How Not to Swing a Hammer

Mike is building a deck for his brother and one of the things needing to be done was to set paving stones where the steps come down. To do that without renting a packer for just a dozen stones, Mike would set one where he wanted it, hold a block of wood on top of it, and then pound the wood with a hand-held 3-pound sledge hammer with all his might.

He was setting the last stone and didn't notice that he'd shifted his hold on the block of wood from hanging onto the sides to holding it down with his thumb on top.

You can follow the natural progression that makes such good blogging material and disgusting pictures. He said it was fortunate that he'd already had one set of stairs in place or he may not have made it into the house. He did make it in, stretched out on the couch, and refused to let anyone come anywhere near except his mom to give him four Advil and a glass of water.

He came home about an hour later and I alternated Tylenol and Advil every two hours until late that night when it started bleeding and relieved the pressure.


He so thoroughly exploded every capillary in his thumb that it's a blackish color, still bleeding nearly twenty-four hours later, and the thumbnail is pretty much separated from the bed.

I was telling a teenage friend of Cameron's what had happened and remarked that this will be about the fifth or sixth time he's lost that thumbnail with all the carpentry work he's done. This Wise Guy, with a wicked gleam in his eye and grin on his face softly commented, "Must not have been all that good a carpenter..."

Fair projects

A month ago, Richelle had no desire to enter anything in fair. I told her that if she didn't enter, she didn't go to fair at all because of the entrance fee. With her as an exhibitor and me as a leader, we can get $4 bracelets that get us into the fair the entire week. I told her that I wasn't going to pay the entrance fee just so she could go when she wanted to...and she was planning to go at least three days at $12 each day.

Well. Now she's entered in not one, not two, but three areas; robotics demonstration, graphic design, and a display.

She's been working on a picture of a cat's face on the computer so she only has to finish that. She's pretty good with the paint program and even added a tiny splash of white to the pupils to show sparkle. Shading is the next item on her list.

Her display is of a two-story Lego house along the lines of a doll-house built for Lego people. She's almost finished with that after two solid days of building, dismantling, and building again. It looks pretty nice. The attic is authentically filled with the odds and ends you would expect an attic to be filled with - a raft, oars, life jackets, a medieval horse blanket, a wagon wheel (although that would more normally be found in the rafters of a barn), a door, etc. There's a rooftop deck with railing off to one side and a yard with trees and bushes in back.

Her demonstration grew out of a "wouldn't it be fun-" talk we had a week or so ago. As in, "Wouldn't it be fun if we had a Lego robot and programmed it to deliver breakfast to guests in their rooms?" So she built a basic robot from plans out of a book (the robot belongs to the 4-H club), modified it to carry a tray and added a sensor. Then she worked on a program so the robot would wait for the breakfast tray to be put into place, deliver it to the bedroom door (it has to be a mock-up because I'm not taking my house to the fair), and stop at the door saying "good morning" repeatedly until the tray is removed. It would then say "thank you" and return to base, wait for the second tray to be placed, and deliver it in the same manner.

Mike suggested loading the tray with milk and cookies and have the judges stand at the "guest room" end of her demonstration table. A little bribery, he says, goes a long way.

She's done a great job with the programming and it works. Now she just needs to fine-tune it and cut out unnecessary move blocks. In several places she has three blocks where one would do the same job. The judges look for efficiency in programming because the more program, the more memory used and more things that could glitch. She also needs to modify the platform for the tray because there's nothing to keep the tray from sliding off and crashing to the floor. Not good for the computer, the demonstration table, or the milk and cookies.

Auntie Mable

Auntie Mable was a wonderful person who seemed always to be smiling. At least, that's what I see whenever I picture her and others say the very same thing. Auntie Mable was my dad's older sister and the last of the four siblings to go. I often wondered in the past three years what it was like for her with all the siblings gone. She could have felt lonely, must have felt sad, but she didn't let it take over her life.

She didn't have a life strewn with rose petals and arched over with rainbows, either. What she did have was a firm faith in the God of the Bible and the ability to find those rose petals and rainbows. They may have been fewer than she wished but she enjoyed them to their fullest.

And her memory...! She knew your birthdate, six or eight special things about you, and what you're involved in at that time. She would greet people with with a personal question ("Why, hello there, Ken! I hear you've moved into your new home. How do you like living in the country?") rather than the generic "Hi, how are you doing?"

We love her, admire her and will miss her.

Training children

The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Lenin is supposed to have said, "Give me a child until he's five and I'll have him forever." or something along those lines.

I have trained my children to respond to two particular sounds I make. One is the piercing whistle which means, "Get yourself over here immediately!" which I use when they are far away and/or out of sight. The second sound is the hissing 'tsst' used to quietly get their attention when they're nearby.

