kmkat and her kneedles

Bittersweet Christmas memories.

Warning: this is a bummer kind of post. If you don't want to get teary on Christmas Eve, please feel free to skip it.

I just realized that it was exactly thirty-two years ago today that we got the phone call from my dad: Mom had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had been losing weight all fall but had refused to go to the doctor to find out why until the cancer had spread so far that her bowels were blocked. (She was definitely old school about her health. No doctor until she was at death's door.)

She was admitted to the local hospital with a prognosis of only a few weeks to live. She refused to consider chemo, probably because she was afraid of the nausea and other side effects. Smokey and I bullied her into trying it. The odds the docs had given us were that chemo had a one in four chance of curing her: definitely gambling odds worth trying, we thought. My dad chimed in to agree with us, but after being married to her for 40+ years, I know he was a bit afraid of her. She was the poster child for stubborn.

The chemo worked, although it was not an easy battle. Mom and Dad lived outside a small town in northern Minnesota, the hospital there was not equipped to administer the treatment, and so she had to be transfered to a larger hospital in Fargo. (You can deduce how remote they were if the nearest hospital of any size was in Fargo, North Dakota.) Whereas the staff in the local hospital was caring and familiar -- she had taught more than one of them in school, and her primary nurse had been a high school classmate of mine -- the staff at the Fargo hospital were all strangers, professional and remote. Plus, after the arguments and turmoil and ambulance rush to get her to Fargo, the treatment did not start immediately, and she wondered aloud about the letdown. After a few days in the Fargo hospital, she rebelled and demanded to be released.

This is when the first amazing thing happened. Her doctor at home sought and received special permission from the powers that be to administer the chemo in the local hospital. Mom was put through the usual chemo regimen of the time, but she was able to stay at home between treatments. Home is always better than in hospital. She had the nausea and lost all her hair and her hearing was slightly impaired, but in late January or early February it was clear that she was in remission. 

We had been making the four-hour drive every weekend to see them. We didn't have kids yet and we both worked full time. It was a stressful time; I think I gained ten pounds. When I figured out that we could bring our laundry along and do it at their house instead of trying to fit it in after work, that made a big difference. Now that Mom was in remission, we thought our lives could relax a little.

But calm had not yet returned. My dad had complained about back pain a few times during the six weeks or so between her diagnosis and remission. Once it was clear she had turned the corner he went to see their doctor himself.

Cancer, possibly pancreatic, that had metasticized.

My boss had agreed to let me postpone any work travel while Mom was in the hospital and sick, but once she went into remission I started scheduling my trips. I was interviewing a brokerage branch office manager in Fort Worth as part of an audit when I got the call from Smokey. Just to show how unaware I was, my immediate reaction was happiness to hear his voice. He had to remind me that he wouldn't be calling me in the middle of the day in Texas unless he had terrible news.

I was able to drive straight from the branch office audit to the airport and fly home that same day because the branch office staff and the staff at the main office in Dallas all helped. While I drove to the airport, they changed my plane reservation, repacked my stuff in my Dallas hotel room, and sent it back to Minneapolis with the president of the company, who happened to be in Dallas, too. 

We drove to northern MN the next morning, a Friday, to see Dad in the hospital.  He was lucid and not in pain, and we were able to chat with him. As I remember, the conversation turned to the counties in Minnesota -- as it does -- and he was able to name all 87 of them.

We stayed the weekend and into the next week. Monday evening we were having dinner with my best friend from high school when we got a call from the hospital to come at once. When we got there we found that Dad had died. It was only four days after learning of his diagnosis. We eventually found out that it was oat cell cancer that had started in his lung; he had been a life-long smoker until just a few years before, when he had been diagnosed with emphysema and his doc told him to give it up.

We stayed until the funeral. Mom had a rueful chuckle thinking that when local friends heard that Dad had died of cancer, their immediate reaction would be to think that the teller had it wrong -- she was the one with cancer. She was feeling well enough by then to be on her own at home, although we continued to visit nearly every weekend. 

Her remission lasted about a year and a half, long enough to witness me being pregnant with Elder Son but not long enough to meet him. Her condition began to decline seriously in autumn, 1984. By November the local nuns were giving her hospice care at her apartment, and on December 1 I got the call that she had died. She had had the nun on duty call me a few days earlier so she could try to talk to me but she was in too much pain to be intelligible. That was the night that I cried because knew she was gone. We had to make the decision whether to drive to see her one more time, but I was already a week overdue. In making the choice not to drive there and risk going in to labor on the road -- I had had a hard time getting pregnant and a hard time staying that way -- I knew she would have understood.

Elder Son was born exactly 24 hours later. 

A old story too good not to share.

If you are one of my relatives reading this, please know that the relative described here was from the other side of my family.

