Twas A Happy T-Day.

Yes indeed. Jody's niece Erin, and her traveling companion Vincent, arrived from their around the country tour, and we all descended on Miles' place for our meal. Jode cooked the turkey here, and I moved the table and chair over to the Decker place. Miles had prepared the Cranberry Hazelnut stuffing, and Brussel Sprouts with Potatoes and Sauerkraut (homemade by Claire). Taylor made a Lemon Cheesecake. Jode made a Pumpkin Pound Cake that was raved about, and I think the difference was the Cinnamon blend she used which was made by Cindy Wilbert, a client I built for a couple years back. Cindy and her hubbie have been gracious in providing me trees for fire wood, and are all around great people. Anyway, Cindy's Cinnamon blend made a difference!

After the meal, Claire arrived with more food and desserts, including Tirramisu, Pecan Pie (yummy!), a berry pie, and Green Bean Casserole. We ate more. We quaffed much wine, Liberte was a fave, and there were some delicious Pinot Blancs, and folk drank beer. We all departed for a walk, apparently much later than I thought it was, and we laughed a lot, and played a poem game, and then I set about to cleaning and everyone helped out, and lo and behold it was 11:30. Time to go home.

Aching

My muscles ache this morning.
They ache from a day spent
lifting 40 foot beams for catwalks
into place,
the hoisting them using the manual lifts
into their respective places
hanging from the ceiling.

After that I spent a night hauling around 70 pounds
on my back, sometimes more
when you add tools
that we use when we
execute our drills.
Moving filled water hoses,
and fans, and hustling here and there,
crawling around inside the house
we set on fire
to locate patients,
and then haul them out.
Then reloading the hoses,
and putting away the tools
and boarding up the windows
before we leave.

It's an ache of satisfaction.
I got the jobs done.
A catwalk frame hangs in the theater.
Drills were executed with even
better results than before,
and more learning accumulated.
It's also an ache of lonliness,
being away from home,
and those I love to do those things.
The community won't hug me,
or run me a bath.
They even cop an attitude,
and some are woefully ignorant
of our mission here as volunteers.

So I spent a night in the rain,
instead of a warm chair,
and this morning I ache.
And I get up and do it
all over again.
I ache, yet I smile.

The Most Healing Place I've Been

THE HEALING SPA

Bob's Discount Christian Counseling Center and Bait Shop,

down on Highway 2,
just out of Kiwaukee,
along the Prescott River,
a place that was old,
hadn't been remodeled
in thirty years,
but kept up,
all the plastic inside,
the blinds, the plexi-glass
widows and skylights
were faded yellow by the sun.

The attempt to stock the shelves
with a little bit of everything
looked abandoned,
and as old as the blinds.
The gas pumps outside long
ago gave way to lack of use:

Premium: 47 cents a gallon

I stopped mostly
out of curiosity,
and to stretch my legs.
The sun was warm,
I realized I had to pee,
and I was the only one on the road
it seemed.

There on the door
was a sign, the ink slowly fading away
like everything else,
begging the momentary question
as to who owned the place now,
but I read that sign:

OUT OF BUSINES
NO ONE WANTS TO FISH WITH
THEIR THERAPICT

I laughed.
I laughed until I cried.
I cried until I laughed again,
the sadness of a place neglected,
so juxtaposed against
a sense of humor to the very end,
a quirky idea that didn't work out,
from a human just as quirky
it seemed,

who maybe died all alone,
his kids off in urban areas wanted
nothing to do with their
dad's remote retirement dream.
So the place sat empty and ignored,
until I came along.
I lifted an imaginary coke,
one of the bottled ones from inside,
a mere 6 ouncer,
and toasted Bob, introduced myself,
and asked,
"What's bitin' on the river?"

A Pile Of Parts

If I divide myself, can I stand?
Work here, hobby there,
family first,
spirituality on Sunday,
or the occasional weekday sit.

Schedules and organizing
teach us to compartmentalize
our lives
as if we were distinct
spirit, soul, and body.

We aren't.

The borders of our neatly defined lives,
those lines we create
  to contain what otherwise might be messy
business we don't like to deal with,
up at 4:30, make coffee,
eat breakfast,
go to work,
lunch at Dahlia at noon,
  hit the gym after work in matching outfit,
return home,
perfuntory family displays of affection,
check the e-mail, check the news,
read a story about spirituality
  and decide once again we need to pray more
and vow to do so tomorrow
when we repeat the cycle.

We know that stree affects the body,
worry can make us sick,
working out can lift our moods,
it makes our bodies tick.
We just need to control it,
get it under our thumb.
It becomes a sign of "healthy"
if it doesn't come undone....
We happen to miss the lesson
that our body and ghost are one.

All of those activities
where we sweat and move,
and smile with our kids,
enjoy the color of the sky,
and fret about getting the hoses
rolled up and stored away before they freeze,
making love with our lover,
and bringing information in to think about
and maybe act on;

are not all these activities
the continuous stream of our being?
The integrated expression of life?

It's as spiritual to dig in the garden
as to pray
if I am present in the moment.

Diking a Leak and Moving a Mountain.

Started back to work recently, and got shuffled to a new remodel job on Mutiny Bay Road.  One of our tasks was to remove the appliances. The refrigerator in this house was a Sub-Zero. A big one. Really big.

In retrospect, we could have removed the island first. But we didn't. So we pulled the fridge out, and did the requisite wiggle behind to disconnect the power and water.

Any one who's done this knows that water shut offs are conveniently tucked into an inconveniently small box. So it's not like you can grab the faucet handle and turn it with your fingers around it. The back of the box is about a quarter of an inch from the handle. So I did the righty-tighty thing until it snugged down, and began to loosen the nut holding the copper tube to the spigot.

Gusher!

Well, thinking that the valve was shut, I sent the co-worker off to shut off the water. That meant around the corner to the left, then the right, immediate right, down some stairs, and three feet off the edge of the concrete in the crawl space dirt was the shut off. I was yelling the directions as he was looking, he got it done, and then we had to bleed the system. All the while I have my thumb over the spigot opening. My shirt was soaked, my pants, gloves, and we didn't necessarily lose that much water.

It seemed like this system had a lot of water in it. Perhaps the feeder to this fride ran all over the house before it came to the fridge. Sure seemed that way. So we finally scrounged one of my tool buckets and collected the rest of the water from the spigot. It was then that I decided to see if the spigot was broken. It was in fact, despite it's pristine appearance, rather stuck half open. I finally got it closed.

Then had to skooch it around the island so we could lay it over on it's aback to tip it over to clear the header between the kitchen and media room for it's trip out the front door. This fridge had the compressor on top, and so wasn't going to fit out any door to make it's way to the drive way. So over onto it's back to get out of the kitchen because the low ceiling even prevented a sideways tip. Oof. This thing was heavy. At the front door,we stood it up again, and then tipped it on it's side to clear the front door, but the side ways tip presented an issue: with the compressor on top, we couldn't maintain a hold on the dolly. So we laid it down, and I grabbed the top of the fridge and lifted as much as possible while my co-worker pushed from the bottom to get it down the three front steps.

While balancing it so it wouldn't tip over.

Are we having fun yet!? Well, I was laughing.....

In the end, we did it. And the good news is that a local thrift store took all the appliances. My employer, Gemkow Construction, is greenin' out. We recycled all the trim as well as the appliances. The built in cabinet is at my house. The pool table went to some one's house. The garage cabinets, a bathroom for the local rodents, were chipped up for ground cover. It's very cool. Toilet's and sink and carpet fragments found new homes.

All that by break time. Soakin wet, yet laughing. What a way to start the day!