I had this great idea that I was going to save myself a lot of money by fixing the leaking shower faucet. I kept watching different videos about how to do it and thought "I can do that." So it's good I looked at several of them because the first two did not say anything about turning off the water to the house. I found it and turned it off. It talked about an Allen wrench. I've heard the term, but I didn't know what it was. Looked it up on the Internet and realized that I have used one (though I know there are different sizes) for some things you have to put together. I worked all day having to return to Home Depot three times to get something to help with the next step. The handle would not come off even though I unscrewed it. There is a handle puller you can buy. I bought it and it worked. Anyway, I got down to the valve stem and could not get that out at all. There was absolutely no movement. I sprayed it with something that loosens bolts, tried several times then gave up. I was having dinner with my friend Janet Seinturier at a place where we love the Margaritas. I cleaned up as best I could with no water, then got in my car to go. I'm able to open my garage door with the electronic opener in my car. I pull out and press the button and the light flashes off and on. It has done this many other times and there is nothing in the way so I decide I have to go in the house and close the garage door from another place and go out the front door. Well, I was on automatic, and drove back into the garage, used the button on the wall to close the door and then went to the front door. I looked out and my car isn't there...... I'm thinking "Crap! They are fast"! Then I look down and I see I have the keys in my hand and I think they can't take the car without the keys. I go back and look in the garage and there is my car, just where I put it. I kept thinking if anyone was watching me, they would be sure I was nuts.
I had a wonderful dinner as always with my friend. I told her about a video that I thought would be helpful. I had put in woman doing plumbing and something came up. It was a young woman in short shorts wearing a bikini top who had a breast enhancement (when she laid down on her back to get under the sink, they were up there and perky). Not how a natural woman would be. The background voice of a woman was sultry with I guess sexy music. Anyway, that is not what I wanted. I wanted to see if a woman would handle the job a little differently from a man or found ways to deal with using brute force which I don't have at all. My girlfriend was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.
The next morning I attempted to loosen the valve and it was just like the previous night, so I go back to Home Depot. I ask a woman who works there what do plumbers use to loosen valves? She asked this man who had his son with him if he understood plumbing issues and asked him was there something special? Nothing more than I knew about. They offer to look at it for free and if I decided to use them, settle on a fee. Well I'm desperate at this point and I said "I'll hire you". I gave them my address and they met me there a half hour later. They sprayed the valves again and then they just turned it. I wanted to yell "NOT FAIR"! Then we went back to Home Depot for the valves and I decided if I was going to do this, I'd get new handles and a shower head. This took a while as we are figuring the length with the screw. We go back to my house and it turns out the shower head I picked won't work. He tells me what to get, but now he has to leave. That was okay because I was already late for my art class.
Again, I feel I didn't spend enough time on my art, but I showed her what I did. She loved my eggs in the nest and thought I should be using the best paper and then frame it. My fellow student Wayne also liked it. Fascinating. Because I really can't tell what they are seeing that is so good. Not that I think it is bad, but they REALLY liked it. The next project is a bird house because of angles of a square, triangle of the roof, circles from the openings and cylinders with the pegs for birds to sit on. She also wanted us to take pictures of what we have so we can refer back to them, and if it is large, we can see more detail. So she suggested first light in the morning. I told her I had gotten used to sleeping in and didn't know if I could do this. She said "make your coffee, set up your birdhouse and nest getting the light over your right shoulder (I'm left handed) then go back to sleep." So I set my alarm for 5:45 with the complete intention of doing this. I wake up after 8 a.m. and wonder how I could have slept through "It's a Hard Days Night." I had put p.m. instead of a.m. I did it again the next day.
Ball with Braided Twine
Robin Eggs in Basket
I had gone to Lowe's to get a different shower head and came back to put it on. My plumber had put the tape on it and all I had to do was screw it on. Okay, I did that, but it really was very tough for me and water was squirting all over the place on the sides of this. I tried it two more times and I've given up. I'm calling the plumber to make a stop here to put it up for me.
On Saturday I did wake at 5:45 a.m. to put on the coffee and get my picture outside. I couldn't find the bird house. I wondered if I dropped it some how when I came home from class. It rained the previous night and the sky was overcast. So I decide I'd have to go out and get another birdhouse, but when I went in the garage, there is the birdhouse on the dryer. I'm sure you are assuming that I would obviously see it. No. The dryer has things on top of it going from outside to inside or inside to outside. I really need to toss a lot of it and just put the stuff where it belongs. Ugh! I tried it on Sunday morning. I could have gotten up at 7:00 a.m. because the light was very diffused until the sun was showing over the trees. I'm not putting in Saint Francis of Assisi yet because I have some things to learn before doing this. I'm ignoring the table. Who would have thought this would stretch out so long?
