Category: Life

Quito, Ecuador and my friend, Marta’s home town

Last night,  over a pizza with extra mushrooms and pepperoni, I carefully listened to the life stories told to me in Spanish by a woman from Ecuador, who at the tender age of 20, moved to Kansas City with her Ecuadorian, soon to be doctor, husband.  After having 7 children with him,  she divorced and raised the children as a single mom, remaining in Kansas City.   She’d only interject with English when she’d see my head tilt and brows knit in confusion over a word or a phrase, then seamlessly, would fall right back into her native tongue.  When the waitress came over to our table to see if we needed anything and I quickly responded in Spanish, my immediate reality hit me and I had to marvel at the beauty of sharing these moments, with this women, in Spanish, in Leawood,  KS and over a pizza.

I met this lovely women a few years ago as she was my teacher at an evening Spanish class I was taking. After the 3rd class, she called me at home and told me she thought I was too advanced for the class and would I rather come to her house and just converse once a week?  Of course I would! I’d much rather speak Spanish while sitting on someone’s couch than at a desk with a notebook in front of me! And that’s how I got to know Marta.  After a few months of weekly Spanish at her house, I ended up taking a trip to her native Ecuador with her and 3 other students.   It was interesting  getting to see the country through her native eyes and frustrating at the same time as they were 78 year-old eyes and we didn’t exactly share the same philosophies on travel and adventure and how many more museums to we have to, I mean get to go to today??  But that’s another story.

I didn’t hear from her after the trip until a month ago when she emailed me and asked for my help with a project she was working on.  Her children are throwing her an 80th birthday party in December and to thank them, she was in the process of putting together a  short story of her life told in paintings and brief text that she wanted to make into books and could I please offer up the tiniest bit of help with the project?  I hesitated, and with good cause, but hung onto the words tiny or “muy pequito” more specifically.  I really didn’t know Marta well as she was fiercely private so was both surprised and flattered with her request.  Flattery won.

I agreed to meet her at her house, a short 10 minutes from mine, where she would show me what she was working on and how I could help.  In my mind, I thought it would be a giving an opinion on fonts or text placement kind of thing,  which I was more than happy to help with.  I’ve got to add that when I returned from Ecuador, I made a book of photos from the trip with some text and gave a copy to Marta, so any hopes of saying I didn’t know how were lost on that piece of history.   When I got there, she took me to her spare bedroom/office where she had 20 8 1/2 by 11 sized paintings carefully laid out on the sofa bed, all of them with the similar theme of trees, birds and a lot of blue sky.  They were quite lovely and all hand painted by Marta, who told me she taught herself to paint on the heels of this project.  Inhale.  Exhale.  It was far more than an opinion she wanted and I was in too deep to walk away.  She begged, she pleaded, she insisted on paying me for the work, which at that point, seeing the size of the project, I already had a number in my mind to charge her.  I looked at her standing proudly in front of the 20 paintings that depicted her life, carefully placed on the bed as a display for me and wondered how in the world I could say anything but yes.  Yes, of course I will help you.

She was so excited that I said yes and  began to explain how she wanted the book by showing me her handwritten copies of stapled and stacked papers, far more confusing than it needed to be, then explained how she learned to paint, again, far more explanation that I needed, but I was committed at that point,  so let go of my need to grab the explanation and be on my way, and  allowed myself to be present in a moment that was not just about me making a book.  There was something else in the makings here, and although not quite sure what that something was, I was willing to stay the course and find out.

I knew I’d be there until next Tuesday if I didn’t tell her I had to be somewhere else, so with the paintings and the papers, all organized into two folders,  we said our goodbyes and I almost made my exit when Marta came running out the front door and stopped me and handed me a lucite in-box from her desk, insisting that I put the paintings, the paintings that were safely tucked into a folder, into the box for the drive to my house.  She said they’d be safer that way.

While driving home, I glanced over at the clear lucite box that contained a 79 year-old woman from Ecuador’s life story, told in paintings and brief text, that was riding shot gun in my car and knew I had made the right decision.  This gift, created for her children and to be given to them on her 80th birthday celebration,  no doubt was going to be a gift for me as well, and to that, both out loud and to myself, I said gracias.

My first task at hand was to photograph the paintings, which had given me the most angst about the project as I didn’t want to lose one brushstroke in the copying process, but they turned out beautifully and I began the process of digitally putting them into the book format, along with her pages of text.  The ease of the project ended quickly when I got an email from Marta saying she wanted all of the paintings back because she wanted to make the birds darker, which were in every painting and represented important pieces of her life.  I knew there was no arguing with her so told her I’d be over “around noon” on the following day.  I pulled into her driveway at 12:10 and noticed her standing at the front window waiting.  My irritation with her request that seemed unfounded, melted at the sight of her anxiously waiting for me.  It made me think of my grandparents who would drive an hour to see me dance in a 10 minute half-time performance in my high school gym.  They always looked little and vulnerable and more excited than anyone else in the room to see me.  I found myself more than willing to hear Marta’s explanations of the small changes she wanted to make and how she was going to make the birds darker in all 20 of the paintings.  I’m finding my Spanish again with each visit and she’s finding someone to use her Spanish with and I think in the process, we’re both unexpectedly finding a friendship. 