Back in the mid-1980s I received a call that my mother’s brother had died.  She had been his beneficiary and executor, and according to the terms of his will, if she predeceased him, I was to assume her benefits and responsibilities. As she had died 1½  years earlier, the mantle fell upon my shoulders. 

Uncle Cletus (not his real name) had wished to be cremated.  Further, he had stated in his will that No words should be said over his grave, but instead his ashes ...should be scattered to the four winds. The caller, his guardian, explained dismissively that, of course, scattering ashes willy-nilly across the landscape was illegal in that state, but perhaps I could make arrangements to bury them on his farm.

Now, let me explain a couple of things about Uncle Cletus. 

First, I had only met the man twice: he had visited us briefly one winter when I was perhaps 5, and later my parents and I spent an afternoon with him on his farm when I was about 8. All I remember of the first meeting was that he drove a black Model T, and of the second, that he didn’t have indoor plumbing and that he served my father moonshine which he had made in his own still. (I remember my father commenting that the taste was a cross between wine and beer.) Cletus and my mother corresponded regularly, but very nearly never saw each other or telephoned; apparently they were still of the generation which regarded the 300 or so miles between them as too vast to cross in any way other than by the US mail. However, the ties of family were strong enough for Cletus to account for them in his will.

Second, Cletus had always been a crotchety old coot. He had never married, although he was engaged for a time during WWII to his sweetheart back home. He lived his entire adult life on his little farm, where he grew whatever it is they grow in that part of the country, until he retired and sold the farm. At the time of his death he had been in a nursing home for several years, and in fact had been declared incompetent.  The women who called to tell me of his death was the local bank officer who had been declared his legal guardian.

The gist of her call was that Cletus was dead, she would arrange the cremation,  and when could I come take charge of the ashes? My husband and I were planning an auto trip later that summer, and we arranged to pick up Cletus’ remains. She gave me the name and number of the old farm’s current owner and suggested I try to make arrangements to bury the ashes there. 

At some point between then and our trip, I received a telephone call from another relative, apparently a cousin of Cletus and my mother, who was, to put it mildly, upset at the prospect of Cletus being buried in unconsecrated ground and without proper religious send-off. Although the man was polite and cordial to me, after talking with him I could understand why Cletus and my mother, both prickly individuals to begin with, had severed all contact with that branch of the family. Fervent Christians doesn’t even begin to describe them. Anyway, this relative offered that he and his relatives wanted Cletus’s ashes to be buried in their family plot, and that they wished to read some Bible verses over him, etc., etc.  I meekly agreed, all the while thinking, Why me?  I don’t know any of these people, including Cletus! However, I felt some responsibility in the matter. After all, Cletus had made his wishes clear, and just because I was too much of a wimp to stand up to those relatives didn’t mean his wishes should be ignored completely. Besides, he had left me some money. Not enough to retire to the south of France, but enough to reinforce my feeling of obligation to him.

A few weeks later, we picked up the urn from the funeral home. Let me describe it to you:  imagine a coffee can spray-painted gold. It was fairly light, and, being ever the kurious kat, I opened it to see exactly what human ashes looked like. To my surprise, they looked pretty much like cat litter – the cheap kind! My husband and I pondered this and jokingly suggested, “Maybe we should scatter the ashes and just bury some cat litter!”

Of course, you can guess what happened. While my husband took a nap in our motel room, I took the ashes and our 1½-year-old son and went off in our VW microbus looking for a suitable “four winds” site. After several miles of ever-more rural roads I found a pleasant tree-dappled meadow and scattered Uncle Cletus. I had my son wave Bye-bye, and the deed was done. We stopped at a pet store on the way back to the motel and refilled the urn.

The next day we met the relatives, accompanied them to the cemetery, and stood by, quietly hooting behind our paws, as they did their thing with Cletus’s (presumed) ashes. They were happy, I had done my duty as I saw it, and we continued home in satisfaction, knowing we had the mother of all dead relatives story.

Weekend recap, SF edition.

Smokey and I visited Elder Son in Sioux Falls this weekend. Did I tell you that is where he is doing his residency? He is two weeks into it and seems to be happy (yay!)

No photos to share (boo!) because I suffered from camnesia all weekend. Let me tell you about a couple unillustrated coffee experiences, though.

After we went out for lunch on Sunday, I  forced the driver at gunpoint requested that we stop at a coffee shop so I could get my daily dose of caffeine. I had noticed a small remodeled house with a large sign, Ethiopian Coffee House and Restaurant, on the way to lunch.

