Jaci Dawn

Bob the Builder (aka Bubba) was over at Baba’s house this evening.

Bubba discovered we’d moved some interesting furniture into the house, specifically a rack from IKEA that is in pieces.

Bubba took one look at the state of disrepair of the rack and announced he needed his tools. He has tools here, of course.

“I want you to make certain you get an accurate record of this, Baba. See that screw there? It is loose.”

“You have to keep your eyes on the target and your fingers clear of the area.”

“The narrow end is handy for nailing down those loose screws. Make sure you are taking notes, Baba.”

“A level will work if you don’t have a hammer handy. See how I am hitting the screw on the head?”

Note the level of concentration by how he bites his tongue. This is serious work.

“Now, take notes, Baba. This is how you tighten a pesky loose screw with a monkey wrench.”

What serious work this is!

“The finishing touch is important. Here I am applying a little black bolt that came with my tool box. You press it against the offending screw for a moment. Are you taking notes?”

“You’re not laughing at me, right? Because this is real Man’s Work, Baba. Important stuff, fixing things.”

This is my truck. Cute, isn’t it? 1998 Ford Ranger “Splash”. They didn’t make very many of this model, probably because cute is about all it is.

I’m not trading it in. After I get into a reliable car, I want to sock some money away and get the clutch replaced. Then maybe I can work on some other things wrong with it, like broken window seals and that pesky missing radio. Oh, and fixing the heater would be high on the list, too.

Right now it just needs an oil change. And a new fuel filter. Or so the guys at Oil Can Henry’s have been telling me for the past three oil changes.

Eventually, way down the road, it needs a paint job. You can’t see that in the photo, but the entire right front fender needs repainted.

We just want to keep it to haul things in once in awhile. It has come in real handy that way, even if it is a very small truck.

This morning before I left for work I snapped a couple photos of my one and only large hyacinth. The poor thing fell over outside, so I cut it and put it in a vase. Now it is fading and I will soon have to toss it.

It is a beautiful plant and makes me think I should eat my words (I don’t really like hyacinths).

I took this photo with the flash on. The blues!

This was taken with natural lighting, no flash. The blues are still stunning, especially against the purple.

I am just amazed by the color. I just have to stop and look at it, breathe it in, enjoy it, and appreciate it. I think you have to do that.

As Shug said in The Color Purple by Alice Walker, “I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a field and don’t notice it.”

I think it probably does.

Stop and look now and then, breathe it in, and let its beauty hold you.

I need a new ride.

And I hate car shopping.

I’m trying to go about it right this time: getting pre-approved through the credit union ahead of time, researching cars in my price range and locating the dealers that have them.

The last car I bought was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was helping my good friend, Rosie, car shop. We ended up out at Courtesy Ford in Gresham where she was getting a heck of a bargain. The fleet sales person was an acquaintance (and is no longer there) and while we were standing around, she ran some numbers for me. I wandered around the lot looking at practical cars in that price range, but I really *really* wanted a cute little pick-up.

Don gave me permission to get the pick-up. And I’ve loved it. Nevermind that I didn’t bother to ascertain if there really was a working radio in it (there wasn’t and it wasn’t covered by warranty. But who needs a radio?). Nevermind that it is useless in rain and I have to haul around 250# (plus) in the bed to keep from spinning out on hills. Nevermind that the low-clearance, 2-wheel drive, fiberglass bed all combined to make it useless in snow any deeper than one inch. How often do we get snow in Portland, anyway?

And never mind that not long after I bought it a mechanic looked at it and mentioned that the clutch was “worn”.

I’ve driven it for 8 years with a “worn” clutch, but I can tell our days are coming to an end. As my son predicted, I speed-shift more often than not.

It was cute and I needed cute at that time in my life.

Now I need something else. We’re of two minds in the house: Don wants me to get a hybrid. I want a used 4×4 SUV. Don wants me to get something with good mileage. I want to know in comparison to what? The pick-up gets 21/22 MPG city (which is a lot more than his Explorer gets).

I don’t want a car. I want something I can take up in the woods if I have a mind to follow after Don some weekend. Something that can handle gravel roads.

I want something that is reliable when we get a surprise snow storm that turns to icy streets within an hour and gridlock shuts Portland down for five to nine hours (depended on your individual horror story: it took me five and a half hours to get home and I had the Explorer).

