Gold, Common Sense & Fur

GOLD, COMMON SENSE & FUR
OK, so I'm not huge on just forwarding crap without finding out where it came from, who wrote it, how old it is and/or if it came from a neo-nutjob site. But I got this thing from a list-serve this morning and could NOT pass up the opportunity to pass it along. The funny thing is, I first thought to forward it to a bunch of friends, but then realized that they're all probably going to look here anyway, and this saves me that step. Prepare to howl!

THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT

My husband and I had been happily married (most of the time) for five years but hadn't been blessed with a baby.

I decided to do some serious praying and promised God that if he would give us a child, I would be a perfect mother, love it with all my heart and raise it with His word as my guide.

God answered my prayers and blessed us with a son. The next year God blessed us with another son. The following year, He blessed us with yet another son. The year after that we were blessed with a daughter.

My husband thought we'd been blessed right into poverty. We now had four children, and the oldest was only four years old.

I learned never to ask God for anything unless I meant it. As a minister once told me, "If you pray for rain, make sure you carry an umbrella."

I began reading a few verses of the Bible to the children each day as they lay in their cribs.

I was off to a good start. God had entrusted me with four children and I didn't want to disappoint Him.

I tried to be patient the day the children smashed two dozen eggs on the kitchen floor searching for baby chicks.

I tried to be understanding when they started a hotel for homeless frogs in the spare bedroom, although it took me nearly two hours to catch all twenty-three frogs.

When my daughter poured ketchup all over herself and rolled up in a blanket to see how it felt to be a hot dog, I tried to see the humor rather than the mess.

In spite of changing over twenty-five thousand diapers, never eating a hot meal and never sleeping for more than thirty minutes at a time, I still thank God daily for my children.

While I couldn't keep my promise to be a perfect mother - I didn't even come close... I did keep my promise to raise them in the Word of God.

I knew I was missing the mark just a little when I told my daughter we were going to church to worship God, and she wanted to bring a bar of soap along to "wash up" Jesus, too.

Something was lost in the translation when I explained that God gave us everlasting life,
and my son thought it was generous of God to give us his "last wife."

My proudest moment came during the children's Christmas pageant.

My daughter was playing Mary, two of my sons were shepherds and my youngest son was a wise man. This was their moment to shine.

My five-year-old shepherd had practiced his line, "We found the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes." But he was nervous and said, "The baby was wrapped in wrinkled clothes."

My four-year-old "Mary" said, "That's not 'wrinkled clothes,' silly. That's dirty, rotten clothes."

A wrestling match broke out between Mary and the shepherd and was stopped by an angel, who bent her halo and lost her left wing.

I slouched a little lower in my seat when Mary dropped the doll representing Baby Jesus, and it bounced down the aisle crying, "Mama-mama."

Mary grabbed the doll, wrapped it back up and held it tightly as the wise men arrived.

My other son stepped forward wearing a bathrobe and a paper crown, knelt at the manger
and announced, "We are the three wise men, and we are bringing gifts of gold, common sense and fur."

The congregation dissolved into laughter, and the pageant got a standing ovation.

"I've never enjoyed a Christmas program as much as this one," laughed the pastor, wiping tears from his eyes. "For the rest of my life, I'll never hear the Christmas story without thinking of gold, common sense and fur."

"My children are my pride and my joy and my greatest blessing," I said as I dug through my purse for an aspirin.

Good news and bad news

I have good news and bad news this evening.

The good news is that I finally finished the shower stall and that I have pictures.

The bad news is that I do not have holiday tree pictures. I got home too late and had to cook dinner, which means I had to do some dishes first to find the stove, etc. And now we seem to be missing a box of ornaments. Very important ornaments. Miami Sound Machine ornaments. At present we have only the weakly blinking Bird of Prey, which I think could really be enough, but my beloved seems to want the shiny balls and little characters on hooks. So the tree goes up tomorrow. For now I am going to show you the pictures of the shower stall. Tomorrow you'll get the tree. Deal.

First, this is how things looked when last we checked in:


Today I boxed in the exposed wood and put sheetrock on the side of the wall that will be next to the toilet:


Here's a better look at the bottom of that wall:


And now the top of that wall:


I added some trim to the top of the inside of the shower as well to finish it. I had to make some persnickety cuts to replace the old molding, but I think it works. It will look fine with a coat of paint.


