I’m not feeling well today, what with volatile end-of-winter weather and that pesky time change. I even took a nap this afternoon, which is out of character. Daisy liked that; she came in and snoozed with me.
I was all set to use my under-the-weatheredness as an excuse to skip posting today. Until I checked into Facebook this afternoon (funny how I had enough energy for that, but not enough for my weblog) and saw a friend post about this book:
The author, Susan Spencer-Wendel, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2011. She was 44 at the time. She quit her job as a reporter with The Palm Beach Post and spent a year checking items off her bucket list. She traveled to see the Northern Lights, but they didn’t appear (I can commiserate with that). She took her teenaged daughter to buy a wedding dress she will not live to see worn. She swam with dolphins and adopted a new dog.
Then she wrote a book about the joys – yes joys – of her experience. On her iPhone. Using her right thumb, the only finger she still had use of.
I am both shamed and inspired. Other than a trifling cold, I am healthy. I have use of all my limbs and all ten digits.
Thanks for the reminder, Susan Spencer-Wendel. I’m looking forward to reading your book and living life to the fullest. No excuses.
Last week’s post ended with how next summer Laura will return to San Antonio via Oklahoma City, the same route that led to meeting now-Governor Mary Fallin. Since then, I have discovered a couple of other coincidences:
Mary Fallin was born in Warrensburg, where Missouri Girls State is held.
Her husband was born on December 14. So was Phil!
Cue the Twilight Zone theme.
Life is chock full of strange little occurrences. Take the time that Hanna checked out a novel about Queen Esther from the library. It was a nondescript book with a plain cover that looked like it was hardly ever checked out. As she sat down to read it, something fluttered out from between the pages. She came running to show me a photo of Laura and a friend on a hike at Runge Nature Center.
Or the time I took the kids to the Jasmine Moran Children’s Museum in Seminole, Oklahoma following a fruitless attempt to visit the state capitol building, which unknown to me, was closed on Saturday. (Wait – isn’t Oklahoma where Mary Fallin is governor? But I digress.) This is an outstanding hands-on museum, but in an obscure location. At some point one of the kids misbehaved and I had to address him/her by all three names using the stern mommy voice. A pleasant older woman nearby asked, “Oh, are you the Hartman family from Jefferson City?” My astonishment must have showed, because she went on to explain that she and her husband had also come from Jefferson City and had noticed our names on the visitors’ log. What are the odds?
Speaking of odds – remember my One in a Million post? During the summer of 2009 I traveled to Chicago to attend a national symposium on acoustic neuroma, which I have never had (although it was one of the possibilities ruled out in the MRI looking for the cause for my hemifacial spasms), but the conference featured workshops on facial paralysis that I thought would be helpful. Several people I knew from an online support forum were also there. Later when I joined Facebook, I looked some of them up. Back then, checking out my friends’ friends was an efficient way to find people I wanted to contact, but there were also some unexpected twists:
Erna was one of the first few high school chums I connected with. I fully expected to find common high school buddies among her friends, but I did not expect to see Kay, an acoustic neuroma friend. They both live in Texas, but how did they know each other? Turns out that Erna’s husband and Kay are cousins.
Another acoustic neuroma friend, Cheryl, who lives in Iowa, sent me a message asking about my high school friend Stephen, who now lives in Colorado. She thought that she used to live next door to his grandparents. Was his mother named Helga? Well of course she was!
Two of my classmates from the same small Midwest high school linked to two unrelated persons that share the same rare surgical side effect as I have. It’s a small world and social media is making it even smaller.
Do you have an interesting coincidence story? Tell me about it in a comment.
When he was six, Joseph asked if we could visit the Alamo. I don’t remember exactly what prompted his request (Davy Crockett, perhaps?), but everyone was interested in a trip to Texas, so later that summer we headed south. We visited all five San Antonio missions, strolled the River Walk, toured the USS Lexington aircraft carrier in Corpus Christi, traveled briefly into Mexico, and took Hanna to a campus visit at Concordia University – Austin.
Also in Austin we indulged my hobby of touring state capitol buildings. On our way home we did the same in Oklahoma City. During our tour of the Oklahoma State Capitol, we encountered the lieutenant governor, who invited us into her office, encouraged the girls to become active in politics and offered a photo op. Hanna and Joseph passed, but Laura took her up on it.
