Ponder Post: Pride in the Mundane

ALLELUIA!
It's official. The bin purging  has come to closure. I am proud of the results and relieved it is over. The entire task spanned Feb 2nd to Apr 26th.

BACKGROUND
On January 6th we needed to empty the attic of 100+ bins of "stuff" to have some HVAC ductwork done. My Jan 28th post titled Progress but TTT related the tale of migration of stuff from attic to second floor bedrooms on Jan 6th. The  final touches and corrections to the upstairs furnace and air conditioning work was not finalized until the end of January and so in my post for Feb 2nd titled Bin There Done That I describe initiating the task of culling bin contents as we repopulated the attic. My estimate at that time was that with 100 bins, if I did three a day, I could be finished in a month. Here it is, the end of April, and so the reality of that estimate morphed to three months! And mundane as it is, I had to mark the accomplishment and celebrate the success with a post. 

RESULTS
I counted 24 full heights bins - all emptied!

There were 3 half height bins - all emptied. There were fewer of these to start with plus the contents of some full height bins were pared down to fit into a half height bin. So even if I did not let go of all the contents of a full height bin I still did succeed in reducing it. Also, half height bins are lighter and easier to handle so the odds of pulling one out of the attic to access its contents are greater. And there were 6 quarter size bins - emptied!

I counted 29 lids for full size and half height bins. Why three more lids than bins? Bins break, especially when dropped. Lids generally do not.

I counted 14 lids for quarter size bins and 10 shoe box lids. The discrepancy here is that I use some of the smaller size bins as open containers to store patterns, socks, underwear, etc. Heaven forbid I should throw away the unused lids. They got stored in the attic and will continue to reside there. Suppose I should repurpose a bin and need the lid?

Where did the contents of all those bins go? A lot was donated to good will. Fabric (gasp, yes, fabric) was given to a quilt guild to make into outreach community quilts. Two bins of hand crocheted baby afghans (Mar 16th DianeLoves2Quilt post) were sent to my guild's quilt show this past weekend to be sold and the proceeds donated to purchase supplies to make charity quilts. Those not sold will go on to be sold at a church or given to mothers with babes in need.

Some of the nicer nostalgic toys that were age appropriate were shipped to the grandkids; we held on to a fair amount that will be sent when they are older. A post in March chronicled a good deal of those toys. Books were given to the library and we are thinning down some wood puzzles to go there as well. I could not bear to just toss stuffed animals in the trash. Many agencies would not accept them for health and liability issues. Through dogged research, Frank found a charity that will accept gently loved plush toys. They were easy to part with once I learned they would be hugged by another child. We packed them in clear trash bags to transport them. Frank and I wanted them to be able to see out and not get scared.

In retrospect I wish I'd taken a photo of all the emptied bins impressively looming on the guest room bed but alas, I did not. Here they are stacked in the attic though, once we ferried them up there. I am quite proud of the volume of contents that has gone from our lives. Imagine how much space they had occupied when they were full and not in this nested configuration!

My goal was a 33% reduction and I think I succeeded in a 25% reduction. But as each holiday rolls around I plan to cull its decor. For example, four bins this Easter were whittled down to three. Here is the guest room in before and after pictures, the king size bed and floor free of a tower of bins, finally. Feel free to visit now. We have cleared a space for guests to sleep!

There is once again a view out the window of Alex's room, now too. Huge sigh of relief ... !

The saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure". It was a lot of work but I am proud that our "treasures" have been refined to a manageable quantity and that our "trash" has been moved on to become some one else's treasure.

Ponder Post: The Education of Will

With an easy, non-threatening, calmly informative writing style in The Education of Will (©2017), the author tells the healing story of a women who has been traumatized by events in her life (and suppressed them) and her dog, Will. The subtitle of the book reads A mutual memoir of a woman and her dog. As a professional animal behavior specialist, Patricia McConnell recognizes a similarity of her reactions to those of her dog when exposed to external triggers. Both she and her dog exhibit the symptoms and actions often associated with post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).  She draws on her medical knowledge and training experience with animals to help herself and her dog Will on the road to recovery. Although on the surface it sounds like a heavy topic, I found the book very enjoyable and intriguing. Her personal trauma is disclosed but the author does not dwell on it. I am pleased I did not let the premise deter me from reading the book.

There were passages which describe the training of border collies and other similar breeds to herd sheep, along with a fascinating analysis of the signaling techniques and sounds used universally - independent of a country's language. Included in the book were numerous anecdotal stories of clients with pet behavioral issues, some that tugged at my heart-strings and others that made me wonder why on earth the person was keeping such an aggressive dog. Most of the training plans for teaching the dogs and owners how to substitute more appropriate responses to triggers were logically obvious - once, of course, they had been pointed out. The detective work to uncover what triggered those undesirable reactions in the canines was clever. One trigger that surprised me was sunglasses.

