Flat tires and Secret Santas

Last week as I was tootling down the road, my tire exploded. I didn't know what it was, of course, only that a HUGE noise had occurred and my car wobbled, swerved, and there was now a larger noise happening and some sort of disaster was in the making.

Driving down the road I always used to wonder when I saw pieces of a tire and how they came to be there. I used to worry for the drivers of those tire-pieces ... those ex-tires. Now I know.

I've always been afraid of explosions. It's the Asperger's and the fear and hatred of loud noises and the fear and hatred of sudden noises. Sudden, loud noises are the worst. Phones ringing. (I turn mine off). Jiffy Pop (I use microwave popcorn). Balloons bursting. (I leave any room that has balloons in them, immediately.) Once while I was in high school, I used a tire pump to inflate my bicycle tire, and it exploded. It was many years before I'd ride a bike again. I do Lamaze breathing exercises before a planned school fire drill. Not really. But almost.

So this explosion under my seat was startling to say the least. And I was in a remote and rural part of the county and the only driveway in sight had three faded NO TRESPASSING! signs. The owner of the property turned out to be very nice and so was his wife, and they got my spare on there and I was on my way again. They'd put the signs up because of thieves stealing their tools from the shed and copper wire from the chicken houses.

As I went to the mechanic the next day to inflate the spare a bit, he informed me it was full of dry cracks from being under the chassis for 20 years and it would eventually go flat. The mechanic's idea of 'eventually' and my idea of 'eventually' apparently differed. I thought it would eventually go flat after October 29 when I got paid. However, the tire didn't wait for payday and Wednesday night I tried to go to church it was thump-thump-thump dead flat. Eventually had arrived.

So I did what any self-respecting, adult woman, living alone would do. I stared at the tire a while, I went into my apartment, cried for 10 minutes and then went to bed. It was 7:30 pm.

I thought, hey, maybe it would magically re-inflate overnight. Yes, I do think like that. Sometimes it is very helpful to mentally insist on a fantasy world where the laws of physics do not apply. It makes life less stressful and a lot more interesting. At the very least the intervening 8 hours would give me some lead time on thinking about how to solve the problem.

And that is what I do best, think. And what I do second best is problem-solve. First I thought about having AAA come and re-inflating the tire and driving like mad to the mechanic (who is near my school) and leaving it with him and walk to school. But that is dangerous for me and other drivers, so I dispensed with that idea quickly. Plus, I had morning duty and I didn't want to be late. So I decided the prudent thing would be to leave the car with its woeful flat tire in the driveway, ask for a ride on Facebook which is the public village of the new millennium, and purchase a new tire by phone.

And I'm not living alone. Of course my friends know that I know Jesus is with me. And my friends are with me. Several of them gave me rides to and from school these two days. That is SO nice. And the tire is coming in tonight and after school I'll pick it up and my friend will take me and the new tire home. I'll call someone and he will come and fix my flat. I should be good to go by this evening and all set for the weekend.

Most amazing of all, someone helped me with a surprise Secret Santa envelope they left on my desk at school, so the tire is paid for. I was blown away by that.

I can't say enough about my life here and how wonderful it is. The friendliness and helpfulness and generosity of my friends is absolutely amazing. I hope I am as good a friend to them as they are to me. I know I fail in that sometimes, but I can keep trying. I have many good examples of how to be a friend all around me.

Shelob lives

Shelob was the huge spider that lived in fictional Middle Earth. Wikipedia: "Shelob is a fictional giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. She appears at the end of the fourth book, second volume (The Two Towers), of The Lord of the Rings. Her lair lay in Cirith Ungol ("the pass of the spider") leading into Mordor. Gollum deliberately led Frodo Baggins there in hopes of recovering the One Ring when Shelob attacked Frodo. The plan was foiled when Samwise Gamgee defeated Shelob with Frodo's elvish light and sword. ... Gollum led the Hobbits into her lair so that he could get the One Ring after she consumed them, as she had no use for it. After losing track of Gollum, the Hobbits realized that the tunnel was blocked by her webs."

My yard is blocked by the children of Shelob's webs.

With all the rain this summer, folks say they have never seen so many spiders. In my 7 years here I've never seen so many spiders either. The legend of Shelob ends this way:

"Shelob fled into her lair, significantly wounded. Her final fate, according to the text, will remain unknown to the people of Middle-earth."

