Simply Norma

Have you ever received one of these envelopes in the mail?

It seems like I receive them weekly, or maybe monthly but it seems like they come quite often.

The envelope includes coupons for “deals” on restaurants, carpet cleaning, etc. so I peruse each one to see if I can use one. And I found a great deal! Uh, well, I thought it was a great deal. I had needed to have the carpet cleaned and this coupon stuck out as a fantastic deal. (But, have you heard of the adage “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t?”

I really only needed to have one room cleaned but since they had such a great deal (2 rooms and a hallway) for $69.95, I decided to go for it.

I called the company and scheduled a morning appointment and was told they would arrive from 9 to noon. Around 11:50 a.m. I received a call from the company letting me know that their truck was in the shop and they hadn’t received it back yet. The gentleman wanted to come later in the afternoon. When I asked “What time?” I was told they couldn’t give me a time. So — I rescheduled another morning appointment. The man was very friendly “anytime you want, ma’am.”

The next appointment date found me waiting until noon again. I called the company and was told someone would get “right back” to me. By 12:30 I had not received a call back. My definition of someone getting “right back” to me was different from theirs, I’m assuming. I called again and this time was told that they were checking and could have someone out within a couple hours.

I explained to the gentleman that this was the second appointment that they had missed and that I couldn’t wait around for them to come in the afternoon. I asked for the appointment to be canceled. It was as if I had said a “bad” word. The man then told me the truck was on the way.

Me: Where is the truck?

Them: On the way.

Me: Yes, I know, but where on the way is it because earlier you told me it would be a couple of hours.

Them: It’s on the way.

Me: Please just cancel the appointment.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Have you ever seen that movie? Same person but he can have different personalities.

“You are being unreasonable.” Uh, what? Yes, that’s what I heard. “You are being unreasonable.” He mentioned something about my being a woman and then hung up.

I stood there with my mouth open not quite knowing how to react.

Then, I did what I should have done in the beginning: I checked online for reviews of the company. The company also operates in Spring Park, MN where the Better Business Bureau has given them an F rating. In addition, a blogger posted that he had had similar experiences with the company not showing up AND their rudeness.

Truth be told, this company was going to “save” me $30. What a waste of two mornings. My time is definitely more valuable than that.

What did I do? I hired the company that came to clean our carpets when we first moved into the house, Daisy Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning. I called, made the appointment, and they were out as promised.

Now that’s a company I can count on!

I spent the morning outside moving large pieces of wood into a woodpile that we had already started.  The mouse was back but this time he was alone. He doesn’t seem to be afraid and looks at me to see if I’m going to leave or what my plans are. I talk to him, uh, her, uh, whatever.  “Get on your way now …”

The mouse skadaddled away to an area where I will be heading. Again, he seems to not be afraid. He’s a rather quick mouse running hither and thither.

I manage to make a new woodpile from wood pieces that are just lying on the ground. There are so many pieces of wood lying around that I wonder if this property has ever been taken care of. Large, small, medium … I rake up the pieces and put them in plastic bags so that I can send them along with the trash but there are too many. Three bagfuls later, I determine that I am done for the day but then I look around and decide perhaps I have a little more work in me.

Large pieces of a cut-up tree trunk sit in an area looking messy so I decide to roll some of them down the slight slope and make a pathway with them. After working with four large pieces I again decide that I am done for the day.

My left wrist is swollen and achy again. I took a Naproxen pill this morning and it seemed to help but now I need to ice it and put the splint back on.  Since the orthopedic surgeon told me that I needed an MRI of my wrist, I’ve been calling places to determine the cost. Shopping for healthcare costs is not for the faint of heart. Calling, leaving messages and playing phone tag is enough to stop anyone from caring. Except me.

I have learned that the cost for the MRI is not the only charge I will incur. I will also have to pay for a Radiologist to review the MRI and give his/her determination of what the problem is.  What a bother.  Another hunt for pricing information.

One might wonder (anyone?) why I bother to check prices. Simply put, our healthcare plan is not as good as the one we used to have in Seattle. We have a $3000 deductible (unless its preventative visits) that we have to pay before our insurance matches anything. So I am more careful now about costs.

But, I’m digressing. Back to the yard …

Since I have so many pieces of wood (mostly decaying, moldy or unusable) I  bag them and wait until I have room in my garbage can. Sure, I can pay additional to leave extra bags out, but why? My large garbage can will take 2 large bags of wood in addition to our weekly garbage which isn’t a lot. So, I’ll accumulate the wood and every week I will slowly send more rotting wood away.

One day, it will be too cold to work outside and then I’ll be able to catch up with putting the wood in the garbage. I can be patient.

I am now more cognizant in closing the garage door in case small animals might enter, ie the mouse.  There are plenty of mouse feeders with poison out there so I’m not sure how this little fella managed to escape them.

