MIstakes Happen

the finished cabinet,
with Dad's picture on top

A year or two ago some of my friends retired and moved to Florida. As they were going through the inevitable big purge associated with downsizing, they offered me their stained glass making supplies. Learning how to make stained glass art has been on my list of 'things I'd like to do' for a long time, so I jumped at the offer.

I'm not sure what they'd used to store the glass, but it came to me in several plastic totes. I've been working around them for quite some time, holding my breath a little every time I move them around the workshop. Glass is easy to break, you know, and the totes are top-heavy and lopsided

Last weekend I finally got around to drawing up the plans for a storage cabinet, and spent the better part of Saturday making little boards out of big boards. This weekend, I went back outside to put them together.

For some reason, when it comes to making cabinets, I tend to subtract wrong when figuring out how much to cut back when allowing for the thickness of the wood - I make stupid simple math errors. Sure enough, when it came time to put the backs on the cabinet, I'd cut them, and the center dividers, an inch too short.

Bad words. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I really hate it when I make stupid mistakes. I was complaining to a friend of mine about it this morning, and he suggested I take a picture of Dad out to my workshop. He thought it would help me get in touch with my inner putterer.

I took his advice, and as I was working to fix my mistakes I was thinking of Dad.

Many, many, moons ago he was putting up the paneling in our bedroom. I was following him around and 'helping' as I was wont to do in those days. The bedroom had a low-ceiling, with slanted walls; and he managed to cut one of the pieces snugging up to the angle mirrored - so the back of the panel was the side showing. (I do the same thing. a lot. suppose it's hereditary?) He said, 'oh, shit!', about the only cussword that ever came out of his mouth, and stared at it for a while, hoping it would magically fix itself.

Magic didn't happen, so we traisped on out tot the garage to fix it the normal way. He didn't have enough paneling left to completely remake the piece, so he cut the biggest piece he could, and then a smaller triangle to fill the gap. It wasn't an invisible fix, but it wasn't glaringly obvious, either.  As he fixed the pieces into place, he looked over at me and said, 'It's not that mistakes will never happen; everyone makes mistakes. It's what you do to fix them that counts.'

I thought of him again today, as I worked to correct my errors. The end result isn't perfect, but it'll do. (especially for a storage cabinet that'll always live in a garage...)

Mistakes happen, and, it's OK; most mistakes can be fixed.
Good for me to relearn now and again.

Butterfly Garden, *sigh*

spring, 2018

My butterfly garden started out so beautifully this year.  The stand was filled to overflowing with spring's blues and purples, with just a touch of red for accent. The flowers grew as they always do, then withered in the heat of summer's sun, ready to give way to the season's oranges and yellows.

Except, this year, the summer flowers didn't come.

In years past, the summer garden was impatient with its boundaries, overflowing its designated patch to commandeer the bordering flagstone path and spreading seeds in a wide circle into the surrounding lawn. My then-neighbor to the south called it the neighborhood afro garden - abundant, beautiful, untamed.

summer, 2017

summer, 2018

This year, there are just a handful of sprouts, lonely sentinels standing bravely in the patch of brown.

The summer has been hot and dry, but so was last year's. Should I have watered sooner? Did I pull the not-quite dried stalks down too soon last fall, and thus interrupt the self-seeding cycle? Or were the seeds done in by the long, cool spring, with its freeze - grow cycle lingering long past its usual time? (I'm pretty sure that's what did in the bulbs I had in another bed - by the time I got impatient in late spring and dug one up to check to see why they hadn't come back, there was nothing left but a withered shell of the root.)

I'm not experienced enough with the land to know. The flowers that did come in don't have many blooms, though they do seem to be appreciating the lack of competition for sunlight - their stalks are strong, the leaves reaching gratefully in all directions to the light.

I finally went out a couple of weeks ago to get some annuals to fill in some of the larger blank spots. I know it's too late in the season for them to really grow, but the empty dirt just looked so sad and lonely. I still see a few butterflies about, drinking gratefully from the few flowers I have. The large bumblebees have (I hope) found greener pastures, the small bees have been feasting on the blooms on the mint. The hummingbirds still come by once in a while, to feed from the pink flowers on the bushes I planted to shield my eyes from my air conditioner.

I miss the abundance, I miss my backyard bug friends.

Next year, I will try again with new seed, and maybe, maybe the bees and butterflies will come back. I hope.

Fort Riley

Custer Home, Fort Riley, KS

My nephew, Connor, took a time-honored path to pay for college and signed up for the Army ROTC program. They kept their part of the deal, and are paying for his education. He is six months into keeping his part of the deal, and is on active duty.

When he was getting ready to be an active officer, they gave him a list of bases, and asked him to pick his top choices. When the duty roster came out, he'd predictably (given Army ways) been assigned to none of the above - they sent him to Fort Riley, just down the road a piece from me.