This drawing is the first done in the house
I will work further on this.
I will work further on this.
I have been collecting change for two years. I ordered a change sorter that will put it in the papers and believe it or not the post office delivered it on Easter Sunday. That was so odd. I wouldn't have expected that. Anyway I got my three grandchildren who were over into the game of sorting all the change for me. I gave them each a roll of quarters for their efforts. I finally took the change to my bank on Saturday morning and they informed me that it is sent out and will take five or six days for them to count it. I had this idea I would walk out with $244.00. Nope. But they were willing to put it in my savings account. Just know if you were desperate, you couldn't get bills to use right away.
So what is my lesson? Relax. It isn't always going to work out. You can't control everything. Go with the flow when you can. Do things earlier rather than later so you might have time to fix the situation. Believe me, you'll be a lot less stressed. In my mind, that is the message of my mom's story below, though she sees it a little differently.
Here is another story my mom wrote. It was in the late 1950's and she would have been no more than mid-thirty's. Women's rights were rarely heard during that time. My mom was very outspoken, probably that is why I am so outspoken.
Children are Communists
This is not the statement of a provocateur in order to bait Communists. Nor am I trying to slur Communists in any way. Why, Some of My Best Friends. I am being strictly definitive about this. (Even dialectical.) Children are Communists. I would like to prove this.
Take private property, for instance. Which they do. Constantly. Home many pens, combs and lipsticks that you have compulsively kept picked up (in your purse, locked in a filing cabinet safe and THEN in a locked room) could you ever find whole when you needed them. None, of course. It is never the lovely bottles marked with skull and crossbones I hopefully leave at a child's level in the medicine chest that is ever missing or needs locking up. They are not that cooperative. No. The more pains you take to conceal the indispensable ingredients of a child's survival kit, the more quickly does he find it.
Trying to keep myself short of hysteria one day on this subject, I calmed down by thinking, "try to be reasonable, logical. Do what Sherlock Holmes would do and put it in the most obvious place." With this new implementation of reasoning power, I wanted to go out immediately and preach to the mothers of all the land: "Just be a Sherlock Holmes!" I relaxed.
Sure enough, things improved immensely. Oh, they still get ever lipstick and pen and comb all right. But by leaving them right on the floor where they will end up anyway, the safe is unbroken, the doorknob lock still works, the file can still be used, my purse is not ruined and I am still in one piece. In fact, I can only truly relax when the lipstick, pen and comb ARE missing in action. Think of all the anxiety of waiting until they are gone that it saves.
But they SHARE it. That's the point. EVERY child gets a turn at using the lipstick on the walls and library set. Communists, of course.
They believe in social ownership of the means of production. This explains of course why my typewriter keys are stuck together with Wil-hold Glue, why the shorthand machine paper I've been writing on the day before always shows some very inky hieroglyphics an adult would blush to have written and why my pen writes penmanship exercises all over my manuscripts, which is all right - it's the BLANK manuscript paper I object to their using - it's so handy for shopping lists.
This is not a very good quality picture, but here is one of my mom probably in her mid-thirties.
I just finished reading a book, Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat by David Dosa. He is a Geriatrician where part of his work takes him into a nursing home with people who have dementia. What I liked about the book besides this great cat Oscar (I have two cats and they are so important to me), is the coming to terms with chronic and/or terminal illness and how hard it all is. That if you can make a life with what you have and note the small victories and call on your support system, you'll do better than the ones who give up. Oscar just accepted people where they were at. He sat with them while they died. He not only gave comfort to the dying, but also the families and the caregivers. And, Dr. Dosa became more empathetic as a result of this work and exploring how Oscar was so well known in this nursing home. The letting go by family is very difficult and is a most loving thing they can do as the person is in the active part of dying. Good story.
I've just started another book recommended by my friend Cathy Seguine who is a social worker and a great one at that. This book is called The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. He has been on the Oprah Winfrey show discussing this book. I did not see it and I'll let you know about it after I've finished reading it.
Today, Sunday, Barbara Long and I went to see a movie shown at the Art and Spirituality Center called Babel. I saw it when it first came out, but I think I saw more this time. It all comes down to communication and different cultures. I think The United States could work more on dealing with other cultures as an okay thing rather than seeing those who are not like us as the enemy. It sparked a good conversation afterwards. Barbara and I went to Rosa's for a good inexpensive Italian meal.
Okay, that's it this week. I hope things are calmer next week. See you next Sunday. Rachel
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