Driving Through Beauty

Glacier National Park

I drove today through beautiful mountain passes.

The clouds and sun played with light and shadow, highlighting hillsides and shading the passes ahead.

I felt a wrench in my chest as I left the road behind.  As always, I wanted to capture the moment; stay in the beauty.  I didn't want to leave.  But life has taught me there is no way to stay in any moment.  Good or bad.

So, I reluctantly kept driving, knowing I may never pass this way again.  I will try to hold the pictures in my mind, but know I won't be able to.  **sigh**

As I drove, I was listening to retreat tapes made by Fr. Richard Rohr in the mid-80's, loaned to me for the drive by one of the Sisters, who works at Cristo Rey.  The message wasn't dated - spirituality hasn't changed much in just thirty years.  He spoke of faith and caring for God's creation and loving ourselves before we can love others; the messages resonated with the scenery.  The combination made for a contemplative drive.

I could use more such days in my life.

Stop.  (I didn't do enough of that.  again!)  Breathe.  Relax.

Go! (Again!)

This stoppin', breathin' and relaxin' stuff takes some practice.

I've not been very good at it since I left home, but I'm willing to work at it so I can get better.

I left home a week ago Friday, and headed up to Minnesota to see family.  From there, I headed off to see more beautiful places I haven't seen yet.

Buffalo River State Park, MN

The first night out of Minneapolis, I drove to Buffalo River State Park, near the North Dakota border.  The park bore out my prejudices towards state parks - they put them where they do because there's something pretty there.  In this case, it is a bit of untouched prairie.  Beautiful.

Painted Canyon, ND

From there, I drove across North Dakota to Teddy Roosevelt National Park - the North Dakota part of the badlands.  I loved my hike down into one of the canyons.  The short loop and the visitor's center at the top of the hill were busy, but as I walked away and down the hill, the sounds of trucks and people faded away, replaced by the chirps of birds and grasshoppers.  The view of asphalt and cars was replaced by the wonders revealed along a rugged trail winding down into the path ancient waters cut into the layered rock.  The smell of car exhaust was replaced by sun-heated grass.  For the first time in ages, I stopped to just breathe.

I left North Dakota, and spent four hours along Route 200S across Montana looking at some of the most beautiful nothing I've ever seen.  Every turn along the road brought a new version of beauty.  This turn showed badlands-like hills and vales.  Around here, a desert landscape.  The next revealed a lush and green valley, cows contentedly munching.  And so it went.  I found myself eagerly driving to the next hill, to see what I would see.

Virginia Falls, MT

And now, I'm happily ensconced in a friend's dining room after the morning's hike in Glacier Park.  Four of us went up into the park for a four mile hike near St. Mary's lake to see the water coming down the mountain.  It was cool up near the road, but once we got down onto the trail, the weather was perfect - comfortable walking in a long-sleeved t-shirt.  We had almost completed our hike when the overcast skies decided to dump part of their load.  I must admit I was very grateful for my '10 hiking essentials checklist' at that point, and was almost smug as I pulled my waterproof jacket out of my daypack and hiked up the hill back to the car in relative comfort.

I know I can get good at this stop, breathe and relax thing if I only try.

Cat: 1

The (mis-named) Monster (because he's really a gentle and good kitty), is not the world's most intelligent cat.  He's a biggish creature, and not overly graceful.  He's been known to fall off chairs and run into walls.  He has a wimpy meow and a wonderful purr.  (He purrs me to sleep some nights.  I really like that part.)

Monster is a cat of simple pleasures.  He takes special pleasure in boxes.  Shortly after you set a box on the floor, he will find it and climb in.  Then he just sits and looks at us with a very satisfied look on his face.  Box!

Well, Monster has decided the sink is a Box.  Even better, it's a Box with Water!  (He loved our drippy bathtub before we tore it out.)  If he is in the sink, he is NOT on the counter, he is in a Box.  and he is allowed to sit in Boxes.  And, he doesn't even really barely even have to pause on the counter to get to this newfound mini-heaven.  Surely, it's OK to sit in this wonderful Box with Water!

I've tried chasing him out, even turning on the water so he gets wet.  (whereupon he just jumps to the other sink).  If I physically lift him from the sink, he will stay down, but gives me a reproachful look.  (It's a Box.  It is.  It IS!  He is SO certain he is right.)

I'm afraid I'm losing this battle.  What does it really hurt if the cat sits in the empty sink?  (I mean, Box?) 

Ready, Set...

It's been a busy and hectic summer.

