What to do, what to do

Administration officials see Trump as incapable of coherent thought and rational action. World leaders agree, and despair or seize the advantage of the dysfunction of this country. Leaders of his party continue to patch the dyke. Affairs are shoved back to some clown version of normal on a daily basis. It’s a charade. There is no normal.

This country can impeach, or invoke the 25^th amendment. Or, continue to do nothing, and wait to rectify the implosion.

In the meantime, I took the ball peen hammer that must have been my dad’s, and walked around the house, rectifying the hinges that have annoyed me for several months.

The hammer had to be heavy enough to get the job done, but not so big as to hit woodwork. I’m glad this was in the basket of tools scavenged from the old house. I wish I had the knuckle busters that came from my Mentor house, and can grip and rip off any one of those damn sealed on foil or plastic bottle or can covers. Oh, well.

I hope Laura hangs on to the tools. She’s been taught to appreciate and use them. Well, appreciate is interesting. First she has to try her way, then take the tool from me and use it. Thank you all for Kahn Academy; she wouldn’t hear it from me, but you all convinced her.

Here’s a fun look around. My Uncle Hank repaired the Westclox Big Ben for me to take to college in 1961. I used it, probably until the nineties, when Uncle Hank couldn’t take care of it any more.

Who knows how old that ball peen is. Perhaps from the thirties, when my dad bought tools, not food. I wove the scarf on the table in the early eighties, on the warp my Aunt Laura left on the little LeClerc four harness counterbalance loom.

My Grandma Rolf made the vase in her last year of school, eighth grade. She was fifteen, and decided algebra was enough math for her. She went to work at Higbees’, downtown Cleveland.

I crocheted the little pineapple doily for her, and got the vase and the doily back as a package, when she went to a nursing home. I think everything here just will go to auction someday, probably excepting the tools.

So, the hinge pins are resolved and I’m off to spend the rest of the day on my new book, Prairie Fires. It will help me forget the YA novel assigned for book club in January.

Fractional exponents

An exponent is the believer of some truth. One person; some perceived truth. In math, an exponent is the power to which a number should be raised. The old squares. Two times two times two is two to the third power, is two times two is four times two is eight. The truth is the third power, the exponent is two. Two believes its third power is eight.

It gets worse. Fractional exponents. Why isn’t the exponent a whole number? Who did this! We must understand the fraction to get the truth. There are rules. Find the least common denominator, for instance. But, enough! I don’t have to do this anymore. It’s Laura who must, and who does not understand.

She is so frustrated. She claims to have studied it in Google, on You-Tube, and, especially to have asked her math teacher. “But, he just knows it; he doesn’t teach it,” she groans. The school year is almost half over. I explained to her the math teacher’s job is to teach as well as know, and she must be student enough to say that to him. Today.

Don’t make me do this again, please. Don’t make me tease out all the little chunks that must be solved to find the exponent. Because the real truth is, I don’t know what the answer to all the chunks tells me, except all the rules were observed. This is far more algebra than I ever bargained for. Why would you have twenty five over nine, let alone want to raise it to the one half power.

I told Laura, if the teacher cannot teach you, your grandmother will know the reason why. I’ll see if that works.

Test: derive a fractional exponent from the example shown.

Identity theft

I threw away my paper calendar. I no longer can write small enough or legibly enough to get a day’s activities on one block. I “migrated” to Google calendar. Like that? Big move. Migrated!

Now, after breakfast, I check my Google calendar. If I oversleep, it chimes on my phone, to let me know some task is undone. No escaping responsibility!

Recently I scrolled over the Christmas trip to Wisconsin and wondered if I scheduled boarding the cat? It was the weekend, so I put it on a week day page: schedule boarding the cat. When I did, I found Toby must arrive with papers for his annual feline booster. Sigh.

My sister and I had some interesting arrangements, all those years we lived together. I took care of all the cat bills. Jan had all the dog bills. But, all the animals had her last name, so Tom would know which animal name to put with the worm pill he was asked to pick up.

When I moved here, I represented myself as my sister, to take Toby to the vet. The women at the counter, Dr. Mike, Dr. Wendy, everyone knew it was me, and the animals had my sister’s last name. I called the vet this morning, said I was me and asked to make an appointment for Toby K.

“Dr. Mike’s next appointment is….”, and the receptionist gave a date next year.

“Toby doesn’t care who he sees,” I interposed.

“Toby only is allowed to see Dr. Mike, owner’s orders.”

I like Toby, and I even pay extra for him to get shots, not pills, since he and I don’t agree on pills. Only Jan could give him pills, and she doesn’t live here. Toby has always been on my payroll, and I didn’t issue that order. I like Dr. Mike, too. I’ve known him for thirty years. I asked to change the order. She couldn’t.

While she went off to see if Dr. Mike will fix the owner protocol, I mused on the state of veterinary medicine. I think the state of human medicine is a mess. Think again.

Memo to my sister: Effective earlier today, Toby K.’s owner has her own account, and a cat named Toby Noragon. Dr. Mike came on the phone and said all these years of catnip laundering by cats using your identity, in secret offshore accounts in my name will end, so help him valerian.

Immovable objects meet unstoppable force

As I stood up from the MRI this morning and disturbed everyone else in the room with a fine display of disorientation, a new post formed in my mind. 

MRI’s disturb my body. The resonance in the tube, in my body, and today in my head, for it was a brain MRI, confuse my body, sometimes for days.

