Time On My Side

Those who know me know that I have a certain fascination (obsession?) with time. Years ago I was going nuts because every clock in the house and car had a different time. In those days there were no cell phones to check, no home computers etc. There wasn't even a telephone time service in Central Florida like there was in Baltimore or even - at that time - Vero Beach, FL. The best I could do was wait for television or radio to announce the time or change hours of programming. Geezers will remember the *ping* at the hour on television and radio stations.

Then one day I was at Sam's, and saw, for only twenty five bucks, a clock that recalibrates itself daily with the atomic clock in Fort Collins Colorado. Such a deal! Ever since then, I have always had one unimpeachable authority as to what time it really is. Even my cell phone isn't as accurate.

One of my (many many) pet peeves is the twice annual time change. It sends everybody into a jet lag state for days afterward, and I have a hard time believing it's worth it. The one in spring is the hardest adjustment,
because the hour is simply removed from your life. But even when you get it back in fall, there is a biorhythmic jolt.

BUT!!! As a licensed professional cat juggler, I have learned to make the springing forward work for me. This year, before the time change, the kitties would start trying to wake me around three am. Now I get to sleep in until four or sometimes even five! I hate having a reason to like the time change!

Back To Normal

Sunday evening we landed in Pittsburgh after our week in Texas. It was raining. We knew it would be raining in Meadville, because it's usually raining - or snowing - in Meadville. We followed Hermione's directions from the airport to Interstate 79 and hauled our butts on home to our sweet little kitties.

I exited the car out front because the lid was open on the mailbox and there was something behind the storm door on the front door. I pulled a week's worth of wet mail out of the box and closed the lid. As I did so, my next door neighbor Donnie opened his pickup truck door. "Back from vacation just in time for the snow!" he said. "Supposed to get ten inches!" I thanked him for the info and proceeded to get the week's worth of dry newspapers in a special 'end of vacation' plastic bag carefully placed between the front doors by our excellent newspaper delivery geezer - the one who will deliver the paper to the front storm door through a foot of snow at 5:00 in the morning. Which he did this morning.

Yesterday morning at precisely 3:30am, Professor Remus J. Lupin woke me up for breakfast as usual. I looked outside to see about an inch of snow on the road and still pouring. By 8:00am it was about four inches deep. I spent a little over an hour shoveling. Four inches is about the tipping point of the 'shovel vs. snow blower' equation. By the time Carmen came home, about 5:30pm, there were maybe two more inches down. I let it ride.

This morning's feeding (they let me sleep in until 4:01) I looked out to see at least a foot of snow in the driveway. Around 9:00 I snew blew the driveway and front walk. Then I shoveled the steps and walkway to the door. It was snowing to beat hell, and the driveway was a good half inch deep again already. I came in, showered, got dressed and walked to the Orthopedic Associates of Meadville for my 'three months with a new knee' appointment. I got my clearance to return to work and came home.

Diane at Sherwin Williams says I'll be back to work on Monday the 9th.

It's been a long three months recovering from surgery. Feeding kitties, scooping litter, walking around town and shoveling snow let me know that life is back to normal. Whoop-dee-doo.

A Long Time Coming

Three and a half months ago I predicted that recuperating from a knee replacement would give my blogging a shot in the arm. I could argue the truth of that. Say, for instance, that the shot in the arm was full of phenobarbital. That would have the effect that my down time had on my writing. I did a lot of reading, played a lot of  handheld games, watched The Price Is Right and Ellen. No blogging.

I'm tempted to say "I'm back!!," but I don't know that - other than my current burst of activity. My one great consolation is that I'm WAY ahead of my wife's blog, last updated in February.

So I have a new knee. The horrendous arthritis that was causing so much pain for so many decades has been replaced by metal and plastic pieces parts. The pain is less, and it feels different. I guess it's better. The muscles that pull the leg straight are weak - walking down a steep hill is a little scary - but every time I do, it's a little stronger. I'm still doing my PT exercises, and I'm back on ibuprofen as my primary pain medication. All good stuff. My next appointment is January 3rd, when I'm pretty sure I'll be released to return to work. woo hoo.