While the rest of the school was on break, I was in charge of making sure our servers got moved to a new home, our file shares were converted to SharePoint, that computers got cleaned and software updates loaded, and that iPads were ready to go for the incoming freshmen.

The server move, which I thought would take a week or so, turned into one of my two-hour projects.  In other words, it took WAY more time than I thought it would, both on my part and on the part of the new server company.

The good news part is that when school started this week, it was all ready to go.  mostly.  kinda-sorta.  Close enough, at any rate.

There isn't really a bad news part, except that I got very little time off over the summer, and so am starting the school year exhausted.

This is where I get grateful for that clause I insisted on when negotiating my contract where I get a month off each year.  I'm ready.

And, I'm leaving at the end of next week.  Back to the camper van, I go!  The school president is currently questioning her judgement in letting me finagle the contract clause.  She's worried about how the tech questions are going to get handled for the next month.

So am I, but not enough to not take my break.  I need it.  I really need it, if I'm not to start snapping at people for asking me stupid questions.  (Yes, all questions are stupid if I'm tired and cranky enough.)  It still seems so far away.  I have a friend who has started planning part of the trip for me, since I haven't done any planning for myself.  (I may or may not follow the portion of the path she laid out, but it's nice to have a plan to deviate from...)

Ready, Set....  soon..........

Neighbor's Garage

Last weekend found me out in the heat painting part of the neighbor's garage.

"Why the neighbor's garage and not your own?", you ask.  "Don't you have enough to do around your own house?", you ask.

Well....  I do have plenty to do here, but.

When I look out into my back yard, the neighbor's garage serves as a backdrop for the yard.  Not that the yard is anything to look at right now, but I do hope it will be pleasing to the eye sometime in the next year.

As I looked out and planned, my eye would always get caught by the peeling paint on the neighbor's garage.  I didn't like it.  Now, they keep their house in good shape, but the garage is pretty rough.  I think that because they don't have to look at it, they didn't think to keep it up.
The back of their garage isn't that big, so I found myself tempted to just paint it myself, so I wouldn't have to see the peeling paint any longer.  I didn't think it would take that long - 4-5 hours tops.

So, one day I popped on over there and asked them if they'd mind if I painted it.  They were a little taken aback, but readily agreed to let me do the work.  (they quickly offered to buy the paint.)

I was talking to their neighbor to the south, whose backyard is also next to mine, and mentioned she might see me out there.  "Oh, my", she said.  "Do you suppose you might be able to paint my side of their garage, too?  It looks even worse than the back."  Well, Anita's been nothing but nice to me since we moved in.  She's getting a little older, and can't paint the garage herself, and she was right - her side of their garage looked awful.  So, I agreed.

Which changed the job from a 4-ish hour job to a 12-15 hour chore.

It took several days to get the work done.  It took a LOT of scraping, then I had to prime and reglaze the window before I could paint.

As I scraped, I must admit I was asking myself what the heck I was doing out there.  It's one thing to indulge my own self-interest by painting the side I have to look at, it's another to paint a side I can barely see.  It was hot.  I was sweaty.  I mulled it over.  And I decided it was high time I'd reached out and done something nice for someone just because I could.  I've been mostly just taking care of me for some time.  I think I said yes because I was overdue for some good church.

Now, I'm not much on formal religion these days - when asked, I claim to be a member of the Church of Random Kindness and Senseless Beauty.  My church isn't much on doctrine, but it does ask, when the opportunity presents itself, that you reach out in kindness to others.  The garage painting gig was a perfect opportunity to reach out.

As I reached this conclusion, Anita saw me out there working.  She came out with her ladder and a pitcher of ice water and a glass of ice.  (and refilled it after the ice melted.)  She was so grateful - she's worked hard to make her small back yard inviting, and the eyesore next door was hard to camouflage.

It's not often I get instant feedback that I've done the right thing, but there it was.  Suddenly, I didn't mind the heat and the sweat.  As Anthony De Mello wrote - I gave myself the pleasure of pleasing others.  and it felt good.

I was happy.  Anita is happy.  and, as a bonus, the garage's owners are happy.

Not bad payback for a few hours work.

Squirrels: gone!

I win.

It turns out that the best way to get rid of the squirrels is to take down the squirrel highway.

I wondered about the highway when I took out the dead tree - I had watched them jump from tree to tree across the yards, and was curious as to how they'd get around with the tree gone.  I needn't have worried; they quickly figured out alternate routes using the fence and the power line.