As I walked into the front room -- the former living room, now with a bar in one corner housing the liquor and the expresso machine -- I realized to my horror that the room was filled with men. Standing room only and not a female in sight. The men were all watching the World Cup final on the HD TV on the wall and cheering for Argentina. (Apparently the German team is not popular with the Ethiopian male contingent.) Mr. Messi! they kept shouting. In my ignorance I thought Mr. Messi was the proprietor, and they were shouting for service. Actually, Leo Messi is a star on the Argentine team.

Anyway, I felt rather out of place as I ordered my four-shot latte, which was served with four shots of espresso and zero latte. After dosing it with milk back at ES's house, I found it to be quilte palatable. And a good story.

* * * * *

We left around noon on Monday. Once again, after eating lunch I forced asked Smokey to stop so I could get coffee, this time at a kiosk in the lot where we had parked. The sign said Open but there was no one visible inside. 

...until the window flew open and a 30-ish man exploded into the opening. 

Hello! he shouted. How are you today? What can I get you?

We decided he had been injesting his wares since 6am. The day before. I really don't know how one person can contain that much energy inside a 6'x6' space. He must be absolutely cray-cray by the end of his shift.

* * * * *

And that was my weekend.

Hippie chick.

An unsettling conversation happened at work last week.

Let me tell you it.

First, let me set the stage. My co-workers are all under 35, many well under 35. I could easily be their mother, even their grandmother. Sometimes the generation gap is... awkward.

::the three other cubicle dwellers around me are talking about something or other, ribbing each other and laughing and generally acting the way everyone does when it is finally Friday afternoon. One says something about someone else having been born in the 1950s::

Me: The Fifties were a good time to be born. ::thinking to myself, I will NOT tell them I was actually born before the Fifties::

Them: Oh, you were born then. (pause)

Them: Were you a *hippie*?

Me: Yes.

Them: (laughter)

Me:  ?

Them: Did you talk like this, (drawls very slowly as though stoned) "Heeyy, man..."

Me: Yes.

Them: (laughter)

Them: Did you have a VW van?

Me: I had a VW bug, my boyfriend had a VW bug AND a VW van. Now we have multiiple VW vans.

Them: (laughter)

Them: Did you listen to (dramatic pause) the Mamas and Papas?

Me: Yes, and I heard The Dead in concert.

Them: (laughter)

Them: Did you have long hair then, too?

Me: Of course.

Co-Worker 1 (who is from Sri Lanka, so imagine this being said in a south Asian accent): Did you wear "bell bottoms"? (I could hear the quotation marks in her voice.)

Me: Yes, I even made them myself -- cut a slit in the sides of the legs of my jeans and sewed in a triangular piece of fabric to make regular jeans into bell bottoms.

Them: (gasps)

Them:  Were you at Woodstock? 

Me:  No, I am one of the few honest people who wasn't there and don't claim to have been.

Me: But I did my fair share of drugs back in those days,too.

Them: (awkward laughter) 

Co-worker 2: I can see you as a hippie. You wear hippie socks.

Me:  ??

Co-Worker 2:  You know, hippie socks?

Me: ???

Co-Worker 2: (comes over to my cube) I bet you are wearing them today. (points to my hand-knit socks) See?!

Me: (to myself) WTF? 

The whole conversation stuck with me. My life, which of course to me is just my life, was so foreign to them. It was as if I were talking to a Civil War veteran and asking about the the horses and the cannons and the uniforms. I may never be able to relate to my co-workers again.

And I will certainly never tell them about how Smokey and I lived for five years in (what they would call) a commune...

Knitter down.

I woke up this morning feeling what my father used to call "punk" -- ouchies in the midsection. This was really too bad, as abdominal ouchies can generally be cured by a good long session in the bathroom. Not these, though. Nothing was gonna help these ouchies. The timing was unfortunate as I had planned to run a bunch of errands today.

Smokey took one look at me, pale and wan in the bed, and decided that he would take care of the errands -- pay the first half of the property taxes, due today; pick up the dog meds at the vet that we forgot when we were there a couple weeks ago (more on that another time); buy dog food; take the recycling to the recycling center, etc., etc., etc.

By the time he left I felt worse. After he had been gone awhile I was in tears because the pain in my midsection was Making Me Very Unhappy. Underneath it all was the fear that whatever it was that led to the gall bladder ultrasound and the pancreas CT scan in December Was Back and that I would be dead within the month. 

Eventually I took my temperature and discovered I had a slight fever -- yay! I have an infection of some kind, a bug! Not cancer! W00t! 

Appendicitis seemed a possibility. Generalized pain in the upper abdomen and fever. Hmmm. I was on the verge of calling Smokey on his cell -- hoping that he had his cell phone turned ON; he is often reluctant to do so -- and having him come home and take me to the emergency room. But the thought of crawling the 15 feet from my bed to the phone was just too much. I lay there and worried and moaned and cried and felt really, really sorry for myself.

