Dear Emily: What Is the Appropriate Thing to Say upon Hitting One’s Thumb with a Hammer?

Posted on July 6, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Incandescence, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

In our one-stoplight town, we are 30 miles from every essential establishment other than a superlative yarn shop, but when the car needs major work, bamboo and camel-hair blends just don’t do the trick. So I grab my knitting bag and settle down for the morning in my far-flung mechanic’s Friendly Waiting Room.

And I contentedly knit.

At first the mechanic and his crew of well-trained buccaneers were concerned that I would be bored, but when I assured them that hours spent alone in a small room were a mini-vacation from the demands of a household of teenagers, they understood.

So through the years they have become accustomed to greeting me with a smile before ushering me into my inner sanctum, where they generally leave me in peace until it is time to announce that The Car Is Ready.

One day, however, Jim, the chief buccaneer, arrived in the doorway, wringing his hands and looking like a young boy who has just been caught kicking the cat.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized.

He's so sorry. Really.

 

This is not a statement one wants to hear in the mechanic’s Friendly Room. My knitting terminated.

“What’s wrong?” I got out.

“The language,” Jim said. “I am sorry that you had to overhear that.”

Having been deep in the knitting zone, I actually hadn’t heard anything, so the most I could intelligently get out was a blank stare.

Jim mistook this for distress, and continued his apology. “The mechanics — they forgot that it wasn’t just a bunch of guys,” he said, “and they talked as if, well, they were a bunch of guys. I am so very very sorry that you had to overhear that.”

It seemed easier to reassure him, and frankly, if I had managed to overhear a bunch of guys talking like a bunch of guys because they were unaware of the weaving diva in the little room, I wouldn’t have minded beyond wondering what it was about my car that was causing them so much consternation.

But I have always been grateful to Jim for his concern, because he recognized — unlike many people today — that it’s okay to talk a certain way within in a certain group, but certainly not okay when Other People — like Knitting Matriarchs, or Children, or just General People in the Vicinity — are in the mix.

Understandably, everyone exclaims  when they hit their thumb with a hammer, and, in most cases, it probably sounds like a chicken by-product. Some words just pop out more readily than others, and Goodness Gracious Sakes Alive Dear Mamma is just too long for most people. Sometimes, as my mother says, the situation just calls for a good four-letter word.

But other times,  a four (or more)-letter word is the easy way out of having to actually think and put one’s thoughts into coherent form. When one is angry or irritated or distressed but has not hit one’s thumb with a hammer, one can train oneself to sound like a reasonably educated humanoid, suitable to being overheard by a general populace.

“They’re just words,” some argue.

True. So are “I love you” and “I wish you had never been born.” Different messages, those.

The younger set seeks to obscure vulgarity by using the word “freakin'”, which is even more annoying for its lack of the letter g, and worse yet, the absence of an apostrophe. Speakers are simultaneously not saying a socially unacceptable word while they are saying enough of it to make their meaning clear. Make up your minds, already.

Port Townsend Bay, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

 

I am old enough to remember using the terms Lady and Gentleman in reference to actual people, and, while I am grateful that I never had to worry whether or not my well-turned ankle flashed from beneath the petticoats, I do wish that we would continue to observe, in this androgynous society of ours, a decorum of speech based upon whether we are in mixed company or not, and whether or not there are children about.

Jim understands this, and we clearly need more Jims to teach us to exercise a sense of acumen and discernment in our daily speech. Oh, and if you do hit your thumb with a hammer, do so try to do it in unmixed company.

Al Fresco -- Original Oil by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

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The Wandering Norwegian and His Breakfast Escapades

Posted on July 2, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Port Townsend Bay, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

We sample a variety of motels, the Norwegian Artist and I.  Because we travel with teenagers — who eat, and eat, and eat — we find it cost effective to stay at places with breakfasts. 

Now I’m sure that in Europe the term Continental Breakfast encompasses a fresh croissant and sultry, provocative coffee, but here in America  the definition is flexible  indeed. While the majority of our traveling breakfasts have given us a Happy Sunshine! morning experience, there are notable exceptions. 

In one motel we wandered into the lobby, looking for the promised food.

“There on the buffet,” grunted the clerk.

The “buffet” is what we at home call a lampstand with a decanter of tepid brown liquid, six styrofoam cups, and four depressed banana muffins swathed in plastic wrap.

Another motel set aside an actual hallway complete with tables, chairs, blaring television, and a guard. Oh, he moved napkins around here and there, but mostly he stood in the doorway, making sure that no one escaped with a spotty banana.

At still another establishment, which advertised that breakfast lasted until 9 a.m., a morose young woman strode in promptly at 9 and began noisily opening and shutting cupboards, indiscriminately tossing in apples, tea bags, crumbled pastries, and sugar packets. At 9:05 she sailed out, presumably to inflict similar damage to the rooms.