The line originally crossed the back yard at about 8'; it was easy to reach up and grab it - and the squirrels had no trouble jumping from the fence to the line and from there to the roof.  I wasn't so keen on the 8' above the ground part (I didn't know yet about the squirrel condo in the eaves; if I had, I wouldn't have been keen about the squirrel roadway part either), so when I had the foundation dug, we also buried conduit between the house and the garage.  When the outside of the garage addition was complete, I had my electrician come back and install a new meter box. (The line had to move SOMEWHERE, anyhow - the location of the original meter is now in the middle of my kitchen.)  The power company was most cooperative about coming out to move the line from the house to the new box.  I don't think they were keen about that 8' clearance, either.  From the new meter box, the line runs below ground to the new crawl-space; the main panel has now become a sub-panel off the feed.

While we were at it, we also had old cable and phone lines taken out, and the new fiber line also moved to the garage.  Which means there are now no suspended wires connecting my house to the pole.

Turns out the squirrels didn't like having their main highway taken down.  They CAN make the leap to my roof from the neighbor's house, which is only about 10' away, but it's an awkward jump.  It's uphill, and not a great angle.

So, within a week after the line got moved, they packed up their bags and moved on out.  Not sure exactly where they went - I think they just moved to the tree across the street; I see them climbing on it all the time now.

I'm happy.  The squirrels, presumably, are happy.  The cats, not so much.  One of their favorite pastimes was watching the squirrels through the screen, plotting how they could get out there to catch the little buggers.  With no rodents to watch, they've had to find other interests.  Oh, well.  Can't please everyone...

Teepeed!

No, not my house.

But last weekend I stepped outside to see the tree in front of the house a couple of doors down festooned in toilet paper.

It brought me back, way back...

Like many high school students, my friends and I thought it fun to teepee houses.  We'd round up our weapons by scrounging from our parent's houses and assorted public restrooms.  (a belated apology to those gas station and restaurant owners...)  We'd pile in my van (a discreet vehicle it was - a red and white full size Chevy van) and go to the targeted friend's house.  We'd park around the corner and gather up the missles.  We'd creep not-so-silently in the night and set to work.  I still remember how good it felt to launch a roll just right, to see it soar high into the night over the targeted tree branch; a ribbon of white arcing in the darkness, decorating the tree in ghostly strips.

One night, we decided to target David Looby's house.  There were five or six of us in the group.  We marshaled our resources and managed to come up with over twenty rolls of TP.  The Looby's had three or four mature trees in their yard; we covered them in white.  A masterful artwork if I do say so myself.

We congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and went home to sleep with satisfied hearts.  The next day, I oh-so-casually called Dave to see how things were.

"Do anything fun last night?", I asked innocently.

"Yeah", he said.  "We got teepeed and boy is my mom mad!  She's grounded me for the next two weeks.  She says she thought my friends were better than to pull such a sad stunt!  I'd better get back outside to finish cleaning up before she gets any madder..."

I felt awful.  We were out to have fun, not to get anyone into trouble.  So, I called the others in the crew, and gathered them up.  Properly shame-faced, we headed back to the Looby's to help with cleanup and to apologize for the trouble we'd caused.

Much to our surprise, when I pulled up to the house, there wasn't a shred of toilet paper to be seen.  Hoping to salvage some of our relationship with his mother (she made the BEST tubs of popcorn...), we rang the doorbell.  When she answered, we poured out our apologies.  We were so sorry, hadn't meant to cause anyone any harm, we had come back to clean it up, would she please forgive us?

She cocked her head and looked at us, puzzled.  She said she hadn't been mad at all.  In fact, she thought we'd done a capital job.

As we stood there in stunned silence with our mouths hanging open, Dave came around the corner laughing.  After a moment or two his mom figured out what had happened and joined in.  A long moment later we finally figured out the joke was on us, and our laughter melded with theirs.

But I don't recall teepeeing any more houses after that.

Saving Things for Good

Erma Bombeck once listed some of her regrets.  Among them was the line:

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

The line has stuck with me, and it comes back to me when I find something ruined because I was saving it for good.

The latest was a cute little bottle of Burt's Bees lotion my daughter got for me a couple of years ago.  Why didn't I use it right away?  I don't know.  I thought I had to use up my regular lotion first.  I thought I needed to save it for something special.

Turns out all I saved it for was a trash can.  By the time I got to the bottle to open it, the mixture had congealed and I didn't get to use it at all.

I hate it when I do this.  When, exactly, do I think I will enjoy the special things that surround me if I don't enjoy them now?  Is there some just-around-the-corner tomorrow where the stars will align and I will feel I have worked hard enough to use the special instead of contenting myself with the everyday?