I realized I was thirsty, so took a sip from the water bottle by my bed.

And immediately felt the upper abdominal spasms... relax!

It was a medical miracle, I tell you! I took a few more sips for good measure and suddenly I could relax and fall asleep. Nurse Hannibal, aka The Fluffball Of Doom, curled up tightly next to my face to ensure pleasant dreams. By 6 pm I was able to be up and even consider a light supper.

And that is how I spent my Monday. How about you? 

 

Mean: a post especially for Twin Cities area readers.

The Youth Performance Company is staging a play called Mean about how mean a kid's *friends* can be. Bullying, cruelty -- all that crap. Remember being in grade school and/or junior high? You may have your own memories of that hell.

I am going to share with you two of mine.

I grew up in southern Minnesota in a very, very small town -- population 585. There were 25 kids in my class, so the groups and cliques were necessarily very small, too. In the spring of seventh grade, one day our girls' phy ed class went for a walk in the country instead of playing volleyball or whatever else we used to do. During that hour-long walk, certain of my *friends* decided that they would not talk to me. Ever.

It took a little while before I caught on, but by the next day I knew. I was being ostracized, and it was happening for -- as far as I could tell -- no reason. As far as I knew, I had not hurt anyone or been mean to anyone or done anything to warrant the silent treatment. It is possible that I had done something -- FSM knows I was not the nicest person on the planet -- but I never knew what it was and no one ever explained.

Eventually, days later, my *friends* began to speak to me if I spoke to them directly, but never again did I feel like I had any actual friends in that school. I spent two more hellish years there, then my family moved 250 miles away and I had the benefit of a fresh start. The move was related to my father's work and had nothing to do with my experience. I never told my parents or anyone else about it until years and years later.  High school in the new school was fine, but I still have the tiny scar from the actions of my *friends.* 

I was on the other side, too. I still remember the day in second grade when a couple other girls and I persisted in tickling and physically tormenting another girl for far too long during recess. I don't remember if she cried, but she certainly had reason to. We were bullying her. Mary, wherever you are, I have regretted that day for years.

The Youth Performance Theatre is giving two free tickets to a performance of this play to anyone who blogs about it, and that is what I am doing. I probably will not be able to attend a performance so I will try to find someone else who can. 

Go see the show. Encourage your friends to go. Help foster an atmosphere of civility in your world. Our children are depending on you.

Manic Monday, wherein manic = horrific.

Sometimes the universe likes to deliver a wee lesson re: overconfidence. Such was the case yesterday, or, as I shall forever remember it, The Day From Hell That I Should Have Seen Coming.

All weekend I had been planning my Monday, knowing that there were a number of things I needed to accomplish by the end of that day:

1. A doctor's appointment @ 9:20 am at a location roughly 20 miles west and south of me. (A routine check on a well-controlled chronic condition; no biggie.)
   
2. Deliver the doctor's prescription to a pharmacy another 25 miles farther west and south.
   
3. Refill several other prescriptions at that pharmacy.
4. Continue driving west and south on that road for another 25 or so miles, all the way to our house in south Minneapolis to pick up some stuff.
5. Continue on to Edina (a first-ring suburb on the southern edge of Minneapolis, for those of you Not Of Our Area) in order to return a new cell phone and cancel its tragically expensive contract.
6. Mail our holiday letters. Yes, I am fully aware that it was January 12. What's your point?
   
7. Return to Polk County by 4 pm to attend the monthly meeting of Friends of the Polk County Libraries.
8. Go to my book group at 6:30 pm.
9. Finish reading Reservation Blues during any downtime; it was my choice for my reading group's January book so it would be my responsibility to lead the discussion. I had read the book several years ago but needed to finish re-reading it in order that I might not make a complete hash of the discussion and an ass of myself.
   

If it were any time in the year between, say, April and October, this list would not present any great problems. It is, however, mid-winter, and that season can screw up the best-laid plans of any man or Kat™ without breaking a sweat.

Had I had the foresight -- and common sense -- to check the radar map and weather forecast before I left, none of the following would have happened.

I accomplished numbers one through three, above, no problem, and even managed to sneak in a tasty breakfast (a Western omelet with a side of whole wheat toast and lots of coffee, thanks for asking) in Lindström. My journey continued on down the highway in a southern and westerly direction toward the Twin Cities.

At some point it began snowing. Heavily. There had been a few random flakes floating down from the heavens when I left home, but I thought they were being dislodged from the trees by a gentle breeze. Duh. They were in fact the first harbingers of a short but nasty winter storm. The visibility dropped, although not dangerously so, and snow began to accumulate between the lanes and at the edge of the road. Traffic slowed a bit, but not a great deal. The speed limit on I-35 and I-35W is 70 mph, and traffic, including me, was moving at 55 to 60. The pavement appeared dry, with skiffs of snow blowing across it. It did NOT appear slippery.

