Just shoot me now

I once read a tidbit about President Obama, back when he was the Senator from Illinois, recounted by a page. The Senator was in a long, dry, boring committee session, and the page sat behind, equally as bored. The Senator wrote a note, folded it and passed it to the page, who unfolded it eagerly. Perhaps some information to find to add to the proceedings. A file to go for. Something. The paper read, “Just shoot me now.”

This morning my troublesome trustee loomed small in my doorway, to tell me again of her dissatisfaction. This rant began, “I’m tired of your snotty attitude toward me,” and thirteen years of perceived sins were fired at close range, few for the first time. There is no response to this, of course. I looked her steadily in the eye, and closed the door when she left.

Just shoot me now.

I’m in for three more years, two months and twenty eight days. Unless she decides not to run for another term in November. In that case, I’m still in for three more years, two months and twenty eight days, but without being lashed to the mast and verbally lacerated to the bone for several months of the year.

The really good news: we’re over winter’s hump, on the downhill slide to the end of March. I looked up the forecast and it’s beautiful:

Last Winters Snowfall
32.8

Biggest Winter Snowfall Ever!
117.9″ (2003-04)

Normal Snowfall
68.2″

This Winter (2016-2017)
75.2″ (+7.0″)

TEMPS THIS WINTER
OVERALL NEAR NORMAL

DECEMBER COLDER
JANUARY NORMAL
FEBRUARY NORMAL
MARCH WARMER

Moving on into spring, it will be warm, and sunshinny bright, then six or nine months light and bright. The  trustee’s dissatisfaction with the world will again be halved, and I will be down to two years and six months. And if she doesn’t run again? I won’t push my luck that far. My observation of the cycle of her personality is certainly not scientific. But thirteen years of it have taught me to keep my head below the bow from Christmas until April Fool’s Day.

Marking time

School recommences Wednesday.

We've watched a lot of movies.

Laura's explanation of sci-fi and horror movies finally sank in.

"They're not real, Gramma!"

Among others, I've now watched The Mummy and 2012.

Tonight we're queuing up Harvey and The African Queen. 

Laura spend a day shadowing at Elements Gallery, the porcelain studio in town.

She came home with a spoon rest and an invitation to come back.

I got the wonderful little man there. He's an egg separator.

We had egg separating issues when we baked cookies.

I once made 500 single bed quilt tops for my sister to quilt for shelters.

Emily moved out, and we made a sewing room

I asked Jan if she needed more tops.

Yes, she was down to the last three old tops to quilt.

I now have a layout artist, and a supervisor.

We've made quite a few. I'm not keeping track this time.

Laura irons them, too, which I am unable to do.

Jan used to iron them.

Win-win.

 And, I played cards with the Methodists today.

I keep my back to the refreshment table.

Those thumbprint cookies were really tempting, though.

And Wednesday I must get serious about closing 2016 and tidying up for the auditors. I did continue my unbroken streak of distributing W-2's and 1099's before the end of 2016.

That's thirteen years in a row.

Which means, three years and three months to go.

Just shoot me

There are seven employees in my township, four elected, three staff. So, there are seven of us. You know me as the person of no authority. Among the rest of the mix, hired or elected, one is normal, like me, one is aggressive, two are passive aggressive, one does not get involved, and the last is pleasant and affable, also like me.

We all use our personal cell phones in a minor way for township business, except one of us, who does not answer or return calls. Because communication is an important part of that job, one elected official purchased a phone, put some minutes on it, and told the employee to use it. A week or so ago I saw the phone on a desk, mentioned it, and was informed it was out of minutes.

Knowing that would never be disclosed, except by me, I relayed the information to the person who bought the phone, assuming that person knew how to add minutes.

Ass…you know the rest. Oh, baby, a firestorm, directed at the other passive aggressive by the aggressive one. I ran into p-a at movie night at the library last night. I had to sympathize, actually, but after ten minutes of listening to the complaining, I said I’d figure it out today.