At yet another, Tired of Being the Youngest snatched the last bagel, then looked around, helplessly, for cream cheese to make the poor rubbery product palatable. With no employee in sight or on site, I sidled to the refrigerator in the corner and peered in, finding a mound of cream cheese tubbies. Unfortunately, the refrigerator door sighed as it was opened.

Spring Rush, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Well, that was one way to find the employee.

My all-time favorite breakfast experience took place at a pseudo-log-covered renovated remnant from the 1950s, the sort that calls itself Motel and advertises the extreme cleanliness of its rooms. This Motel had an actual name, something along the lines of Mountain Vista Estates, which could double as a housing development or a cemetary, and we chose it because our room had a kitchen.

It also had an upright piano, which clearly showed that we had landed the Executive Suite. Walls had been knocked down to turn two formerly closet-sized rooms into a long walk-in closet, with iron bunk beds in the “living” space completing the charm.

Piano aside, what mattered to us was that kitchen, since when you travel with  Voracious Vultures you generally avoid candlelit dinner spots. The first morning of our stay I pulled out the muffin tins, pre-heated the tiny electric oven, and set about making breakfast for four.

Unfortunately, the only thing about the oven that really worked was the red light indicating that it was on — the oven itself was so hot that the lemon muffins came out chocolate.

So off to the proprietor I went, smoking muffins in hand.

“Oh,” he paused, taking in the burnt offering. “Oven’s not working. It’s been out for awhile. I’ll get a guy on it next week.”

“We won’t be here next week, (or ever again),” I replied,  “What can be done about this?”

“Well,” he paused longer (during our stay I noticed that he paused everytime we “chatted”). “I suppose I could bake what you need in my oven.”

Done. Much to his surprise, incidentally. I think he figured that if he just did the Clint Eastwood thing long enough, I would go away. Ah, but a woman feeding her cubs and mate does not slink off to the cave, beaten. Over the course of the week, I entered the office matutinally, muffin pan in hand, and returned 15 minutes later to collect our breakfast. When other guests glanced inquisitively,  I smiled beatifically and sashayed back to our tubular passageway while the proprietor shuffled back to his warren. By the end of our stay, he was as happy as we were that we would never be back. 

I love to travel, and I really enjoy checking out different lodging options, but ultimately, I think that Dorothy was right.

There’s no place like home.

Opalescent Sea -- original oil by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

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Obsessive Frugality and When a Man Should Stop Wearing Itty Bitty Swim Trunks

Posted on June 29, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Mill Creek Farm, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

This weekend I embarked on an experiment in extreme frugality, not because I had dropped over the edge (the Norwegian Artist was initially concerned when I explained to him what I was doing), but because I wanted to see if I could. After all, that’s what extreme sports are all about — pushing oneself to the limit.

I was piecing together cotton batting to finish a quilt — the batting, for those people who yawn prodigiously at the first mention of domestic arts (my own sister does this) is the bologna part in the middle that provides the warmth factor.

Normally, one does not piece together batting. One makes a quick trip to the fabric store and plonks down money for a big swathe. However, I am not an ordinary One  — sending me into a fabric store is akin to inviting the cat to play in the gerbils’ cage. (By the way, the apostrophe in that last sentence comes after the “s” in gerbils, meaning that I am talking about more than one rodent here — just a friendly grammar observation.)

So the weekend found me in my sewing room that looks suspiciously like a laundry room, rummaging through drawers and boxes to assemble as many scraps as I could. The sorry little heap that I wound up with did not look like it could sew itself into four 15″ by 100″ strips, but the prospect of impossibility has never stopped me before. Ignoring reality gets easier the more you do it. Really.

I began sewing — little pieces to littler pieces, one after another, trimming off the ragged edges and sewing them back on another way. Ridiculously teeny pieces grew into still absurdly miniscule pieces, which grew into somewhat identifiable-with-the-naked-eye pieces, over a number of hours on my Saturday afternoon.

On the Edge, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

Surely I was getting a little obsessive here. The thought was in the Norwegian Artist’s sexy blue eyes, but 27 years of marriage has taught him a few things about thinking things in his head and actually saying those things out in the air.

“Are you, possibly, getting a little . . . obsessive here?” he asked. So much for the 27 years of wisdom.

“It’s difficult to explain, but I’ve set myself a challenge, and I want to see if I can do it,” I replied.

Actually, holing up in the sewing/laundry room wasn’t as bad as it sounded, as everybody who was genetically related to me had chosen to visit that weekend. The Eldest with the toddler and the boyfriend were clattering about (in the case of the toddler, this term is very, very literal); the College girl and her friend had come down, taking 7 hours to make a 3-hour trip because neither one of them had a map and neither one of them was particlarly paying attention to the road signs OR the scenery until they were on the outskirts of a large city 2 hours northwest of us); the existing little family structure still existed, and all in all there were just a lot of people in the kitchen cutting up watermelon, in the bathroom putting on mascara, and upstairs in the crib NOT taking a nap — and everybody else’s idea of what a clean kitchen or a clear bathroom floor should look like is totally different from mine.