I told the new neurologist I would not have another. He offered a sedative. I’m not anxious; it’s the magnetic waves bouncing off my heart, my lungs, my brain, my muscles, confusing them. I couldn’t drive after a sedative, I said. He shrugged and handed me the order to schedule the MRI.

I had to find a new neurologist, as mine threw up his hands at the current state of medicine and went to Ohio State to teach and do research. I understand his frustration, and sympathize completely. But I still need a neurologist to follow the effing brain injury.

The neurologist recommended to me has no openings until February, and I still need (or not) anti-seizure meds filled by a neurologist. You don't just quit those things. So, I settled for another member of the practice, and will play the immovable object/unstoppable force game until I am satisfied or ask to go to the top of the practice.

Every brain doctor since George Washington Medical Center in DC was convinced I have seizures. Except Dr. DeRen, but he threw up his hands and quit patients. So, I’ve had innumerable cat scans, an EEG, two MRI’s, three neurosurgeons and one neurologist signing off on the lack of seizures, but here’s a new neurologist, who has to have his own pristine set of findings. He and I have now met the impasse.

He said, to end the visit, “Well, I still haven’t cleared you to drive.” Ask google. Look in a text book. Apparently this brain injury precludes driving. No matter every authority has ticked the “drive” box. The new man on the scene must have an opinion weighed, too.

I told his back, as he left the room, “I parked my car in your lot this morning.”

There is a more lighthearted immovable object in the kitchen; my granddaughter, the cookerer. A while back she tried biscuits. I watched her plop butter from the butter dish to the flour in the bowl. In passing I remarked she should try to use cold butter. The biscuits were a little chewy, but OK.

Several weeks later she made biscuits to die for, and I remarked to that effect with every one I ate. “Yes,” she said, “google recommends using cold butter and I put a note to do that in my ‘cooking notes.’”

Don’tcha love it.

Last week I tackled the kale question. Kale has its place, but an exclusive two year run is long. I suggested chard. Putting away groceries Saturday, I stowed kale in the fridge, but no chard. “They didn’t have any,” Laura rejoined.

Yesterday we stopped at Kreiger’s for a small item. On the way out I took a good look at the greens. I poked Laura in the ribs and pointed. She looked, shrugged and headed out the door. A couple of years ago I made a rule: there will be a vegetable with every meal. Time to make a “less kale, more chard” rule, too.

A garden story

When I was a child, we had a garden. Always a good reason for a garden. A war was on (twice!). Saved money. Eliminated waste of the several fruit trees on various properties. A Queen Anne cherry tree in my grandmother’s back yard translated into cherry pies in the winter. In my grandma’s kitchen, I sat on the kitchen table and turned the handle that spit pits out one side and slid pulp down the chute, into a bowl.

I came home from school in the forties and fifties to canning every fall afternoon. I slid skins from tomatoes and peaches and packed them in quart jars. After supper we put on lids and rings, put the jars into the canners and settled down to the Lone Ranger while they processed. I graduated high school in 1961, and went off to college. I can’t say I never canned another tomato.

I fell off the turnip truck, very young.

When I was married, we lived in Willoughby, Ohio, in a house on Strawberry Lane. I wanted a garden, our landlord did not object, and we made a garden. It was loam to dream of. Twenty years of mowed grass mulch, miles of grass roots, millions of worm tunnels. Perfect, once in a life time soil under the sod.

I can’t remember what I planted in the garden, while we lived there. Tomatoes, for sure. Radishes and carrots to die for. They grow perfectly in perfect dirt. And, turnips. I love turnips. I’ve met one other turnip lover in my life, my husband’s Aunt Jean.

Aunt Jean and Uncle Leeds lived in California, with their son, Howard, in La Jolla. Aunt Jean was my father-in-law’s sister. I met her and her family once, when they came east to visit. My father-in-law was a reserved man. I never imagined him as anything but a civil engineer, even when he was a child. His mother and I were friends, and Grandma Thomas (she outlived two husbands) had a garden behind her house upstate, but I doubt my father-in-law did more than draw highways in the dirt.

My mother-in-law came from the same German green grocer stock background as my mother. Dottie Noragon never really approved of me and certainly shared no childhood memories with me. Her brothers and sisters did, though, and I know Mom Noragon knew turnips, too, even if she never admitted it.

So, Uncle Leeds, Aunt Jean and Howard came visiting from California, and stopped to see us. Uncle Leeds wore trousers, an open throat cotton shirt, a Panama hat. Aunt Jean wore a light cotton shirtwaist and sandals. Howard was a young teenager. I walked around the back yard with them, past laundry and a thousand diapers flapping on the line. I was slightly embarrassed; my mother-in-law had a dryer, and I was sure Aunt Jean must, too.

In the back corner Aunt Jean stopped short, then approached the garden. She dropped to her knees; her hands brushed over foliage. “Leeds, these are carrots. Leeds, these are radishes. Oh, my God, Leeds. Get Howard. These are turnips. He must know what a new turnip tastes like!”

And up from the soil one of my perfect turnips. Jean brushed it clean on the hem of her beautiful dress. “Quick, Leeds, your knife!” The turnip turned to slices in her hand and was shared with Howard and Leeds. She went back to my in-law’s home with a bag of turnips, “for Dottie to cook for supper.” No idea how that went over.

The picture that inspired the story. About 1966. Back row, left to right, my Grandma Rolf, my mother, Lenore Lytle. Grandma Thomas. Me. Front row, my mother-in-law, Dottie Noragon. I loved GrandmaThomas. You can tell by looking, she would have a daughter named Jean, who loved gardens, too.