Meanwhile, in addition to my new knee, I have new orthotic arch supports, new trifocals and refurbished hearing aids. I'm like an all-new geezer!

At Their Mercy

All I have to do is follow doctor's orders. I would say, without exaggeration, that fifteen people have told me this. Three weeks from tomorrow I'm scheduled to do the unthinkable - place myself in the hands of humans of the variety that I consider to be a shade smarmier than lawyers. I'm going to allow them to incapacitate me while they come at me with scalpels, saws and hammers. Allegedly, when I come to, I'll have a new and much better right knee. If I follow doctor's orders and physical therapy exercises, I should be pretty much healed in six weeks, and ready to go back to work in three months. All fifteen said that their only regret is that they didn't get it done sooner. Well heck, I've only been suffering with this knee for forty years, what's the hurry?

Actually, until about ten or fifteen years ago, it was what Carmen described as my  "trick knee." Sometimes I would twist it just the wrong way, it would issue forth a loud *POP* and hurt like a bitch for a week or so. My response to her was that this was not a very good trick.

During the "double naught" years, this knee began to just hurt all the time. If it stayed in one position for very long (like ten minutes) it would shoot pain like arrows until I moved it around. In 2004, Carmen talked me into seeing a medical human about it. He said I was not a candidate for replacement. He trimmed the meniscus and shot the knee full of cortizone, and it was better for a while. Then we moved to Boston, and I walked about two thousand miles. Albuquerque a few hundred more, and then Meadville. Watching me limp everywhere was painful for her, so Carmen talked me into another doctor visit.

My knee hurts a heck of a lot worse since I saw the X-rays. The right side of my right knee is pretty much bone on bone. I never noticed until that visit that the shin bone shoots off at about a five degree angle from the knee down. Well, no wonder it hurts!

I will be spending a lot of my life flat on my back with my leg elevated and straight. Carmen will let me use her oldest laptop to keep up with my Scrabble games. I'm betting the blogs will get a shot in the arm as well. There you are, a silver lining.

The Savage Breast

Three weeks have passed since my magical apperations as Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore at the church's Harry Potter Day Camp. You'll remember that I was befuddled because the two lawns needed mowing and the front door step-up needed painting, and it was raining. You'll be ecstatic to learn that the step got painted that very afternoon and was unblemished by the next burst of rain, which began as I was finishing the job. The following Saturday I mowed both lawns.

Last Saturday we went to The Home Depot and bought stuff we needed to create a "Joys And Concerns" candle box. Carmen drew a Unitarian Universalist chalice symbol, I routed it into the back board on Thursday night, and finished assembly last night. This morning I had a commitment at the Community Garden to cut out and install doors on the cabinet in the pavilion. As soon as I got home from that, I unloaded my tools from the car, and vacuumed out the sawdust for Carmen, who had to drive it to a wedding she was officiating (refereeing?) this afternoon. Then I filled holes and cracks, listened to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," sanded and- painted the box with primer, listened to "Car Talk" and painted the final gloss white finish on the box - ready in time for the minister's first Sunday back in the pulpit after her study leave.

By now, you're wondering what the heck the title of this report has to do with anything. Wellllll...

Two weeks ago was Nicki's last day at Sherwin Williams. She was the "third key," which means she had many of the responsibilities of a manager or assistant manager, but with lower pay. She closed the store most weekdays, worked at least one day each weekend, kept the inventory on track, ordered products and tracked them, calmly went about many other essential tasks while cheerfully greeting every customer by name and tinting paint efficiently. She was the one I could ask the stupid questions, and she answered them without snide commentary or exasperated expressions. Now she's gone, the manager and assistant are stressed out, and I have noone to ask. To make it even better, my hours of torture have been increased.

This morning when I arose at 6:30 to get to the Garden early, the one essential accessory I took along was my MP3 player and headphones. Painting the step, mowing the lawns, installing cabinet doors, assembling sanding and painting the candle box, having a thousand of my favorite songs playing just makes me happy. I sing along, dance, work in rhythm with the music, and am genuinely delighted with every song the "shuffle play" serves up. My grumpy mood is blown away by The Beatles, Steely Dan, Gershwin, Glen Miller, Simon and Garfunkel, Susan Werner, Roger Miller, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Association etcetera etcetera etcetera. The fact that a thousand of my favorite songs can be clipped into my shirt pocket still amazes and delights me.