Laura with Mary Fallin, August 2004.
I hadn’t thought about this in years, but was reminded of the incident last week when Laura received an invitation to attend Missouri Girls State this summer. Only a couple of junior girls are selected from Helias each year, and the selection process includes an application with an impromtu essay and an interview with an American Legion representative. Phil and I are so proud of Laura!
Out of curiosity I looked up Mary Fallin; she is now Governor of Oklahoma. Now I’m not saying that our encounter with Governor Fallin eight and a half years ago directly led to Laura’s selection to Girls State. But interestingly enough, just as soon as the 2013 Missouri Girls State session wraps up, Phil and I will be taking Laura to meet her youth group for the National Lutheran Youth Gathering.
It’s in San Antonio, and we will be following the same route through Oklahoma City that we took back in 2004.
As my family returned home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house one fine day several years ago, where my kids had been royally spoiled (a grandparent’s prerogative), I was trying to explain to them how things had changed since I had been their age. Soda pop, for example, was a rare treat, maybe once every month or two. At our house it was usually served with pizza, another treat.
Furthermore, in the “olden days,” we either watched a TV show when it was scheduled or we missed it. There was no videotape or TiVo. There were only three stations, and no cable. We went to see movies at the theater (although we watched The Wizard of Oz on TV once a year, as long as we were home that night) because there weren’t films on VHS or DVD. There were no personal computers; in fact, I can remember my mom buying my dad one of the first handheld calculators for his birthday. It cost over $50 and was several times the size of an as-yet nonexistent iPod Touch. We had no cell phones or even cordless phones.
There weren’t even music CDs yet, much less MP3 players. We listened to record albums and cassette tapes. Our Christmas or birthday wish list might have included a battery-operated transistor radio. My older brother had an 8-track tape player in his truck. That was pretty cool, I told the kids, because I only had an AM radio in my Ford Pinto. My son was incredulous at this bit of information. “Mom,” he exclaimed, “You mean it only worked in the morning?”
After the laughter died down and I explained what an AM radio is, I got to thinking about how much can change over a lifetime. Take, for example, Laura Ingalls Wilder. We know from her books that the Ingalls family crossed the frontier in a covered wagon. She describes the trials and tribulations of everyday pioneer life — how to build a log cabin, boil down maple syrup, braid straw hats and butcher a hog (complete with instructions for headcheese). Laura witnessed the building of the transcontinental railroad, and described a trip on the train in By the Shores of Silver Lake. Later she traveled again by covered wagon with husband Almanzo and daughter Rose to Mansfield, Missouri, where she would spend the rest of her life.
During Laura’s lifetime the telephone, phonograph, incandescent light bulb, Kodak camera, gasoline-powered automobile, airplane, television and atomic bomb were invented. She died in 1957 at the age of 90, just a few months before the launch of Sputnik I ushered in the space age.
In her books, Laura Ingalls Wilder left behind a rich written record of her frontier experiences. It’s likely that someone you know also has an interesting history. My eldest daughter’s great-grandmother was acquainted with (but did not much like) Charles Lindbergh. She also drew pen-and-ink images for 1920s Famous-Barr ads published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. My husband’s father went to Europe as a young MP just after WWII ended, and among other experiences, delivered war criminals to Dachau just months after its liberation. My great-uncle was friends with Walt Disney and was honorary mayor of Disneyland when it opened.
I find reminiscing with older family members and friends more interesting than contemplating the changes that have occurred in my lifetime, probably because I take my own experiences for granted. But that conversation with my kids reminded me how important it is to take the time to talk to family, friends and elderly neighbors about their lives. Like the Little House books, their memories can bring history to life.
Since my last post on home renovation, I am still hard at work painting the old steel frames to match our new windows. I started in the downstairs bathroom, where, as such projects are wont to do, my workplan took a detour.
It’s partly Menard’s fault. They ran a rebate special a couple of weeks ago, so Phil and I decided to change out some light fixtures in the kitchen and study. I suggested that we also replace this old and yellowing bathroom fan
with a new one to match the other fixtures in the bathroom. Isn’t it pretty?
It didn’t take long to discover that the ceiling opening required for the new fan did not match the existing one and would require significant patching following an already complicated process to replace the unit. Reluctantly, we returned the new fan and looked for a replacement fan grille instead. Menard’s carried only the entire fan kit, but a clerk thought we might be able to special order the grille.