Today I spent an hour on the phone. About thirty were devoted to helping me find the serial and phone numbers of the phone (yes, this p-a had left the building). Ten were spent listening to the seller of said minutes reading me the minutes and expiration dates of every phone plan, instead of cutting to the chase and telling me the maximum number of minutes and months he could sell me. When he got to one year I yelled “Stop, I’ll take it!”

Another ten were devoted to confirming every bit of credit card data (J for jug, O for overhead, A for apple, N for never, N for never, E for every; N for never and so on and so on). I smiled and remembered that as little as I earn, he earns less, and probably works twelve hours a day for it. We had the best luck when I said “Listen, it’s J-O-A-N-N-E. Is that what you have? You’re one N short. Let’s do it again.” Peninsula was a real struggle. Apparently his software did not return a city in exchange for a zip code.

So, I returned the one year out phone to the desk of p-a, with a note, as p-a remained out of the building. I used my cell to call the cell of the other p-a, thus leaving no email trail, and impart the knowledge the phone was good for a year. I gathered my stuff and literally was shutting the exterior door behind me when a friendly voice said, “Hey, you. Have a great weekend.” It was the road super, who is pleasant and affable, like me.

And that’s why I take my camera to work and take my time going home.

Tweaking technology

When we started the township web site some nine or ten years ago, one goal was to publish all the township minutes. All the minutes on 14" paper, held flat for a hundred years, I could scan and upload myself. But many machinations were involved. 

I used some forgotten Microsoft picture program to splice several pages of minutes of one meeting into a contiguous whole. I think I used the same program to strip extra pixels from the file, then used a free program to make a PDF file. All the years and years of minutes I first uploaded have PDF file created by free version of PDF Factory stamped across the bottom. Actually, meeting minutes I typed have the same information stamped; it was not until Windows 7 that Word could be saved as a PDF file.

At some point all minutes we had, from 1811 to present, were uploaded. The original 25 inch ledgers were outsourced to a scanning company, but I stood at the scanner and scanned, collated, resized and uploaded 1936 to present. It took a long, long time, and I simply labeled it my gift to the township. 

There were three gaps in our minutes. When some noble citizen took one missing book from his shelf and turned it in, I needed to think hard how to get these into usable format. Several computer upgrades later, I could not run several sheets through my photography program to make one set of the pages. Every solution I looked at cost more money than I cared to spend. The book of minutes sat on my credenza, awaiting inspiration.

One day and eureka. I realized that in scanning a document to an email (magic that is beyond me) I got one file with continuous pages if there were more than one page. A bit more experimenting and I realized the scan was a lovely PDF file that I could drag to desktop, then save and rename. Or rename and save. Such control. So, that found chunk of our history was scanned and sent to the servers. Two more books to find.

Not too long ago our township legal counsel decided to clean out a storage unit (and save the firm $400 a month!) He has been counsel for thirty odd years; he has a lot of files.He came into a meeting recently, dropped several battered expanding folders in front of me, and said perhaps I was looking for these. Several more missing years. Now we are down to only three years missing.

But the folders our attorney gave me look rode hard and put away wet. They have been stored on their 14" edge, the opposite edge unprotected from sleeves rubbing across them, other files dropped on top, and other indignities that happen to paper. The scanner at work is not a 14" flat bed; it is a workhorse 8 1/2 x 11 inch copier that handles 14 inch copies through a separate unit that sends the paper around a bend as it takes the picture. Adequate for paper nicely stored in a heavy binder all these years, but sure destruction to sheets with torn and ragged edges.

I consulted again with the trustee/historian/curator. We decided I needed archival tape. In the end we decided what the heck; good Scotch tape cannot be any worse than what the pages have suffered for the last thirty years. Forge on.

The very first page and I realized I could not get tape on the mangled tears until....

With a nothing to lose mindset, I went to work:

Edges too battered to go through the scanner:

A cotton towel for padding, a percale pillow case for protection, 

 My iron. I straightened those pages right out.

(Aside--this is the best iron I've ever owned. It's the same on both ends and doesn't make wrinkles ironing the back stroke.)

Scotch brand's finest "archival" tape.

Another important tool--the oblong hole punch, so those repaired pages still fit oblong posts in official Record of Proceedings binders.

