Month: May 2020

Yes, there is half a tree on our roof.

And, no, it’s not the start of a joke. We’re all fine. So, blessedly, is the power which runs very near where the tree now rests.

I heard a bizarre – but not all that loud – noise Friday night. Like something falling. A quick phone call to Bill assured me that he was safely working away in his basement office.

Then, a text from our neighbor saying that her son said a big branch fell at our house and asking if we were okay. I peered out all the windows (with a rather wimpy flashlight) and decided we were, despite the mystery, okay.

The photo was taken Saturday morning… mystery solved! More hassle begun.

We’re still in the midst of the stove adventure from last week. The new one is here but there was more installing to be done today. And a switch-thing to wait on, so that the light in the oven actually goes off when the door is closed! In the meanwhile, we’ve been experimenting with strategies for getting the massive amount of sticky goop off of it!

And it is, of course, Memorial Day weekend which doesn’t bode well for speedy help.

I’ll confess that a come-apart was tempting.

There are several new creations bouncing around in my head like one of those old, brightly colored kids’ toys that pops when you push it, like a popcorn popper, demanding attention.

It’s really NOT a good time for hassles.

Then I had a conversation with a young woman who is food, housing, and possibly immigration-status insecure, due mostly to the pandemic.

And I decided that perhaps I might be grateful for hassles I can fix. (Well, not me, personally. But I can help cause them to be fixed!)

So far, my fixing has meant a sale for a local business and work for a contractor-friend. And, clearly, work coming up for a tree trimming company. (Let’s don’t think about the roof just yet!)

Then it occurred to me that, with a bit more work on a couple of my projects, I might just have some extra resources, allowing me to cause a few more things to be fixed.

But, before that, there’s a grocery delivery in our future. And some phone calls to make.

There are a lot of things wrong in the world just now that I can’t fix. And a few that I can. In fact, a few more since I got up this morning! And, while I’m at it, count on me voting!

And giving thanks for those who have served, and are serving, on all the front lines in this world.

As you know, if you’ve been reading along, we moved a lot when I was a kid. According to family gospel, when I learned that we were moving from Cleveland to Pittsburg, I had questions.

Did they have corn on the cob? And, did they have Romper Room?

Assured that they did, I agreed to go. (Yes, you can laugh!)

Miss Whomever must have done her job well for I survived, in our next move, from Pittsburg to St. Louis, a world without Kindergarten.

It’s true. I never went. There wasn’t a public option and the private choices were all filled to their over-running waiting lists.

My mom, who professed to believe I needed a teacher, signed me up for dance lessons. The teacher had royal blue eyeshadow that extended above her eyebrows and she scared me.

Mom, who probably really thought she needed a couple of hours here and there with only one small child to chase, finally relented when I was given a beat up used bicycle, complete with training wheels, and insisted on staying home to ride.

By the time I reached my first day of first grade, complete with painful, slippery new shoes, a plaid dress with a Peter Pan collar from Sears, and a too-short haircut that closely resembled the mixing bowl-on-the-head do’s so popular in those days, I was way past ready to learn!

Sally, Dick, and Jane rocked my world! In a matter of weeks I was ready to make the leap from, “Puff is on TV, ” to the complexity of Betsy & Tacy, eating supper on the bench at the end of their street, while I made up the words I didn’t know.

I have been blessed with much learning to do since then. And, like the artist known as Michaelangelo, I am still learning.

It’s been a big week for learning! I suspect that’s because I spend a great deal of my time hanging out with a tribe of women, connected by a red thread, and bravely learning, too.

You may have heard rumors of my unintended learning experience with an enormous pot of gorgeous bird bones and a stove that quit working during the step of the process known as simmer, with bubbles gently breaking the surface, overnight.

I was heartbroken. And frustrated. Those were lovingly roasted, local chicken and turkey bones, sustainably raised by farmers with whom I’m on hugging terms which, in these days more than ever, isn’t a bad way to get food! At least they were until they became trash.

Enter the need to learn a whole lot about buying a stove, as we own neither microwave, nor toaster oven. Thankfully, I was already in possession of categories for success on that decision and the new, improved version should arrive late this week.

That done, it was back to the business of art. Literally, for I am engaged in several conversations about how to do healing art in the world where we now find ourselves. Here’s a short list of what I know now that I didn’t know before:

How to get the very skippy new email signature in my laptop to also work in my phone.

New uses for adjectives in writing invitations… and ways to decide which ones!

How to get my toys to work together so that I can lead a Zoom workshop demonstrating an art process while still seeing and being seen by others on the journey.

And, possibly best of all for empowering the future, a link between the name my parents gave me all those years ago, and the medicine painting on my easel just now, which looked, in the early phases, like it might have come from Romper Room!

The answer to the tech-y questions is, on the one hand, YouTube videos and, on the other hand, whatever changed inside me such that I believed I could figure it out.

The name thing is a story for a different day.

If you click here, you will be magically transported to the place with the videos mentioned above and a photo of my new tech-y miracles!

For now, I’d love to know what you’re learning in this place we’ve never been before which may actually be the place we’ve always been… a world that changes. There’s a place for comments if you scroll down a ways. I hope you will!