Here is the shower head rig. Remember the pipe that went straight up through the top of the wall? Well, I put the trim board on, drilled through it, and slid the copper pipe up through the hole. I then put some dope on the threaded fitting and screwed it into the brass shower hot/cold mixing unit and tightened it with a wrench. Then I polished up the top of the upright pipe, smeared on some flux and soldered the elbow and fitting into place. I let it cool while I fiddled with drywall and trim and then put some teflon tape on the plastic fitting and screwed it into place and added the shower head in the same fashion. This is what it looked like when finished:


Because I made the exterior of the shower stall a little bit bigger than the old one, I had to trim the existing window trim. This means I had to notch out the new trim to accommodate the existing trim. Here's what it looks like there:



I'm just thrilled that the window has enough clearance to open. Although leaving it open while you're in the shower might be painful to the getting in and out of the stall part of things.


On the back of the wall with the water pipes inside, I put up sheetrock and trim, but I had to allow access to the pipes for repair and maintenance. I cut the drywall into three pieces, hung the right and left permanently and then used the middle one to make a frame of trim wood that could be removed. There are four galvanized three-inch decking screws holding it in. I put putty over all the other screw holes so there would be no confusion. Here are a couple pictures, one top, one bottom:



And here is a close-up of the top that shows the screws:


Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow holds promises of freezing rain, sleet, snow and all kinds of nastiness. Luckily, I think I will be spending a good part of the day playing with the tree. Provided I find the box of decorations. TTFN.

I hurt

I hurt today.

Really bad.

We went down to the big city of Portland Saturday, stayed overnight at Motel 1.4 or whatever, and then came back Sunday. Only Sunday it snowed.

In Portland, it was pretty. There was an inch or two of wet, fluffy flakes - just right for snowballs, but not enough for snowmen yet. The roads in town were a little greasy, but the highway was OK. We headed north toward home at just before noon, and the highway was clear-ish for quite a while. But after Brunswick, it got colder, and by the time we reached Augusta, it was starting to get a little hinky. Traffic seemed to want to go much faster than I was willing to drive, so we got off the highway and took the coastal route down Route 3. Bad idea. Apparently nobody wanted to pay plow truck drivers overtime rates on a Sunday for less than six inches of snow, so things were barely plowed at all. Greasy and slippery and we saw several places where cars had hit the guardrail or slid off into the ditch. We crept along, vowing every few miles to get studded snow tires as soon as we get a few hundred dollars together to do it. I was tense the whole way home. A drive that normally takes about 3 hours took four and a half. It was hellish.

I spent some time last night on that vibrating massage thing that fits in the armchair, and that was nice, but not nearly enough. Then this morning the power went off sometime between four and six a.m. I may have mentioned here before that I have a sleep apnea, if not: I have a sleep apnea. I wear a face mask attached to a hose that constantly pushes air into my lungs as I sleep. The machine is called a C-PAP and it is a lifesaver. I am useless if I do not wear it for a night, and if I go more than one nigh without it, I am punch-drunk and incapable of any productive effort. So anyway, when the power went out, my little "breathe machine" as I call it, crapped out, leaving me with a mask over my nose and mouth and no air coming in. Helluva way to wake up, let me assure you. So, I took it off and tried to go back to sleep, but that doesn't work much at all, and when the power came back on and I finally got out of bed, my back was so stiff and sore that I could hardly bend over. Lacing my boots actually brought tears to my eyes. It's bad.

I had to get up, though, because I have some really cool senior citizen folks who depend on me to shovel out their driveways and front walks, and I knew they'd be wanting to get out of the house today. Mind you, I can't bend over, so shovelling would have been comical had it not hurt so much. Luckily, most of it could be pushed and scraped clear and I didn't have to bend and lift.

So anyway, after that, I hit the grocery store and limped on home. I am still dressed in my work clothes (the boots are as far away now as they were this morning, and I'm not excited to try that again) but hope to find my pajamas soon. Maybe sweatpants. I might travel down into the next village to sozzle in my friends' spa for a little while. We'll see how it goes with the boots first. Maybe a hot shower will be enough to let me relax a little. The spa sounds great, but it's the coming and going in 6 degree (that's Farenheit, for my Canadian and foreign readers) temperatures with sub-zero wind chills (it's howlin' a gale out theyah) that causes me some concern. How relaxed am I going to be if I have to run that gauntlet before and after the sozzle? Meh.