Low tech scanning of 14" pages.

The ultimate discovery--that PDF file in an email that will never be sent can become a PDF file to send to the server in the clouds.

Drag it to the desk top,

and back to the working folder.

 I have two years scanned and uploaded.

A year a morning (or afternoon) is all my back will put up with.

But, where do I vote?

My camera has not been out for a spin for so long, I threw it over my shoulder this morning. There could be one decent picture lurking in our drought out landscape.

One turkey vulture hanging over the salt shed. Far fewer take their morning roost here, since the two dead trees were removed, after they fell, one through the salt shed roof.

You may recall, the vultures lay eggs on flat roofs, like the school house roof, and leave them to hatch. Or, roll over the edge.

I had a turkey vulture morning.

There was a call on my machine,

"I used to vote right there in your schoolhouse, but I moved to Parma. Where do I vote now?"

Actually, I do a lot of public service stuff.

The caller now lives in a different county, and needs to register the new address with the Board of Elections of the county.

So, I looked up that county's Board of Elections before I returned the call.

"Now you live in Cuyahoga County. You must register your new address with them, and they will tell you where to vote."

"How do I do that?"

"You can call them. The phone number is ......"

"I'm driving. Can you text it to me?"

I keep reading the expression "facepalm moment.' I used it, and then texted the number on my personal cell phone. I could call it a turkey vulture moment, but facepalm has it covered without knowing about eggs rolling off the roof.

I paid the bill for the blocks to build a new material bin. The old wooden bins were collapsing and rotted to dust, thirty or forty years later.

Of course there was controversy when the new road super asked for authorization to buy these blocks. The iconoclasts at the decision table could not bear the thought of concrete replacing the wood.

The new road super brought in a quote for building two new wooden storage bins. It was, of course, twice the cost of the concrete blocks. The decision makers compromised; one bin this year, one next.

Not before they had a decision maker conversation on how to make them more attractive, including placing them at an angle to the building. Eventually the person of no authority said, peevishly, "It's a road department yard for crying out loud. It will never be pretty; let it be."

The discussion moved along to real topics, and today I paid the bill.

Leaving, I encountered these tourists with four kayaks.  

"Where is the river?"

I sent them back the way they came in.

How can you miss a river when you crossed it on a bridge?

In closing, a stand of black eyed Susan's that the winter salt in the parking lot has never decimated.

Hardy things, black eyed Susan's.

Boots on the ground

I come from people with big feet. Not my mom so much, but she was the only girl in four generations on her father’s side, and men tend to have bigger feet. My dad was over six feet and had corresponding size twelves to stand on. My brothers the same; way over six feet. I’m thinking Melvin wore fourteens.

Foot size was not in my consciousness until after I married. My father-in-law was roughly comparable to my dad. Tall. Solid grounding. Definitely a Bohunk, as my mother-in-law proclaimed. Mom on the other hand (I never quit calling my in-laws Mom and Dad) was tiny. Her feet must have been correspondingly small; I’ve lost some of my mental image of her.

Her son had small feet. He was taller than me by a couple inches, and the length of his feet didn’t strike me as unusual, probably because I could conveniently slip into his slippers and be done with them before he got out of bed in the morning. Then I realized my brothers called him Twinkle Toes.

We divorced, he moved his Twinkle Toes to my best friend’s house and that was pretty much the end of it, excepting the genetics he left behind. Each of my daughters inherited his small feet, and the youngest inherited her Grandma’s stature, too. Five foot two, eyes of blue as the old song went.

Ms. Five Foot Two has three small daughters. Rebekah is over 21 and under five feet. Emily is 16, and approaching five foot two. Laura is 13, and we hope not done growing. She needs to catch up to the feet she got from my side of the family.

Emily needed boots two summers ago, when she began working at Heritage Farms; I outfitted her and she trudged through a year at the farm and a winter at the ski run. Now she is working at the nursery across the road. 

Last weekend she brought the condition of her footwear to my attention. I can tell you, I would not like to bounce a bale of peat moss off my big toe, outfitted in those worn out boots. We went shopping for Timberland’s, like the big boys wear.