I want something with a heater. My poor truck hasn’t had a heater for the past two winters. Winter before last, I coaxed some heat out of it after Don changed all the hoses but one (the one he can’t get to). This winter, I got heat on warm days. Cold days, I carried a blanket and a heat pad. I look forward to summer.

I’m turning in my application for a loan tomorrow. Nervously. Don and I just spent years paying our way out of bad debts and stupid decisions. Two years ago we were making $860.00/month car payments between my truck and his Explorer. Both rigs are paid off now. I don’t want to pay any more than $400.00/month for a car. But because we are virtually debt-free, committing us to a new loan is scary.

I want to be certain what I buy has a good engine, a good transmission and a warranty. When I bought the pick-up, I bought a warranty. It paid for itself when I replaced the entire power steering.

I want a radio with a CD player. Silence is overrated.

This story is to be continued…

Today was so beautiful that I decided to take it off and just hang out.

Okay, maybe that was a stretch. I got up and drove to the orthodontist’s first thing this morning do they could take the top wire out of my teeth. Then I hurried back to my dentist’s office (hoping I wasn’t late) so he could drill holes into my teeth. I wasn’t late, but he was.

But he’s such a nice guy and I’ve put his son through college, I’m not complaining. And he did a real nice job with the front fillings, too.

When he was done, I hurried back to the orthodontist’s before they left for lunch. Got the top wires back in before noon.

Then I took the rest day off. I already asked for it, just so you know.

I didn’t do anything special, just wandered a few thrift stores and then came home and took a long nap while I waited for the feeling to come back into my nose and upper lip.

I only took one photo, too.

I really need a macro lens.

There’s a teeny-tiny spider in the daffodil. Just the teeniest little spider.

Now I’ve had my day off and I need to do something constructive so when I go back to work tomorrow, I can say I had the most wonderful day off.

I went to the dentist, I took a long nap and I photographed the world’s tiniest spider.

The End.

I moved several boxes of artwork up into my room. Then I opened them and discovered a plethora of treasures, including some old homeschool work the kids did.

The art work is all undated, but it’s still fun to remember. I can guess at about what age they were when they drew or painted. It’s all high school and junior high school work because I was late to homeschooling and opted to homeschool two of the kids through high school. Most people homeschool early and send their kids to public school. I’m not sure what their thinking is, but I found extending our homeschooling into high school was very rewarding and it certainly didn’t hamper the kids from reaching toward their professional adult goals.

Obviously, homeschooling is near and dear to my heart.

Anyway, here is what I found: two self portraits, a fashion sketch, and several oil paintings. All three kids are represented.

This undated sketch of prom dresses has to date to before we moved into this house. Arwen was probably 15? She could have been 16 or 17. She didn’t go to any dances until she went away to college, but I remember the sketch. I love the hair style.

I’m going out on a limb here and guessing this is 8th grade. Arwen taught herself a different approach to pencil sketching when she started classes at the community college and this is pre-community college. Her renderings became more realistic and she branched out into pastels.

I’ll bet this was done at the same time as Arwen’s self portrait. So Levi was 13. He was taking oil painting classes at a home school co-op about the same time. Later, he took drawing 101 at the community college, but his art work (and there was a lot of it: he filled sketch books prolifically) always had this hard “edge” to it. Defiant. Rebellious. I love how he captured his own nose & the rebellious look.

This is very different for Levi: a religiously themed piece of artwork. Oil on canvas. He was 13 and taking the oil painting class (which he took primarily because there were cute homeschooled girls also taking it). I’ll hang this in my studio. I like the Impressionist style of art. I like the rays of light (or, knowing my son, the bolts of lightning) raining down on “Noah’s Ark”. That’s a pretty rough sea out there!

Chrystal was in and out of public school during high school, so this probably was not technically a homeschool work. She painted it and set it in the loft to dry and never finished it. She told me the koi still need fins.

I love it. It is by far my favorite of all the above: the koi seem to be dancing in the green depth of a pool. I don’t even care that they don’t have fins: do they have to have fins? If you’re looking into a murky pool, do you notice the dorsal fins?

There was a lot more and several entertaining items from grade school, when Levi and Arwen were still in a public one-room school. But these were the best examples.

A pretty blue  anenome.