After about a week of working on the book,  and two more trips to her house with worries and suggestions, I brought over the final copy via my computer for her to look at before ordering.  She was thrilled!  Well… mostly.  There was one painting that she wanted to tweak just a little bit and then I could come back the next day and get it.  Or, I suggested, the tweaks could be done as I waited then I could carry the wet painting home in my car, oh so carefully.  She hesitated and said she’d do it now and I could take it home with me and in the meantime, would I like to go eat pizza with her tonite at a pizza place nearby that she liked?  My first thought was to say no, I have to go, but then thoughts of her sitting by herself at a trendy and likely busy pizza parlor came to mind and I graciously said yes, of course yes.  It was over pizza that I heard about Marta and her seven children and both her happiness with being here and the longing for her Ecuador.  I am both blessed and honored to be a very small part of the celebration of this dear woman’s 80th birthday.

The warmth of such an interesting and delightful evening quickly faded when Marta emailed me later that night and said she wanted all of the text size changed as larger text is just nicer to read.  She didn’t seem to understand that the actual book would be larger than my computer screen but that didn’t matter.  She wanted it changed and needed me to come by her house, at my convenience, of course, ASAP,  so she could explain.  She ended the email telling me that because she had shared her history and her family’s history with me, “we are now friends.”

Marta (on the right) with her childhood friend and me in Cuenca, Ecuador

 And so, with my new friend directing me, I continue to work on this project, that in reality was completed a while ago, while realizing that this is less about the book and far more about what is going on between Marta and I during the process of making this book.  These really are the moments,  wrapped up in a package so cleverly disguised that it hardly seemed like a gift, let alone one I’d want to unwrap.  It has been the unexpected treasure of friendship inside wrappings of frustration and annoyance,  that I never saw coming.  For that, I am grateful and say gracias,  muchas gracias mi amiga, Marta.

To be continued…

My front yard has become a construction zone and I should really wear a hard hat when going to my car, which as of yesterday, and until further notice, is parked several houses down the street from my house.  My driveway is no longer accessible and with that, I lost my garage.  Mail delivery is iffy and my overly full recycle bin was finally returned to my garage in the same position that I hauled it out in as I got tired of waiting for it to be emptied.  I can hardly blame either the mail truck or the recycle truck for not making their way down my street.  It takes a brave soul.  This is what happens to homeowners when their old neighborhood gets a below the surface facelift and it’s out with the old pipes and in with the new.  That alone, is helping me stay positive about the whole mess of a situation, but when trying to get to my house yesterday and having to quickly change from drive to reverse because a fire truck was backing down the street just feet in front of me, my  positivity started to wane.

I asked the fireman, who was headed to my car, what was going on and was everyone OK and am I really going to have to back down the street to the busy road I just turned off of?

“A major gas line was broken a block from here… down there on the corner… sure does take patience to live on this street these days, huh?  And no, we’ll move the truck so you can get by.”

Thank you, fireman.  Yes, it does and I sure did appreciate the acknowledgement of that.

As I was making my way through the tight squeeze around the fire truck,  I realized that “a block from here and down there on the corner” was, of course, my house.  Sometimes all you can do is shake your head, be grateful that the firetruck was called and leave candle lighting on my porch for another time.  I’m still scared (although they said it was fixed and I couldn’t smell gas).  The whole gas line breakage has resulted in a hole the size of a swimming pool in the front corner of my yard.  I’m not even sure it could still be called a hole.  A trench, perhaps?  Whatever it is, there’s a deep end that could certainly support a high dive as it was a few feet deeper than any of the men working in it – my estimates from my kitchen window said 10 feet and once all the workers had left and the coast was clear, I stood on the edge of the pit and without scaling my way down, 10 feet deep seemed about right.

 

THIS is the corner of my yard…

 

No worries… there’s a plastic net fence around it for safety.  This would be a pretty ugly fall in the dark of night…

Patience.  I’m trying to find it, keep it, put it into action.

The initial work involved replacing the 75 year old gas lines to my house, which meant there was a pretty steady stream of workmen traipsing through my house and into my basement to do the work, have their work checked, and light my hot water heater, followed by a few rounds of shutting the gas off and relighting the heater.  They were in my house often enough that I felt like I should at least offer them a cup of coffee or maybe a piece of toast.   Only thoughts.  The good news is that the work has totally moved away from the inside of my house so the workers are no longer in and out,  but the bad news is that my yard seems to be the headquarters and where all of the really big machinery seems to be hanging out.