Sure enough, I found replacement parts online, but decided to check to see whether Lowe’s might have a grille in stock. Unfortunately, they also carried only the entire fan kit. On my way to the exit, I happened to walk through the paint aisle and spied this:
My New Best (Home Renovation) Friend
According to the label, Rust-Oleum Universal Metallic Spray Paint (Oil Rubbed Bronze) works on most surfaces, including plastic, and does not require a separate primer. I snagged a can and headed home.
I had never used spray paint before, but I figured the worst thing that could happen would be that it wouldn’t work and I would have to buy a new grille online. Here are before and after shots of the bathroom fan:
Still not as pretty as the round fan, but a huge improvement nonetheless. The photo really does not do it justice.
This paint is seriously great stuff. There were a few hiccups along the way. I forgot to hit the inside angle of the louvres, and although I followed the label directions exactly (recoat within one hour or after 48 hours), the finish blistered a bit. I had to wait for that coat to dry, then sand the bubbles off, then wait another 48 hours to repaint. The finish still is not perfectly smooth, but it’s not very noticeable and besides – it’s on the ceiling. We also disrupted the paint around the grille while removing it, but that repair will just have to wait its turn.
Cost of the spray paint: just under $8. It would have cost $98 for the new bathroom fan (plus the aggravation of changing it out and patching the ceiling) or about $35 to have a new grille shipped to us.
But wait – there’s more! The bathroom floor vent had corroded, and since it had to be cut to fit an irregular opening, we never seemed to get around to replacing it. Emboldened by my success with the fan grille, I painted the vent as well. I’m not sure of the cost savings as I have not priced replacement vents, but I estimate $10-$15.
The floor vent turned out even better than the bathroom fan. So well that Rust-Oleum featured it on their Facebook page!
I can envision all kinds of other uses for this paint. I may try painting the shower fixtures this summer. The front door hardware and fireplace screen are also on the list of possibilities.
So yes, it is Monday already, and I have to confess that I did not make the time last week to write a post for today. This morning I dug through my old documents file and came up with this gem, written November 9. 1994, ten days before Phil and I married. I had completely forgotten about this and a few other poems and articles.
I hope you enjoy the poem. I know I was happy to rediscover it, although now I have yet another item on my to-do list: convert these old documents to Microsoft Office before I am no longer able to open AppleWorks.
ODE TO CONNUBIAL BLISS
by Sara (10-days-and-counting) Hartman
Phil and Sara met one day,
And soon after fell in love.
They agree on nearly everything,
Truly a match from above.
But . . . a controversy arises!
Across a crowded room
A Windows machine and an Apple face off.
Which will be meeting its doom?
Phil, the System Administrator,
Never strays from the PC track.
But Sara, while computer bilingual,
Prefers the more elegant Mac.
Can anything resolve this impasse?
Will the romance go up in flames?
No, for Hanna knows the secret to happiness
Is that both have some really neat games.
So, the fusing of different elements —
And operating systems as well —
Yields a two-computer nuclear family:
Hanna and Sara and Phil.
P.S. Eighteen years plus later, we are still a two-OS family. We have increased our number of children by two, and our number of computers by some ridiculous multiple of that.
Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice was published January 28, 1813, two hundred years ago today. Austen is my favorite author, first because her dialog is brilliant; second because her characters are brilliant; third because her description is, well, brilliant. She does not squander time or words on description, yet I can picture every scene in my mind’s eye although I did not live in that time period nor have I visited Britain.
Austen’s characters, even minor ones, are well-developed and easy to identify with because each is, in one way or another, flawed. For example, Mrs. Bennet is shallow and silly, but Mr. Bennet responds with cynicism and more or less leaves his daughters to fend for themselves. At the same time, even unlikable characters have redeeming qualities. Mr. Collins, the consummate buffoon, has his heart in the right place wanting to marry into the family he will displace when he inherits Mr. Bennet’s estate. It truly is a “small world” in Pride and Prejudice, with varied and tangled relationships among the characters.
Pride and Prejudice Character Map (Wikipedia).
In P&P – indeed, in all of Austen’s novels – conflicts arise due to love, money, and societal expectations. Elizabeth Bennet, the female protagonist, is the personification of “prejudice,” often forming opinions without considering all sides of the story. And let’s face it: Mr. Darcy, the “pride” and male protagonist, is quite simply a jerk during the first part of the story.