I know what happened to her. She survived and bore generations of evil spawn who continue to build large webs in my yard. Reason #2,347 not to go outside. Inside is better.

Ingenuity and working with what you have

I have a small kitchen and not a lot of convenient places to put stove mitts. And I need them close because I am ridiculously stupid when it comes to cooking and I'm wont to open the oven and grab the pan with my hands. I had them on the stove fan hood for a long time but was frustrated with them sliding off into my pot of soup or pan of eggs. I'm live a lifestyle of "working with what ya got" so I looked around for a fast and free solution. This was it. Magnets placed just so and voila, pot-holder no more drop into pot.

The one on the left was a hand-print of a kindergarten student that her mom made and shrunk onto a magnet and given to me for a Christmas gift. The one in the middle was one I'd made because it was how I was feeling during that era. And the one on the right was made for me and it says "Attenti Al Gato" meaning beware of the cat. I had a bad cat at the time, lol. Abby The Psycho Kitty, RIP.

Bountiful Basket Day

My Bountiful Basket today: a dozen small green apples, 5 red pears, 2 Asian pears, huge bunch bananas, ruby red grapefruit. Veggies: 3 large green peppers, two bunches celery, three bunches scallions, packet cherry tomatoes, bag russet potatoes, large Romaine lettuce, and a large bundle of baby asparagus!! The produce LOOKS great, and TASTES great (I already ate some celery). Cost benefit analysis: in looking at today's weekly ads from my 2 local supermarkets, plus estimating closely where produce is not featured in the ad, the cost for what I received today would have been $32.20. The total cost to me at BB was 21.50, saving me over $10. Thank you BB!

The green apples will become apple crumble for church Homecoming tomorrow. I will grill the scallions on the George Foreman grill, or roast them in the oven. They are very sweet that way. The cherry tomatoes will be used in salads and also cooked in a ratatouille with the green peppers and onions. Celery will be cream of celery soup. The rest of the fruit will be eaten raw with my lunch every day. The potatoes are usually turned into home fries and also will be used in black bean soup in a week after the celery soup gets eaten.

I love produce day. It only takes me ten minutes to drive there and ten minutes picking it up. The produce is already put together for me so it saves me time lingering and shopping in the grocery store. I hate stores. The produce is very good.

TV before computers

I am watching television shows from the 1970s. Mary Tyler Moore, Rockford Files, Columbo, and now, Lou Grant.

I loved Lou Grant when it was broadcast between 1977 and 1982. The show won 13 Emmy Awards during its run. Now that I'm watching it as an older person, I can absolutely see why.

It's so well written, the characters are distinct, the players are good actors, and the themes are relevant today thirty years later.

That it deals with newspaper publication is a bonus, as I used to be a newspaper publisher and grappled with all the issues presented on the show. News gathering is a wonderful thing- when done right.

I published a weekly paper in the internet era. Lou Grant gathered (fictional) news before computers. On the 70s shows, there are no computers! Mary Tyler Moore's broadcast news desk has manila folders and a typewriter. Jim Rockford has the latest new machine all right: a telephone answering machine (for which he makes monthly payments). Even City Editor Lou Grant's desk has only a phone and Rolodex. The reporters clack away on typewriters. They all run to the phone when on the beat, clamoring to be the first one to phone in the story to the waiting reporters who have their fingers poised over the keys.

Several Lou Grant episodes have talked about phone tricks. If the reporters were in a house or business, the first reporters arriving at the scene hide phones so they know which one to run to when the story breaks. Joe Rossi gave his aunt a pocket full of dimes when they were at the airport so she could call the news room and keep the line open for when he needed to retell the story over the phone wires to the typist.

On his first day on the job, Lou Grant passes by a VDT, video display terminal, and asks what it is. His boss explained, but I don't get it. It displays text only, and it doesn't save when turned off. Something of a primitive word processor connected to a bigger computer somewhere. It doesn't generate text, only displays it. And it's huge. To me it looks clunky and ancient (as I type this on my slim laptop with high resolution, graphics and mega-memory) but to 1978 eyes it looks newfangled.