I suppose someone will tell me to go to the doctor, and that sounds like a great idea, but I haven't got insurance, and I haven't got any money, so hot showers and gentle treatment are what I've got to work with. Maybe I'll get the cat to curl up with me on the couch. He's a good heating pad.

Grout v. skin: Grout 1, skin 0

I don't know what the chemicals are that make up sanded grout, but they cannot be good. The skin on my hands is dry and cracked and rough and scuffed and it feels tight and I have already dosed it with super-lotion and it just drank it. Time for another dose, and it's only been an hour or so since the last one. Damn.

---

Honestly, my greatest strength is my confidence in myself.

Regrettably, my greatest weakness is also my confidence in myself.

Today took much longer and accomplished much less than I had hoped.

But the grout is done. Nearly two full boxes (seven pounds each) of sanded antique white grout have been installed in those nasty little spaces between the tiles. It took me 9. 5 hours to take out those miserable fucking rubber spacers, scrape down the excess adhesive, replace the one tile that tried to make a run for it, and apply grout (and wipe clean) to the space I am calling the phone booth. I spent far too many hours kneeling in the entrance to the shower stall, grout float in one hand, trowel in the other, leaned over in a way that offends both my back and my stomach muscles, trying to convince that loose wet sand to get into the cracks and stay there. Ouch.

---

Shortly after I arrived this morning, the owner came hustling into the little cabin where I've been working. "I've got a problem" he said. Uh-oh. That's never good.

Seems he was concerned about the pattern I had used on the back wall of the stall. It didn't match the other two walls and he wasn't sure he liked it. He feared that all of the toxic fumes had rendered me mad, that I had taken leave of my senses and just stuck the tiles up willy-nilly. When I explained how it was "an architectural feature" to hide the fact that the stall is wider at the top than the bottom and that it is because the cabin is just a little out of plumb, he was much relieved and decided he liked it after all.

Although, by the time I was done putting grout in those nasty little zig-zag seams, I was about ready to take leave of my senses.


The parts that were over the entrance to the stall were especially tricky. Pushing loose, wet sand into an overhead crack is not as easy as it sounds. And it doesn't sound easy at all. I had grout in my hair before I was done.


I must return on Monday to spray on the sealant and do the drywall and trim work. I'll bring my shop vac and clean up as much as possible as I collect my tools for the next job. We'll hope that day's work doesn't take more than I plan.

Tight quarters

I just tiled a phone booth.

No shit.

Actually, I think it is smaller than your standard phone booth. Certainly smaller than the Tardis.

This has got to be the world's smallest shower stall outside of a motor home. It measures barely 25 inches on a side inside. It is teeny. And the worst part?

I built it that way.

See, I've been working on a little cabin - one of those summer places you stay when you go on vacation. Nice little units. Nothing big, but with a smell of salt air and quiet surroundings. Just what you want on vacation in Maine. View of the cove and everything. OK. So the old shower was one of those free-standing units made of semi-rigid plastic frame and flexible vinyl walls. Icky. Well, the base was just so utterly stained as to be simply useless, so the owners decided to rip it out. Can't blame them a bit. Only the base was about 30 by 30 inches. No problem, says they, and they run up to the big orange box and come back with the smallest shower stall in the place. Only it's 32 inches on a side. Uh-oh. 32 inches means we're into the toilet tank on one side (the tank is already against the far wall) and an inch and a half into the glass of the bathroom window. Oh dear.

Well we stood around and scratched our heads for a while and decided that we'd have to fabricate something to fit the old footprint of the shower stall. Fine. I order some lumber and some plumbing parts and some wonder board. I go to the hardware store and pick up lots of bits and pieces. I come back and get to work. The first thing I did was take out the toilet because it was simply in the way and there was no room to move. Here's what I started with:



So here is what I did first. I framed in the square-ish box that will become the shower stall and ran the appropriate plastic drain bits down through the existing hole.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but there are a TON of shims under the entrance edge (near the bottle of propane). In order to make this level, I had to build up fully 7/8 inch. And this was after jacking and supporting things underneath (see below). This was a crazy thing.



I topped it off with a piece of 3/4 inch plywood that almost lined up with the plumbing stuff.



I did get the pipes braced so that they lined up with the hole and everything there was good. Before I went any further, though, I thought it would be wise to reinforce that section of the building before I installed a couple hundred pounds of cement board and tile. Under I went.