Labor Day I have to work 10:00 to 3:00. I'll be fine. I've been soothed.

Intentions

Here I am on the road to hell. For two years I've had good intentions to keep Cat Juggler current, but it's been over a month now since I wrote anything. Of course, a lot of it is about busy-ness - working thirty hours a week during the summer exterior painting season, church stuff, Community Garden stuff and even Tamarack Wildlife Rescue stuff, not to mention lawn mowing and this blog's title occupation.

Yesterday I had more good intentions. I was at the church nearly all day making appropriate appearances as Dumbledore during Opening Assembly, the Chess Games, the Quiddich Games and the awarding of the House Cup at the end of Harry Potter Day Camp. I walked home, arriving at about 4:00. I listened to my Saturday NPR shows (Car Talk and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me) with the expressed intention to mow the lawn and paint the wood at the bottom of the front door entry today.

It's raining.

What to do? So many indoor good intentions are stacked up. I have to change out litter box liners for tomorrow's garbage, but I like to do that later, after today's use. I want to push myself off of the dead spot concerning my Analog Games design and marketing. I ought to write up last week's car trip to North Georgia and back for The Gospel of Rand McNally. And I ought to post something, anything, on Cat Juggler. Well, that's something I can cross off the list.

The Final Frontier

I spent most of my life in Florida. During my three years of high school in Vero Beach I watched, live, the launches of several Apollo missions, including 8, 11 and 13. Other lesser launches sometimes surprised us, such as unpublicized military launches, sometimes at night.

Shuttle launches were very visible. Whole neighborhoods would stream out of their houses a minute or so after liftoff to watch the column of flame topped by the tiny white sliver. The 1986 Challenger explosion happened during the work day. We stepped outside the offices of Emerson Art Service to watch it go up, and watched it blow up.

From Orlando, where we lived from 1987 - 2005, launches were farther away, but still visible if the atmosphere was clear enough.

To top it off, my brother used to work for Bendix Corporation at Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland, and he programmed several functions of the robot arm in the cargo bay of the shuttles.

This last shuttle mission has awakened all these memories of the space program. I figured we'd have colonies on the moon and missions to Mars by now.

Oh well.

In Demand

I took inventory the other day. I still have visible marks from injuries received at the Community Theatre, the UU church, the Community Garden and Tamarack Wildlife Rescue.

The theatre has steps up from the back hallway to the stage. The bottom two are standard eight inch rises. The top is about twelve inches. At least six times that top step has caught me as I've run up to the stage. Twice I've actually gone down. One of those falls resulted in a major boo boo on my left shin. It was funny one Sunday morning at church when little Audrey came running up to me, pulled up her pants leg and showed me a bruise on her shin. "Oh yeah?" I countered. I pulled my pants leg up to show an inch diameter scab on my shin. I won that round!

After the church sanctuary was painted in March - April, we were letting it air out some while we replaced stuff taken out for the paint job (pew cushions, hymnals etc.) When we were closing the windows, one of the big heavy storm windows came down too fast and guillotined the very tip of my right middle finger. Still hurts.

Out at the Community Garden a few weeks back I was building an outhouse for the gardeners and got a half inch long splinter in my left index finger beside the knuckle.

I had no more than gotten home from the Garden and showered when Tamarack Wildlife Rescue called wanting me to rehab a relocatable bird enclosure. It was in Sue's garage, and I whacked my head on an overhead light fixture!

It's nice to be in demand!

Back From Mass

Friday morning Carmen and I left the precious (evil) kitties with a twice daily visiting juggler named John. We drove (she drove, I navigated, as is our custom) nine hours to tornado ravaged western Massachusetts for the ordination of Misty Dawn, our friend since early Andover Newton Theological School daze five or six years ago. We stayed with her and her wife Jenna Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, helping out with tasks (I word-processed and printed twenty six signs for pews reserved for visiting clergy, family members, choir etc.) and running errands.