People interested in gaining or maintaining power often wear sunglasses, not just to conceal their eyes but also to enlarge them to look more formidable. Conjure up the image of a young military man in a country enmeshed in political turmoil, and looming behind the ubiquitous AK-47 will be a face punctuated by two large black circles staring at you, the lenses unwavering like the hard eye of a dog about to bite.

In The Education of Will the commonality between human and canine reactions to fear was advantageous in helping a dog owner and her troubled dog mutually help each other control their fears. But the author does whimsically point out an advantage of canines.

We [humans] are hardwired to remember negative events over positive ones, so we ruminate on our mistakes and the slights of others. No wonder we love dogs who don't need meditation retreats to get over the shame of getting into the garbage last Thursday.

The previous example illustrates the quirky language and mildly humorous metaphors the author uses. The phrase "A nest of robins in her hair" from the Trees poem by Joyce Kilmer has often been held up as an example of an awkward simile, but I have always kind of liked it. Patricia McConnell has sprinkling a few delightful similes throughout this book that pop up unexpectedly. They are fun to stumble upon. For example, in racing horseback with a friend across a field the author describes the start as

... we'd exchange glances like teenage boys in hot rods at a stop light 

When the horse really starts to run full tilt she describes it as

... the saddle, and your seat within it, lower as if a plane hit an air pocket and dropped fifty feet.

The potpourri of names for the dogs is also amusing, Tanker, Aladdin, Zip, Tulip, Pippy-Tay, Vic, Lassie, and of course Will. Her one-in-a-million dog Luke could not help but make me think of our own faithful, patient, loving, best-dog-ever, Jessie. Jessie passed on in April 2003 at the age of 13 in human years. We had dubbed her a Germador, a German Shepherd and Black Labrador mix. Although not a nationally recognized breed, that is how we registered her with the city for her dog tags. She truly was one-in-a million.

Why did I pick this book to read? My reason was nothing more than an impulse upon exiting the library when the dog on the cover looked at me from the display rack of new suggested reads. I had gone to the library to pick up the book I'd reserved,  A Dog's Purpose, because Frank and I  had recently enjoyed the movie with Alex. The Education of Will also appealed because my son's dog Snoopy can also exhibit some fearful behaviors and I thought I might get some insight from reading about the title dog, Will. I guess maybe I was in a dog frame of mind at the time. I am very glad I read this book. It was an eclectic pick, yes, but well worth the time to read, learn, enjoy, and ponder.

Ponder Post: A Dog's Purpose - the movie

A few weekends ago Frank and I took Alex to see the movie A Dog's Purpose. He loved it!! The story is narrated by the main character, a dog who becomes repeatedly reincarnated, each time as a different breed, and who experiences a variety of owners and living situations. The owner may be brave or shy or lonely and the dog rises to fill a void in their life.

There was a lot of barking in the movie, which thoroughly pleased Alex. There is a book by this same title that was the premise for the movie. I have it requested from my local library and plan to read it. Oh, and when the DVD comes out we are definitely going to buy it – for Alex, of course. This was a fun, uplifting, heartwarming movie that showcases the faithfulness of dogs' support of their owners. I recommend you watch it when you get the chance.

Easter 2017 Images

Here is the Easter basket I prepared for Alex. It contains all his favorites – chips, Vienna Sausages, and Hershey kisses tucked inside metal tin bunnies. I added some stuffed cloth carrots and other carrot related items. In conical shaped cellophane bags are orange Reese's Pieces packaged to look like carrots. Lindt's made some cone shaped solid chocolate on a stick, wrapped in orange foil also to look like carrots, so I added some of those, too.

Frank got a bit of a treat for Easter. He got his standard allotment of jelly beans and I added the DVD for Harry Potter's Fantastic Beasts. We missed it in the movies but rented it on pay per view. It was interesting enough (even though each of us dozed off in parts) that I bought us a personal copy.

The wing chair was occupied by its annual large scale bunny visitor. The small bunny by his side was actually a gift handmade by a volunteer and left in our room at Give Kids the World Village during our Make a Wish trip to Disney World in 2004. Alex was seventeen years old then, just under the wire for the age cutoff to be a wish recipient.

Sitting across the room in a rocker are the bunny pair I had made a long time ago when Alex was three. (Yikes, they are 27 years old!) I could not place my fingers on their spring pink and blue outfits so they are in their patriotic wear instead. Oh well, they match the chair better and they will be ready for Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Veterans' Day.