You know, even though I LOVE computers, and I LOVE the internet, there is something appealing about a desk without the hulking, looming, slightly insidious monitor squatting like Jabba the Hut on my table. Everything looks simpler, streamlined, and cleaner. Was that era really simpler? Maybe, maybe not. Has the internet been a boon to this generation? Maybe, maybe not.

Sue Grafton is the author of the Alphabet detective series, you know, "A is for Alibi", etc. She said in an interview once that she deliberately set the novels in an era prior to the computer era (70's and early 80s) because she wanted her detective to solve mysteries on the beat like the old gumshoes, with wit and intelligence and cunning. I like that.

You see the tv ad of Paul Revere playing charades by firelight with friends, and he sees the light come on in the old North Church, and he takes a cell phone out of his pocket to say "The British are coming". He pops it back into his pocket and continues with the game. There's something compelling and daring about being in the world doing exploits, riding a foamy horse through the darkling night, shouting THE BRITISH ARE COMING" that texting on a cell phone just doesn't have. 

Aw, snap, I've turned into an old lady, musing about "the way it was."

I can have it both ways, though. I can listen live stream to a sermon in CA, watch a Syrian conflict unfold as it happens, see the dust still flying during an earthquake in New Zealand, attend Khan Academy to learn physics, and still have my old fictional friends Mary, Lou, Columbo and Rockford running around gathering news and solving crimes the old fashioned way. And that seems pretty good to me.

Using the Bountiful Basket produce

I mentioned a couple of times that I have been buying the Bountiful Basket co-op basket of produce. It is a huge bunch of quality produce, half veggies and half fruit. The price has gone up from $15.50 to $20.50 but it is still a good deal.

You pay online and show up every other Saturday to pick up whatever the co-op folks have found for quality veggies and fruits. Last time we got two bunches celery, green beans, English cuke, cauliflower, pack of mushrooms, a pineapple, huge bunch bananas, Hatch chiles, two yellow squash, and a head of Romaine lettuce. The quality is outstanding.

I am a vegetarian so I love pretty much everything that comes in the basket. See, you don't pick what you want. You don't know what you get until you pick it up. It just comes and whatever is in the basket, you eat.

I grilled the chiles on my George Foreman grill, and then popped them into a plastic bag to seat them. This helps separate the skin from the flesh, and I scraped it off. Cut open and scrape out seeds. They are mild and sweet. I used them in a black bean soup into which I put potato, a roasted on on the cob corn, onion. And also this way: flour tortillas, whipped cream cheese, and Hatch chile, roll up for pinwheels or fold into sandwich. Yum!

The mushrooms and squash (plus a zucchini from last Basket) became ratatouille, along with a tomato. Into this I put black olives and feta cheese. Also can put quinoa, or spaghetti, or just eat plain.

The celery became cream of celery soup.

The pears we got two weeks ago we were told were pears but looked in the shape of an apple. I found them to be hard and sour. They've been sitting in the fridge. Today I peeled and chopped them, and baked them with a bit of butter and brown sugar. Pear crumble.

My approach to groceries and food is: I eat whatever is on sale at the grocery store. Now that I do the basket I am making a commitment to whatever is in there. I always use it in some way and eat it all within the two weeks before the next Basket comes around.

I encourage you, if you live in an area that has Bountiful Baskets, to try it. Committing to the Basket means you take a different approach to groceries. You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit, lol. It does take time and commitment t make sure you use the food in a way that means it will be eaten, and sometimes searching the internet for recipes, but it is worth it. I especially love not eating any processed foods.

Morning commute

My morning commute is only 10 minutes. It's a straight shot up one road and then I veer off a bit to the school road. I go by pastures and a few homes and trees and ponds and cows. I love the moon in the  morning and the when I pass the open fields I can see it very well as it sets.

This time of year, the drive starts out dark. (7:00 AM)

The hay is in!

I think about what's ahead. Usually I think about all I have to do and the little time I have to do it in. But I try to focus on the kids as I drive. I think about the funny things they say and do. For example, I overheard this yesterday:

When the day begins at school, kids enter the building and some go to the cafeteria for breakfast and some go to the gym and wait for the first bell. When the bell rings, there is a lot of traffic in and out of the gym.

