Plans?

I've still been struggling with my lack of retirement plans. It seems I should have some, but beyond helping Joe and Rita get into their house, I don't. (And they SHOULD be in there sometime in the next few months.) Without plans, I feel adrift, directionless. I always told my kids they needed to have plans, because that way they'd know what they were deviating from - and here I am, not following my own advice.

Since I retired last October, I've tried several times to scope out a tentative path, but each time, life just didn't work out that way. (No thanks to COVID-19, which seems to delight in upending not only my plans, but those of most people on the planet.) 

Then, earlier this week, I stumbled across an editorial in the New York Times. The article isn't typical of them. I usually read the paper for its political and national news; to find a feel-good story about bread and roads and traveling and plans or the lack thereof was a surprise twist in my daily reading.

The author, Emily Scott, is a Lutheran minister; her story in the paper talked about leaving a long-term assignment and taking six months on the road in a camper van to recenter herself. (Sound familiar?) She experienced the same disconnection from time and place I did back in the long ago when I was able to take my similar journey. She speaks of Jesus gathering people, yes, but also scattering them in ones and twos to carry on his ministry. She speaks of her longing to share bread; to share a meal with a large group around a crowded table, bumping elbows and passing the food.

I read the article several times, convinced it was written just for me, placed in the paper because my soul needed to hear her message.

She ends her piece by saying:

In Erie, Pennsylvania, I rolled into a campsite and backed my van up to the edge of the great lake, surrounded by Harley-Davidsons. I shared a beer with a biker who had one thing to tell me about my trip: Don’t plan a thing.

“Because all my plans will fall apart?” I asked.

“Not only that,” he answered, “but because when you don’t plan, things will happen you wouldn’t believe.” He winked, his bristle of mustache rising mischievously as he smiled.

During this pandemic, I can’t depend on communion each Sunday as I used to. But there will still be bread. Here, on the road, between the old life and a new one, we have the opportunity to be remade. Who will we choose to become?

The pandemic has changed our lives. Like when I took off in the camper van, when it subsides we will not be where we started, nor will we be able to go back there even if we want to. This is a scary time, yes. But that doesn't mean there isn't wonder to be found ahead on the road.

I needed the reminder. Thank you Rev. Scott

Link to original article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/opinion/start-looking-and-youll-see-roads-all-over-the-bible.html

New Skills

3rd floor stairwell

There's nothing like a project house to teach one new skills.

The front bedroom of the house has some water damage on its curved ceiling. Normally, when I do a plaster patch, I reinforce the hole, cut a piece of sheetrock to more-or-less fit, and tape and mud around the edges. In this case, that won't work. Sheetrock doesn't curve well. 

I looked up methods of traditional plaster patching on the internet. Near as I can piece together, the best way to properly patch plaster is to repair the underlying lathe boards, apply a couple of coats of plaster patch, then end with a coat or three of Sheetrock joint compound. (If you're really good, you can do plaster on all the layers, but the stuff is deucedly hard to sand, so the method does not come highly recommended. And, I'm moderately OK, but I'm not really good at this. Let's not kid ourselves.)

While I am pretty sure my patching skills are up to the task, I decided maybe, just maybe, I should practice on an out of the way repair spot first, before tackling the highly visible bedroom ceiling. What the heck. So, earlier this week, I started on the fix on the ceiling of the stairwell going up to the 3rd floor. The spot meets all my test criteria - it's out of the way, a similar type of ceiling repair, and approximately the same size as the hole in the front bedroom.

So far, it's going pretty well. I replaced the rotten lathe strips (and even put a new piece of insulation behind the boards). I covered all that with a first, then a second coat of plaster patch stuff. It didn't start out so well. Every time I'd pick up the knife full of goop and start to apply it to the ceiling, a good half of it would fall to the floor and get dirt crumbs in it which made it useless. I cussed under my breath, kept at it, and figured out the trick to make the stuff stick. I also learned to hold the mud bucket underneath the putty knife, so when it didn't stick, it would fall back into the bucket where I could try again.

Today, I put the first coat of Sheetrock mud on the mess. I wasn't sure how to tell if it was even close to level across, then remembered a trick one of the guys who once did work for me told me. You take a long straight board, hold it straight against the undamaged part of the wall, and let it overlap the patch. Slide it down the wall, and it'll scrape away the high parts. I tried it, and sure enough, it worked. *whew*

I figure it'll take me a couple of extra coats of mud and sanding to get it remotely level, but I do think I've got it. It was definitely a good idea to practice in an out-of-the-way spot first. 

Yup, yup. I can picture the final ceiling now. I'll be showing someone the restored house and say, "see where I patched the hole up there?  No?  Great!" Then, I'll smugly mentally pat myself on the back. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?

Happy 4th!

April lasted forever, but June just came and went without pause, so I'm pretty sure I now know where all the extra April days were pulled from. It does work that way, does it not?

Despite COVID, I had a wonderful 4th of July holiday this year. The original plan was for my niece to come into town from Minneapolis, and then the two of us would head to the Kansas hinterlands to visit her brother near his army base (his travel was limited to a fifty mile radius of base), but at the last minute, he was able to snag permission to expand that radius to 150 miles, which allowed him to come on in to my place. (which made us all happy - his sister got out of extra hours of driving, he got a break from his work at the base, and we all got to see more of him than we would have been able to in the nearby town where we'd originally planned to meet. As they say, win, win, win!)

It wasn't an action-packed weekend; we stuck close to home, but I think we were all good with that. We talked and laughed a lot. We ate too much good food, as is proper for the holiday. We enjoyed the baby, and even managed to get in a little bit of work at the castle, cleaning out the basement.

The visit left my heart a lot fuller, the aches of my soul eased just a bit.

I am introverted by nature, and sometimes don't realize the toll the isolation imposed by COVID is taking on my spirits until I skirt the quarantine rules to make room for the physical presence of people I love and miss seeing. Hugs are important, and thank goodness baby Joe and his parents are staying here, because otherwise I'd be starved for contact.

Speaking of the baby (which I can do at length at the drop of a dime these days), Joe is a study in motion these days. He started to crawl a couple of weeks ago, and gains in speed, agility, and dexterity by the day. We are trying to teach him to avoid light sockets and to be careful around stairs. So far, we've had far better luck with the former - if we say 'no' when he reaches for the flat plates, he quickly loses interest. However, when the single stair between the living room and porch catches his interest, and he zooms over there to try to figure out how to negotiate it, he is much harder to divert. So, when this happens, I usually just go sit on the floor and play catch the baby as he works on mastering the challenge.

Life is Good.

P.S. Bedbug update: Against all odds, it seems that I did manage to bring just the one bedbug home. (??!!!!??) On the recommendation of a local pest control company, I invested in pheromone and bed leg traps - they won't get rid of an infestation but will give you an idea how many resident pests you are sharing space with. The guy said, if we had bugs, we'd see evidence of them within 3-4 days after installing the traps. It's been almost two weeks, and the traps are all still clear. I don't want to jinx anything, but am starting to be cautiously optimistic. Maybe we've managed to dodge a bullet.  Maybe???  I hope???