So I was driving merrily along with traffic, passing no one and other cars occasionally passing me, when my car started to fishtail slightly. I missed my tiny window of opportunity to regain control, and the fishtailing accelerated -- although of course I did not -- until I found myself skidding broadside down I-35W at nearly 60 mph and realizing that my car had totally lost it and I wasn't coming out of this easily.

The front wheels caught the edge of the road, the car spun, and for several seconds all I could see outside my windows was dense flying snow. I held my breath and waited to be struck by another car. When my car came to rest, here is where I found myself:

Another view:

 

Imagine with me, if you will, the consequences if I had spun out in front of, oh,  I don't know, say, THAT SEMI! The least of which would be that you would not be able to read this blog post because I WOULD BE DEAD!

Ahem. Enough with the dramatics already. Suffice to say, the worst did not happen and I (and my car) were intact.

I pulled out my archaic-but-trusty cell phone (with just enough charge for one call because I had forgotten to recharge it) and found that I was in an Emergency Service Only location. Blessed 911 called a tow truck for me.

Behold, my savior:

 

 

(Why, yes, I did stand in the deep snow and take photos of the whole damned thing. I do it for The Blog.)

The tow truck driver had me sit in the driver's seat and keep the wheels pointing more-or-less straight ahead during the pull-out until he signaled me to turn them.

 

That is an approximately 20-minute buildup of snow on the passenger's window. It was snowing really, really hard.

My car popped out of the ditch, and, $133 later, I was safely on my way again. Driving, need I say it, very, very carefully.

As to my overly-ambitious list of Things To Do On Monday, I made it through number four by 2 pm, at which point I realized there was no way I could make it back to Polk County for numbers seven and eight. I made some phone calls to cancel my presence at Friends and the book group and managed to finish the rest of my Twin Cities errands by 3:30, at which time I decided to brave the beginning of a winter storm rush hour and to attempt to get back to my cozy home next to the frozen lake in Wisconsin.

A note for the easily apprehensive-d among you: no further sliding nor crashing were experienced. Relax and ride along.

Traffic was not too bad until I got past downtown Minneapolis and onto That [New] Bridge. Suddenly everybody was moving so slowly that my speed didn't even register on the speedometer. It continued that way until well past I-694, the loop of I-94 that transcribes the northern edges of the Twin Cities, which I reached... 45 minutes later. That distance would normally be less than a 10 minute drive.

Now, being stuck in traffic is not typically something that would bother me as long as I had my iPod with an audio book for entertainment. Which I did (Across the Nightingale Floor; once again, thanks for asking). But my Aveo has a standard transmission, which meant my still-tender left foot and ankle were dealing with the clutch for 45 minutes straight. That became painful after about 45 seconds and did not get any better during the remaining 44 minutes and 15 seconds. Even after the traffic unwound itself to move at 35 mph and I no longer needed to keep my sore foot on the clutch, waves of achy pain continued to roll over it.

I got home about 8:30, took a pain pill -- my first since mid-October -- and went to bed to sleep for 12.5 hours. Today is ever so much better.

Resolved: to always check the weather BEFORE setting off, no matter how benign it looks before I leave. Amen.

Answers, and the ultimate analysis of *that* song.

Answers to some questions about my MacGyver experience in the *elevator*, asked by commenters and non-blog-reading friends and relatives to whom I e-mailed the link:

• The whole experience lasted 30-45 minutes, no more than an hour.
• Yes, I take my knitting everywhere I go. Clearly, that question came from a non-knitter.
  
• No, I never burst into tears during the experience. MacGyver never cried, and neither did I :-)
• On Sunday #2 son investigated and found what had caused the failure. I had tripped a circuit breaker by stopping and starting the *elevator* too quickly. It is once again as functional as it has ever been.

* * * * *

     

Ya know that maudlin song everyone loves to hate, Christmas Shoes? I had never heard it until a few minutes ago, when Cursing Mama sent me an audio link so I could listen. Gee, thanks, kiddo!

But I am benevolent. I am gracious. I am unbelievably generous and forgiving. I shall share with you an analysis of that song. Would that I could claim to have written this, but no, honesty compels me to reveal its true author: Joshilyn Jackson, of Faster Than Kudzu.

Ms. Jackson writes:

The Big Weep

Please do not judge me harshly. I am a woman of a certain age, and prone to sniffling at southern bell commercials and velvet paintings of big-eyed children with a single tears hovering on their lower eyelids, and, conversely, inexplicable rages and, on particularly bad days, stress murders. By which I mean, sometimes, people reallyreallyreally get on my last raggedy nerve and bounce – for example PEOPLE WHO LITTER when I can SEE a trashcan less than 30 steps away AND THEY SEE IT TOO -- and then I kill them.