The kids don't naturally align themselves into the proper traffic pattern of entering or exiting on the right side and the left side. This year we put little P.E. cones on the floor to direct them in, and out. Otherwise a lot of kindergarteners get bumped into by fifth graders trotting off to breakfast. However, some kids still cut the last cone going in and go across the threshold in the wrong direction.

There is a decorative cone-shaped neck-high plastic tree in the hall. I took it and put it in the spot where the kids tend to cut across.

Two of the fifth-graders came out of the gym. They spotted the tree.

The girl said, "That's a nice touch!"
The boy said, "I think it's going overboard."

LOL!

The day brightens fast around here. I took this picture while driving, putting up the camera, and aimlessly shooting the road ahead as I went tootling down the highway. I'd stop, but as you can see, there is no shoulder.

Today a kindergarten boy cracked me up. He's all boy, plain spoken, down to earth, loves his four-wheeler and says what's on his mind. I love him.

He had to choose 6 books for his book basket. He wanted books about puppies and snakes. We looked through all the puppy and snake baskets and he found five books he was interested in. We went through every other basket but nothing else appealed. We started to go through the baskets a second time.

Pink sky, moon set, cows wake up. (The blobs are cows)

I was started to get a little desperate. I had other kids to work with and he was taking a lot of time...and he was starting to lose his focus. I held up a book I knew other kids enjoyed, it was hilarious. But the cover featured a granny looking women scrubbing the floor. I said "Hey! This one's funny! You will like it!" he looked profoundly skeptical. I opened to the hilarious page, and showed it. "Look, she hung the Meanies on the line."

Glanced at the page, looked at me, waited a second, shrugged and said, "I ain't laughin'".

He had a point. Okey dokey then. Back to the book search!

I love morning ground fog.

It's full day when I arrive. There are a few cars lined up by the front door with puffs of air coming out the tailpipe, these are parents in idling cars with kids waiting for the opening bell so the kids can exit the car and enter their school day. I walk across the parking lot and think about all the important things I have to do. And those are: for the 2000th time, listen to the story of how the tooth fell out, ask how old they are when they tell me "It's my birthday!", say "Yes!" when asked "Do you like my dress/shirt/hair? And all in all, love on some kids.

The day has begun.

The kind of conversations you have in Georgia

Our church has a church supper every Wednesday evening before bible study and kids' church begins. They are heavily attended. Last night fried chicken was on the menu. I was sitting on a bench by the bathrooms, looking over some notes. A little girl skipped over and stood there. She looked at me and I looked at her. After a moment, I said

"Hi! What's your name?"
"Amanda"
"My name is Miss Elizabeth."
[awkward pause]
"Did you have chicken tonight?"
"I have chickens. I have three hens and a rooster."
"I meant, did you eat chicken for supper tonight?
"Yes."
"I think the bathroom is empty if that's what you're waiting for."
"OK, thanks!"

and she skipped away.

I love living in a rural area. Many people around here have chicken houses as the means of business. This county is chicken farm central. But many locals have a few chickens in the yard as a means of personal sustenance. Or a few cows. Or a few goats. Or a few hound dogs for hunting. Georgians are tremendous agrarians and they know how to live off the land.

Birds are better than TV

A fellow church-goer said yesterday that she believes that God put in us the desire to nap on Sundays. Everyone naps on Sunday after church, it's like He is making is easy to do what He said that day is for: rest.

I had to agree. After my nap, I continued to rest on the bed.

My bed is next to a window and the height of it comes exactly to the sill. I lay there, just resting in my Sunday rest, and along with my cat who was next to me, we watched the birds.

There is a wall of green trees outside the bedroom window and I enjoyed feeling the cool breeze and listening to the birds. I began to actively listen to and count the number of different calls I was hearing.

Crow
Hawk
Cardinal
Something
Something
Some other thing

Hmmm, it looks like I need some help with auditory identification.

I went to the Cornell's ornithology department online and listened to many of their calls online after having searched for birds of Georgia.

Their bird call collection is impressive. So were the number of birds songs in my backyard. This is going to be fun, trying to memorize them.

I realized something else. It has been not a few days since I turned on the tv. Wednesday, I believe. That was when I tuned in to watch the finale of Masterchef when I got home from church, and after a few minutes of watching decided:

--I did not like the noise
--I didn't care

I hope I keep doing the things that relax me and don't do the things that don't relax me. When it comes to television being part of the things that don't relax me, it seems very hard to give it up, though. For some reason.