So it wasn’t such a bad thing, sitting in my little room, surrounded by fluffy white scraps.

WinterScape Farm, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

I came out now and then, but during the afternoon, people became busy doing their own things — the toddler actually napped, the boyfriend muttered his way through cleaning up his laptop, the preponderance of femininity draped itself on the top of the trampoline, baking, like cookies, in the sun. Long before, the Norwegian Artist and the Son and Heir had spurted over to the studio, where there was no mascara, discussion of different bra sizes, and observations about the age when a man should stop wearing tight little swimming trunks (the boyfriend was so immersed in his computer that he felt no need to escape. Besides, he’s still young enough to wear itty bitties.)

The scraps grew big enough that they could be called pieces, and the pieces eventually morphed into strips, longer and longer strips. At the same time, the sorry little heap with which I had started was shrinking proportionately smaller, and the questions always hung in the air, “Will I make it? Will there be enough?”

Amazingly, I did, and there was. I felt an immense sense of  satisfaction at having solved the problem without running to the store (which is 30 miles away, incidentally) and at having made do with what I had. Four long, gracious strips of batting reposed languidly in the corner of my sewing room. The numbers in the ledger of my checkbook were the same as they were Friday afternoon. The project was a small thing, indeed, but as a statement to my psyche, it was magnanimous. I had conquered the little heap of little scraps.

The issue of the itty bitty swim trunks, however, regarding what age a man should stop wearing one, remained still unresolved, despite the many minutes that were spent in debate. Although the preponderance of femininity did not come up with a specific number, the opinions expressed, gentlemen, were brutal. My advice would be, unless that rippling comes from muscle and muscle alone, then drop the short shorts. Figuratively, please.

Saturday -- original oil by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

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The Issue of “Choice”

Posted on June 25, 2010 by This Woman Writes

 

Musings, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

A teacher friend of ours raised his children with the concept of choices, as in,

“That was a bad choice, son.”

“Do you think that was a good choice?”

“What were you thinking when you made that choice?”

He always sounded so patient, but I’m sure that, when outsiders weren’t around, the questions may have sounded more like,

“What in God’s name were you thinking — if that isn’t too powerful of a word — when you made that monumentally stupid CHOICE?”

The word choice is bandied about in this society where we, fortunately and unfortunately, have an array of options concerning everything from our lunch sandwich to our career.

In the potluck table of life, we’re allowed one pass through, with some people’s options stopping shortly after they have picked up the plastic cutlery, and others wending through all the way to the desserts — not much choice in that aspect. None of us really know if we’ll be called off the planet just as we’re deciding between the scalloped potatos with the cheese, or the dish that features ham but no cheese.

Ebb Tide, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

 

But while we’re here, we’re faced with choices, and one of the biggest is what we ultimately plan to do with our life. From the time we are very little, we announce that we will be a teacher or a fireman or a policeman (I have always liked those job titles — they’re so concrete and identifiable. Few 7-year-olds proclaim, “I really want to be an environmental consultant in offshore drilling litigation!”).

As a teenager, I decided that I wanted to be a journalist, despite my mother’s longing that I go into computers (Oh, please, mom. This was in the day of  punchcards and Cobol — which sounds like a misspelled color — and Fortran — always associated with after dinner cookies). My mother, being a mother, wanted me to choose a career that was secure, well-paying, and safe, and journalism just didn’t fit into that category.

As it turned out, I never wound up as a journalist, having found something that paid even less:

I became a homemaker.

I’ve heard it all before:  “Being a homemaker isn’t a choice nowadays — it’s a luxury!”

“Women work outside jobs PLUS take care of the house — what makes you think you’re so special?”

“What a waste of a brain — home with dirty diapers and sticky faces!”

Really? by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

I have always found it amusing that, in the early days of the feminist revolution, women were promised that they could do anything that they wanted to do, including stay at home with the kids, but when all is said and done, the particular potato casserole that is homemaking was taken off the table and put, well, in the kitchen.

The Norwegian Artist and I made a conscious decision, before the first child was incubating away, that I would stay home and focus on raising them. Now anyone familiar with the word artist probably associates the word starving in front of it, so enough said on the luxury aspect — only in Movie World do graphic artists make enough to afford waterfront property that isn’t the puddle formed in the street when the drains are plugged.

Without getting into the Mommy Wars of  us versus them, our particular choice involved exchanging more money for more time. Interestingly enough, in the process of cooking everything from scratch, shopping the thrift stores, and sitting down with our financial advisor to learn how to translate his words into English, I was able to set aside enough money to buy our 7 acres in the country where the Norwegian Artist and I literally built our home, which we own outright. The deed to the land reposes in our filing cabinet. Not bad for a single, very moderate, income.

The brain drain part?

