Monthly Archives: April 2008

The other day I got a package in the mail. A small package, looking suspiciously like a paperback book wrapped in a manila envelope.

The address was hand-written, with everything spelled right. The first name was “Kathy” rather than “Kathleen,” which implied that the package came from someone in my family. Or at least someone who had known me before I started high school and began using my full name in an attempt to distinguish myself from the six other girls in my class named Kathy.

But the return address, in Seattle, was June somebody-or-other I had never heard of. True, I have cousins in Seattle. But none of them is named June, or has married a June, or even, as far as I know, has a girlfriend or a poodle or a parakeet named June.

On the back of the envelope was scrawled, “Thanks!” Inside, in excellent shape for its age, was a paperback copy of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was no letter tucked inside, no name written on the first page, no sticky note on the cover with a scribbled note saying, “I found this in a box of books in the garage and remembered that I borrowed it from you in 1970 when we were both in Dr. Weinkauf’s Contemporary Lit class. Sorry it took so long to return it.”

Besides, I didn’t go to college with anyone named June. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone named June. Some 20 years ago, I worked for someone who knew June Carter Cash, which was a remote connection even then.

Maybe, I thought, this was a sign that I should suggest Cuckoo’s Nest for the book discussion at our family reunion this summer. We’ve decided to read and discuss two books, one classic and one contemporary. And the reunion—this can’t be a coincidence—is in June. Obviously, the Universe was sending me a message.

But before I got around to passing that message on to the rest of the family through an email, one arrived from my niece. Sara, by virtue of taking the initiative to suggest several book titles, had been unanimously chosen by the rest of the family to pick out two books for our discussion, and this email announced her choices.

One of them, even though it hadn’t been on her original list, was Cuckoo’s Nest. Add in the wonders of Internet shopping thanks to Amazon.com’s used-book department, and my mystery was solved. So much for signs from the Universe.

But, whether the choice came from the Universe or from Sara, it was a good one. Based on previous emails, I thought the classic book was going to be The Great Gatsby. I wasn’t especially looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with all those selfish, obnoxious characters.

So, thanks, Sara, both for choosing the books and for going to all the trouble to order them for us. I just have one small complaint. How can Cuckoo’s Nest be a “classic” book? It was practically new when I first read it in college, and obviously that was only a few years ago.

Books by Charles Dickens are classics, certainly. Or by Jane Austin. Or Mark Twain. Even Faulkner and Hemingway. But those authors all have one thing in common. They wrote their “classic” books well before I was born.

The workshop in the basement has a workbench in it.

Admittedly, that hardly seems like a startling bit of news. A workbench is a perfectly reasonable—one might even think necessary—object to find in a workshop.

But this workbench has been a work-in-progress for nearly a year now. It’s been that long since we decided to turn the then-laundry room into a workshop. (Okay, I decided, and the other party involved, wise and accommodating man that he is, said, “Yes, dear.”)

Phase one, moving the washer and dryer into the downstairs bathroom, went quite quickly. Maybe this was due to the involvement of several professionals—a carpenter and plumber, an electrician, and a flooring installer.

The next step was to build a workbench for the old laundry room/new workshop. Somehow last summer came and went without this being accomplished. Last fall would have been a good time for workbench-building, but we were busy. Winter wasn’t the best time for such a project, which had to be done in the garage (unheated and fully occupied by two vehicles), because one can’t built a workbench in a workshop which has no workbench to work on.

I’m certainly glad I don’t have a problem with procrastination.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, I finally got started. Conditions were auspicious—we were having a spell of warm pseudo-spring weather, and my spouse and his car were out of town so I could clutter up his side of the garage with amateur carpentry.

I had the design clearly in mind. I had the materials—odd pieces of recycled lumber from various other projects. I had a new handsaw and two new sawhorses. I had a tape measure, a square, a sharp pencil, and my reading glasses. Despite all these tools, when I got done measuring and sawing, there was a certain lack of precision in my four posts and eight support pieces. Sawing straight along the line on top of the board wasn’t the problem; it was that three-dimensional thing that did me in.

Assembling the pieces with deck screws presented difficulties, as well. I finally figured out that holding the corner post, holding the two-by-four crosspiece, holding the screw, and holding the drill required four hands. Which meant waiting for my spouse to get home.

Eventually, with him doing most of the heavy work, we built a workbench. We set the countertop, purchased from a salvage store, onto the frame. Unfortunately, we could see an embarrassing amount of daylight between the top and the frame. That nit-picky straight sawing thing again.

One quarter-inch shim and a bunch of planing later, we were ready to attach the countertop. He did the “lie on the floor and drill up through the supports” part. I did the “sit on the top so the screws would go into the countertop instead of pushing it away” part.