I know having to back up those big huge machines to the nearest side street so that anyone who lives in this chaos zone can make their way to their houses has got to be frustrating for the workers and has me being a whole lot more thoughtful about how many times I leave my house, knowing that I’ll have to weave my way through the mess to get home.  Three weeks ago I was making eye contact, followed by a quick nod and a smile.  I figured it was the least I could do to offer my encouragement for no doubt a difficult job.  I quit that last Monday when at 7 a.m. my house was shaking so hard from the concrete smashing that was going on in front of my house,  that I was sure photos were going to start falling off the walls.  That, along with the noise and the dust that has enveloped my house and has left all horizontal surfaces in my house coated so thick that you could write your name on it,  has my smile waning a bit.  Just as well to keep eye contact out of it.  I don’t want to be “that” person who is in continual complaining mode but given what my front yard looks like, I truly feel like I’m taking one for the team here and feel totally justified.  Still, best to just keep on moving and keep my facial expressions out of it.

Most people have friend’s cars parked in front of their house… not me!  I’ve got KOMAT’SU parked in front of my house!

 

The pipes have to be stored somewhere while digging the trenches where they’ll eventually be… my side yard seemed to be the best choice…

 

Just random stuff in my yard…

Throughout this whole process, I do have to think of how much worse it could be.  My neighbor has a 9 month-old baby, who probably hasn’t had a decent daytime nap for 3 weeks (the noise is a constant).  Then there’s the danger element… if ANY of my kids were of “that” age, it would sure be hard to keep them out of that enticing canyon that seems to be growing in my front yard, let alone any curious pets.  For that, I’m grateful, as the flimsy plastic fence hardly acts as a barrier.

Every time I see this, I want to steal it.  I’m not sure why.

I suppose the clincher to all of this should be that a short 3 months ago, I had  my old and very crumbling driveway replaced with a brand sparkling new one, something that I’ve put off since I moved to this house 4 years ago because driveways are not cheap, nor a fun way to spend your money.  It was removed to the first joint this morning, as was everyone else’s on my side of the street.  I couldn’t watch.  I’ve been assured multiple times (because that’s how often I’ve asked) that the section will be replaced with a driveway of the same or better quality.  For now, I’m believing them until I see otherwise.  It’s keeping me sane and a whole lot calmer than I could be given the situation.

Patience.  Inhale.  Exhale. (being mindful on the inhale as I live in a cloud of dust right now…).  This will end up good and I truly believe that.  Besides, who gets to actually see what lives 8 or 9 feet under their street?  There’s a whole other world under there!  That’s a start…

 

I fell in the mud two weeks ago and have been wallowing in it ever since. Sometimes you have to step back a few feet to gain perspective and then again, sometimes it’s simply just best not to look.  This would be one of those times.  I got a glance,  and it wasn’t pretty.

When your day starts with 2 hours of binging on Breaking Bad before the coffee pot’s even emptied… well it’s a pretty good indicator as to the direction the rest of the day is going to go.  I think I need about 4 hours of a PBS or maybe a Brady Bunch cleanse to counteract the effects of Breaking Bad. The show truly makes me feel like I need sunshine, some fresh fruit and maybe a long bath.

And then there’s the whole shirt thing.  Today is day 12 wearing the same shirt that I was wearing when I went shoulder first into the mud.  I’m teetering between being totally disgusted with the rate at which my personal standards have gone south and how easily I’ve adapted to the whole decline. Something about it makes me sad… or is it proud?  I may not be physically up to the challenge of a multi-day backpacking trip… yet…but I feel I’ve made a lot of headway in other areas that will come in handy on multiple days on the trail.  I’m over the hygiene hump.  I crested it about last Friday.

That was my morning, but it got better, even with my wallowing in the mud in an overly worn shirt and with too much Breaking Bad in my system for that early in the day… but I digress…

I spent a big chunk of my day in the KU orthopedic lobby (thanks, Robin) waiting to hear if all of the not moving my shoulder by leaving both my shoulder AND my shirt in tact, fearing still, that one false move and I’m back to square one, has been a fruitful commitment. I’m very happy to say that the doctor told me that things looked very good, no surgery necessary,  and I could downgrade to a simple sling and,

“You can change your shirt…”
(it may have come up in the conversation that the shirt had been worn for a “few” days, or more accurately, longer than the length of most yoghurt’s sell by dates.

He (he being the Dr.) did ask me quickly in between his transcribing two nurses who stood behind rolling computers, how I had broken my shoulder.  I was SO glad to be able to tell him something that in my opinion is legit….

I fell in the mud while hiking.

Where?

Colorado…Frisco, to be exact.

Oh. nice… at least you had a nice view.

I’m so glad I didn’t have to tell him I fell off of a small ladder perched on top of a leather ottoman so I would have the height I needed to hang some art work.  Sadly, I know this from experience, but it was in Frisco, so I did have a nice window view.  I swear by a smelly black shirt that’s heaped in the corner of my closet, that those days are over.  Really.

