In Like a Lion; Out Like a Lamb

I was thinking today about this proverbial saying, which (best I can tell) compares the cold, snowy weather that often blows in March 1st, to the sunnier days and warmer temps that tease us of spring on March 31st. This year, the lion/lamb deal was more of a cycle, one that repeated itself throughout the month. One day I'd venture outside for my first walk of the day and be hit by biting wind that seemed to freeze to the skin on my face, the only exposed part of my body. The next day I'd find warm, gentle breezes with the temperature so high I didn't even need a coat. Lion/lamb/lion/lamb. 

The similes in this saying extend to other areas of life in March, 2021.

In Like a Lion

1. Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced his decision to lift the statewide mask mandate. Ridiculous! Way, way too soon. Only this week has the general population had access to vaccine appointments. Seth is signed up for his first dose April 6th. Three weeks later, he'll receive his second, and even then he'll need to wait a couple weeks to reach his highest immunity level. By then it will be mid-May, but the reversal of the state's mask mandate happens April 10th. President Biden called the rush to reverse mask mandates "Neanderthal thinking," and he's right.

2. I feel like life is opening again, like the pace is picking up. Suddenly, there are all these places I need to be. Is it bad that I feel just a bit of melancholy, remembering those days of full quarantine, when I wore pajamas and no makeup all day, as I read book after book, interrupted only by an occasional Netflix binge? I've enjoyed spending more time at home, not having a calendar full of obligations. I love teaching from home. Now that I am post-COVID infection and double vaccinated, I go more places. But is it too soon? I saw a meme this week with a picture of the movie Jurassic Park, and the text, "Here's another place that opened too soon."

 

Out Like a Lamb

1. Sitting in juxtaposition with #2 above, I'm so excited and hopeful for when it's once again safe to interact with people. I'm an extrovert, after all! I miss hugs and face-to-face visits with friends, concerts and plays, Jazz games and church activities, road trips and airline travel, parties and girls' nights out. All these things are just ahead.

2. All of us except Seth, Isaiah, and Matt are now fully vaccinated, and the three of them have appointments for the first shots. I'm beyond grateful my whole family will soon be protected.

3. Our basement finishing project will be completed tomorrow! Can you even believe that? I barely believe it. Once we switched contractors (read that story here, if you like), the project increased to warp speed. Workers were in our basement nearly every morning at 7:00 a.m. and worked all day. It turned out just as I hoped, so nice! Many things will improve with this additional space. Seth will have a place to hang out with friends, watch TV, and play video games. Gerald will have an office that is not in the garage. Waffles will have a home that is not the garage. I will maintain the main floor of our house as a showroom that looks like no one ever goes in there. Because no one will. Yay!

4. My Jazz boys continue to rock the NBA, winning game after game, securing their position as #1 in the league. Take note, everyone. This is so our year.

5. Seth and I drove to Orem for his first college visitation at Utah Valley University. He liked it! Perhaps my last baby will go to college just 20 minutes from home. I would love that.

6. Donald Trump is not the president. Enough said.

March. In like a lion; out like a lamb. Yep!

The Cutest Tarantula Ever

In 2020, I told each of my children's birth story in the month of his or her birth. Here they are, in case you missed any: Luke, Shulamith, Isaiah, Eli, Seth.

This year, instead of birth stories, I think I'll share a favorite childhood memory for each of them. Saturday was Eli's birthday, so he's up first.

At age 6, Eli made his theatre debut, as a tarantula in the Missoula Children's Theatre (MCT) production of The Wizard of Oz. I realize there are no tarantulas in Oz, but in this spinoff production, there definitely were. Little Mountain Elementary School sponsored MCT each year, a fabulous weeklong program, where two actors show up in a van with costumes, sets, and props, and produce a full-length musical in one week, using children from the school. 

Sound wild? It was!

Isaiah had participated for a couple years, but this was Eli's first time. It was the year 2000, and he was in 1st grade. I was pregnant with Seth, and very tired, so my friend Joanne took both Eli and Isaiah to the auditions, along with her daughter, Amy. I remember waking up from a much-needed nap to Eli running into my room with news that he would be a tarantula! Joanne and Amy followed, with big smiles all around.

Eli attended the rehearsals every day after school, and soon it was Saturday, the day of the performance. He was beyond excited. There were probably a dozen little tarantulas in a row up there on the stage, drowning in black fuzzy spider costumes, but it was Eli, right in the middle, with his round face and giant smile that melted the audience's hearts. 

And mine.

Trust

Admittedly, I have trust issues. That truth is the product of both my natural personality and my life experiences.

Today I had to break ties with the company I hired back in November to finish our basement. The reason? I don't trust them anymore. It makes me sad because I want to believe that people are honest, that they take responsibility for their promises, and that they try to be fair and transparent. It's disappointing to discover this is not always true.