Except—those tiny feet on my little granddaughter.

Of course, the smallest size in the store was too big. An inventory search of the stores (a modern miracle, those computers these youngsters use) showed the closest pair of size 6.5’s in Cincinnati, Ohio. We asked to have them shipped in, and they arrived today.

Still too big. We should have gone with our first choice, the sixes. They’re on the way now, from Indiana.

Chutzpah and sleep ahead

It’s been a long day with a camera with no pictures. My itinerary was to take Emily to work, return home for breakfast (for although I say I get up to eat breakfast, seven a.m. is not breakfast time!), back to the village to mail parcels, up the hill to the turnpike to go visit Linda, return for Emily and make a stop at the Peninsula Art Institute—all before supper.

I had a picture in mind from yesterday. Perhaps there was sunshine yesterday.  A line of deer prints across the ice on the little lake are turning into large circles as the temperatures rise. They were like large crystal pearls yesterday. This morning, at 7:45, they were less remarkable.

As we drove to work I reminded Emily this is spring ahead weekend. “I know,” she responded. “I’ll be so happy for an extra hour of sleep.” “It’s spring ahead, not sleep ahead!” After a pause she said she’d probably call me from college in two years for another explanation.

I had lunch at Linda’s, greens and beans—nothing finer—and came home in time to take a container of pearl cotton to the Art Institute to see if I could trade the director for some 8/2 cotton, as Linda and I won’t be going to Sheldon’s for a month.

Weekend Peninsula is a pure pain in the patoot. I circled twice looking for a reasonable parking place, and the phone rang. “Gramma, I’m off.” Two-thirty. Be still my heart. I went up the hill and back down to the ski slopes, to get the lift attendant I had delivered at 7:30.

“Light day?” I asked, although the slopes were packed. In fact, no. She had not been relieved for her lunch break until 2:30. As she came in from the slopes she passed Austin, and told him she would be eating her lunch at home.

On the way back we discussed management by college students. She is not impressed. I have the feeling she will plow snow for the garden center next year before she will work the slopes. She does agree it was a “real job” and worth the experience, and after I pick her up on March 21^st the ski pants can go right into the goodwill bag.

Back to the Art Institute and a parking place right in front of the door. Carol, the director, had nothing I could trade for, so I left several pounds of pearl cotton as a donation. Her weaving students were on that table of goodies like the well known duck on a June bug as Emily and I headed for home. All in all a satisfactory day, although there will be no more lime green thread until we go to Hendersonville in April.

The girl with the grandmother

Yesterday, having waited one hour for Emily to emerge from the slopes, I went into the lodge, found Customer Service and told the young woman behind the desk to call Emily’s supervisor and tell him to send her a replacement. The whole encounter was brief and effective. Austin (the supervisor) said she would be right out, and she appeared at the car door less than ten minutes later.

Emily did not know why her replacement was so late to work. “Maybe she was held up in traffic.” This elicited a snort from me; there is not enough traffic on valley roads to impede any vehicle from reaching its destination on time, if the driver were interested in arriving on time.

Over these last eight weekends Emily’s dismissal time has crept from three to three forty five, as people realize she’s a non-complainer, a soft touch. “Super Bowl Sunday! Emily won’t complain; I’ll call off.”  “Saturday night date? Emily won’t mind; I’ll call off.”

We had a driving experience this morning, driving in at 7:30. Remember, there is no salt. The double S hill was quite the challenge, and with a truck the opposite direction I couldn't use the straight line for a good go at the uphill side. Baby skittered on the ascent, looking for traction, but crested the hill, rather proud of herself, and got a little pat on the dash for job well done. Told Emily I would anticipate her dismissal at 3:30, and not be there sooner.

The snow was ended and the roads plowed clean when I left this afternoon. After thirty minutes of waiting I briskly made my way to the customer service desk. The same young woman as yesterday was on the telephone and the other customer service representative was not about to convey my directive to anyone, let alone a supervisor. I slowly repeated my request that she contact the lift supervisor and tell him it was time to dismiss Emily. “Who?” I heard him question her. “Oh, the girl with the grandmother.”