Now these cottages, and there are thousands of them up and down the coast of Maine and around every lake and pond inland, are up on blocks. They do not have a regular foundation. Cement blocks and chunks of wood hold them up at the corners and in the middle, usually, and when the spring comes they need to be jacked and leveled. My young friend J and I did just that at this place earlier this year. A very muddy, nasty job it was.

Here is a picture out the bathroom window at the cottage next door. Note the lattice at the ground level. This covers up the blocks and posts that the cottage is perched upon and where I must go to deal with plumbing and supports. Yeah. cozy.


So under I went to put in some extra blocks and supports. While I was there I pulled the plug on the trap for the shower. If I'm going to be rinsing grout, it needs to have a place to go where it won't freeze and break pipes. These cabins are not winterized and the water is turned off and the pipes drained before winter. This also means I need to carry warm water from the office/residence to clean tools, etc. Lots of fun. Oh well. Could be worse. The cabin has a heater and the power is on, so I can bring my radio and plug in my tools.

After I got the wood floor finished, I set myself up to play with some copper pipes. I do love copper. I love the feel of the metal, I love the shine of the polished surface, I love watching the flux boil out of a joint and the solder flowing in. Science is so damned cool. So I fiddled around underneath the cabin and ran the pipes up through the floor. I put in a couple of shut-off valves for good keeping, then ran the pipes up to the shower mixer gizmo (the thing with the knob that makes the water come out onto your person) which I had mounted to a cross-member. It got a little warm in there, and I charred the cross-member a bit, but nothing I couldn't put out. The joint should hold, though.



As sometimes happens when soldering pipes, there is a little support required to really snug the joints together. That's what the two-by-four is about here. Notice the shiny stuff on the top of the board and the same kind of shiny stuff on the thighs of my Carharts. Let's just say I am very, very glad for the double thickness of denim. I felt the splashes when the molten solder hit my legs, but not the painful burns that would have happened in lesser pants.

So anyway, I get the thing boxed in and the pipes figured out. I make the floor out of wonder board:



I used my Dremel to carve out the sloped sides of the drain hole to accommodate the floor drain for the shower.

Then I cut it into pieces so I can pitch the floor just the tiniest bit to better facilitate drainage.




The little board looking things? Cedar shingles. 3/8 inch thick at the thickest part and thin down to nothing. The pink looking stuff in the seams and screw holes? That would be bondo. The shiny stuff in the drain hole? That would be duct tape. I have lived in Maine long enough to value the myriad of uses for each.

So then I got the wonder board up on all the walls. Nasty stuff. Have to use an abrasive wheel for masonry on my good circular saw. Dust gets everywhere. Blowing gray shit out of my nose for days afterward. Bleah.



I had to line the bottom of the pan with a special vinyl membrane that had to be glued down with some of the most toxic crap I have ever used. I put this stuff down on a Monday and was sick all day Tuesday. Yuckers. But it won't come up, and it won't leak. After I trimmed the gasket thing, I used bondo to build up the wonder board to make a gradual seam, then I covered it with a four-inch wide band of fiberglass cloth secured with fiberglass resin. Come to think of it, any or all of those things might have contributed to that two-day headache and sore throat. Oh well.





The drain hole looks sketchy as hell here, but have faith. It cleans up OK, even if I did sacrifice millions of brain cells to do it.


And to speed the drying process and increase the fumes, I added my little space heater to the mix. Damn resin just did not want to cure...


The tile for the floor was about the worst part of the job. We had mats of tile that I tried to arrange around the seams in the floor so as to work with the slopes I had built in. It took a lot of cutting and snipping with tile nippers, but I think the result looked pretty good if I do say so.



So today I went in to finish tiling. I wanted to let the floor rest at least overnight before I put anything on the walls. Here's how it went together today. I started on the left wall, half at a time:

Then the right wall, half-way up:

And then the back wall, where I staggered the seams because there was not an easy way to cut the tiles that would not show how out-of-plumb the outside corner of the building is, so I fudged it with a pattern that will not make it so obvious:


Here's what it looks like all the way done:
How lucky was that shower cutout?? I did a little happy dance with that one!

In an effort to keep tiles stuck to the overhead portion of the shower entrance, I devised this somewhat dubious system of clamps and braces. The two-by-fours each have scrap tile parts stuck to them to act as spacers to hold the tiles in without squashing the little plastic spacer bits between the tiles. Take a peek. If you're careful, you might see me in the mirror, taking the picture over my own shoulder:

One thing missing: Shower spigot!