The average office, with its cubicle world that looks like an experimental maze for rats, does not exude acadamia. Listening to most people talk about their day jobs, one gets the strong idea that life begins after 5 on Friday.

Even those people who find incredible satisfaction in their paid work also realize that they are much more than a teacher or a fire fighter or an environmental consultant in offshore drillling litigation. And within these proper, paying, real jobs, hours during the week are spent on mind-numbingly boring meetings, superfluous paperwork, and purposeless acitivity — dirty diapers are no treat, but unlike meetings, they eventually come to an end.

So what has my choice brought me? In more than 20 years, I have spent copious time around children — not just my own — of varying ages. Kids are a kick.I have run four businesses from the home, including the latest, Steve Henderson Fine Art. I’ve put in more writing hours than I did when I worked in public relations. In the process of homeschooling (“Good God! And she drinks goat milk, too”), I have revisited my trigonometry days, said bonjour again to French, and joined the debate club as the little feet and hands sprouted teenaged hormonal horns.

I spend as much time on laun

Fenceline Encounter, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

dry, dishes, and cleaning the toilet as my office counterparts do — really, homemakers do not finesse these domestic equivalents to filling out forms in triplicate — but I have had more mental time and energy to pursue my interests which, if I work hard enough, eventually become paying interests.

Oh, and I knit, sew, and cook. Not because my middle name is June (enough with picking on June already — gosh, Beave), but because I actually like doing these things.

I am acutely aware that, because I live in a country where such choice is available, I am more fortunate than many. I am also aware that, if the choice is available and I don’t take it because someone else, somewhere else, does not have my options, then I am throwing away opportunity, which is stupid.

And homemakers aren’t stupid.

Just Breezin' by Steve Henderson, A.S.M.A. -- original oil painting accepted into The 31st Annual International Marine Art Exhibition at Mystic Seaport, CT

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We’re Not Environmentally Sensitive; We’re Cheap

Posted on June 22, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Just Breezin', by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

The Norwegian Artist and I have never worried about steering our little raft through the middle of the stream, which is good, since according to our four progeny we are hopelessly on the edge. The other day, however, we discovered that, without our changing any of our odd habits, we have become cool, contemporary, and whatever other words describe the opposite of what we actually are.

We did this by not owning a clothes dryer.

Our College Girl brought this new status to our attention by reporting that, according to one of her professors, hanging clothes on the line is an environmentally avante garde thing to do, and that even celebrities — or the housekeepers of celebrities — are joining in this ecologically friendly activity.

I have a difficult time imagining  Botox Babe rubbing a sun-dried towel across her face (“folding” towels becomes a literal activity when pima cotton dangles in the open air), but if the professor said it, it must be so.

(Incidentally, isn’t our daughter an English major? What type of literature is this professor having her read?)

“Can you believe it?” the College Girl exclaimed. “You’re actually fashionable.”

This is most gratifying.

The Fruit Vendor, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

Although I would like to say that the reason we subjected our long suffering children to crispy underclothing and socks that lean straight against the wall when you prop them there is because we, long before even Al Gore, were sensitive to the abuses on the environment — this would be somewhat untrue.

Actually, it would be completely untrue, as the reason we have never owned a dryer is that we are too cheap to do so.

It started when we were college students ourselves, holding down a half-time job between the two of us, when we stood by the electric meter and tracked how it spun when we turned on the light in the bathroom and the one in the bedroom.  Quickly determining that one of these had to go if we were going to meet that month’s bill, we were in no shape to turn on a dryer, much less purchase one.

As time went on and enough money flowed in that we were able to add salt to the day’s oatmeal, we never could make the plunge to the dryer. Or an air conditioner. Or a dishwasher. They made the meter race.

When the kids were younger this was no problem, as they accepted that one hauled the basket out to the line in the summer and creatively dispersed the clothing on a rack in the winter. On sultry days, one plunged one’s head under the faucet outside and shook out the excess, like the dog, sort of. After each meal, someone cleared, someone washed, someone dried, and nobody argued about who was supposed to empty.

As some of the children aged, however, they noticed that other people put their clothes and dishes in little boxes, and that another little box, somewhere, pumped out cold air. Also, everybody else held tiny little boxes to their ears and talked into them. And drove cars without peeling paint (“Just tell your friends that we own a Jaguar,” we advised. “It has spots.” This did not go over well.)

Day by teenaged day we became stranger, weirder, more embarrassingly outlandish and utterly outre. While it is a given, in our adolescent-oriented society, that parents be considered with condescending deprecation, we found ourselves, and our ideas, and our way of life so overwhelmingly distasteful to members of the generation below us that breakfast table conversation literally stopped (Oops — did I mention that we drank goats’ milk? Any idea how that went over?).