It began snowing as we left the slopes this afternoon, with half an inch on the roads before we were home and another two or three inches fell this evening.

There are three weekends left of this ski season. Give me patience. Better yet, give me spring.

Snow on the birdseed cans before breakfast.

Snow on the birdseed cans after supper.

Euba, through the window. That funny streak center is the reflection of the cat perch.

And since I sort of promised no more snow pictures, here is the cat, perched.

Aren't his whiskers magnificent!

Hammered

When I took Emily to work at 7:30 yesterday morning the snow was falling.

It still is drifting down in a desultory way, because it can.

I was thankful for so little traffic, especially the place in the village

where the road drops straight down from a glacially induced ridge,

to Slippery Run, over the culvert and climbs as dramatically.

That tiny piece of road also has S curves,descending and ascending.

Because I was the only car I could drive the straight line through the many inches of snow,

and not hold my breath negotiating the curves.

When I picked her up at 3:30 I waited an hour in the parking lot, my texts unanswered.

Although all the morning shift but two drove through unplowed snow to man the ski resort and give the skiers a good day, half the second shift called off.

Superbowl, no doubt.

More than an hour until they found someone to relieve Emily at the lifts.

School was cancelled today. Mercifully, the call came at ten last night.

The weather maps showed us in the nine to fifteen inch band of projected snowfall.

I'd say that was about right.

Hoovering Europe

No good deed goes unpunished, it is said. Sometimes neither does a bad deed.

This is another story about my corporate days, when I was the controller, etc. The corporation was Maytag, and way down at my end, the subsidiary was the company that manufactured bill accepting machines found round the world, dispensing everything from soft drinks to laundromat soap. We called them dollar bill acceptors, but they recognized close to a hundred different currencies.

The company was not too old when I was hired, nor too big, and manufactured those little bill recognition systems for vending machines everywhere; soft drinks are ubiquitous. About the time we were acquired the first time, by a vending machine company, our marketing team had the product pretty heavily into gaming machines and fuel dispensing, too.

Remember Pac-Man and other such games of skill in restaurants and bars? Our Japanese distributor was the manufacturer. All this work predated credit card recognition systems, for gasoline, for instance. The units were commonly used in Europe for gasoline. They could not be used in this country because unattended stations were illegal in most states. The days of self service had begun, but we went into the station and said “Ten dollars on pump two.” Remember?

My last ten years were a whirlwind of acquisitions and divestitures. I outlasted three division presidents, but not the fourth. His fall occurred after I was gone, but friends filled me in. My little company of fewer than one hundred people was acquired by a soft drink manufacturing company that also was a division of Magic Chef. It made sense for them to own the company that supplied their dollar bill acceptors. And so life went on for several years.

Then Magic Chef was acquired by Maytag. Why? Maytag wanted to build refrigerators, but didn’t want to start from scratch. “Let’s buy a company that builds refrigerators!” Magic Chef manufactured Admiral, and hey presto, the deal was done. Sadly, it was the beginning of the end for Magic Chef, as all its subsidiaries were spun off, and then Magic Chef itself. No more stoves.

Back at my plant, life was not going on so well. Maytag was not interested in my company’s note recognition machines, but in its pc board ability, and especially the very automated and skilled production lines we had built. Maytag products were transitioning from analog to digital, running on printed circuit boards. The once friendly factory floor became quiet and tense, wary of the “new bosses.”

Lots of changes were occurring in the office, too. Old faces gone, new faces appearing. New lines of command. One day I no longer reported to my boss, but to a division president. The one who outlasted me. I recall walking into the usual Monday staff meeting and being greeted by a roar of “Traitor!” as a joke.

It came off totally wrong; I turned on my heel, went to the ladies room, sat in a closed stall and tried to think it through. Eventually everyone came in and pounded on my door to come out, they were sorry. Someone crawled under the stall door and opened it; we all had a good laugh. Probably the last one we had together, ten men and women crowded into the tiny ladies room.