This company, called Probasements, advertises on social media to be "fast, organized, and transparent." I found it to be none of these things. I hired Probasements in mid-November to begin work the day after we closed on our home. Part of the reason I chose them over the other bids I received is that they promised they would have the project completed by Christmas. It is now mid-March, and it's still not done.

They are woefully disorganized; they show up with no warning, do a bit of work, then disappear for days and sometimes weeks. When we hadn't seen or heard from them in 4.5 weeks, Shulamith found one of them on social media and threatened to take him to court. That motivated them to install flooring the very next day, but we've heard nothing from them since.

Feeling less and less confident in these people, I called the City of Bluffdale to make sure they had actually secured a permit for this work. They had. And their early work passed a legitimate inspection by the City. Thank goodness! However....

My conversation with the guy from the City revealed that Probasements no longer has a license. Before I hired them, Gerald checked to make sure they were licensed and insured, and without a license, they would never have been issued a permit. Apparently, that license was revoked sometime in December, because they have a history of starting projects and then just peacing out, leaving the projects only partly done.

Say what??????????

Well this is awesome. Not only do we have a partially-finished basement that was supposed to be done by Christmas, but now our contractor is unlicensed. And no, they never shared this information with me.

We will be hiring a new contractor to finish this project ASAP.

Oh, and my trust issues? Yeah, this isn't helping.

A Goofy Poem about a Man in a Nursing Home

When I was 15, I spent my summer charting and dispensing medication, giving insulin injections, and irrigating catheters at my job as a nurse's aide at Glendoveer Nursing Home in Portland. Anyone else find that alarming? At the time, I was too immature to be alarmed; now, I'm just so thankful I didn't kill anyone! The rule was one RN was required to work each of the three shifts. The RN on my shift was a lovely woman named Corbin (her last name, and what she preferred to be called). She really was a sweet lady, but sadly, she struggled mightily with obesity and was too heavy to make it up the stairs to the east end of the building, where the men's ward was. So she taught me to do all things she did.

With no computers, we used physical books to chart patients' medication and treatment. Corbin taught me to look at the chart, determine all the different meds each patient required and at what time, then take the proper pills out of pill bottles and put them in little paper medicine cups and deliver each patient his medication. We had three diabetics in the ward, so she also taught me how to give them their insulin injections, and at 6:00 p.m., they would line up at the nurses' station door for their shots.

I thought I was the absolute coolest doing all this stuff, and I have many crazy memories of my experiences there. One in particular I chose to memorialize in a poem.

Recently, my mom was cleaning out her bookshelf and came across a literary magazine from when I was an undergrad at Willamette University. In it is this poem. I have zero idea what possessed me to submit this poem to the magazine and less than zero idea why they chose to publish it. 

All the other poems in the magazine are serious, heavy, deep, and meaningful, the kinds of poems people discuss and argue about as they seek for hidden connotations and interpretations. Mine is just a goofy poem about a man in a nursing home. It's a true story, embellished just a bit (the FBI and private spies). For the sake of family history, one of the goals of this blog, and also just for a good laugh, here's the silly poem:

I once worked at a nursing home

Its name was Glendoveer.

I had a rare experience

I'd really like to share,

One night when I was working hard

My friend came in to say:

"Has anyone seen Mr. Brown?

I fear he's run away."

"Oh me! Oh my! Oh no!," I shrieked,

"Not dear old Mr. Brown.

He said he had to meet a man.

I'll bet he's gone to town."

We searched the east; we searched the west.

We searched that nursing home.

We searched in every single place

We thought that he might roam.

Mrs. Brown, his faithful wife,

Who lived just down the hall,

Was frantic and hysterical

Which didn't help at all.

We couldn't find him anywhere.

We called the F.B.I.

They begged us please to have no fear;

They'd send a private spy.

We waited not so patiently.

It seemed to take forever.

But finding one so small as him

Is quite a large endeavor.

Finally after hours and hours

We heard the telephone.

They'd found him sitting on a bridge

Quite wet and all alone.

While I can't remember a thing about his wife, all these years later, I can still vividly picture Mr. Brown. A tiny, frail man with osteoporosis, a cute bald head, and glasses, he was one of my favorite patients. By now, he is most certainly dancing with Mrs. Brown in heaven, but I will always remember that night, waiting with Corbin and my coworkers for news of this sweet man, about whom we had grown to care so much.

Surrounding that trailer were miles and miles of dirt!

One year ago in February of 2020, Shulamith and I sat in a white, single-wide trailer, with no masks or hand sanitizer, across from an Edge Homes real estate agent named Chase. Surrounding that trailer was nothing but dirt, miles and miles of brown, rocky mounds of dirt. Chase explained to us the vision for that dirt: a large housing development that included both single-family homes and rows of townhomes. She showed us floor plans and explained the process of bidding for these homes in a ridiculously competitive market that definitely favored sellers. 