Consider his marriage proposal to Elizabeth (as depicted in A&E’s 1995 miniseries):
Ouch. Fortunately Darcy and Lizzy are open-minded enough to allow for some major character development. Observe the smoldering gazes exchanged during a later encounter at Pemberley:
Ahhh, this is my favorite scene from the 1995 adaptation.
Each of Jane Austen’s novels ends with an engagement or wedding. Pride and Prejudice is no exception, and everybody – at least the deserving ones – lives happily every after.
Aww, thanks to Jane Heitman Healy, my friend, fellow writer and blogger (Read, Learn and Be Happy), for tagging me with my very first weblog award. The Liebster Award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Like me! In German, Liebster means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, sweetheart, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. Also like me!
Having never heard of the Liebster before, I was curious and ran a Google search. There is no parent site and it is not listed in Wikipedia. Every hit I found was an entry in a blog that had received the award. I don’t think it’s possible to trace back to its origin, but interestingly, the rules vary from site to site. Some simply require a thanks to the nominator and identifying three other weblogs, while others ask for thanks plus five random facts, questions answered and asked, and other weblogs. Some three of each. The invitation I received asked for eleven.
I don’t generally participate in or pass along quizzes, but I like the idea of promoting obscure weblogs, so here goes.
(Fore the record, when I wrote this, the list items were numbered. I have no idea why letters show up instead.)
Rules:
1. Post 11 random things about yourself.
2. Answer the questions the nominator set for you.
3. Create 11 questions for your nominees.
4. Choose 11 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers to nominate and link them to your post.
5. No tag backs, but please leave a comment on the nominator’s post so that s/he can learn more about you and see who you nominate.
I: Random Facts
I have been struck by lightning.
Al Green sang a lullaby to my baby bump just ten days before I delivered my firstborn.
I have had brain surgery.
My first car was a Ford Pinto and one day I drove 12 members of my church youth group home in it.
I have never broken a bone, but have had a ruptured eardrum.
I am 101 days older than my husband.
I like prime numbers. Such as 101.
I do not like asparagus or Brussels sprouts, although I understand this is genetic. I don’t like lima beans either, but have nothing to blame it on other than their texture.
One of my books is available as an iPad app.
I was described as “indefatigable” in a reference letter from someone who is now a Missouri supreme court justice.
I have long fingers, but short toes.
II: Jane’s Questions:
What is your favorite book? The Complete Works of Jane Austen.
Who is your favorite author? Jane Austen, followed closely by James Herriott and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
What was your favorite vacation? Christmas 2011 in Vietnam visiting our daughter Hanna.
What is your favorite song/singer/band/musical type? My favorite is jazz – Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan.But I also like 60s pop – the Beatles, Monkees, and Herman’s Hermits.
What’s the most unusual food you have eaten? Probably spicy roasted beetles that a missionary brought to our church.
What day of the week is your favorite? Whatever day it is.
What is your favorite movie or TV show? Movie: The Princess Bride. TV Show: Revenge.
Do you prefer dogs, cats, or other (if other, specify)? I have a cat and a dog and love them both. But my ideal pet is a cat, specifically a cuddly lap cat, because they are lower maintenance.
What is something amazing about you? I got a perfect score on the logic section of the GRE.
Do you prefer reading hard copy or online? At home, hard copy. On the road, it’s much easier to pack my iPad, especially since I can check out e-books from our library and download free books through the Kindle and Nook apps.
How often do you use your public library? I pick up my son at the library Monday – Friday after school. I go inside once or twice a week.
III: Questions for my Nominees:
If I had my own comic book, I would be Indefatigable Girl (see Random Fact 10/J above). What would your superhero name and trait be?
Mac or PC?
How long have you been keeping a weblog?
What is your earliest childhood memory?
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
What is your favorite holiday?
What color are the walls in your kitchen?
What is the last movie that made you laugh out loud?
Are you right- or left-handed?
Do you own more scarves or pairs of shoes?
What type of vehicle, if any, do you generally drive?
IV: My nominees:
Sorry, I am not going to be able to identify eleven more weblogs. First, I am not sure how to tell whether some blogs have fewer than 200 followers. Second, I won’t nominate a site unless I actually know the author. Third, Jane beat me to some, and I don’t want to hit them again. Finally, I have an inkling that some of my really serious blogger friends would not like being tagged.