So..my wallowing in the mud time is over and I’ve climbed out of my hole, have put on a clean shirt and am on my way to happier days.  I’m not quite ready to find my gratitude or the silver lining in all of this as my shoulder still hurts too much to find my resolve there, but soon, I’m sure.  In the meantime,  I have found a new appreciation for shoulders that work in full range and are far more awed by seeing a shoulder in motion these days than I am by lean runner legs, chiseled abs or cut arms as a working shoulder is a far more useful goal for me right now.  Oh to do a down dog again….

But for now, just one more Breaking Bad…it’s an open bag of chips and I can’t seem to keep my hand out of the bag… then I’ll do some PBS or Brady Bunch counteracting.

New shirt, new sling, new attitude… the hair still needs some work though…

Oh yea and the truth on where I ended up on the black shirt lies somewhere between Emery’s worries of our separation anxiety and Robin thinking I should burn it.  It will be washed, twice, then hung in the back of my closet for posterity, or something like that…

Today is day 7 of my broken shoulder, which without doing any math, adds up to 7 days of wearing the black tee shirt.  My daughter, Emery, is worried about separation anxiety when the two of us eventually will go our separate ways, and my sister, Robin, insists that I will never want to see, let alone wear, the shirt again and will likely lay it to rest in the garbage can.  The truth, I’m guessing,  lays somewhere in between.  Out of pure exasperation, on around day 4, I did take scissors to my sports bra that had been along for the ride since day one,  and was able to make enough one-handed cuts to pull it out my right sleeve.  If this is too much information, I’m sorry.  My life kind of feels like a too much information situation these days.  I need to vent.

Before any judgements are made, and I would hardly blame you, I have been washing my shirt right along side all my other parts, as I’m still wearing it as much as I’m wearing my left arm, which I now wish I could have dropped off at the emergency room and picked up when it was healed.  I guess you could say my shirt has become a part of me.  Would it help if I added that it is a quick dry shirt and people who backpack, the Colorado Trail for example, would wear the same shirt for a whole lot longer?  Isn’t that right, Lexi Schmidt??  In truth, my justifications here are much more directed to myself than they are to my audience.  I came to that realization while sitting in a bank lobby yesterday morning.  It was there, while seated on the other side of of a highly polished, mahogany desk, that I realized I had mustard on my four times bathed shirt and it’s possible that I did not smell petal fresh.  OK, it’s more than possible.  An odor that might be similar to day 4 or 5 on the trail comes to mind, but I’ve not gotten confirmation on that.  Robin did lean in pretty closely though and assured me that I didn’t stink, but that was 3 days ago.  She did, however, tell me that the fingernails on my left hand still looked kind of muddy, which sadly is true.  Thank goodness for sisters, who will tell you what you need to hear and will wipe your tears afterwards. She must not have noticed the mustard.

How is it that the mustard stain didn’t show up in the mountains of CO, which is where the consumption took place, but did show up in the lobby of Commerce Bank two days post consumption?  Did the two storied windows, high ceilings, large commercial art installations and hushed tones bring an awareness that simply went unnoticed while in the more rugged, rough and tumble mountain environment?  Of course once you notice something then try to ignore it, not look at it, pretend it’s not there, it seems to explode, right before your very eyes.  I wanted the neatly, unstained banker to ask about my injury, so I could give some credibility to the contraption that seemed to be wearing me, but he didn’t and I didn’t want to be THAT girl who couldn’t wait to share my tale of woe.  I was asked by everyone I passed in CO, or so it seemed, what had happened to my arm, or more specifically, which sport played a role in the injury?  A slinged arm, a braced knee or a supportive crutch are common sight in my neck of the mountains and the curious asking is as much about gleaning information on trail conditions as it is to offer empathy.  Given the bruised visual aide, perhaps the banker was simply being professional and even thoughtful to avoid the subject, which could have just as easily been the result of an angry boyfriend, drunk brother-in-law or any anger-fueled ruckus as far as he was concerned..

I’m feeling vulnerable.  I can’t tie my shoes, button or zip my jeans (at least donning yoga pants makes me feel a little post-workout”ish”) and I can’t pull my hair back into a ponytail by myself.  My long, curly hair in this current KS post rain humidity is …well it’s not pretty, or small and although asking for help is not an easy task for me, asking someone to tie back my hair is such a necessity right now.  It’s been a day at a time situation that I’ve lucked out on so far with friends or family who have dropped by (thank you, Rhonda…).  But if/when luck doesn’t show up, I’m all in for waiting for my mailman (who is a woman) and will ask her.  My pride is waning.  So is my ego.