Oh. Not really. But I see it play out in my mind’s eye, perfectly, how I will pick the litterer up in my mighty hands and crumplecrumplecrumple them and throw their destroyed remains IN THE CAN instead of down in the grass while saying, “AND DATS TAHHHKIN OUT DA TRAAAASH!” with lots of German accent and ZERO inflection, as if I were Arnold Swarzenegger, circa 1989. So, yes, weeping at schmaltz and killing the inconsiderate. I LOVE being 40. No, really. SO MUCH.

BUT WE ARE NOT JUDGING HERE. This is important to remember, o best beloveds, as I am going to share the deep ugly secret hidden in my ugly guts.

For three years now, I have burst into tears whenever Christmas Shoes came on the radio.

I am HIDEOUSLY shamed, shamed beyond all mortal ken, to admit that such a pernicious and wily perpetration of manipulative SAP AND TWADDLE could WORK on me and make me squirt with the weepies.

Do you know this song? It is a nightmare. I only heard it ONCE when it first came out, and I wept until I was close to puking and every since the opening bars undo me and I have to flee the song WAILING like the Sabine women. In the song, it’s Christmas Eve, some guy is in line at a shoe store, and this KID ahead of him is buying some shoes. For his mother. So she will look PRETTY WHEN SHE MEETS JESUS AS SHE IS DYING HERE ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

And if this is not enough, the kid doesn’t have enough money. He and the clerk sort through all his crumpled ones and change and there is NOT ENOUGH for the Christmas shoes. Also it is snowing, I am sure, and somewhere a sad kitten expires of hypothermia pressed against cold, dead side of the starved and frozen The Little Match Girl, but NO WORRIES, because the singer ponies up for the shoes, and then, just when you think it cannot get worse, the singer shuts up, and this WARBLEY LITTLE FLEET OF BIG EYED-SOUNDING ORPHANS sings the final chorus while the music goes all TINKLEY with SAD SAD bells.

BY the way, strictly to make myself feel better, I will tell you that professional cynic and red head Amy-Go BAWLS LIKE A LOST SEAL PUP whenever she hears the opening bars. SO. I am not alone in this awful madness. Whoever wrote that song, whoever perpetrated the singing of it, down to every child in the chorus, when at last they slip their mortal coils (or I get them for littering) they are ALL going directly to HELL, and they have earned it. OH, and last year I found out some heinous creature made a MOVIE out of it, and HE is going to the special hell. That is all.

It’s a manipulative awful song that plays SHAMELESSLY on every twinging heartstring it can find. AND YET, every Christmas, it starts to come on, and I find myself flailing into immediate bawlage, driving blind, desperately whanging my fist at the radio to change the station. YARG.

Until THIS year. Friends, I have defeated Christmas Shoes.

Here’s how: I actually listened to it. For the second time. I listened to it, and the Spock part of my brain, the lizardy piece that lives just under the occipital bone and takes care of fight or flight and my autonomic functions said, “WHOA, Nelly. This song makes no SENSE.”

I sniffled a little, and then started actually PAYING ATTENTION.

It’s Christmas Eve, and this kid with the dying mom is IN A SHOE STORE. His FATHER has sent him. Um, no. Who says, “Hey, kid, your mom is about to kick it, take a fast run over to Pay Less?” No one. And then the crumpled bills and all?

My Spock brain, listening to this poor sap concluding that the Lord sent the future motherless boy to remind him Christmas is about... shoes and hope, or something? No. NONONO. My reptile brain said, Dude, it’s a SCAM. There is no MOTHER. There is no DYING. There is some Fagin-esque teenage brother in an alley waiting to see what the kid’s TAKE is going to be so they can go to the pawnshop and get money for the ARCADE. Next the kid will go to WOLF and not have enough for the camera his mother needs so she can get a photo of heaven’s golden roads. Then they will head off Best Buy so the kid can warble, “Sir I want to buy this 42 inch flat screen, for my mother, please…”

It is SO CLEARLY a scam. Anyone who has ever been approached by the guy who needs 3 bucks for the train to get to the interview for the job he needs to be able to support his 4 starving babies that he was on his way to catch when robbers took his wallet and he will miss the interview OH HALPS HALPS…yeah. I have met that guy a hundred times, and he NEVER agrees to walk to the subway or Marta with me and let me buy him a ride. He just wants the cash. For meth. SO, I buy him a sandwich and tell him to get help, but I do not BUY HIS DRUGS FOR HIM.