I know he wasn't initially thrilled with the assignment, but I thought it was nice that at least he'd be able to stop by once in a while for a weekend break. Little did I know about the life of a modern Army officer - they've kept him busy with training exercises almost all of the time since he got here last spring.

Finally, last weekend, his unit was given a break from the too-many-hour days they've been working to get ready for deployment later this year, and he was able to get a four-day pass. It was supposed to be Thursday through Sunday, but they didn't finish their work on time, so it got shifted to Saturday through Tuesday. (guess they figure their soldiers should get used to not making plans...)  Undaunted, his sister, Juliann, came on down from Minneapolis on Thursday as originally planned. I took Friday off from work to spend some time with her, and we left Kansas City mid-day to go to meet up with him on base.

It's just over two hours out there; the drive went quickly since she and I had much to catch up on. I'd never been on an Army base before - I was impressed. I've seen part of the base before - you can see a bunch of the equipment from the freeway - but didn't realize how far back into the surrounding area the grounds went.

It took very little time to get through at the Visitor Control Center - apparently Friday evenings are not prime time for visiting the base. From the size of the waiting room, I know we lucked out. You don't have four admitting stations and 40-50 chairs available if they're not usually going to be in use.

The base was established in 1852, and some of the original officer's quarters are still around. Most are actually in use, but they've set aside one of the oldest buildings as a museum.  We went over there on Saturday to see what we could see; were pleasantly surprised to find the building open for guided tours.

I was unprepared for the sense of age and history permeating the building.  We were the only ones there for our tour, and the guide was kind enough to let me behind the guide ropes for a closer look as long as I didn't touch anything. They've done a good job recreating the look and feel of the home as it was back when. I'm a sucker for old buildings in general; this one had me feeling as if someone would be back shortly to invite us to sit on the porch for a spell while dinner was being prepared in the detached kitchen.

Connor says he works with good people. He has a sense of belonging, of service, of duty. While my heart aches when I think of war, I'm glad we have good people like him willing and prepared to protect their country, their families. The Army's 1st Infantry Division takes good care of their historical home. I hope this means they will also take good care of the treasure entrusted to them in the form of my nephew.

Superpower

I used to be skeptical; I didn't believe in superpowers. The Hulk, Spiderman, Wonder Woman - I thought they were figments of imagination. Then, I heard rumors about each of us having a superpower of our own. I scoffed. No way. Not me.

But then, then I began to pay attention to inexplicable events in my everyday life.

I'd be standing in line at the grocery store, a line carefully chosen based on a complex point system which takes into account the number of items in the cart, the perceived distractibility and people-watching interest points of the cart driver(s), and the number of small children with the cart driver (among many other shifting factors), and is supposed to help me determine which is the shortest path to freedom.

My system worked for many years, but then its effectiveness dropped precipitously.

I'd be standing in line behind a guy with one loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter, and the lady with the cart full of assorted lunch meats and one of each kind of fruit would be checked out ahead of me because the bag around the bread would be found to have a tear in it, and he'd saunter slowly away to select another one, leaving the register tied up because the peanut butter had already run through.

I'd peruse the lines, and pick the one with two people, each with only a few items, only to have the first person decide they want to pay for their items in small change, which must be laboriously fished, coin by coin, from the depths of a cavernous handbag.

I'd pull up behind the small Honda in the toll lane, and they'd drop their quarter on the ground and because it's the only one in the car, have to take five minutes to crawl beneath the car to retrieve it.

"That's it!", I decided. "That's it!"

It's a little known derivative of the power to stretch time - I have the superpower to be able to stop checkout lines. I know, I know, you find this hard to believe, but it's true. I have story after story to prove it.

I generally keep knowledge of my power to myself. I mean, it would be so sad to see the faces of the people in front of me in line fall in disappointment just because I strolled into place behind them. Who knows what chaos would ensue if they all jumped to other lines? - I'm pretty sure that would be the moment I'd place my first item on the belt only to have the store's power cut out and ALL the lines would stop dead.

No, no, it's best to keep it to myself. But it gives me comfort to know I can change the world in my small way, every time I go to the store.

When I choose Lane 5, the people in Lanes 3 and 6 find themselves run through by the senior super-checkers, who can scan an entire cart in 45 seconds.

When I get behind the scowling meanie in Lane 2, I get to watch the steam rise from his ears while he watches the cashier carefully count each ear of corn in the bag to make sure the shopper got the count correct (Yes, ma'am, you were right - there are 38 ears of corn in your eight bags.  Lessee, that's today's special, and at seven for $4.50, that comes to....), while the mother with the cranky baby in Lane 4 scoots clean out the door.

I've heard it said, 'with great power, comes great responsibility', so I do my best to shepherd my power wisely. And you, my friend, would be wise to take heed and choose another queue should you see me standing, waiting patiently, in line somewhere.