Within a couple weeks, Shulamith and Matt had selected a floor plan and put offers on several lots, hoping they would be chosen for one of them. Stressful, much? In the end, they were successful in securing a perfect lot to build their perfect "forever" home. And then it was my turn. Eeeeek! Gerald and I decided to go with a townhome. I've second guessed myself on that decision dozens of times in the past year and continue to do so even today, but I need to stop! There are plusses and minuses to either choice. In the end, for me, it all came down to the yard. I couldn't handle the discouragement of yet another ugly yard, and trying and failing to make it good.

I hate yard work. I suck at it. I also hate the look of a shabby, unkept yard, which is what I always have, no matter how hard I try to take care of it. So while there are clear drawbacks to living in a townhome, I'm hoping this spring and summer, when I'm not mowing and not watering and not trimming and not clipping and not weeding, only to end up with the same ugly yard I had before I started, I will quit wondering if we should have bought a single-family house.

Gerald and I went through the same process of bidding for several units (because there were more bidders than there were available homes) and were ultimately successful in securing the middle unit of a row of townhomes. Shulamith and I think divine providence guided this process, because we had so little say about where, specifically, we would live. As it turns out, I can exit my back door, turn left, walk about 100 steps, and be in Shulamith's back yard. Since moving here two months ago, I've been able to watch the progress of her house from my bedroom window.

Of course, back then, both these houses were only hypothetical. Here in Bluffdale, it was still only dirt. We made multiple trips to Edge developments in Lehi and Saratoga Springs in order to see the the actual houses we were buying, and eventually, construction began here. The process was smooth as silk for me, but Shulamith's house was held up because of issues with the city and power lines. Then there was the giant stumbling block none of us remotely expected when we signed contracts back in February: the global COVID19 pandemic. This left Shulamith and Matt in a small, 2-bedroom apartment, sheltering in place with three little kids.

I am here to report that today, all that ends. First thing this morning, they signed the papers, and we spent the rest of the day moving and putting things away in the Webster-Monsons' new home. We are beyond happy and so grateful and just full of joy that this whole endeavor, which began one year ago, came to this perfect conclusion. It is a dream come true.  

Here are some happy pictures of the happy homeowners!

What is this white stuff all over my house???

Warning! This will likely be a whiny post. Sorry. Sometimes you gotta whine. So remember my unfinished basement, the one that was supposed to be finished by Christmas? Yeah, it's still not finished. How close is it, you ask? I'm not even sure. I think all that's left is paint, flooring, and the bathroom, but who really knows? No one from this company communicates. At all. They simply show up and work some days. But not most days. And we never know ahead of time which days. 

The last time I saw them was five days ago, which brings us to the main point of this post. 

Last Tuesday night, I was upstairs teaching my broadcast class. Most of my online classes are fully asynchronous, but this one is a broadcast format, so once a week I have to actually be online, teaching on WebEx, a Zoom-like platform, for 90 minutes. 

I was upstairs for two hours, and when I came down to start dinner, this:

These pictures don't begin to capture the magnitude of this mess. Fine, white powder (dry wall?) covered my house. We could see it in the air and feel it as we breathed. It was on the appliances, on the dining table, on the kitchen countertops, on the cabinets, on the furniture, and all over the floor. I wanted to cry. I didn't, but I wanted to. Instead, I went to work.

The next day, Isaiah commented, "It seems like you've been cleaning for the last 15 hours straight." No, I slept, but otherwise, yes. 

I'm still cleaning. Not as constantly as I was those first couple of days, but I'm still finding powder here and there, and no matter what I do, I can't get it out of all the creases on the laminate flooring. I'm afraid I'm going to need to hire a professional floor cleaner.

I tell my students to show, not tell, their readers, so I won't tell you how I am feeling about all this.

I'm sure you can guess.

"Sometimes": A Poem for This Day

It has now been three days since my family gathered in our living room, ate Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and watched as Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States of America. It was not a huge celebration, only Gerald and I, Shulamith, Isaiah, and Seth. Both Eli and Amanda had to work. 

As the five of us watched that morning, we once again felt pride in our nation. Our hearts were full as we witnessed the many traditions that surround the peaceful transition of power that defines our democracy.

For the first time in four years, we felt calm. And hopeful. There is no perfect person, and there is no perfect President, but President Biden has already proven to be a man of character. Has he made mistakes? Of course. Serious ones? Sure. But unlike his predecessor, he owns them. He is able to admit when he's wrong or when new information causes him to shift his perspective or change his position. He can listen to others and accept their counsel. 

His focus is outward, rather than on himself. An honest desire to serve, rather than a juvenile need to be admired, informs his decisions and fuels his actions. 

Our hope for this new administration is bold and it is brave, and that's a good thing. The despair that has plagued us for four years is now behind us, leaving plenty of room for optimism. I sensed that optimism in each of us as we watched together Wednesday morning.

One of my very favorite poems came to mind. May I share it with you today in honor of President Biden and Vice President Harris and the hope for better days ahead:

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you. 

                                       -Sheenagh Pugh

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