Christmas Shoes is the same thing, and if the fellow in line had ANY sense, he would grab that kid by the scruff, drag him out, round up the mastermind teenage brother, take his cell phone, flip through for the inevitable entry that says MOM N DAD, and CALL THEIR TOTALLY ALIVE NOT DYING AND WELL SHOD PARENTS to come PADDLE THE BUTT of con-the-younger and ground con-the-elder for the natural born rest of his LIFE.

Well played, Christmas Shoes, well played. But this year? I win.

Thank you for writing that, Ms. J. You have done us all a great service.

My MacGyver moment(s).

This is one l-o-n-g post. Grab your knitting and settle back. It will be worth it, I promise.

I returned home late afternoon Friday after attending the three-day conference in Appleton that I mentioned on Wednesday. I'll tell you about that later. Right now I want to tell you about My MacGyver Moment(s) that occurred when I arrived home.

Smokey is working in Minneapolis this weekend and will not be here until Tuesday, so I am home alone. Matthew is coming up this weekend, but he is helping a friend move on Saturday morning and wouldn't be here until late Saturday. (/setting the stage)

When I got home I parked my car carefully in front of the garage. I had done more walking in past three days at the conference than I have in the past three months, so my bad ankle was a little sore. I decided that it would be smart to put my suitcase and other paraphernalia (tote bag with knitting, a couple Christmas gifts I picked up on the way home, two days' mail, and the ten or twelve library books that I had just picked up on the way home) on the elevator and send them up that way, instead of lugging everything up the stairs as I usually do.

Let me tell you about our elevator.

When we remodeled and added on to this house, we tried to take into consideration the fact that we were both in our fifties and wanted to live here until we were carried out feet first. In other words, we tried to make our changes as handicapped-friendly as we could. I got materials from the library on accessible design. All the doors in the addition are a little wider than usual -- some even as wide as 42" -- to accommodate a possible future wheelchair. (You can be sure that after I broke my ankle, we were patting ourselves on the back for our foresight.) All the door handles are levers rather than knobs to make it easier for a potential future arthritis-crippled wrist. Light switches are a little lower than usual, so they are easily reachable from a wheelchair.

I also considered the problems of carrying groceries, etc., up the stairs (remember? the second floor here is the main floor) for the next twenty or thirty years, so I suggested, partially in jest, that we put in some kind of dumbwaiter thing. Smokey immediately started scheming how to build one using garage door openers mounted vertically in a small shaft.

A few weeks later we were at an auction and discovered our solution: a warehouse freight-handling lift, a piece of equipment designed to lift thousand-pound pallets eighteen feet in the air. It was kind of like the business end of a forklift, but with a small platform where the fork would be. $125 later, it was ours. We have always intended that when the house was finished, we would build a larger platform on the lift, with half walls for safety, but that hasn't happened yet since we haven't finished the house.

We modified our house plans to locate two "closets" directly above and below each other, with no floor between them and the lower one opening into the garage. Once the addition was built, we moved the lift into the shaft. Ta-da! The construction workers liked it, too; they used it to move tools and supplies up to the second floor instead of carrying them up the stairs.

*Elevator* shaft from the second floor:

It is not a perfect solution, though. The lift is not designed to have a control at both upper and lower levels like a real elevator; instead, it has one control on a long, coiled cord that the warehouseman would use to operate the lift from the ground. In our situation, if the lift is in the garage at ground level and we are on the second floor with boxes of stuff we want to load into the car, we have to walk downstairs to get the control and raise the lift. If we are downstairs in the garage with bags of groceries and the lift is at the second floor, we have it a little easier; since the "down" button on the control doesn't work, we lower the lift by pulling on a rope attached to a lever at the base. This rope is only accessible at the lower, garage level. Eventually Smokey will either fix the electronics in the control, or, more likely, put the rope on a pulley system so we can reach it from either up- or downstairs.

The control:

The lift was invaluable while I was incapacitated because the platform was j-u-s-t big enough to accept the wheelchair. There was a menacing gap of about twelve inches between the platform and the second floor door jamb, but Smokey found a piece of 1/4"-thick sheet steel that wedged in securely and bridged the gap perfectly. He was able to roll me in my wheelchair in and out of the *elevator* easily. (/background)

Back to late Friday afternoon.

I loaded my stuff onto the lift platform and decided that I would ride up to save climbing the stairs on my over-worked and sore ankle. I grabbed the control and up we went... (cue ominous music)

halfway.

The lift shuddered slightly and stopped.

It would not go up nor down.

WTF?

Oh, crap.

There was no one else home. We have no neighbors within shouting distance. I had my cell phone, but there is no service at our house. I was stuck on an *elevator*, between floors, on a platform roughly three feet square with a six-foot drop on three sides, with no one to help me.