I called my husband around noon to check in and said “You know, I could catch the mouse and we could keep him as a pet. I could call him Barky since he seems to like the woodpile.” (laughing)  It didn’t go over too well … I wonder why?

We bought our current house the end of April 2011 when snow (and a lot of it) was still on the ground. Last summer we had some work done on our property such as removing 5 dead trees. At that time, the .97 acre that we have looked manageable, at least in my head.

This year, with mild temperatures and little snow, our property looked more like an overgrown forest. Weeds grew abundantly and the growth of small trees and bushes could be seen which is not good for a dreamer like me who wants things to happen sooner rather than later.

Here is what our property currently looks like:

It looks messy but the wood pile has halfway been cleaned up which is a big plus. This next week I’ll be working on the woodpile so it will be “done” (although we might be felling two more almost dead trees so we have to put the wood somewhere.

But — I have a dream of what I’d like my backyard to look like. It doesn’t help that I visit Japanese gardens as they make my mouth water from the simplicity, structure and beauty that they have. I know, I know, it takes awhile to get a garden to look like that and my friends in Seattle reminded me that it took them over 5 years for their one acre to resemble anything like they wanted. Five years!  Well, it seems long until you remind yourself how much time it takes to work it every day.

I usually don’t work full days in the yard either. I like working in the cool of the day, the morning. By noon I’m ready to head inside and do something else. In the summer it’s easy to blame the bugs for only working a little each day, but in the autumn when the bugs are ready to hibernate (or simply die off) there are no excuses. Although, my left hand has gotten swollen and achy again from the fall I took in the Caribbean back in January so I guess that’s a really really good reason.

When we went to visit our daughter recently, she took us to the Anderson Japanese Garden in Illinois. It was a wonderful garden and gave me even more incentive to “get out there and work!”

Since I am a visual person, it gave me more ideas with what we can do with our property. But it will take time — lots of time. Eventually the park-like setting I’m looking for will happen. I’m thinking I should organize our property into four sections and then work on one section per year. Thoughts? Has anyone ever done this before besides the designers in Japan who come to America and do it for us?

Here’s a glimpse into some ideas although I don’t have a pond on my property. But I could put a fountain in …

Small hints of wood and bamboo can be seen through trees and bushes …

I especially like this lamppost …

And I definitely will need one of these fountains. I read that the noise from these bamboo fountains scare the deer away.

It would be nice to have a Japanese style building but, who will build it? I wonder if I could buy a kit to put together …

You can barely see the wooden steps that lead up to private property outside the gardens. Our property has a slight slope to it so perhaps I can incorporate some steps onto it.

We won’t be able to have a waterfall like this although we might be able to build a small fountain that looks like one.

Maybe little boys will come and play in our yard. (laughing)  That’s our grandson examining the rocks.

Incorporating a couple of bridges sounds really good to me.

A koi pond is the one thing we won’t have as I don’t want to have to worry about bringing the fish inside in the winter.

Well, what do you think? This garden combined open areas with areas that were more bushy which would work well for us since I like a more structured look and my husband likes a wild look.

I can dream, can’t I?

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I guess with time things start falling apart.

My current iPod classic is getting finicky with me as sometimes it stops playing the music I’m listening to — even while being charged on the iPod stand. It’s quite odd.

Then it decided not to allow me to push the buttons to select a playlist or artist. Oh wait, it works now. Oh, wait, it doesn’t.  Well, you get my drift …

I’ve been having problems with it for a few months now and my husband, bless his heart, has offered me his old iPod. I’m not sure which one is worse although his doesn’t seem to have a mind of its own. The only problem with his is that the screen is “broken” and it feels like it weighs ten pounds — well, alright, a little bit of an exaggeration on the weight.

With Apple’s recent announcement of the new iPhone 5 I checked and found that they have also updated their iPod’s. So … I have my eye on a really pretty blue iPod Nano.

In reading up on the newer Nano’s, they do quite a lot more than my current one. For instance, the Nano now has Nike support and a pedometer that’s built into it.  Cool!  It also is bluetooth enabled. Wowie zowie!

Now I need to find time to get to an Apple store to feel it in my hands and see if I really like it — in person. Can’t wait to try it out!

Click here to see the new iPod Nano.

When we first moved to our house over 16 months ago, I noticed black plastic triangle, hmmm, for lack of a better word, thingamajigs.  There were probably 12 of them that were placed strategically around our property. I didn’t know what they were for until the pest control company we hired said “Did you want me to fill the mice baits?” “Uh, what?”

Yes, the plastic black triangles are mice baits that they put poison in.  The mice then eat and off they go to die some place else. I had not seen any mice though.