These sites are all written by folks that I know from the Faith and Writing Workshop at Concordia Seminary last summer:
When I was a kid, from time to time I would gather up all the dominoes I could find, carefully set up them up in a pattern and gently topple the first one. If all went well, it would start a chain reaction, something like this:
I must admit that my constructions were never that elaborate. First, because we did not own anywhere near that many dominoes; second, because I never thought about augmenting with playing cards (which is brilliant, by the way), but primarily because I am not blessed with that kind of time and patience.
Life is full of examples of the “domino effect,” where one simple event leads to another and another and yet another. Like a little cover-up fib that requires a more and more elaborate background story to hold up. Or a fabulous clearance-rack sweater that doesn’t match anything else in your closet but happens to look great with that pair of jeans and those shoes and *oooh!* the earrings over there (too bad they’re not on sale, too).
Homeowners are especially well-acquainted with this phenomenon; the older the home the more pronounced the effect. Our house was built in 1952, with steel windows that were installed between concrete blocks and brick during construction. They were top-of-the-line back then, but sixty years later Phil and I were ready to replace them with more energy efficient and easier to clean vinyl windows. Problem was, the solid construction made the window frames nearly impossible to remove. The only way to avoid astronomical labor fees would be to remove most of the old window, then slide the replacement into the old steel frame, leaving a small steel lip around the new window. We ordered our windows last November, and they were installed right after New Year’s.
New vinyl window to the right of picture window, as compared to old steel window on adjacent wall.
I knew going in that there would be some trim painting involved, both inside and outside. What I did not realize was that the new windows would be a much brighter white than the color we already used on trim all over the house. All righty then, some of the window sills need to be repainted anyway. But the window trim also matches the baseboard and doors. Well, to be honest, the baseboards and doors have also needed attention for the past couple of years, or maybe five.
As I washed the new windows and began the prep work for painting, I removed some ugly trim that was put up in the front room to attach window treatments that we no longer use. Under these same windows there were some less-than-attractive shelves built into either side of the fireplace. I have never liked them so Phil and I decided to rip them out, leaving a few chinks in the plaster. The plaster needs to be repaired, and we’re going to need to repaint so why not pick a new color while we are at it? We’ve put off refinishing the hardwood floors for a while, and just look at the difference where the shelves were . . . you can probably guess where this is heading, and we haven’t even made it out of the living room yet.
Christmas 2002. Note the shelves on either side of the fireplace behind us, as well as the wooden frames supporting the window treatments.January 2013. Shelves, curtains and window frames are gone.
The dominoes, they are a-tumbling, but the first one toppled long before we bought replacement windows. Just after Christmas 2005, Phil came home and told me that one of his employees had offered to give us a five-month-old black lab puppy. At the time her littermates were being sold, she was being treated for a cut under her eye, so they ended up keeping her. Now they wanted to find her a new home before her mother delivered another litter. Phil and I went to see her, and of course brought her home. Laura named her Daisy.
Daisy, happy to be living in her new home.
Daisy had lived outside for five months and her house training was a bit rough at first. We installed a baby gate to confine her to the family room, but despite diligent attention, she had a few accidents. Once she got the hang of letting us know when she needed outside, it was time for the old carpet to go. Instead of replacing it, we opted to install hardwood floors.
Back room, pre-Daisy.
Then we had to paint, because the walls looked shabby next to the gleaming floors. And speaking of shabby, the aluminum windows were practically falling apart. Wouldn’t top-down bottom-up shades be wonderful with the new ones? The woodburning stove was too hot and too smoky; what about one with a door to see the fire? Wow, look at how much the ceiling tiles were sagging. The lighting was dismal. We wanted more seating. We needed more shelves for DVDs. We didn’t really need a bigger TV but we bought one anyway, and Phil built a media cabinet to measure.
New floors, new paint.New windows, shades and sectional.New ceiling tiles, DVD shelves and track lighting.New woodstove, media center and massive television.
Before you knew it, our free dog was well into four figures. I suppose one could argue that we would have undertaken these projects sooner or later anyway, but I’d just as soon credit the dog. It’s not the worst thing she’s blamed for!
If I knew seven years ago what I know now, her name wouldn’t be Daisy – I’d have called her Domino.