 
The hearth is populated with a small basket of painted wooden Easter eggs, one carrot and two rabbit truffle boxes that were just to pretty to discard, and a plush bunny holding a carrot. I elected not to display all the other stuffed bunnies I have – just this one for Alex because it is holding a carrot. The tall slender bunny trio is from my days at the lab when it had a employee store. When the store closed and its wares were being liquidated, the staff were pleased I was buying the mascot family that had greeted visitors at the front desk for years and would give the bunnies a good home. See? I am not the only person who anthropomorphizes.

On a side table I have a mini tablescape with this ceramic pen and ink type figurine of a rabbit that just tickled my fancy. The magnifying glass reminds me of Alice in Wonderland and down the rabbit hole. The kisses? They are there just because it is Easter after all, the holiday of chocaholics.

In cleaning out closets I discovered a set of floating candles shaped as bunnies. 

Alex loves to blow out candles so I lit and relit the five small ones throughout the afternoon. Alex enjoyed extinguishing them after cajoling us to count to three first before each whoosh of air he exhaled. Frank and I obliged and took every opportunity we could to relight them when he was distracted.

We spread them out on two plates to try to provide more of a challenge to blow them out in one try. We did not float them out of concern that the wicks might get wet and not be dry enough to relight. Are you ready? One...Two... Three...!

Success! HAPPY EASTER!

PonderPost: Pax

Pax©2016 by Sara PennyPacker is a story about a boy and his fox. Illustrations, although there are not a lot, are soft and inviting and evoke a mood of gentleness and kindness to me. This book is a young adult book,  geared toward ages 10-14. It is a simple but very touching tale, and I personally thought it should be directed at an older age group to truly appreciate some if its concepts.

Peter is inseparable from his fox who he raised from a kit. This bond is exceedingly strong because not only did Peter's mother die about five years previous to the timeline of the story but also, Peter's father is not a very warm person. Peter's father enlists in the military during a time of war, so Peter must go live with his grandfather and release his beloved – and domesticated – fox to the wild. Peter is inconsolable with this situation, and sets out to be reunited with Pax. Peter's determination and the hardships he endures in search of Pax make for an inspiring reading experience. The unwavering faith and loyalty of Pax is heartwarming.

Succinctly put, this is "a boy and his dog" story. It is more, however. In this novel, there are lessons to learn about war and lessons to be practiced in order to reveal and understand one's self. It was worth the brief read.

A Cavalier Goodbye

Just short of 20 years and 200,000 miles we bid farewell to our old green 1997 Chevy Cavalier. This past Saturday, April 1, 2017, we donated it to the Make A Wish foundation's related charity Wheels for Wishes. This is one final contribution the Chevy Cavalier has made to our family

The day before, I had Frank pose with his long time friend and I photographed the two of them from several angles. From the driver front side

and from the passenger front side.

I even took a rear view photo of them both

and one last shot of a goodbye hug.

The morning of the pickup Frank signed over the pink slip.

He also relinquished the manual for the car, still un-crinkled, un-smudged, and in good shape after nearly two decades.

On one of my solo visits to Oklahoma, Frank surreptitiously had the car repainted while I was gone. Truly, I did not notice a difference when the two of them picked me up from the airport; but Frank did and that is what was important. The Cavalier was not as old as this muscle car being repainting in the photo but Frank had it repainted just as green.

Actually, a year or so ago, Frank asked me if I wanted my red Pontiac repainted. I said frankly, no. I would rather put the money toward a new Mac computer. Obviously, my love for my car does not reach the level of his for that Cavalier. As we sent the Cavalier off to that big parts repository in the sky, I recalled memories from that car.

When Robin and Dan were grade school age we would camp for a weekend, once a month three times during the summer, with four or five other families. On one particular trip, Frank was driving Robin and Dan in the 1980 Oldsmobile, our roomier, air-conditioned car with the larger trunk, to Lake Tahoe. I was staying home with Alex. One third of the way there, outside of Stockton, the Oldsmobile threw a piston and the entire engine needed to be replaced. If I drove out to rescue them and return them home, the time for Alex and me in the car to Stockton and back was pretty much the same as the time to continue the journey to the campground. Also, Robin and Dan would have been bummed to miss the fun time with their friends. I threw some clothes in a bag for Alex and me and decided to pick them up and all five of us would continue to the campground together. I cannot explain how we got the contents of the larger car into the Chevy Cavalier along with two extra bodies but we did. I think there were not a lot of empty laps on that trip. But that 1997 Cavalier proved to be more reliable and worthy than its car mate, the 1980 Oldsmobile Delta 88. The Cavalier to the rescue!