Sunday we took care of the dogs while they were involved in church biz for morning services and preparations for the afternoon ordination. Then we drove to Northboro for the ordination. It was a beautiful service and celebration by her home church in Brookfield and her internship church in Northboro. Carmen did the Ordination Prayer and the Laying On Of Hands. The two choirs combined and sang beautifully, but the musical highlight was when four multi-congregational singers and a guitar performed "Down To The River To Pray," a goose bump moment.

So our friend Misty Dawn is now our friend Reverend Misty Dawn.

Early this morning (Monday) we left and came home, stopping only for gas, food and a major shopping trip in Erie, since we were coming through there anyway. It's been about four or five months since we stocked up in Erie. And don't tell anyone, but we bought a 32 inch TV for the living room. After Jenna's 55 inch all weekend, it was just too hard to think about watching our tiny little 19 inch HD television.

Anyway, we're back now, the kitties are well, and so are we.

Lame Update

This blogging thing seems to be quite beyond my capacity. It's been more than two weeks since my last post, and the only urges I've felt are motivated by pangs of guilt over my apparent inability to keep it up. I'm reminded of the late sixties and early seventies when I had a string of - what shall I call them? - Diaries? Journals? Record books? For days, weeks, sometimes months at a time I wrote down the events of the day. For years I was glad to have them, because when I or anybody else wondered when something happened, or tried to remember some detail of a significant event, I often had an account of it in my book. Not always, however. For instance, my best friend Michael's wedding happened during one of the many long dry spells. I had a book for 1973, but the wedding didn't get even a mention. Then, in 1974, I gave away, sold or threw away almost everything I owned, and after a long soul-searching, the diaries went in the dumpster - 1967 - 1974 gone.

Is that going to be my final solution thirty seven years later? I don't even know if it'd possible to obliterate a blog. I know I can delete posts, but would there still be an empty shell left behind if I stripped the guts out of it? So far I don't feel compelled to find out, but it could come to that. I have two copies in book form of The Gospel of Rand McNally, maybe I should try it on that one. For a while it was many people's favorite of the three, but the stories are pretty much written now. Occasionally I tack on another one, but its raison d'etre is spent. The Business of Show still
has about five years worth of stories to come - if I ever feel motivated to write them.

Motivation to write is hard to come by. In the beginning there were a lot of stories to tell and I had way too much time on my hands. Now it's a struggle to make myself write anything. Is it because I have nothing to say? Because I still think nobody cares whether I write or not? Because My time is spent on other pursuits?

Yes.

Great Show

Those of you who have read "The Business Of Show," the blog next door, know that I have done a lot of theatre over the past three decades. I have acted, worked scene shift crew, made or found costume parts, music, props etc., been sound person, hung and focused lights, run follow spot, and built lots and lots of scenery. I've seen great plays on crappy sets, seen crappy plays on great sets, and even crappy plays on crappy sets.

Not many people are as attuned to the scenery as I am. When I see a movie, I'm watching the sets as much as the story. When I go to a theme park, I'm feeling surfaces and knocking on them - fiberglass? concrete? wood? metal? But plays are the real deal. Ever since I saw "The Tempest" in London in 1975, I've known how stage scenery can be an integral part of the show. That was what nudged me into set work in community theatre, to get a feel for how it's done, and then to professional scenery construction for twenty two years.

When Mr. Snyder hoodwinked me into my first ever set design back in March, the pressure was on to create something that would be flexible and fast to shift on a tiny stage with no wing space and no fly capability. What I came up with worked, which is my first judging criterion. In fact, it gave me goosebumps a couple of times, shades of "The Tempest" in London.

The fact that it all looked good I attribute to Sue Crandall and her dedicated crew of painters. A scenery engineer I may be, but the look of it was all Sue and her painters. And the hinged walls were my idea, but Jim and Bill and Jason and Jacob and Lennie and Sue found and modified flats, secured them in position and hinged them so they would work, even with the uneven stage floor. I never had a hand in making my "boxes with exterior scenery on the outside and interiors on the inside" idea work. And work it did. The rolling double sided pieces were pretty much all me, as was the tree.