It is an activity that seems embedded in us, or me anyway. My first memory was of TV: The Beatles, Ed Sullivan, Feb, 1964. I was just turned three. I watched the moon landing, the space shuttle blow up and 9/11 unfold. I crowded around with friends at their houses watching American Bandstand. I saw American black people fight for their civil rights and hippies waste their freedom. Mr Rogers soothed us, Walter Cronkite informed us and Johnny Carson comforted us.

I came of age during the television age, so I think it is hard to give up a friend.

But it is not a friend.

In the 90s I read a book by Jerry Mander: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978). It "is a book written by Jerry Mander which argues that there are a number of problems with the medium of television. Mander argues that many of the problems with television are inherent in the medium and technology itself, and thus cannot be reformed."

Wikipedia summarizes Mander's 4 arguments:

The four arguments are:

1. While television may seem useful, interesting, and worthwhile, at the same time it further boxes people into a physical and mental condition appropriate for the emergence of autocratic control.

2. It is inevitable that the present powers-that-be (or controllers) use and expand using television so that no other controllers are permitted.

3. Television affects individual human bodies and minds in a manner which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium. (Ed note: affects our very biology, in other words)

4. Television has no democratic potential. The technology itself places absolute limits on what may pass through it. The medium, in effect, chooses its own content from a very narrow field of possibilities. The effect is to drastically confine all human understanding within a rigid channel.

I agree with all of them. Presciently, thirty-five years later, Mander has been proven right.

Especially about the biology, I feel calmer for not having watched for 5 days. I have come to dislike television so much, and I've come to love birds so much, that I would not insult my feathered friends by saying "tv is for the birds." But I am going to try to make it a thing of the past.

Insanity is going to the Dollar Store over and over again but expecting different results

The title of this blog essay is an edit on the old definition of insanity. It's attributed to Albert Einstein but its earliest emergence was 1981 in Narcotics Anonymous material.

So, insanely, I went to the Dollar store again on a Saturday. I had written last week in a piece titled "I went to the Dollar Store for TP and garbage bags, and forgot the bags",that I noticed there is often a higher price rung up at the register than was shown on the shelf. I know that food prices have been volatile for a few years now, due to unusual and severe weather, fluctuating fuel prices, and scarcity. I also know that one of the reasons the prices are lower at the Dollar stores is that there are fewer employees and quite often, I'm sure, they don't have time to keep up with price stickers that are increasing each week.

But I can't let the overcharge go, even it it's only a dime or so each time. I showed how the higher prices accumulate from the pocketbook over a year's time.

Now these, I'd pay $2.15 for!
photo credit:
Dee West (Formerly deedoucette)
via photopin
cc

This week it was busy as usual, even busier because there was a festival down the street and people were coming up to get drinks and snacks to listen to the music. I kept an eagle eye on the prices on their small screen they have at the checkout stand for the customer to swipe their card. It's a small screen and shows about four items at a time, and they click by fast. But I did spot one price difference of nearly a dollar. I bought chopped green olives for $1.35 shelf price, and they rang up at $2.15.

I asked, "Why did the olives ring up at $2.15?

The cashier peered into his larger monitor and said "They didn't ring up at $2.15. I see $1.00, .85, $1.69..." and he read off four or five prices of the last items scanned through.

I went "Huh, um, ok" and we continued.

I got to the car with my register tape receipt and I took a good look. And what did I see? "Olives = $2.15." I drove out the lot and shaking my head, decided not to let it go, I circled back and went back in with the olives and the tape.

I said, "Help me understand, I might be reading this wrong but I believe I see olives at $2.15 when the shelf price says it sells at $1.35."

He said "Oh, you meant THOSE olives. I thought you meant the other olives." (I had bought black olives too.)

I said, "Please restore the difference, if you would." It was 82 cents.

The lady behind me, who ironically was behind me at the register originally five minutes ago, had an item in her hand and she said, "That's why I'm here too. You have to watch every penny these days."

And olive the other customers shook their heads and went hmmm. Har har.

Insanity...I will still go to the Dollar store but I will change a variable. Never again on a Saturday. Let's see how that works.