We were becoming so unhappy with the sinister transformation of the happy little company everyone one of us in the “front offices” were getting fat; our desk drawers were stuffed with candy bars. Everyone was outgrowing suits and falling back on slacks and shirts. I've written about wheeling around a corner, shirt tails flying, and walking smack into the head of HR, straight from Newton, Ioway, Maytag’s headquarters. Did you know why that beagle in the Maytag commercials was named Newton?

HR looked me up then down, and the next morning there was a dress code directive from Newton. I felt awful about that; the women in my department didn't make a lot and supported families, and now were being told they must wear skirts, blouses, jackets, stockings and appropriate shoes to work. That was the bad deed that did not go unpunished, but not until two or three years later, when I was long gone.

Maytag was acquiring Hoover as I was leaving. Hoover employed hundreds and hundreds in a town near me. All gone now. Did Maytag want to add vacuums to its line? Of course not. They wanted Hoover’s European distribution system, which was sizable and stable. And that HR fellow who caused the dress code became president of Maytag International, headquartered in England. He took with him a sizable chunk of Maytag that had made our lives unpleasant, I heard. I was gone by then.

A couple of years on the new president in England decided to boost weak sales of Hoovers in Britain and on the continent. He had a brilliant idea. He would give away an airline voucher with the purchase of every Hoover.

The scheme progressed beautifully for the better part of a year; his division’s sales led every other Maytag division sales. Until toward year end, when folks with vouchers began cashing them in, intent on holiday travel.  Sitting at my own kitchen table one morning, two or three years into my weaving career, I spit coffee all over the business section of the morning paper. 

There were not enough airplanes, there were not enough airplane hours, pilots, staff, airports to accommodate all those vouchers. A lot of unhappy people, including Maytag, which had to buy back the vouchers to keep them off the market.

It seems people all over Britain and Europe had Hoovers in attics, Hoovers in basements, Hoovers in closets and dark corners. The value of the vouchers far exceed the cost of a new Hoover. The whole contingent who dreamed up the scheme, led by my HR nemesis, was fired.

I wonder who the mergers and acquisitions do benefit. My little note acceptor company had grown to four hundred employees when I left, well over three hundred of them on the factory floor, making pc boards. Eventually Maytag outsourced the manufacture overseas and sold what remained of the little company to our chief competitor, Mars. The candy bar company, privately held. 

One day the new bosses walked into the plant, ordered all lockers and desks emptied, everyone was fired. Good deeds and bad deeds don’t amount to much then. Maytag overextended itself and was swallowed up by Whirlpool. I felt worst for all who lost their jobs. My little company, as well as Newton, Iowa.

Probably a bag of candy on the desk.

Probably the very shirt I wore the day I crashed into the future president of Maytag, International.

Another weekend at the ski run

I remembered to take my camera today when I picked up Emily. I wanted to take pictures of the pipe stem legged preschoolers in fluorescent ski pants, learning on the bunny hill. They have finally graduated to coming down from the top of the hill, and they come down like a snaking dance line.

But, I parked in the wrong place.

So, I snapped folks coming down the “big” hill.

Not much color, pretty boring, until the fellows with white crosses crested the hill and brought a laden sled down. I asked Emily later if it was practice. She didn't know,  but there had been three that day. She works first shift.

My local fire district covers the ski resort, and I told her of some accidents I knew of from the years I clerked for them. The district runs on a shoe string, there being just under two hundred taxable properties in the township and real estate the only tax available in a township.

Steam could come out both my ears when the EMS team transported some young skier and then had the ambulance bill go unpaid for want of insurance. We’re talking a gainfully employed person who could afford ski equipment, or its rental, clothing, tickets. A smart phone with a ski app, no doubt, and expected the ambulance ride to be free. No budget excess to pay for that unexpected consequence.

Emily helps people on the lifts, helps them off, helps them stand up, stops them from doing stupid things.  She does not have the authority to “clip a ticket,” but may say to a youngster who looks as if he will jump off the lift to retrieve a dropped pole, “If you jump, I’ll have your ticket clipped!” Then she retrieves the pole, sends it up on the first empty chair and tells her squad leader to “keep an eye on that one.”