Better even than all of that, the show itself was excellent for a community theatre production. I think my greatest accomplishment in "The Secret Garden" was to design and build scenery that was as good as the show, that allowed the many overlapping scenes to flow into each other without bogging them down. I saw the show twice in rehearsal and twice in performance, and it made me proud every time.

Changes In Weather, Changes In Technology

It wasn't very long ago that I and everyone else walking the mean streets of Meadville, PA were happy to duck into a store or restaurant to get out of the cold and snow. I was wishing it would stop snowing nearly every day so I could put away my snow thrower and stop shoveling several times a week.

So now it's the middle of May. In April it rained twenty five out of thirty days By the time I had an opportunity to mow my yard and the neighbors', the grass was ankle-high in the short places and the dandelions were gaining on the grass in population. A short week later, it's raining again and the grass needs a mow job again. Suddenly I'm remembering last fall when I was wishing for cold weather so I could put away the lawnmower and the weed whacker. Little did I know... And yesterday when we went into stores, it was a relief to get in out of the heat and humidity - and then it started raining - AGAIN.

Albuquerque was the best, weather wise. No grass to mow, only a few weeds to pull out of the gravel every now and then; A three quarter inch snowfall was the most we got all winter. Massachusetts gave me some shoveling to do, but only because the blind landlords upstairs were oblivious to the real needs of the driveway - they had a person plow it, but he didn't plow it enough to allow the landlord's visitors to park out of our way. But a lawnmower I hadn't touched between June of 2005 and July of 2010.

Lake effect rain does not require shoveling or snowblowing, it's true. But it sure makes the grass grow. Time to start wishing for cold again.

A Long Three Weeks

My last posting was three weeks ago. Since then, I have cut all the parts for the rolling double-sided pieces, finished the tree, taped the stage to indicate where things probably will be, taken the sound equipment (including the new mixer!) back over to the church sanctuary and battled burnt out amplifiers for many hours, had two Saturday work days, pretty much finished the sets, and oh yeah, cooked and cleaned and scooped litter all de liblong day.

I have decided that somewhere along the line, somebody set up a computer program to design a theatre that features optimum inefficiency and difficulty. I know that I am at a loss to imagine a more inconvenient situation. Switch over to "The Business Of Show" and read all about it!

Cat Toys

Today was a perfect lesson in cat toys. Our friend Ann gave us a cute little plastic fabric arch with a ball on a string hanging down on the inside. She gave it to us because - wait for it - her cats weren't interested in it. We figured, hey, Lucia will play with anything. We put it down on the floor, and Lucia immediately went for the swinging ball. She broke the string and ran it around the house until she passed a plastic pull-plug from a milk carton. Ball forgotten; milk plug all over the house. Professor Remus J. Lupin walked over to the arch and began giving it a good long liesurely but thorough sniffing. Carmen wondered aloud if, when he smelled Ann's cats on there he got an image in his mind's eye of what they look like. We'll never know. So the arch thing is abandoned and the really fun stuff like bottle lids keep flying. Gotta love cats.

Paralysis

Here I sit. The tree in the basement is mostly done. It needs to be coated with glue and then painted, and yet here I sit. I have a list of things to buy for the rolling double sided pieces, and I can't begin building them until I purchase materials - and yet here I sit. The current MCT show has one more weekend to run before that set will be disassembled, beginning the panic-ridden transformation of the stage into sets for The Secret Garden during three Saturdays. The tree and the rolling units need to get done ASAP - and yet here I sit. I think about going down there to work, and something freezes up inside me. I don't understand why that is or, more pertinently, why I can't seem to break through and just get 'er done. What's wrong with me?

Meeting

At 10:30 this morning I met with Sharon Barnes, the director of The Secret Garden, to discuss the preliminary scenery plan. It was a good meeting, a few changes were made, and all for the better. You have to put something on paper as a starting point for making changes toward the final product. I learned that decades ago in the commercial art biz.

Her concerns were met - such as the bedroom being too small to fit the number of actors that are in certain bedroom scenes. My rolling double sided pieces were good, but we modified them to make them even better, hinging together clusters of them to make them easier to place and better looking. She liked the tree I described, and it is partially fabricated in my basement already. And we agreed that, given our space limitations, the gallery, the ballroom, the study and the library are all the same treatment.