Still…

As far as the black tee shirt goes, frankly, I’m afraid to take it off.  My physical therapist friends have given me the instructions on removal, which is bad arm through the sleeve first…or was it good arm first?  Whichever way, I’m obviously not ready for the task.  Besides, the immobilizing sling would have to come off first, which scares me even more.  I’m a good patient to the point of flirting with being a bit neurotic, and if the ER doc told me to keep it immobilized, well then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  He didn’t tell me to shower daily, change out of that black tee and quit eating stuff with mustard on it, or that’s exactly what I would be doing.

I know this could have been a lot worse and I did declare on my last post that I only needed another 24 hours or so of complaining, which was at least 4 days ago.  I think compromised hygiene in the burbs simply isn’t as acceptable as it is in the mountains, when assumptions of “just off the trail” could be made, and will therefore blame my current rants to hygiene issues, or lack thereof. A little shirt scrubbing in the shower and a tie back on this unruly hair and I’ll be as good as new.  Well… kind of.

This is probably a creepy addition to my post, but my friend, Rhonda thought the colors were beautiful and snapped this photo.  Sadly, the lighting hardly does it justice,  An unexpected silver, I mean purplish black, lining.

 

I bought a necklace a few summers ago while visiting in Frisco – a silver disc with tree branches on it.  I liked the simple lines.  The paperwork inside the box said the charm represented resiliency.  It could have stood for a whole lot of other things – love, courage or hope, but I was glad it was resiliency as that seemed to resonate with me.  It reminded me of the swaying tree branches in the strong Kansas winds and how it’s the winds that develop the tree’s strong lateral root system. The following summer, I found a charm of similar size with a small piece of turquoise in the center and the words “protect this woman”  encircling it.  I figured that given  the amount of time I was spending alone on the trails,  the silver talisman couldn’t hurt. For the last year these two charms have dangled around my neck, offering me both protection and resilience, or so I like to think.

 

My resiliency has been challenged after a bad fall I took while hiking a few days ago.   I fell in the mud.  Just typing that makes me want to laugh for some reason.  I mean really…  falling in the mud?  I broke the fall with my shoulder and am now wishing my wrist would have done the breaking,  as I’d be in less pain, but I really had no say in the matter.  A week earlier, a friend had told me that being able to get up without using your arms was a good indicator of overall strength and progression of aging.  I thought about that while laying in the mud and contemplating my transition to vertical.  Either my core strength with the possible help of one arm was going to get the job done or I was going to be the woman “who had fallen and couldn’t get up.”  I didn’t linger long on that decision and drug myself out of the mud and onto upright via my core, a small victory that was desperately needed.

the calm before the storm…

the “storm”

I also pulled my phone and sunglasses out of the mud and cleaned them off best as I could with my hands as my clothes were covered in mud.  To my children who make fun of my phone because it has not one but TWO protective coverings on it, this is why.  I did make myself sit down on a nearby log to collect my wits, survey the damage and take a few minutes to put my head in my muddy lap and cry before making the two mile journey home.  I’m not sure what concerned me more….what I had done to my shoulder?  or how quickly my plans for the rest of the day, the rest of the week and possibly the rest of the summer had changed in one quick slip of the foot. I was a walking mud mess that couldn’t make eye contact out of my mud smeared sunglasses with the couple of people who passed me on bikes.  I just hoped they had make the assumption that I had just participated in a Tough Mudder Run.  Probably not, but it made me feel better.

By the time I got home, I was in quite a bit of pain, and the only way I could hold my arm was across my chest,  with my hand on my heart, as if I was pledging allegiance.  And I did.  To never hike in mud again.

My fear was as great as my pain…what had I done to my shoulder?  Was my summer ruined?  How was I going to manage? I thought about a woman who I was standing behind in line at the Gap a few weeks earlier who was wearing a heavy duty sling on her arm and was sharing her horror stories of pain with the man who was ringing her up who had experienced the same injury and had worn the same sling.   I remember more of their shared words of pain than what I purchased that day.  Certainly ice and a couple of Tylenol would put me back together again, wouldn’t it?

Webster online dictionary defines resilient as:

“Being able to become strong, healthy or successful again after something bad happens; being able to return to original form after being pulled, stretched or compressed”

I know, because for some odd reason, looking up that definition was the second thing I did when I got home. The first thing I did was take a bath,  leaving my shirt on, as I had no idea how it was going to come off without scissors, which I was not going to attempt one handed.  Besides, just thinking about maneuvering my arm out of the sleeve was painful.  It got washed right along side my muddy legs and arms.  The sports bra, I figured I’d just wear for the rest of my life or until this, whatever this was, was healed.

To Webster’s definition of pulled, stretched or compressed, I’m going to take liberties and add broken, because that’s what the doctor in the ER later told me.  I fell in the mud and broke my humerus, or my funny bone. As soon as this stops hurting, I’m really going to laugh about that.