One time our neighbor had leg surgery and could not drive his car because it had a clutch. We loaned the Cavalier to him since it had an automatic transmission. The car earned us a lemon meringue pie as a thank you for the few week loan. The Cavalier was his savior at that time.

Parts of the rear seat of the car still bore small brown splotches on the grey cloth. When Dan was in high school he or one of his school buddies left a can of Pepsi in the car one summer day with the windows rolled up. The heat caused the can to explode distributing sticky brown liquid on the rear seat, ceiling, windows, and backside of the front seats. The chain of blame was never truly established; the spotted legacy never faded from view.

But peppered pops of Pepsi were not the worst indignity the Cavalier endured. It was eleven months after our son Dan had gotten his driver's license, a time the police describe as when a teenager's confidence exceeds his driving skills. Our son Dan overcorrected his steering on a curve driving on an overpass in town, ricocheted off the median strip, and jumped the curb on the right. He plunged the car over a steeply slanted embankment, down what at that time had been a rugged, rubbled terrain of eye level weeds opening out onto a gravelly uneven field. The unplanned detour ripped out the undercarriage, causing enough damage that the car just barely escaped being totaled. Dan was unhurt. The Cavalier had protected him.

Memories not withstanding, 7:00 am on Saturday morning the flat bed arrived to take the Cavalier. We watched as it was winched up onto the truck bed. Frank had driven it one last time earlier in the week, but being conveyed, not driven away, was standard procedure.

Frank gave the Cavalier one last pat goodbye. I shed a few tears; silly, I know, to anthropomorphize a car, but that is me.

We stood across the street and watched as the Cavalier was about to leave our cul-de-sac.

Down at the corner we took one last look at the front hood, the "face" of the Cavalier staring back at us.

Then the flat bed with the Cavalier rounded the corner and faded off into the morning light. The irony of the STOP stenciled on the pavement gave my heart one last twinge but we know it was the right thing to do. Donating it rather than selling it made the separation a bit more bearable. Much like a human donates his organs upon death, the Cavalier that had served us so well would live on as parts in other vehicles. Goodbye, old friend.

Ponder Post: The Girl You Left Behind

Yesterday I forced my self to finish reading The Girl You Left Behind ©2012 by Jo Jo Moyes.  As I considered what to write about it in this ponder post, I idly perused the back of the book jacket – filled with praises. But on closer inspection I realized that those praises were for Me Before You ©2012, an excellent book by the same author, but more relevantly not this novel. I completed this novel with the optimism that it would get better, based on the reputation of the author and other books by her that I had liked. But I fear it did not get better. I conclude now that I disliked this novel and am sorry I devoted my time to reading it. It was depressing. I prefer to read for entertainment, not angst.

The novel is set in two time periods, the first being World War I in France. It is very demoralizing to be placed in  a small town in the French countryside during its German occupation. Conditions are horrible and the treatment of the residents is even worse. A key character in the story is The Girl You Left Behind – no, not a person, but rather an oil painting of a person. But the painting is given attitude and attributes as if it were the embodiment of the woman, Sophie, who posed for it. Sophie is separated from her husband Édouard, who she deeply adores, by the trappings of war. It was her husband, an artist who studied under Matisse in Paris, who devotedly created this likeness of her. She longs to be reunited with him and is desperate to do anything to achieve that goal. It is this painting that is the link to the second time period of the story.

Fast forward to present day in London. The painting is hanging on the wall of a sleek, glass enveloped house of award winning architectural design. Sunshine beams through the walls in the day and stars twinkle through the transparent, retractable roof at night. I think, "Ahh, a beautiful setting in which to be immersed - such a welcome contrast to the first part of the book." The pleasure is short lived. Inside lives a young, lonely, grieving woman, widow of the architect who designed and built the home. More angst.

The mystery the book attempts to unveil is the story of how the painting came to be where it is. Was it legitimately transferred or unjustly obtained through wartime seizures? Establishing the link revealing the provenance of the painting is weakly and painfully-slowly unveiled. I wanted to know the answer, but upon finishing the novel, I concluded that finding out had not been worth my effort.

In contrast, you can read a very positive review of the book by the Washington Times in November of 2013. The reviewer John Greenya stated, "By the end, The Girl You Left Behind had become not just a picture-perfect historical novel, but also a true mystery-thriller. And I no longer cared how many romance novels Ms. Moyes had written."

Here is an image of Henri Matisse and one of his paintings Purple Robe and Anemones. I might guess that the painting of Sophie titled The Girl You Left Behind might look something like this work of Matisse.

Maybe so, maybe not; but frankly I do not care. Even this artist and subject look bored. But do not take my word for it. Maybe I am merely a shallow romance-oriented kind of gal.