I was totally on my own.

I had two choices: stay on the lift in the unheated elevator shaft for the next twenty-four hours, or try to get out. I chose door #2.

My first idea was to somehow climb into the second floor. I was able to throw my Noro striped scarf up, loop it over the door handle of the second floor door, pull the handle enough to unlatch the door, and push the door open. The lift was at a height where my upper chest was level with the second floor, so I knew I would have to stand on something to get high enough.

At this point I would like to remind you that I am no spring chicken, nor an athlete, nor even physically fit. I am nearly sixty, I have a recently broken ankle still in a cam boot, I am overweight, and I am dreadfully out of shape. Pulling myself up to that second floor would be well-nigh impossible.

But I tried.

First, I stood on a gift box of Feeney's Irish Cream liqueur, purchased on the way home as a Christmas gift. One box = not strong enough = collapsed box. Two boxes, side by side = strong enough, but not tall enough.

Clearly, I was going to have to [somehow] stand on my suitcase. I won't describe the various arrangements I tried, but suffice to say nothing worked. The only good thing was that I neither lost the suitcase nor myself over the side of the platform nor injured myself in the attempts.

I spent a fair bit of time between attempts sitting on my suitcase and thinking. If I tried A, what could go wrong? Would B be safer? What about C? and so forth. The whole time I vacillated between whether it would be safer/easier/more likely to work if I directed my efforts toward reaching the second floor or instead tried to get down to the first floor. I could see the release rope at the bottom, but I had grave doubts as to whether pulling it straight up, as I would have to do, would actually pull the lever far enough to allow the elevator to descend.

In order to pull myself onto the second floor I really needed to be able to get high enough that I could get my center of gravity over or almost over the door jamb, and that Just.Was.Not.Happening. Even when I got my upper body onto the second floor, there was nothing to grab hold of to pull myself the rest of the way, even supposing I were strong enough to do so.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to get up high enough to pull myself onto the second floor, I decided to try the downward alternative. The first problem was how to get hold of the rope. Knitting bag to the rescue!

Was there ever a more appropriately named knitting bag?

A stitch holder bears a certain resemblance to a fishhook -- have you ever noticed that?

My first "fishing" expedition involved using a stitch holder tied onto a long strand of sock yarn. I soon discovered that one strand of sock yarn was not strong enough. Boing! it broke, and my stitch holder/hook fell to the floor. Damn.

Back to going up to get out.

More non-successes, but happily, also more non-disasters. Eventually, though, I decided that there was little to no chance that I was going to be able to hoist myself up to the second floor.

Back to going down to get out.

I considered sliding over the edge of the platform, hanging from it, and dropping the remaining distance, which I calculated would be two to three feet. Several problems with this approach: I wasn't sure I could slither through the space between the platform and the wall, and I was pretty sure I could not maneuver myself around to actually hang from the platform without falling. Plus, I knew I would re-injure my ankle if I dropped that far.

Clearly, that had to be The Method Of Last Resort.

I had checked my knitting kit to no avail for a second stitch holder after I lost the first one. Now I checked again to see if there was anything else that might work -- a safety pin, a twistem, anything.

Do you see what I saw, cleverly camouflaged by the row counter?

Yep, another, smaller stitch holder. I tried again, this time tying three strands of yarn to the hook.

 

The rope that I needed to pull ran from its lever, across the bottom of the shaft, and under the closed door to the garage. I knew I had to get that door open in order for this plan to work, but the door handle was waaay out of reach. After sitting down on the platform -- no easy feat in itself -- and sliding myself nearly over the edge of it, I was just barely able to use my foot to push the door handle far enough to unlatch the door. Success #1!

I was able to hook the rope with my fishing apparatus fairly easily and pull it up, but I was not able to pull it high enough. Remember that 1/4" steel plate that we used to bridge the gap? I had used it in my attempts to get up to the next floor, and in the process it had dropped over the side of the platform and crashed deafeningly to the bottom of the shaft. Even worse, it had landed on top of the rope, making it impossible to pull the rope up to where I could reach it.  The other end of the rope seemed to be encumbered by something in the garage, and there was just not enough slack for it to reach up to me.

With my second fishhook, though, I was able to hook the first one on its broken strand of yarn and retrieve it. Success #2! I attached it to three strands of yarn and tried to use it to move the plate steel.

 

It slipped, it bent, it didn't work at all. But somehow, I don't exactly remember how, I was able to use my first fishing hook and line to jiggle the rope enough that the plate slipped off.  Yippee, success #3!

I pulled the rope high enough to grab it, pulled it, and the elevator began to descend. I lowered it enough that I could step off. It was so easy it was anti-climactic.

And the rest is history. Yay, me!