The other day, Richelle and I were in a grocery store I don't usually frequent but it was on the way home and we were tired. I was about fifteen feet from the end of an aisle checking prices when I heard young men's voices coming from my left. For some reason, I looked up. Three young men appeared, meandering across the end of my aisle and discussing something fairly seriously. Two of the guys were strangers to me but the one in the middle looked somewhat like Cameron. I say 'somewhat' because he was nearly hidden behind one of the boys.

Do I call to him? What if it isn't Cameron and I look like an idiot? What if it is and I've ignored him?

Almost on its own, my mouth made the 'tssst' sound. The boy's head snapped around even as his legs carried out the 'walk' order and he disappeared from sight.

Pause...

Suddenly Cameron appeared, walking backwards, and a look of utter confusion on his face.

Yup. Training wins out.

Oh, the serious discussion? How to stretch $50 to cover food for two days.

Creative Children

Richelle made a few cookies like this in honor of Memorial Day. This one was her favorite because not only was it the best-looking one, the missing corner gives it an authentic "been in battle" look.

This was her project from start to finish. I gave help only by suggesting she use decorating tips and, when she ran out of white frosting for the stars, to use white sprinkles instead.

My children's artistic talents continually amaze me. I'm somewhat beyond the stick-figure and color-by-number point and several decades of experience has helped me but I certainly didn't have their ability to dream up some of the stuff they do at their age.

California Trip

Richelle and I went with Mom to California for convention last week. We spent the first night in Medford with Mom's sister and bro-in-law. A short hop for us, yes, but it was four hours longer for Mom. My aunt and uncle are showing their years and it's good to spend time with them. My cousin's daughter from Australia (their granddaughter) has been staying there since February to help with whatever. While we were there, she added changing the movement box in a wall clock onto her list. It was fun to listen to her Aussie accent and terms and to see pictures of their place in Australia.

The second day, we stopped in Alameda to visit my dad's sister in the care facility. She's in the final stages of congestive heart failure and it's only a matter of time before she's gone so it was a privilege to visit with her. She was very weak physically but still very alert mentally and we were able to visit for about half an hour. Two of her daughters were also there and it was special to see the surprise and delight on all three faces when we walked in. Not that we're all that special, we just weren't expected.

We spent that evening and night with my brother and sis-in-law in San Mateo. I'd not visited their home before so it's nice to be able to picture them with a background now when I think of them. We had a great time there. I got to play with his iTouch, Richelle went shopping with her aunty, another brother came for supper and we all visited well into the night.

Wednesday to Sunday we spent at convention where it started out hot in the lower 90s and got progressively hotter each day until it peaked at 105 on Sunday. Kinda hard on us poor folk from the cooler Pacific Northwest where our daytime highs were about the same as their overnight lows. I thought I'd kept to the shade most of the time but was evidently in the sun long enough to get a bit of color. It didn't seem to affect the local kids, though. They still spent time in the sun hunting and playing with the toads that seem to live under every bush in the garden.

My niece from New Mexico was there with her three children. I hadn't seen her in three years so it was good to visit with her and get to know her three very adorable children. I had a great conversation with her nearly-five-year-old. He'll probably never remember it but I will!

I love going to places where you have enough room to breathe deeply and swing your arms. I love the fields that start without fences to mark the boundary. I love the miles and miles of orchards. I love trying to guess what's growing (that only works when I have Mom with me and she can correct me). I love the rice paddies giving way to corn fields giving way to carrots, onions, tomatoes, grain, and cotton fields interspersed with miles of olive, apricot, nectarine and prune orchards, orange, lemon, and grapefruit groves, walnut groves, almond, and pistachio orchards, as well as fields of table grapes and wine vineyards. Makes a person hungry driving through there.

There's also mile upon mile upon mile upon mile of rolling desert with nothing but sage, sparse grasses, and alkali flats. Places where Mom said Dad would love to go rabbit or bullfrog hunting and spin cookies and such. Maybe that's why I love going there so much....it makes me feel a little closer to knowing Dad.

Still too small

Every child hates the words "you're to short/young/light to do this" whatever "this" is and they can scarcely wait for the day when they're tall/old/heavy enough to do whatever it is they want to do.

Mike and I decided Richelle was old enough to take the responsibility of keeping the lower field mowed this summer and Richelle was eager to take on the job.

Yesterday, Mike walked along while Richelle took her first turn going solo on the riding lawn mower. She had difficulty keeping the engine running because every time she hit a bump, she bounced in the seat and triggered the kill switch located under it.

It finally died halfway around the field and Mike told her, "Honey, you just don't have a big enough bum for this, yet."

There are worse things in life than not having a big bum.