So here we go. She will get information about my budget and the fabrication can begin in earnest.

Baggage Handled

Yesterday morning I sent the director an email asking her to let me know if she got my email and was able to open the Word document with pictures inserted. If she hated it, I told her, that's okay, we can work it out.

Yesterday evening the reply was in. Her husband had been home sick, throwing off her whole routine. She loved my designs but there are minor modifications to be made, and we're meeting as soon as we can manage it to hash out the details. So there, Dad!

Baggage

Last evening I went to my final Wildlife Rescue First Responder class, received my cute little diploma. Then I walked on up Main Street (up meaning up the steep hill) and prepared myself to hand over my drawings and descriptions of ideas for the sets to Sharon, the director of The Secret Garden. Unfortunately, she wasn't there. So this morning, before launch sequence began at 10:45, I scanned the drawings, inserted them into the Word document of descriptions, and emailed the whole package to her. Thirteen hours later, I have had no response.

I have vivid memories of my dad making up amazingly detailed stories about why he hadn't heard from someone. He dredges up a memory of something he thinks he might have said to offend them, or not said that he should have, or did or didn't do, and he believes in his heart that one of these scenarios must be true all the way up until he finally does hear from them, and it turns out that they were out of town, or caring for a sick relative, or just really busy in some way that made getting in touch impossible.

Well, my drawings were crap, my ideas were stupid, she's embarrassed to have to tell me how much she hates the work I have done, and that she's changed her mind about wanting me to design her sets. I don't blame her.

Thanks, Dad.

Free At Last!

We took Lucia to the vet yesterday morning to get her stitches out and, most importantly, her cone removed. It took her a little while to become accustomed to it once she came home and got over the trauma of yet another vet visit. Soon, however, she and Remus J. Lupin were charging through the house just like days of old. Up the steps to the big long attic room, back and forth around the upstairs, down the stairs, through the living room, dining room, bedroom, back up the stairs and around again. It was good to hear the pitter patter of little feet again!

Life In The Way

I have about twenty five minutes to post this before launch sequence begins to get me showered, dressed and out the door for the twenty-five minute walk to Sherwin Williams. It's hard to remember either direction from here: there was a time when I worked fifty to seventy hours a week and had no time at all to call my own; more recently there was a time when I worked zero hours and had nothing but time and guilt to drive my blogging efforts.

This is a twenty hour week, five hours a day, noon to five Tuesday through Friday. This schedule serves to maximize my effectiveness as delivery boy. They normally wait until later in the day to send stuff out, because orders come in later in the day, and things can be delivered all in one trip. Of course, it's not always very efficient. Yesterday the late-in-the-day order was for a client in Cochranton, which I included in my trip to Saegertown - which means I drove within two blocks of the store on the way between Saegertown and Cochranton.

But I'm here to talk about my day off - Monday, February 28th, 2011. My first duty was to get Carmen off to the Pittsburgh airport, which I did. She left around nine thirty. Then I changed out the three litter boxes and got the trash out to the curb. Then the big time pressure was to get to the church before the office administrator left for the day, so I could grab Carmen's check to deposit in the bank. I took along the technology to hang speakers in The Arthur Room, the temporary home of Sunday services during the lead abatement project in the 175 year old sanctuary.

All of those tasks done, I walked to the Downtown Mall to get my way-overdue haircut, and some last minute groceries before walking home again. I had less than an hour to put stuff away and eat lunch/supper before launch sequence began for the evening's activities.

I walked to Carnegie Hall - not in New York, but at Allegheny College Meadville - for my wildlife rehabilitator First Responders class 6:30 until 8:30. After that I climbed on up the steep hill to the Oddfellows Hall, home of the Meadville Community Theatre, for a meeting with the director of The Secret Garden, which opens in May. This was when it became clear to me that I had been drafted as set designer for that multiple set show. Sneaky, those theatre people.

Remember that long dry spell in my blogs when I was building the sets for Irving Berlin's White Christmas in Albuquerque? Well, here comes another one.