Emily’s thinking she’d like to learn to ski. I told her about the young woman in my department who took a lesson, went down the bunny hill, caught her ski, suffered a spiral fracture of one of those long leg bones. The bone was plated, the bone was pinned, she underwent electrical stimulation treatments or some such thing. For the eighteen months she continued to work she was generally in a walking cast. I wonder what became of her.

But, Emily wants to learn to ski. Told her it might be a fun thing for President’s day, her next day off school.

And when the sled was down the hill it appears the fellows with white crosses were on a training run.

Escargot

I've written from time to time of the olden days, when I was the controller of a subsidiary of a division of, etc. Before that we were just a little manufacturing company with a unique product and a lot of international business. We even had a foreign subsidiary, of which we had to divest ourselves before the first company that purchased us would make the purchase.

That subsidiary sale became the subject of an IRS “Committee” audit, a look back audit, in which they would audit four years back, as customary, and three more years before that if the slightest thing came up. I sent the time and motion engineer to find new digs for the duration and gave the auditors the office next to mine. I sent in gallons of coffee, met daily to answer questions and even cancelled my vacation that summer. My boss, who handled the sale, never set foot in my wing of the building, and I never visited his end while the auditors were in the building. But, I digress. Oh, yes, there was no finding against us, either.

International business. International customers. Foreign reps and brokers. I enjoyed knowing almost all of them. I remember our English rep telling me he scolded his little girl for running across the grass and leaving footprints. Our Swedish rep was extremely handsome, and knew it. His shirts were beautifully tailored and close fitting. His suits were always a cut beyond anything I saw in the states. Our German rep was so proper, our Italian rep always a flirt. Our Japanese rep one of the most interesting men I have known. His name was Kay.

If I needed to call Kay I had to call at ten or eleven at night, to catch him in his office at ten or eleven the following day. We communicated mostly by cable. Kay and his wife had no children, but he had adopted a Chinese son, who he regarded highly. He trained the young man to inherit his business. Kay’s description of his son’s wedding was a delight. Everything was red, Kay explained. “You know how the Chinese love red.”

The entire management staff took Kay to dinner one evening to celebrate the launch of a new product. My boss, who was the president of the company, had reservations made at The Top of the Town, a restaurant in the round on top of the Terminal Tower in downtown Cleveland. It was a very long meal; many involved loved to dine.

Near the beginning of the meal some were enjoying an appetizer of escargot. I passed. Kay eventually insisted I try just one. I could not bear the thought of swallowing a snail. I demurred. These many years later the scene would not have occurred, but back then I was a single mother who valued her job, and still could not bring myself to accept the escargot.

My boss, directly across the table, had “You must do this” in his eyes and above my smile I know mine said I cannot. He put the little black thing in a spoon, tipped in two shells of butter and garlic sauce and handed it over.

I never felt the snail go down. International trade was saved.

The balaclava is in the backpack, humoring grandma

School was closed again yesterday.

First the 5:15 am call,

"Start of school is delayed two hours, due to deteriorating weather conditions."

I relayed the message to Emily, to pass along to Laura,

and went back to sleep.

Near 8 am, the second call, no school.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, near 15 degrees.

But, I understand the school business manager's call.

When I picked up Laura and Liam from jazz practice Wednesday night,

they each were bundled head to toe.

But, I watched a stream of youngsters emerge and climb into cars with running engines,

dressed in summer shorts and light jackets.

What are their parents thinking?

The business manager has caved.

Back to the present. At the balaclava store I asked Emily if she thought Laura would wear a balaclava to the bus stop.

"No way in Hell."

So, I purchased just one. 

This morning, in the garage, at 7:30 am,

leaving for the ski run.

"Do you have the balaclava?"

"Yes, Gramma."

"Do you have sunscreen?"

"Yes, Gramma."

What a difference a week makes in the morning light!

Four inches of snow and a week of really cold weather make the slopes look official.

The sunrise on my way home.

End of shift.

The black above her eyes and down her cheeks is the balaclava.

It covers her chin.

She would not let me buy the one that also went over the nose.

Fast forward to today, the green bandanna came from the bottom of the backpack, and was installed over her nose at first break.

Grandma's rule!