eventually outed to reveal feet of clay.  I wonder how Luna will slip up and show us some imperfections.  I think I will find our Wodehouse compendium and read about some cats.

 

Tell some good cat stories.

 

Nature, Uncategorized

For the Birds

30 Comments

I am afraid of birds. I like to watch birds, but I get anxious if they are too close, or swoop at me. I don’t mind the  scolding wren who upbraids me in the garden, since he keeps his distance and scolds me from the safety of a tree.

I think my bird fear started when I was very young and I went with my grandmother to collect eggs from her hens. I remember the birds pecking me and flapping their wings as I tried to retrieve the eggs. Flapping birds really scare me.  I also remember a parakeet we had who escaped from its cage all the time and who was devoured right before my eyes by a very proud and self-important pug when I was a preschooler.  Alfred Hitchcock didn’t help the situation at all with The Birds.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed what I thought was a robin crash into the French doors leading out to our deck. Robins tend to do that, momentarily stunning themselves and then flying away. This bird fluttered at the door a couple of times.  Husband noticed, too, and went to see what was happening. Imagine my surprise when he announced “Renee, it’s a parrot!” It was trying to get into the house.

We don’t see many parrots in our backyard as a rule. I phoned the police to see if anyone had reported a missing parrot. The dispatcher said no, but that a man had phoned to report two small parrots sitting in his tree.  Our parrot appeared to be alone, and was sitting in the grape vines that grow up our deck. Husband made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to catch the bird with a net. It flew off each time and then returned to the grape vines on the deck.

It was 99° that day, and I was really worried about the bird’s safety.  I asked Husband to get our cat carrier, and I placed it on the deck with some cherries in it. Then I slowly approached the parrot, speaking to it in a gentle, high-pitched voice.  It let me come close, and I extended my finger. It hopped right on.  I tried to stay calm and not think about having a bird perched on me.  It allowed me to walk over to the cat carrier and pop it in. Thank goodness it didn’t flap at me. It started devouring the cherries.

Here is the bird I rescued after the police took it to the shelter.

I learned that it was a Green Cheeked Conure, and that its buddy was apprehended the next day two blocks from our house.  They were placed together in a foster home. A work friend knows the foster mom, and she showed me a photo of the two exhausted birds cuddled up to each other on the foster mom’s shoulder.  She will adopt them if no one claims them.

I still am afraid of birds,  but glad I could help  a grateful bird who had enough of the outdoors and just wanted to feel safe and eat cherries.  It was the perfect bird for a therapeutic intervention to reduce a phobia.

How do you tackle your fears?

 

Art, Baboon Achievers, Family, Stories

Skill Set

31 Comments

We spent the weekend in Brookings, SD visiting our son and daughter in law. They moved to a new town home a couple of weeks ago, a place they will reside for a couple of years while they financially position themselves to purchase their first home.

Every time they move to a new place, they request my assistance hanging pictures. They insist that I am the only one who can hang the pictures straight, at the correct height, perfectly centered, and do it virtually error free. They say they make too many extraneous nail holes if they do it themselves.  So, I scramble on top of the sofas, chairs, beds, and other furniture, measuring, marking, stretching, reaching, and pounding nails and picture hangers.

Each time they ask me to do this, I demonstrate, one more time, how to figure out where the center is, how to make sure groups of pictures are evenly spaced and at the same height, and I show them the tools they need. I also demonstrate how to hide extraneous holes with tiny screws of tissue and/or toothpaste. It isn’t rocket science. I learned this from my mother, who was a meticulous picture hanger, measuring side to side, ceiling to floor, to find the perfect spot for the nail.

They were so happy to have the pictures on the walls, and declared that the art and photos made their new place truly home. It could have looked like home much earlier if they did it themselves.

What skill set does your family depend on you for? What is your plan for teaching them to do it without you?

 

 

Family, Stories, The Future

Your Mortal Remains

80 Comments

Today’s post comes from Reneeinnd

A friend of mine has the sad task this week of spreading the remaining half of her sister in law’s ashes in the ND Badlands. Her sister in law died of complications of West Nile Virus.  It is truly tragic, and my post, although it contains some levity, isn’t meant to diminish her life.  Sometimes humor is the only remedy for grief.

I say the remaining ashes, as half of the ashes have already been spread in a lake near where the woman grew up in eastern ND. I guess she loved both places. Given how windy it is here, it might have worked just as well to stand at the Montana border on a windy day and let them sail east with the prevailing gale. They would have reached the eastern part of the state eventually.

My friend is quite familiar with the odd and strange when it comes to funerals.   She works with developmentally disabled individuals and has coordinated the funerals of several of elderly clients lately, people with no family able or willing to help out.  Last month she stopped an interment in mid descent and insisted that the funeral director turn the casket around so that the client was facing east, which is how Catholic remains are supposed to face around here.  Her client may have out of step during life, but my friend wanted to make sure the individual was facing the right direction for the Second Coming.

When I look out of the kitchen window I see three urns that contain the remains of our dog and two cats. I have been thinking about downsizing when I retire and we eventually move, and I wonder if we will take the pet ashes with us or do something else with them. I really can’t see moving them with the rest of the household, so I suppose we will commemorate the furry ones in some fashion and empty the urns in some beautiful place. Then, I wonder, what do we do with the used urns? We could keep them for future pet ashes I suppose, although I think there is something kind of morbid about people who keep and recycle pet urns.

I believe the Catholic Church has decreed that cremation is fine, but you have to keep your ashes in one place and not spread them around.  I’m not Catholic, but I want to be cremated and kept in one container and buried somewhere yet to be determined.  I want tangible proof that I existed. Husband hasn’t decided what he wants. I remember the very funny tale of a Baboon dealing with her parents’ ashes by mixing them up in a paper bag so they could spend eternity together. I think that would be a little much for our children to handle, so Husband and I need to come up with a unified plan. I suppose we could just use the vacant pet urns and save a bundle at the funeral home.

What are your plans for your mortal remains?

gardening, Nature, Weather

Waiting for Rain

27 Comments

We are in a severe drought here. All fireworks are banned, no one can grill using charcoal, and all open fires are prohibited. The city fire works display has been cancelled.  Our town usually resounds with the sound of  fireworks the week before and just after July 4. It is always illegal to shoot off fireworks in town, but the police rarely enforce it.  This year we were told the local constabulary would be “heavy handed” in enforcing the fireworks ban.  No one wants their house or neighborhood to go up in flames, and people are being very careful.

Ranchers are selling their cattle, CPR land has been opened up for emergency grazing, and farmers are pretty depressed. It is really too late for anything but the pastures to recover if we would get some rain.  It isn’t promising.  The high temperatures are predicted to be around 100 this week.  We have sufficient water to keep the gardens going, thanks to an upgraded city water system and the Missouri River.  I scowl, though, when I see people watering lawns, especially when they are watering in high winds and more water goes in the air than on the lawn.

The governor has declared our county and several others to be disaster areas.  This is a slow, painful disaster that will take a long time to see a recovery.  We need a good long stretch of several days of rain, and that never happens out here.

How have you coped with disasters?