The Blue Poncho, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

And then, one day, things began to change — not us, we still hung out the clothes, washed dishes with rags, squeezed the goats’ udders — but the teenagers began to drop out of the nest, flutter their downy wings, and attempt to fly. And as they scraped their beaks against the rocks, they remembered the story of the spinning electric meter.

A car with peeling paint didn’t seem so horrible anymore when the alternative was a four-mile roundtrip trek to the grocery, where (“My God! Look at the price of milk!”) that week’s paycheck wouldn’t stretch to cover a DVD rental, not if you wanted food with that.

When the College Girl complained about how 6 quarters bought 10 minutes of dryer time, her older sister advised her to pack the damp clothes home and drape them over the chairs to air dry. “Dryers cost a lot of money,” she told her. “Air’s free.”

Well I’ll be.

Whitewater -- Original oil by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

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Facebook Plea: “I’m Sad. Please ‘Like’ Me”

Posted on June 11, 2010 by This Woman Writes

 

Passage by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

In the last week on Facebook, I have stumbled three times upon this phrase: “I’m Sad. Please Like me so that I will feel better.”

Being a technical inept, I initially thought that the persons sending the messages, who were already friends, wanted me to reassure them of my friendship. Well that’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? If I didn’t like them, they wouldn’t be showing up on my Facebook page.

Then I realized that these messages were along the line of the one by another friend inviting everyone over for ice cream. She wasn’t, really. As part of Facebook’s endless game options, she was virtually offering the ice cream. This is Alice in Wonderland Looking Glass stuff — it’s not real; it just looks that way.

Which comes back to my three sad friends. For the first one, I did hit the Like button, my mind screaming against common sense — Oh, you’re sad. I Like that!

The second time around, I was a little smarter — I wrote, “I’m sorry,” as a comment. I’m sure that made them feel better.

The third time, I sent a private message, in an attempt to open actual communication.

The Emerald Valley, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

Okay, so you’re sad. Do you have any idea how long it takes me to hit the Like button? About half a second — then I move on and read about another friend’s failed chocolate cake — so failed that her husband thought that she had baked a large cookie (I bet he’s sad by now).

Do you feel any better?

If I am the only one to hit the Like button, how does that make you feel — do you conclude that there is only one person in your world who remotely cares that you are sad?

Let’s say that 10 people hit the Like button — is that enough? Did the right people hit it? Did somebody who should have hit it, not hit it? Did anybody care enough to call or e-mail or visit you to find out what was wrong, or did they all move on to the chocolate cake thing?

The ultimate result of this particular plea is to make a sad person feel sadder. Like any ultimatum, its unfulfillment speaks volumes, but not necessarily the right words. It is equivalent to the prayer, “Dear God, if you love me, please get me this job (or this guy, or this car, or this exotic truffle).”

So, when you don’t get the job or the guy or the car or the truffle, does this mean that God doesn’t love you? Or does it mean that you’re missing the point?

Hidden Lake, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

I have no problem with people posting “I’m sad” on their Facebook wall — without going into gritty details of what is going on in their lives, it sends the message of somebody hurting and reaching out to others for comfort. If I know that you’re sad, then I can call you and talk. If I know that you’ve been ill and haven’t been able to get to the grocery store, then I can drop by some food. If I know that you really blew the diet and ate an entire pound of M&Ms (do you really want 185 people to know this?), then I can — well, I can feel better about myself and that half-pack of Oreos.

It is asking people to hit the Like button, however, that sets the writer up for failure.

I like Facebook — it’s fun to keep up with the minutiae of people’s lives in the midst of a busy world. At the same time, there is the bad side of Facebook and other social media — they deal primarily with minutiae, and virtual farms, and mindless posting and re-posting of someone’s initial thought (“If you think that Chihuahuas have sexy ears, then post this on your wall”). We can spend hours on Facebook skimming the surface of people’s lives without ever having to get — literally — face to face with people themselves.

We are a lonely society, too busy with being busy to have time for one another. In our keening, wailing inner desire to connect with other human beings, we all too easily accept substitutes for the real thing. So we join groups, attend little classes, sit on committees, read books with others in a circle and answer a list of questions from a workbook — all in the effort to forge relationships that wind up being more acquaintanceships than they do friendships.

Facebook can be a tool in our lives to maintain enough contact with similarly busy people that we can eventually connect real time, maybe after we’ve dropped the majority of our groupettes and committees and meetings and life enhancement courses and events.

I’m thinking this thing through. Please Like Me.

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What I’ve Learned by Cleaning the Local Baptist Church

Posted on May 27, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Iglesia Colombiana — original oil painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

Ten years ago I sought to make extra cash by cleaning the small Baptist church we then attended. I should have suspected something when the woman then doing the job fell prostrate at my feet.

“It does pay, doesn’t it?” I reiterated.

“Yes. Oh, thank you thank you thank you!”

For one person, it was a six-hour weekly event; for five people — moi plus four kids — it was a great way to earn money for the annual trip to the coast, as well as a means of learning patience, perseverance, humility, and the fine art of ignoring in-your-face but but not to-your-face critique.