As it turns out, this shower is going to have the spigot spray part mounted to a piece of copper tube that comes out of the top of the wall (through the trim and everything). I liked this idea especially because it meant I did not have to cut more tiles.

It is not permanently fixed yet - just there so I know what's what and where it goes. My cheap clamp light is hooked over the end of the pipe, providing both light and heat in such a small area.

I'll have some more pictures when I get the drywall and trim up and the grout in and set, but for now I need to let it rest for at least 24 hours before I try anything else.

No philosophical diatribes today, I fear. Just ceramic tile in a very small shower.

Party night!

Tonight is the night I celebrate my sobriety anniversary with my home group. I made my own cake this year - it's what I wanted, and yeah, I like my version best. The cake recipe comes right off the back of the box of Hershey's baking cocoa. I used the butter cream frosting recipe, too, only instead of milk, I added come coffee sludge to make it mocha.

What is coffee sludge, you say? Well, coffee sludge is what happens when you can't seem to find the jar of instant decaf coffee reserved for just these occasions, but you do find an old jar of regular instant that is from Hy-Vee.

Now, some of you will know that Hy-Vee is a midwestern grocery store chain. That means this particular jar of instant coffee moved with us back from Minnesota.

In 2004.

That could be why is was a solid block of almost-black nastiness rattling around in the otherwise empty plastic jar.

It was this morning that I was making the frosting, and I had just poured my first cup of the day when I got the idea that adding hot, fresh coffee to that freeze-dried ball of what looked like shit might give me something pretty strong with which to make a killer mocha frosting. [Note to self: do not try to think before drinking that first cup.] I poured some of the fresh coffee into the little jar and swirled it around. The one lump broke apart and a couple of the larger chunks dissolved quickly. I poured off 1 cup of the stuff to use in the frosting. It was thicker than any espresso I have ever made. I did not taste it, but it looked, well, chewy. I was glad I used a glass measuring cup - that shit would have dissolved metal and melted plastic.

The frosting is incredible. I don't think I have ever made frosting that I could describe as "having teeth" but this stuff does. Oh man.

I think I might use a combination of instant and real again another time, but I will be measuring the instant into the real stuff instead. It was almost too strong.

So, the recipe for my killer mocha frosting is:

2 sticks butter, softened (this is a double batch)
1 1/3 cup baking cocoa
6 cups confectioner's sugar
1 cup coffee sludge

Beat the butter to smooth it out and add the cocoa.

Beat gently (it'll poof all over the place if you go to fast!) until the cocoa and butter are good friends.

Add the 10X and beat gently again. It will look sort of loose and crumbly. Now add the coffee sludge and beat until it is all incorporated and looks like frosting instead of something unpleasant.

Frost the cake. I made a half-sheet cake, plus six cupcakes and I still had about a cup of frosting left over. God only knows what I'll use it for, but I've got it.

In remembrance

A guy I knew in my early years as an activist was named Ron McClinton. He lived in Portland and was moderately well-respected in the queer community. I lived in Central Maine and was a vast disappointment to the queer community. Then, as now, Dawn does not play well with others nor does she readily take direction from people who think they ought to provide it.

Ron and I only met once or twice, but he is one of my heroes. He is dead now, from AIDS.

Ron defended me when the "old guard" of the movement wanted my head on a pike for having the audacity to put on a week of queer programs at my college while they were busy sucking up to legislators who didn't like them to pass a bill the governor had already said he'd veto. I got my mug on TV that week, with four other demonstrators, facing down a crowd of 200 and a media presence the like had never been seen in town since Chester Greenwood invented earmuffs (true story - look it up). Well, it seems that some thought my activism was a bit extreme (we hugged on the lawn of the library. It snowed. We kept our clothes on.) and that it was my fault that the bill was going to fail.

I don't remember the specifics, but Ron said a few pointedly nasty things and stormed out of the meeting. He called me later that week and we talked for several hours. A month later he founded the Matlovitch Society to celebrate and educate ourselves about gay culture and history. It drew attention, publicity, and donations away from the first group. That bunch in the old guard? Tossed him off their committee. As he was dying. Nice touch, dontcha think? Yeah.

So anyway, Ron is the one I remember today. There are many, many others. Too many to count, and if I start, I'll just get very, very angry and start yelling about Ronald Reagan again. This is a day to remember and to stir ourselves to action for those still living with the disease. I am not sure what action I can do today, save to remember Ron, to share stories with some mutual friends we had, and hold him close in my heart.

Blessed be.