It's OK to eat the last of the raspberries - I don't have to save them for tomorrow; they'll be bad by then anyhow.  Likewise the chocolate.  (OK.  It'll last longer than the raspberries, but still.  How many times have I gone to the cupboard to find a delicious piece of chocolate gone gray and stale because I was saving it...)

It's OK to dip into my savings because my project is over budget.  Hoarded wealth benefits no one (that was a quote earlier this week - I looked for it, but couldn't find it again...)

It's OK to use the little bottle of lotion.  If it's gone, it's gone.  At least I would have enjoyed it.  And if I really like it, it's OK to buy more.

It's OK to treat me as if I'm special.  As if I deserve to be treated now and again.  Or even every day.

I'm going to try harder to enjoy the beauty around me.  All of the days, not just the predetermined special ones.  I know that more days could be special if I'd let them.

I will try.

Not Exactly the Ritz!

I'm deep in the slog part of my project.

It seems like I've been living in the midst of dust and debris for about a decade (I only exaggerate a little), but it's still not worth cleaning the house because we'll just make another mess within a day or two.

We've hauled load after load to the dump, but there's still more to be hauled.  (OK - I actually went with Joe to the dump with exactly one load; he's taken the rest himself.  But I have helped load them all onto the truck, if that counts for anything!)

The tear out is almost complete; the last part to go will be the bathroom walls, which will be gone sometime this week.

There's a lot left to do, and nothing, but nothing is complete.  Nor is it ready to be completed.

Living here right now is a bit of an adventure.

I still have a sink in the kitchen, and the microwave and fridge in the dining room work just dandy.

I may not have a bathroom upstairs, but we've cobbled together the necessary facilities in the basement.  Admittedly, there's not a ton of privacy down there, but we're careful to check what the basement occupant is up to before heading down the stairs.

I can't turn the air conditioner on - there are too many holes in the walls and it would be unable to keep up with the airflow.  Fortunately for me, the weather's been unseasonably rainy and cool.

This weekend's priority will be to insulate the walls; according to the forecast, I'm about to the end of my cool-weather grace period.  I've scheduled the furnace company to come out next Thursday to run the new ducts and move the air conditioner to its permanent home.

As hard as it is to see right now, we are making progress.  The framing carpenter is done, and the house is weatherproof.  I finally quit dithering and ordered all the tile, which got delivered today.  My brother will be back next week to work on the plumbing.

I'm still hoping I'll have a semblance of order here by the end of the summer.  It'll take a bit longer than I'd planned, since I'll need to finish building my kitchen cabinets without Ron's help, but I'll get there.

One step at a time.

Remodeling Break

Last weekend, I interrupted my regularly scheduled work on the house with a trip to Hastings, Nebraska.

My older brother, who has always loved Porsches, has decided to indulge his midlife crisis by racing a perfectly good, quite expensive car around in circles with other people afflicted by the same excess of money and a need for speed.

He invited us to come watch him race in Hastings this past weekend.  When you start racing, they put an X on the back of your car; sort of a 'Student Driver' sign for race drivers.  You get to take the X off after you've successfully completed four races without incident.  He'd completed two races last year, this set was to be the one where he graduated.

Curious to get a taste of a Porsche club driver's life, the kids (Kate and the baby are here) and I piled into the car and made the six hour drive after work last Friday night.

We got to the track in time on Saturday morning to watch his first practice run.  I was catching up on the latest family news with his wife and kinda-sorta watching him drive when the cars on the track all came to a halt.  You could see smoke off at the far end of the track - right about where Michael had been driving.

We watched anxiously for his car to pull off with the others, but didn't see it.  We COULD see the white roof of the car that was burning; the same color as his car.  Since the waiting ambulance didn't take off, we weren't panicked, but at the same time...

Sure enough, when his car came off the track, it was on the back of a tow truck.  Once off the track, they pulled it over to the side and doused it with water good to make sure the fire was out.  It turns out he'd taken a turn wrong, run onto the grass, got a load of alfalfa stuck under the car and the heat of the engine set fire to the hay.

I was quite sad.  We'd driven a long ways to see him reach for a dream, only to see it go up in smoke.  Little did I know.  They brought the car back to his spot, and within a few minutes he had all four tires off.  He and Joe climbed under the car to pull out all the packed grass; his wife wiped the extinguisher residue off the exterior.  By the time his first race started 90 minutes later, the car was ready to go.  I was impressed.

A couple of hours later, he had his two races tucked safely under his belt.  Relaxing in the condo after the event, he was tired, but obviously high on his well-earned achievement.  Yea, Michael!

(I'm SO glad we took the time to make the trip...)