In nine years, what have I learned from cleaning the cavernous sanctuary, the equally large basement, three kitchens, four bathrooms, and assorted little rooms spread across three buildings?

1) There is job security in performing work that no one else wants to do.

People may complain, but not enough to snatch the work from your latex-gloved hands and take over.

2) Keep an eye on the details.

It’s easy to miss one plastic communion cup out of 100. Don’t.

Spiders build webs up high. Look up.

When the city spends weeks ripping the street down to dirt in front of the building, it’s dust to dust to dust all over the place.

When the water main breaks in the middle of the ripped up street in front of the building, dust is no longer an issue.

Where the River Bends, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

3) Do not, however, obsess about details, or worry about people who do.

When I inherited the job, it was impressed upon me the importance of placing three rolls of toilet paper on the back of each commode in the ladies’ bathroom — two on the bottom, one on the top, forming a pyramid.

After awhile, I reduced this to two, thinking that three was excessive, especially as one roll languished, week after week, unused, until its  paper wrapping got ratty (at this point, the paper was removed and the roll placed in the cabinet of the men’s restroom — no pyramids there,  just a spaceful of unwrapped rejects).

Lo and behold, next week the trinity was back — two on the bottom, one on the top, the one on the left tattered and poised for the boys in a month or so. As a matter of principle, I removed the top roll and waited, like the shoemaker with the elves, to see what would happen.

Three again.

This went on for several weeks, until finally my silent adversary gave up. Score one for the Cleaner.

Which brings me to number four,

4) Be persistent.

Five years ago, the administrative head brought forth charts and figures and graphs and PowerPoint presentations to prove the superiority of individual chairs over pews. “People leave a minimum of 32 inches between themselves and a non-family member in pews,” he intoned. “Chairs will eliminate this waste of space.”

Apparently none of his extensive research mentioned that people leave an entire chair, if not two, between themselves and a non-family member.

Ah well. As the cleaner, I brought up a thought out of my head, totally unsupported by the latest research: pews can be vacuumed under; chairs can’t. Who will remove and put back all those chairs?

No problem, I was assured. A Ministry of Chair Removal and Replacement was instigated.

Nobody signed up.

There is an increasing population of dust bunnies, literally unreached.

5) People do odd things in odd places.

Every week, I found a pile of fingernail clippings in one section of the sanctuary. Personally, if I were the speaker, I would be alarmed to spot someone so focused on grooming, although the positive side  is that this person is at least awake.

For several years, some snacking virtuoso left nacho chip crumbs (bright orange against a teal carpet) at the base of the piano, but never on the keys themselves. Perhaps it was the page turner.

After communion Sundays, a swathe of broken cracker crumbs covered the teal carpet — how do people manage to spill so much out of their mouths?

There are more lessons, but like a tolerable sermon, lists should be limited. Otherwise people pull out the nail clippers and Dorito bags, sharing resources with the person two chairs away from them.

Posted in Christian, Culture, Family, Growth, Humor, Job, Life, Personal, Random, Relationships, Uncategorized, Work | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

That Damn Dog!

Posted on May 21, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Moonlight Sail -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

When our now College Girl daughter turned 16, we threw a surprise  party. While the memory of her screeching and falling back into the furniture when everyone yelled out “Happy Birthday!” is one that still makes me smile, my husband (the Norwegian Artist) and I were the ones who wound up with the surprise.

It was a dog, a puppy, that one of the girls brought as a “present.”

“If you don’t want it, I can take it back,” she told us before the party started. Yeah, right.

What we initially saw was brown, floppy, droopy, absolutely adorable, and asleep.

The Norwegian Artist and I looked at one another. “How bad can it be?” we asked one another. (Did we really not know?) “Look at her. She’s sleeping. And she really is cute.”

And so Roxy came into our lives. Even though nominally she belongs to College Girl, that person is three hours away in, well, college, and dorms do not accept pets. So we are raising Roxy.

Hurricane River, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

It quickly became evident that the sleepy calm thing was an aberration, and that Puppy, as we initially called her, had boundless and unlimited supplies of energetically effervescent ebullience. She started by chasing the chickens, which is a huge no-no on the farm.

“If that dog kills a chicken, she’s gone,” the Norwegian Artist intoned. Something about the tone of his intonation got through, and Puppy stopped chasing chickens, cold turkey so to speak, and turned her attention to the cats. Now here was scope for her imagination — eight different cats, with eight different running styles.

Jasper vaulted up the tree. Archie hunched down and let the dog put his face in her mouth. Eddie stood fast, then bolted. Xena the Warrior Princess abdicated. Mozart, the Old One, lost all thought of his dignity and scurried under the car, from which vantage point he hissed. Cappuccino hurled herself onto the roof of the chicken coop.

And Roxy thought that she had eight new friends.