Which proves that she also helps who only sits and weights.

This week I cleaned my office.

Big deal, you say. Some people do that sort of thing all the time. They file papers, pay bills, answer mail, and even dust their desks.

Well, sure. Some people wash their cars every week, too. And wash windows twice a year. And clean out their refrigerators before stuff evolves into fuzzy green new life forms. I have more urgent things to do. I’m not sure what they are, exactly, but I know they have a higher priority than cleaning.

But this wasn’t that kind of cleaning. This was get-rid-of-clutter cleaning. Serious spring cleaning. Inspired, no doubt, by the six-plus inches of April snow piling up outside the window.

I started my excavations in the antique oak wardrobe. It held an embarrassing amount of stuff. Floppy disks that no computer of mine has had a drive for since 2003. Instruction manuals for printers I no longer own. Yellowed old greeting cards and mismatched envelopes. Two plastic boxes—one still marked “1977” on the front with permanent marker—intended to hold cancelled checks. Old bank statements, obsolete computer parts, and newsletters from an organization I no longer belong to. A box of stuff from a failed political campaign.

A padded envelope holding several “Ross Perot for President” buttons. I’m keeping those. In another 20 years I’m sure they’ll have gone from “oddity” to “collectible,” and—assuming I remember they exist and assuming I can find them—I can sell them and take a cruise around the world.

A plastic bag full of “Pecos diamonds,” thumbnail-sized quartz crystals from New Mexico. They’re pretty, they were fun to collect, and I have no need whatsoever to keep them. Do you suppose it would confuse the geologic record if I tossed them out into the front yard to mix with the plain old South Dakota gravel in the driveway?

Then it was time to do something about the file cabinets, long past their prime. Which, since they were cheap metal ones, hadn’t exactly been “prime” to begin with. The drawer I used the most opened and closed with a shriek of anguish straight out of a B-list horror movie. The other cabinet, presumably squashed in one of my frequent moves, had a top drawer that could only be accessed by prying it open with a pancake turner.

I bought a new file cabinet. The box said “some assembly required,” which I realized meant the drawer handles needed to be attached. The handles were included, of course—tucked safely away inside the bottom drawer. Which couldn’t be opened because it had no handle. No problem; I had a pancake turner and I knew how to use it.

After a day of sorting, tossing, organizing, and wondering why on earth I ever kept that, my office makeover was complete.

Now, I have my files moved to the new file cabinet, which sits inconspicuously inside the closet. The wardrobe has been tidied, rearranged, and relieved of at least 50 pounds of clutter. I have tossed three trash bags full of stuff. I have a box of things to take to the Salvation Army. My desk is organized, dusted, and invitingly bare.

And the three unopened photo albums are stacked neatly on top of the two boxes of unsorted photographs. Oh, well. That’s a project for another day. Maybe we’ll have another spring snowstorm—next year.

The headline in our local paper was factual and restrained in tone. It gave no hint of inappropriate humor or delight in someone else’s misfortune. Still, I’m sure reporters and editors at the Journal, as well as newspaper people all over the country, were slapping one another on the back and howling with glee this week.

Why? The headline says it all: “Woman Bites Dog, May Need Shots.” (And yes, I double-checked the date on the story. It was April 3, not April 1.)

John B. Bogart, long-time editor of the Sun newspaper in New York during the late 1800’s, was the source of a saying that’s become a journalistic cliché: “When a dog bites a man, that isn’t news. It often happens. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

This week, in Minneapolis, it happened. Even better—just to keep the story fully up to date and politically correct for the 21st Century—the biter was a woman, not a man.

When a pit bull jumped a fence to get into her yard and attacked her Labrador retriever, Amy Rice was afraid the intruder would kill her dog. So she “took matters into her own mouth,” as the Associated Press phrased it, and bit the pit bull on the nose.

The pit bull was quarantined. The Lab went to the vet for stitches. Ms. Rice, who bit the attacking dog hard enough to draw blood, was waiting to hear whether she would have to get rabies shots.

The article, at least as published in our paper, omitted a lot of the details. Such as exactly what happened in between “biting the pit bull on the nose” and “the pit bull was quarantined.” I would think there must have been some intervening events. Screaming, perhaps. Bleeding, no doubt. And quite possibly some interesting explanations to the animal control officer.

The pit bull may, of course, be in quarantine because of the possibility of rabies. Or maybe it’s just hiding out of sheer embarrassment. It’s a pit bull, for Pete’s sake. It’s a certified bad dog, with such a fearsome reputation that its kind is even banned from entire cities.

How on earth is the poor, humiliated creature going to explain to its tough-guy pit bull buddies that it met defeat at the hands—or rather the jaws—of a mere human? It might just as well have been overpowered by a poodle.