This experience has tested my patience, exposed my vulnerability and has pushed me to do things that I’m very uncomfortable with, mainly asking for help (thank you, Karen and Lisa for stepping in before I had to ask ).  It has also given me appreciation for the very simplest of tasks that I clearly took for granted before.  Who would have thought to be grateful for being able to put deodorant on or file fingernails on both hands and not just the injured hand?  I miss being able to perform the simple task of changing my shirt  (yep, still donning my accident shirt and of course the sports bra that I will wear forever. )  I’m pushing the boundaries here with my camping hygene, less the tent or campfire, but have no immediate plans to venture out in public at this point so feel justified.   I miss typing with two hands and am finding that this solo-handed hunt and peck method feels like a foot on the brakes to my stream of consciousness, not to mention the whole two-step capitalization process.  I miss being able to tie my hair back…a few more days and I’m going to look like the dark-haired version of Emery and Miles dog, Olive, who is about as close to a dog with dreads as I’ve ever seen.  I’m tired of wearing yoga pants because I can’t get my jeans on and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to zip them.  Oh yea, and I miss yoga.

My necklace with the resilient and protection charms, is in my purse where the nurse put it before my x-rays,  no doubt with a new tangle or two,  which I wouldn’t be able to untangle anyway and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to fasten the clasp, so in my bag it will stay.   One thing that a broken shoulder doesn’t seem to have affected is my ability to whine.  Sorry, but I feel like I’ve got at least another 24 hours of stomping my feet and saying,

“Dammit I want to climb a mountain, zip up jeans, ride my bike, tie my hair back and carve out a piece of watermelon to eat.”

I cried this morning when I realized that I had to add putting on deodorant to my growing list of “no can do’s.”  Sometimes you’ve just gotta cry.

Just 24 hours… then I will be ready to back up and look at the big picture, think about the lesson and move on with the healing.

One of my friends compared me to a bird with a broken wing, which is exactly how I feel while perched in my bed with a blue-skyed mountain vista that seems to be beckoning.   Now is my “lay me in a shoebox with a Kleenex blanket to heal my broken wing” time.

just like the woman at the Gap was wearing…

Resilient?  I’m not sure.  I think I’ll have to wait and see what my return to original form after being fractured looks like for my answer.

Everyday, since January 1, 2014, I have been taking a photo and digitally putting it into a self-publish book.  Some days I’ve had a plethora of photos to choose from and other days I’ve struggled to come up with the one photo that will represent the day, more or less.   I’ve given each photo a date, the number of days into the year it represents and a caption.  By the way, today is day #146…

It’s been an interesting journey that has brought on challenges that I had not expected, which surprisingly has NOT been to remember to take a photo and digitally upload it into the book on a daily basis.  Initially, I tried to outdo myself daily, each photo upping the last, most of them scenic, none of them boring, but 146 days into the project, I know now that the days that I think I’ve got nothing, are the days that I find myself slowing down, listening and simply observing and I’m always surprised with what I end up with.  They are usually the days with the photos I’m most proud of.

The process has given me a different lens to view my day through (pun intended)… and through that lens, I’m finding the beauty in places and situations that I never noticed before….
Unexpected bonuses.
Open eyes.

Here are a few of my favorites…

Day #1

 

Day #36

 

Day #37

Day #71

 

Day #77

Day #91

Day #114

Day #146

 

Thanks to the help of my good friend, Lawson Barlow, my toilet is now up and running.  While he toiled away at the mess I had made (I’m learning the importance of using the right tool… you called it, LaMonte), his wife, Terri, and I enjoyed mint juleps on the screened in porch.  Who says that letting go and letting someone else step in and help you can’t be all that and a sprig of mint?

Although I can’t discount the importance to my own sense of confidence and self worth that comes from doing things myself, I think that asking good friends for help sometimes, hard as it is, can do far more for me than three days of a closed bathroom door with a heap of wrong tools filling the sink,  including a newly purchased hack saw.  Today, the feeling of knowing I’ve got great friends who will come to my rescue trumps the feelings of pride that comes from doing it myself.

In the event that this happens again, and it likely will given that I have 3 toilets in my house, Lawson gave me my very own pipe wrench, guaranteed not to strip the threads like my over-used pliers did.  With the addition of a new, never used hack saw and a pipe wrench,  my tool box it starting to look legit!

Up and running again!  Thanks, Lawson!

 

Along the same lines of my giving readers a heads up not to scroll down for the naked photos that did not exist in my “Skiing Naked” post, I need to be up front about the content to follow which is not about past relationships, disappointments, unmet expectations, or worse, but rather is about fixing toilets.  I had hoped this post would have a happier ending, or an ending, but it doesn’t and for those who want to continue to read this, I’m going to ruin the ending that doesn’t exist and tell you that the toilet is still not fixed and I have not let go of the issue.  The best I can do right now is to focus on the silver lining, which at this very moment means stuff to write about; stuff that may sound kind of funny now but had me in tears two nights ago.

The toilet fill valve on my guest bath toilet decided to quit, or kind of quit, but it was making noise, which is never a good thing… that much I do know.  When I took the video of what was going on post flush in the back of my toilet to the hardware store, the kind gentleman who was helping me knew exactly how to fix it and showed me what to buy and what to do with it, step by step.  I am not mechanical.  I struggle with reading instructions and then having to figure out how to follow them.  Although he was only a toddler at the time, it was my son, Grant, who put together the Little Tykes toys and equipment that seemed to flow into our house non stop for several years.  Even without the ability to read at age 3, he seemed to know intuitively how the brightly colored plastic pieces fit together to make something.  I marveled.  I had mechanical envy.

As the kind hardware store man is wrapping up the explanation with me on step 7 or 8 or whatever step has you giving the final check with a flush, I asked him,

“Which way does the shut off valve go to turn the water off at the toilet?”

Sometimes it’s best to humble yourself and come clean.  He knew, at that point, who he was dealing with and backed up slowly to the beginning.

“A slow clockwise turn… that would be to your right.”

At one point he mentioned “youtube videos,” and that information, coupled with my new knowledge of knowing how to shut off the water to the toilet, was all the information I needed.  I thanked him profusely, bought the $18 part and was on my way.  I’ve got to admit that there was a tool belt that caught my eye on the way out of the store, something I’ve always wanted, but I feel like it needs to be earned and I’m not there yet.  Maybe this was the home improvement project that I’d earn my belt on.

The idea that this was something I’d be able to do myself gave me a great deal of satisfaction and pride and not having to shell out a hundred dollars (I’m guessing?) to have a plumber walk through my front door, even happier.  I’d love to be able to add fixing my toilet to my list of accomplishments.  Really.

With feelings of confidence, I lined up the pieces that came out of the box, including the instructions, on the countertop, watched a youtube video three times, turned the water off, drained the back tank, disconnected the water hose from the toilet then got stuck.  I could not even BEGIN to budge the plastic lug nut on the outside of the toilet (I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called, but that’s what I’m going to call it from here on…) and surprising to me, the me who throughout my 20’s used a clog to hammer a nail into the wall, was even using the right tool.  After about 45 minutes of struggling and torquing myself in half to get to the side of the toilet in the first place, I gave up, which came in the form of me sitting on my bathroom floor in tears.  I know it may not sound tear-worthy for most, but those emotions were coming from a place far deeper than the back of my now drained toilet.  This was about doing something so small yet so big BY MYSELF, without having to ask for any help (I’m not counting the gentleman at Ace because that’s his job).  The flip side of wanting to feel that sense of accomplishment is that for the past 9 years,  broken toilets, flat tires,  sump pumps, birds nests in porch lights on fire and beeping house alarms have become my chore to deal with by myself, whether I wanted to or not (and that “by myself” includes calling the repairman, AAA man or handyman).  Although it’s taught me a lot, asking for help to begin with, it’s not something I’ve gotten the least bit comfortable with, even after 9 years.

I’ve done a whole lot of scary things in those 9 years without giving much thought to them, but a beeping alarm, a running toilet and a flat tire requires immediate attention, whether you want to give it or not.  This is the emotional spot that when I work from I start breaking things, on accident AND on purpose so when I texted Robin to see if Jim had a hacksaw, it was more a cry for help than anything else (although I still think sawing the stuck lug nut off may be the answer).  He didn’t.  And so I turned out the light, closed the door and drove to Baskin Robbins where I ate the better part of a double scoop of jamocha almond fudge ice cream on the 5 minute drive home.  Enough.

The next night ended in a similar way… frustrated… with a lug nut that still won’t move, but this time I made a 1/2 recipe of chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies simply because a whole recipe scared me as I knew I’d likely make my way through all of them.  1/2 recipe was a good idea and yes, I did.

The project is still looming behind the closed door and I fear that one more night with the same results are going to end with my head in a bag of Crispy Cremes, but I’m still not quite ready to let go and call a handy man.

Still with hope…

Hope fading…

I’m not sure how many days of walking by the closed bathroom door it will take before I call for help, but right now, I’m standing strong in the face of the challenge and am merely giving myself a break before going back in with a different attitude or maybe different equipment… such as a hacksaw…

To be continued…

I’ve been helping Emery and Miles clean, weed out, organize and redistribute their things (i.e. take stuff out of their basement and put it in mine…) in preparation to sell their house and move to Colorado. At one point, I asked Emery what she wanted me to do with her wedding dress, which looks like a white tent perched up against the wall of my upstairs cedar closet.

“Oh I don’t know.  I should probably have it cleaned but really don’t really care…  Just leave it.”

I asked too late.  My girl who says she doesn’t have one sentimental bone in her body has moved on.  No doubt the day will come when she’ll be grateful for what I will likely go ahead and do, which is have the dress professionally cleaned and boxed for proper storage.  She may say she doesn’t have a sentimental bone in her body,  but I’d rephrase that to say, “she’s selective with her sentimentality and the pieces she decides to let in, she’ll carry forever…”  She just wasn’t ready to to file this piece away as sentimental.  It’s too soon, or maybe too late, but years down the road she will feel a flutter in her heart when she sees the big box wrapped in brown paper on the closet shelf… most likely MY closet shelf.

I can remember going through similar feelings regarding my own wedding dress, but made myself take care of it the day after returning home from our honeymoon because I knew if I didn’t do it then, I never would and my white satin gown would quickly yellow, and not in a cool tea-stained vintage sort of way, or so I was told.  I did the research and ended up taking it to a cleaners on Troost Avenue that had been recommended to me, and for $50 I had it cleaned, wrapped in blue tissue to keep it white, boxed and for that price, I assumed hermetically sealed.  It was a huge investment at the time, exactly one tenth of what the dress cost me, but everyone I spoke with insisted I shell out the money as  I’d regret it if I didn’t.

For 28 years,  that large box wrapped in brown paper sat in the back of the cedar closet in the home Charlie and I raised our kids in, until one day when my then future daughter in law, Brooke,  was in town and wanted to see what my wedding dress looked like.  And just like Pandora’s box, when the box that had been sealed for the past 28 years was opened up, I never could have predicted that the most astonishing thing would  NOT be that I could get it zipped half the way up, but that it would be on file at the Leawood Police Department.

The promises the dry cleaners told me were upheld and the dress looked as good as the day when I handed it over to them, except it was a bit of a wrinkled mess, but I expected that.  I’m so glad Brooke asked to see it as I never would have been inclined to open the box for even a peek, let alone a try on.  Afterwards, I brought the dress back to my house, box and all, but before doing my best to box it up again, Emery wanted to have a look and a try on.  Both she and Brooke were getting married in the coming year and although they both already had their dresses,  it was fun to be able to share this moment of my history with them.

After Emery tried on the dress and oohed and ahhhed (OK, I’m kind of exaggerating on that one… she did mention something about Renaissance Festivals though…), I left the dress at the bottom of the stairs to be taken up to the cedar closet and folded back into its box when I had time.

Two days later, an unfortunate series of events unfolded, beginning with my impulsive move to set the alarm system when I left the house (something I rarely did) and left without realizing  the front door wasn’t completely latched. The wind blew the door open, the alarm went off, the police were called and my sister was called because she’s my “call her first when there’s trouble..” person.  While I’m enjoying a challenging but fun workout with friends, Robin is at my front door discussing the possible “incident” with the Leawood police.

By no means is what I’m about to say minimizing the work that the policemen do in my neighborhood or the respect I have for them, but it is a bit like Mayberry around here and an alarm going off was noteworthy enough that 2 cars and 4 officers showed up to the scene.  Of course Robin could not enter the house once she arrived,  as it was still considered a possible crime scene (thank goodness no tape had been stretched across the front door) although they said it didn’t look like there had been a break in as my computer was still on my bed as well as some jewelry on the night stand.

However…. there was one thing that they found that was very odd that they couldn’t make sense of…

There was a wedding gown on the floor at the bottom of the stairs….  Did she know anything about a wedding gown?

At that moment, as Robin is relating this story to me, I realized that just a few paces away from that wedding gown heap was something else they saw but chose not to mention and that was a half a dozen empty wine bottles next to my sink.  I had gathered them up to recycle and although right next to the gown on the floor, the two had absolutely,  no way no how,  anything to do with each other.  Robin of course knew nothing of the dress but told the officers she was sure it was nothing.  It was, however, her first question to me, which went something like this:

“Please tell me that you don’t put your wedding dress on at night and drink wine…”

I know there’s a big ole moral of the story in here somewhere … maybe something to do with following through with projects, being mindful when doing important things such as setting the house alarm or maybe it’s taking care of the 2nd wedding dress in my upstairs closet so it, also, doesn’t end up in a photo in my file down at the station.  But the moral I like to think about is that maybe my string of carelessness offered a bit of comic relief to a few of  Leawood’s police officers, and a good story to take back to the station.

I continue to be hopeful that the officers on duty that day don’t sigh in pity when they drive by the house on High Drive where circumstantial evidence would have me traipsing around in a wrinkled mess of a wedding dress, most likely stained with wine… the Miss Havisham of Leawood, if you will.  Maybe I should covet the incident that gave an otherwise quiet police department an unexpected laugh that morning.

Hours after the “incident,”  the wrinkled mess of a dress was mashed right back into its box and put it on the shelf in the cedar closet, with plenty of room next to it for Emery’s eventually cleaned and boxed-up dress. Years down the road, it will be her adventure, not mine, if and when she decides to break the seal to see what’s inside, hopefully without police intervention.

Police files are confidential… this is the best I could do…