During Roxy’s long, long puppyhood, the Very Old and Ready to Die Labrador, Brandy, was still, barely, alive. Until Roxy arrived, Brandy spent the day sleeping — deaf, blind, and losing her sense of smell, she didn’t know if it were day or night.

Roxy did, though, and early in the morning she leaped upon Brandy’s subtly breathing carcass, then bounded back, barking, six inches from Brandy’s face. Bark BARK! Bark BARK! Bark BARK!

We figure that by forcibly getting Brandy up and moving, Roxy increased her lifespan by two years, but we’re not sure if Brandy appreciated this.

Eight months after Roxy arrived — while we were still calling her “Puppy” — a little friend started visiting. It was a Springer Spaniel.

Now with those ears of long flowing tresses, neither the Norwegian Artist nor I gave the visitor much thought. We told ourselves that were happy that Roxy was having a girlfriend over to play.

Provincial Afternoon, by the Norwegian Artist, Steve Henderson

But it wasn’t a girlfriend, although yes, they were playing. The mail carrier informed us that Roxy’s friend was a fully functioning male and that he was coming from a half-mile away.

We chose to stay in a state of denial, and observed with pleasure that, “Puppy seems to be getting a little plumper these days.”

Finally, when the obviousness of Roxy’s impending motherhood could not be overlooked, we remained optimistic: “First-time mom, she’ll probably just have one or two.”

One morning, the Norwegian Artist went out to the hay bales, and he saw what he initially thought were eight, 8-inch-long maggots. They were Roxy proxies.

We eventually sold all eight, not having to resort to giving any as birthday gifts, and purchased an overnight stay at the vet’s for Roxy. Her newfound friend, the Springer Spaniel, never came back.

Roxy recovered her figure and boundless energy, returning to chasing cats. She also eyes the neighbor’s horses. Barks at the other neighbor’s pigs. Runs in the other direction when you call her. And lately, at 3 in the morning, barks at something — we don’t know what — for an interminable period of time.

Bark BARK! Bark BARK! Bark BARK!

“That DAMN dog!” the Norwegian Artist grumbles as he pokes through the dresser for a flashlight, maybe some aspirin.

Dog’s outside. Nothing else.

Bark BARK! Bark BARK! Bark BARK!

The next night it’s 2:45. Night after 3:10.

No deer, no bear, no skunks, no porcupines, no weasels. Just the Damn Dog.

When we tell the College Girl she laughs. “Aw, she’s so sweet,” is all she can come up with.

The problem is, Roxy is sweet. This is what she looks like (just so you don’t get confused — The Norwegian Artist is on the right — he’s cute too, but in a human way. Roxy is the cinnamon scrunchie thing in his arms):

She’s cute; she’s intelligent; she’s wrinkly; she’s funny; she’s noisy; she’s disobedient; she’s impacting; and in all likelihood, she’s probably ours.

That Damn Dog.

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How to Write a Resume – Part Three – Odds and Ends

Posted on May 20, 2010 by This Woman Writes

On the Horizon by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

To get started on your resume, sit down at the keyboard or with a pad of paper and write out everything you can think of about yourself and your job and education history. Where did you go to school? What did you study? When did you graduate?

Over the last 10 years, what jobs have you held? What were your positions? Were there specific duties that you had?

Can you speak any foreign languages? Do you have specific computer skills? Can you type? Do you work well with people? Do you have writing skills? Speaking experience?

Write down everything, and synthesize from there. It’s better to have more information than less, with the corresponding ability to winnow down the excess.

Let’s say that you worked as assistant manager at HappyDay grocery. You might list it like this:

Assistant Manager • Happy Day Grocery
Dayton, Wa • 1997-2010

Worked extensively with public as well as store staff. Ordered inventory; oversaw scheduling of employees; published in-house newsletter. Trained new employees; performed light accounting duties.

Notice that the “I” is implied and left out. The listing of duties is an addendum to the job itself, necessary to describe more of what you are and what you do. If you write in the past tense (“worked,” “ordered,”) then write everything in the past tense. If you write in the present, then write it all in the present — just be consistent. (As they say, it’s okay to be wrong now and then, as long as you’re consistent about it.)

If many of your duties in various jobs are the same, consider starting the resume with a Summary of Skills, either in paragraph or bullet form, listing out your proficiency in computer software, management experience, people skills, office duties, whatever it is that you have done a lot throughout your career and don’t want to keep repeating after each job.

As far as the actual layout of your resume, remember that white space is a good thing. Your margins can be generous, and space between headings and descriptions within keep the body of the page from looking like chunks of black ants filling the area. Even if you have a lot to say, give your viewer’s eyes a chance to rest. Think of yourself when faced with a printed page that has no paragraphs, but just one line after another of type. It gets exhausting.

If you list something, maintain consistency of form: order inventory; maintain books; tidy shelves is consistent, because each item in the list is stated in verb/noun format; order inventory; book maintenance; shelves are tidied is not, because the first item is verb/noun; the second is adjective/noun; and the third is passive construction.