For me, the saying “out of sight, out of mind” works very well until, of course, the “out of sight” comes into sight.

I moved most of the wood from the woodpile in the back of our property to the new woodpile at the side of the house. Two more trips and I was done. I reached for a piece of wood to put in the wagon I use to haul things and then — something moved. I had seen spiders already but I think I’m getting used to them and just let them get out of the way then proceed with my work.

I picked up another piece of wood … something moved again. Looking to the left, I spotted them. Two small cute-as-a-button mice. Hmmm … they kept darting this way and that and I was wondering if maybe, just maybe, they had a nest in the woodpile that I couldn’t see. So, I did what any new-to-woodpile girl would do — I stopped what I was doing for the day. This will allow the mice to move elsewhere, or am I too hopeful about that?

Perhaps by tomorrow they’ll be gone and I can continue that part of my work.

But I am so proud of myself! In less than 1 1/2 hours I moved a whole stack of wood from one location to another. I must be getting to be a real country girl.  (laughing)

We are now ready for the cold and snow to hit. We don’t need the wood to heat our house but we sure do like having our fireplace going.

Weather predictions through the end of the year are calling for a dry autumn so we’ll wait and see what happens — dry means outside work will continue until it gets too cold. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy these dry crisp sunny autumn days.

It’s after 1 a.m. Sunday morning and I am awake. Before going to bed, I took a Naproxen because I had a slight headache. It hasn’t helped much, yet, and it’s been a couple of hours. Unfortunately the label says I can only take one every 8 hours.

The headache is one-sided which can mean the start of a migraine but taking an Excedrin For Migraine pill is not an option as they have caffeine which would keep me awake — but they do get rid of my headaches.

So I’ve gotten up trying to figure out why I’m still awake as the headache doesn’t seem severe enough to warrant a sleepless night.

Saturday started out easy enough but I much anticipated going to church because a friend, who I hadn’t seen in over 10 years, recently moved to Minnesota to look for work.

I first met him when he came to visit the church I attended in Seattle. I invited him home for lunch and the rest is history. He has an interesting background. He came to the U.S. seeking asylum from Liberia where he is from. He is currently a U.S. citizen and received a Masters of Divinity degree.

When my husband and I arrived at church he was not there yet. I kept looking back to see if I could see him amid the many faces in church. Once he spotted me (in spite of my now almost gray hair) he came straight for us. I was so happy to see him. We invited him over for lunch, we ate, talked then he went to his temporary home.

But surely that excitement wouldn’t cause a headache or have me wired that I can’t sleep. Thinking back to before the headache started, I remember having hot chocolate, small pieces of cheddar cheese and saltine crackers. I have heard that cheese can cause headaches in some people.  Hmmm …

Surely it can’t be the hot chocolate … that’s an almost daily ritual for me.

Perhaps my being wired (if I can call it that) and possibly the headache is from the stress my church is going through right now. They have started committees to discuss whether women should be ordained as Pastors. And, unfortunately, three Conferences have decided to pre-empt the committee process and have approved gender neutral ordinations. I’m not sure what the result of that will be.

What’s really interesting is that the church was co-founded by a woman. And even more interesting is that women have been doing the work as “commissioned” Pastors instead of “ordained” Pastors. They pretty much do everything the men do so why not give them the title?

For me, the missing piece is the study of what God wants us to do in this situation. What does His word say about it? Just because women have been allowed to do something for so many years doesn’t mean that God wanted it that way.

My head spins when I think of all the reading and policy deciphering that I need to do in order to decide for myself what the answer is.

Some people have not behaved humbly — men nor women — and that troubles me even more. This isn’t about “rights” — it’s about following what God would have us to do in spite of what we want to do.

The situation brings to mind a similar problem within the Catholic Church. Some priests wanted to marry but the teachings of the church prohibited it. My stance on that was — get out. If you don’t like the teachings you don’t have to belong to that particular organization. Instead, priests tried to change the system and were angry and accusing of the church in spite of their agreement when they first joined.

We seem to live in a world where we demand what we think is rightfully ours. But that’s not the way of a Christian. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek yet the world says defend yourself. (More on that another time …)

Our calling is different than the world’s.

So, I’ll listen to the pros and cons, I’ll read, but mostly I’ll pray. We have Someone higher than ourselves who cares about the direction of His church. We must do what He wants in spite of what we or others want.

So many things in my head — no wonder I’m wired.

Looking out the window into the moonless night, I see so many stars. I pick up the binoculars, look again and see so many more stars. I’m reminded of the Scripture that says that God knows the number of hairs on my head. Quite a detailed God He is.

There is truly nothing to worry about. In the end everything will work out. It’s just that humans are so unpredictable and I don’t like seeing power plays in the church among my brothers and sisters.

Okay … time to try to sleep again.