Punctuate consistently as well. Within a list, you may or may not put a comma before the final conjuntion (speak and write Spanish, English, and German) – just pick one way of doing it and do all the lists the same way.

Make sure that there are no typos, grammatical errors, or misspellings anywhere on the resume. Even one small error leaves a bad taste with picky people like me. To this end, print off a copy of your resume and read it with pencil in hand. After you have gone through the entire resume, word by word, start at the last sentence and go through it again, backwards. You will be amazed the things you catch when you do this.

Look for space issues, as in, two spaces between words instead of one — this is one of those hyper small things that you can catch when you read your resume backwards.

Ask a friend or relative to look through your resume and ask questions on what they see.

If you have an aspect of your work life that looks negative, such as a lot of jobs in a small amount of time, consider dropping some of the less important jobs or adding together similar jobs into one entry. As far as dates go, it is not necessary to list month and year; year alone will work, especially if the job lasted 10 months and you really don’t want to advertise this fact.

Community service and volunteer jobs are valid jobs, by the way, even if you didn’t get paid. They provide experience and require you to be on the spot even if there is no paycheck at the end of the cycle.
I’m sure I’m missing something, but this with Parts One and Two should give you enough to get started. Good luck, keep your head up, and believe in yourself.

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Public Bathroom Humor

Posted on May 14, 2010 by This Woman Writes

Sunset Encounter -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

Like most women who have had young children in their lives, I can find the public restroom in any grocery store fairly quickly. The other day I used one in a squishy little mom ‘n pop place — the bathroom was palatial, bigger than a  bedroom, with the toilet far at the other end of the cavernous room.

My first thought upon closing the door was, “There had better be a lock, because if someone opens the door while I am, um, sitting, then the entire grocery store will see me.”

Yes, there was a lock — a tinny little button that wouldn’t hold up to an aggressive person’s impatient rattling. As I was, um, sitting, I glanced at the door and saw the bronzed sign: Did You Remember to LOCK the Door?”

What on earth would one do on realizing that, “Oh, Dear God, I forgot to lock the door . . . ”

Another bathroom, in an upscale deli that had Manhatten prices but prided itself on its “authentic Eurpoean decor” (rickety old tables, mis-matched chairs, servers who called out, “Bob! Your sandwich is ready!”) had a hand-lettered sign on the back of the women’s toilet:

“Customers! You MUST hold the handle down when you flush until ALL of the water goes down! This is YOUR responsibility!”

Apparently, the owners did not feel it incumbent upon themselves to hire a plumber. Interestingly enough, this establishment is no longer in business.

My local fabric store has a restroom that requires a key to enter, a giant key on a giant ring — something that Sherlock Holmes would use to open up an ancient box of mysterious items. What it means for me is that I announce to everyone in the store, “I have to use the bathroom!” The announcement is a long one as the key never opens the door on the first try (“It takes a little jiggling, dear”), and while other women are looking through quilting supplies behind me, I am frantically jiggling.

Church bathrooms have to be one of my favorites, as they have signs — not divine ones — all over:

“Ladies!” (what is it with the exclamation points?) “Please use the little wastebaskets to deposit personal items!”

If you are curious enough to pull out the liner to the wastebasket and look at the bottom of the container, you’ll see another sign: “Ladies!” (I assume the sign in the men’s wastebasket says “Gentlemen!”), “Do not deposit trash in this container unless there is a liner in place!”

There is no sign saying, “If there is no liner in place, then use the little wastebaskets in the stalls designed for personal items!”

On the mirror is a laminated sign, nagging, “Wash your hands!” At least the hands are not in praying mode.

My mechanic must do woodworking on the side, because the little tiny keys to his restrooms are on little tiny rings attached to 3″ by 6″ slabs of wood, clearly identified by “Woman” and “Man.” Not that it matters since he always leaves the doors unlocked anyway.

Another restaurant boxed in its bathroom in the hallway between the food order spot and the video arcade. As one is sitting, again facing a door too far away to keep shut with one’s foot, one sees the shadow of people’s feet as they walk back and forth, frequently stopping to rattle the door as you pray that the $1.50 lock will hold.

The dentist’s office arranged its waiting room so that all of the chairs circle around facing the door to the bathroom. I don’t know about you, but something about the dentist’s office triggers my need to use the bathroom, yet I am reluctant to stand up in front of a group of people and try out the door. If somebody’s already in it, I stand there, looking and feeling foolish. If somebody’s not in there and I make it in, I do so with the knowledge that a roomful of people is staring at the door, waiting for me to come out.

I have not yet had the experience of opening the door on someone who forgot to lock it, but the possibility is always there.

I am grateful for public restrooms — they add such dimension to my day.

Posted in Christian, Culture, Family, Growth, Humor, Life, Personal, Random, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments