Thankful for a Piano

Today, I was at the hospital for something pretty routine (not actually hospital-worthy, but the nature of my health insurance is that they will pay for everything as long as I go where they tell me to, and so they would rather I go to Hospital N for routine stuff than a doctor's office). Afterwards, waiting for Viking, who has gone to the next town to refuel the Rumpled Ranger.

There is a piano.

The beautiful, big hospital in the town where I grew up has three of these. They are placed in very open locations - my favorite is a Steinway in a rather intimate (by comparison) lounge with a pretty wall-fountain. Another is in this big marble tower-room that is cold and impressive - like if someone was inspired to build a cloister modeled after a well, and all they had to work with was marble. Playing there, everything echoes fantastically throughout the underground network. The most well-known is in a very big, very open, VERY well-trafficked central location in the hospital, and I am such a mouse that I've only played on that one once. Perhaps twice.

Typically, this is my thing. After giving blood, I stroll across the street and play on the Steinway for about an hour or so, just long enough to make sure I'm okay to drive again. Sometimes when I'm stressed and downtown late at night - if you know the underground walkways, you can almost always find a way to where you want to be in it - I'll go and play on the Steinway. That lounge is one of my favorite places in the city - it's set underground, but one side opens to a courtyard, so it's a two-story window letting in all kinds of light, but below the public eyes, and there are usually a few people on the couches and chairs who are pleased by a bit of music.

The understanding with each piano is that they are gifts to the people, for the benefit of the people. Music is healing. If you are able to play, and you can treat the gift with care, you are welcome to play.

And there is a grand on the ground floor of Hospital N.

Interestingly, I didn't really think about it at the time, but the construction of Hospital N, the main building is three stories, but they're all reached by an open staircase - so the music from the piano will flow down the corridors a bit on all levels.

I love to play. I am very rusty. We don't take pianos when we go around the world, and I have yet to establish regular access to one here in Washington. But there's something to be said for muscle memory.

And so, I quietly asked the other man waiting if it would disturb him if I played, and then quietly removed the cover and sat down.

And I played.

There was a time when my life was oriented around performance. I was bouncing off the walls, high-energy, brilliant smile when I was onstage. I lived for the energy coming off the audience, for the shared emotion of a well-formed creation, that had taken discipline, diligence, and passion to put together.

I don't know when that changed. Now I'm not much concerned with the presence of an audience. Now I just like to play, to make music. Fingering my way through a couple chords on a friend's guitar when we meet before work to pray each morning. The Gentleman sent me a harmonica within the first month of us leaving, just in regards to how much I missed making music and it was something I could have in my pocket and play with when there was no one around. I'm more likely to be making some kind of music, even just whistling or singing, when no one's paying attention. More often than not, I'M not paying attention.

One of the conversations that stuck fast in my mind was a day when a few of us friends were talking while watching a movie, and I don't remember who said what, but I answered it with, "Yeah, I don't think I really count as that anymore - I haven't picked up my instrument in YEARS."
The Gentleman was surprised, and turned to look directly at me. He has a tone that comes in when he's speaking what he absolutely believes to be true. "No - you're a musician."

Just simply stating what he had seen, what he knew to be true. The Gentleman values music, even treasures it as something that enriches life and wasn't part of his growing-up. I think I value mountains for a similar reason.

And playing the piano unlocked something. Hard to describe, but in the mix of twenty-something, "Oh, what am I ever going to do with my life, what am I good at, where should I go?" was the affirmation - this resonates with something of who I am.

It wasn't perfect. I messed up a few times. One song I had to abort halfway through because I could NOT remember one of the chord changes. But when I stopped, three stories over my head, I heard enthusiastic applause. Glanced up to see a small band of kids, who'd clustered out on the balcony to watch.

It might have been my rustiest time playing yet, and I stopped playing for applause a few years ago. I think it's that it was so unexpected, and so unneeded - I was actually surprised, in a very happy way.

And I got to play again.

There's so much to be thankful for.

Viking Thanks

This isn't any one event from today, but more the last year.

This is my last day seeing Viking for awhile. I have one of those 60-hour shifts, so I'll actually miss her leaving - she's going to go spend a week with her family, and then headed to Italy for two years.

Viking is the woman who knows me best from the last two years, by virtue of us having spent the most time together. We have almost completely different backstories (realized Tuesday that she and the Gentleman have almost identical backstories, actually), and through two very different roads came out at a point where we were basically the same person. Mostly, we have the same spiritual struggles, a similar approach to males and whimsy...it's really remarkable how much we find we have in common.

Most of our family doesn't see this, but that may also be because Viking and I look almost nothing alike. She's fashioned rather like Merida and I'm a bit like Belle.

Even as relaxed as I am with the Gentleman, and everything he's seen in my personality, there's a level of sheer goofiness and vulnerability that I only have with Viking (likely because of the whole female thing - there is some factor of, when one is interested in having an attractive man find one attractive, one does not in his presence belt out selections from "3-2-1 Penguins!" in a tiny German hamster voice).

Bob Cratchit said at the dinner table, "It's all right, children. Life is a series of meetings and partings." While sentimental, I do think it's very possible to have had two very good (and challenging, and frustrating, and cry-on-your-shoulder...oh, yeah, we went through two deployments together) years, and to be thankful for those two years at the time of parting, and be happy for your friend as she heads off to new adventures on the other side of the world.

And I'm happy to have today with her.

(She would know this, because in honor of the occasion, I created, in the shower, a special medley, setting the lyrics from Cruella de Vil to the melody of Rum Tum Tugger, interspersed with bits of a hyper-syncopated Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The last month together has been a flair of all the things that I only bring out around her, taken to the max. She's just thrilled. :D )

There's so much to be thankful for.

Sander Thanks

My current project involves addressing a corrosion problem on an awful lot of steel.

After we blast off the paint where rust has eaten through, we then sand the metal to get as much rust as possible off it before we prime and paint again. Very straightforward concept. Rust is metal-cancer.

At one point, I am working with a disc-sander* about six inches wide, feathering an edge on the underside of a railing, so that there is a smooth transition from the height of the paint we left on there to the bare metal - hopefully this means that it will STAY smooth when we repaint, so weather and corrosion-gremlins won't find a good spot to get their teeth locked in. 'cause that's really how corrosion happens.

*Pneumatically-powered, spins a disc of hard sandpaper very fast. Throws tiny shards of glowing-hot metal and oil-based paint dust at my face and hair, which is why I wear my hard hat and a full-masked respirator.




When I'm focused on a task like this, I really only have the ability to think about four things at once, not the usual seven or eight. So, I'm focused on my footing on the scaffolding. I'm focused on holding myself half-upside-down over this railing, maintaining the necessary angle to reach this stuff. I'm focused on making sure my safety gear stays with me and doesn't fall eight stories (which wouldn't be bad, just mean that I'd have to stop what I'm doing and clamber out of the scaffolding and trot down 8 stories to retrieve it), and most of all I'm very focused on that delicate little slope I'm carefully spreading through four layers of paint.

I'm not at all focused on the OTHER side of the sander disc. The one away from the railing. Or my wrist's proximity to it.

And then suddenly, my attention is seized, and the other three are all forgotten, as I move my wrist just a hair too close to the spinning disc, and open up a slash in my forearm to fill with paint dust and tiny shards of metal.

Hrm.

This is different.

But, going off to wash it out (helpfully, the nearest running water is only twelve stories down and a quarter-mile away), it's actually only about a quarter-second's worth of damage. Considering everything that runs through one's forearm/wrist there, this could have been a terribly exciting day - really, this just stings a lot.

So today, I'm very, very thankful for pain, because the surprise of unexpected pain caused me to release the hold I had on the sander, and as a result it didn't go any deeper. This will hopefully heal up in a week or two.

There's so much to be thankful for.

Hard Hat Thanks

This'll be a long one. Some explanation is in order.

(This is largely due to my own lack of posting, as I'll have to explain a few things that would in other circumstances have been explained months ago.)

First off, another one of those neat points where a few ideas had a sort of crossroads in my brain that would have completely missed each other anywhere else.
-Noting that one of my friends was starting to really irritate me with his work attitude.
-Realizing that said friend was actually mirroring me, or taking his cue from me - I just hadn't been paying attention to the things I'd been saying about work. Translation: I need an attitude adjustment.
-Conversation overheard with a couple of guys looking forward to Thanksgiving (when we're underway, I think the two topics the guys discuss most are sex they're looking forward to having and food they're looking forward to eating. When I'm in the room, they usually keep it to the latter), which is now 4 months away.

All this came down to, "I need to fix my attitude. There is so much I have in my life that I'm thankful for, and I think I should talk about it more often. One day is much too short for being thankful. I want to take from now until Thanksgiving to really pay attention to blessings in my life."

This also doubles neatly because I stopped writing letters home when we made it back to the States (Praise the Lord!), and now nobody outside of my group of 8-12 friends here has any idea what I do with life. There has been some irritation expressed on the subject. Justifiably so.

Today, I am very thankful for a situation with my hard hat.

Explaining this situation will take some time.

First off, the powers that I work for have the authority to determine where I live. Underneath those powers, the team that I work for takes punctuality very seriously. Their approach to a lack of punctuality is to recommend to the powers that the individual in question take up residence in the barge. Barge life is not awful - you have a place to sleep, a place to shower, and you can get food there. It's just very un-fun, and since no one can access the barge without a certain security clearance, your social life just got zapped. There is also the slight bit about how almost every electronic amusement - your laptop, your phone, etc. - has certain features that mean they cannot be kept on the barge.

Last week, two people from this team were assigned to the barge. Admittedly, one of them showed up for work three hours late - I have no idea how you even do that - but the other was two minutes late. I've seen one person sent to the barge for showing up twenty seconds after 7 a.m. We do not mess with the punctuality.

I happen to be very appreciative of my living situation. Jewel owns a house in the next lovely little town over from where I work, Dawn's been renting one of the upstairs bedrooms for some time, and Viking and I moved into the other* about a month ago. Jewel is currently contracted to the same people I work for (she gets paid way better than I do, but her hours and responsibilities make it clear she's earning it), so most mornings, she's my ride to work.

*By which I mean, we both keep our clothes and books up there, Viking sleeps on the air bed, and I take the downstairs couch because I prefer it to the air bed.

That bit about wacky hours? Watching Jewel has taught me the importance of having my job be something I enjoy, and something I believe in. Most weekdays, she gets up at 4 a.m., has her devos, drives to work, spends two hours assembling her own information and whatever she's going to need to prepare for her team, meets with her team around 7, they'll wrap up around 3 or 4 p.m., she'll be turning over information to the night team about what they did that day, so she's usually ready to go at about 4 or 5, we'll stop and grab food on the way home, and then she just crashes. Straight to bed. Life for Jewel, during the week, is sleep, devos, and work. And she's happy. She's one of the best people I know to hang out with - you just feel like you can rest in her presence.

Every night before she crashes, I check with her what time she's leaving in the morning, she'll think through what she needs to get done before work, and come up with two hours, one hour, whatever. Last night, she realized that she would have to get in more than three hours before work, so I appealed to Viking (because I didn't feel like getting up at 3), who agreed that if I woke her at 5:30, and not before, she would be willing to take me in.

(In case you're wondering what I do with all that time before work, since my team doesn't believe in prep work - my team wears a uniform that can't be worn past the gate. So, I'll usually come in and change, and then get breakfast here, and show up about fifteen minutes early. If it's a very early morning, I'll read - I'm looking forward to having my commuter-bike, because then I can head to the gym, shower, AND get over to work in time to change and eat on those very early mornings.)

In my morning preparations, I realized at 5:40 that I was missing a critical element of my work clothes. My entire work environment is currently a construction zone, so we all wear hard hats and safety glasses to work. Normally, I leave mine in Jewel's car after work, not bothering to bring it in the house - it's just one more item I don't have to corral in the morning if it's already out there.

But, wait a minute, Jewel already left - and while I know where she parks, I also know her car is locked, and phones aren't permitted past the gate, so I'll have to run to her office (but wait, that's why she's going in so early today - her whole team's moving to a new office and she wants to get her stuff hauled so they can actually do real work during the workday - I don't know where her new office is) and get the keys and run back to the car and can I do all that and change and still make it on time...wait.

I didn't ride home with Jewel yesterday. (My brain takes a little longer on such things in the mornings.)
Yesterday was the thing over where GS works. He picked me up from work so we could make the opening announcements on time.
I left my hard hat in the Gentleman's car.

I dive for my phone. The Gentleman and I work for the same organization, but with good traffic, it's about a twenty, twenty-five minute drive between our locations. The nature of his work is that he ALSO does not take his phone with him, and I know he goes for breakfast first and then goes to work....

This is my brain in the morning. Actually, this is my brain anytime I leave the house. Details details details all pertaining to Can I Get This Thing Done?

The Gentleman is surprised, pleased, and still sleepy to hear from me at this hour, and has enough command of his faculties to recall that yes, I did indeed leave my hard hat in his backseat. And this without coffee, ladies and gentlemen! (The Gentleman is NOT a morning person. He is, however, exceedingly gracious and agrees to leave early in order to meet me at his car.)

So, Viking and I haul furiously to make it to the lee side of the peninsula, get through the gate (pleasantly, the line is short), meet the Gentleman, I get my hard hat and a hug, and we take off flying for the windward side of the peninsula.

Because there is a very slight complication regarding the gate on this side. There are so many people who work this side, and so few gates available, that if one does not make it to the gate before 6 a.m., one is probably not getting IN the gate before 6:30.

Well, we did get stuck in that line, but this has already run beastly long, so I'll just say, praise the Lord, we made it. Viking dropped me off at 6:36 (not that I was counting the minutes or anything), I covered a lot of distance at a very fast walk (running about in an area where the security guards are just a mite touchy is usually a good way to get detained and questioned), shot through a flying change of uniform (I don't think my hair has EVER looked so unprofessional for work), made it over to where I work, joined the team...two minutes to 7.

Adrenaline crash, yes, but riding that exhausted gratitude high for the rest of the morning. One more day. Never know what tomorrow's going to bring, but at least for today, I still get to live at the house.

There's so much to be thankful for.

Pack It Up, Pack It Up...

Why moving?

Not because it's easier. It's not.

It's going to mean sharing a bathroom with two other women, where before I shared with one (and barely saw her anyway.)
It's going to mean meshing together the lifestyles of four women in one house, where before I pretty much did whatever I wanted (within what was required of me by work).
It's going to mean biking ten miles to work every day, which also means arriving early enough to utilize the gym showers, changing into work clothes, and a half-hour walk from the gym to work. Which, if I'm serious about getting the sleep my body needs in order to function at work, is going to mean changing my evening lifestyle...which will mean changing up my entire social life.
It's going to mean going from my bed to sleeping on the floor (sometimes the couch). It's going to mean having to maintain more responsibility about my finances, food, and night-before preparation.

It's going to mean being stretched. And I need that, badly.

I'm looking at moving in with Jewel and Dawn. (And Viking, too, for her last month in the States). Because the alternative is in the mirror. I'm seeing myself slowly but solidly becoming a person I really don't want to be.

In my current situation, I barely have to accommodate anyone else's needs, or even desires. Not really. Socially, the four of us barely interact with each other. I clean up the bathroom or the kitchen when *I* think it needs it. I have my little stash of me-food in the refrigerator, I can watch movies or read books whenever I want, I have my comfy bed and personal space marked off with invisible lines - honestly, the greatest inconvenience my roommates pose in my life is that once in awhile I have to wait an hour for the dryer.

And I'm becoming selfish. Self-absorbed. Growing up in a smallish family, I still had to do things like stop playing the piano when people needed to sleep, take out the dog because someone had work, pause and LISTEN in conversation. I spend my leisure time mostly by myself - means that the person I'm talking to most is myself, and I'm losing the skill of listening. Losing the inherent understanding that we look out for each other, take care of each other. Losing the reasons - I understand taking care of myself, but forget WHY it's important to do that.

I'm slowly evolving into a pig. And I really, really don't want to be that. When I say I don't like what I see in the mirror, I'm not talking about my skin or my waistline. It's the look in my eyes. There's something missing there.

Even my manager noticed - we had a one-on-one meeting yesterday, and at one point he asked me if I was doing okay, that I'd been changing over the last two months. We've been working together for the last two years.

Jewel and Dawn are the two women in my life that I would most want to be like. I know we become like the people we spend the most time with - I've experienced this over and over in my own life. If I move in with someone, I'm going to start picking up their attributes. Living with myself, I just reinforce the ones going on, hardening that pig-heart that's developing. I'm aware that it's important to choose one's housemates carefully, and weighed a few options - living on my own couldn't keep going like this, but living with someone less responsible and joyful than these two wouldn't be much better. Probably wouldn't keep hardening in the same way, but becoming more negative isn't a direction I want to go, either.

In the Indian In The Cupboard, Little Bear is at one point going back to his people, and realizing that his young friend Omri knows what's going to happen for them, but can't tell him about it. So he says, kind of asking, "Things change for us?"
Omri nods, glad to be able to confirm at least this much. "They will."

Hero Of the Day

Today, the Powers That Be decided that several of us needed to move. We've sort of been existing between where we lived for the last 8 months, and where we'll live for the next year, and most of us have been transferring stuff a backpack-load at a time, with the understanding that we need to be done with this sometime next week.

Or, y'know, a week early, that's cool, too.

Grouse grouse grouse. I have about four more backpack-loads - and we refer to my backpack as "The SUV of all backpacks." It would look appropriate if I were, say, in full battle rattle and headed somewhere Very Important in one of the 'stans. Here, when filled, it looks like I'm walking home from work with a little black Mini Cooper strapped to my back. Four of these, I had expected to get home over the next 4-5 days.

Also tempting is the urge to feel sorry for myself for not having the use of my left arm. Home is about a 20-25 minute walk, so it's not THAT bad to have to make multiple trips, but there's this Really Big Hill. Most of the time, I am quite fond of the Really Big Hill. It's pretty, and affords me a beautiful view of Rainier, and a pretty walk through the trees with holly and ivy and big pines, and is really a very relaxing way to transition from work to whatever one is doing after work.

That's when one is carrying a backpack or less.

I am at this point rather frazzled and frustrated. And in deep need of a shower. The Gentleman gets off work a little earlier than I do this week, and shot me a text - I basically wailed my despair (fortunately contained in the dignity of text).

His first response, "What can I do to help?"

Oh.

Well, that puts a different light on it.

And then along the way in my mad digging, I come across my "garment bag." It was originally designed to hold dress clothes, but I've been known to stuff just about anything into it.

And someone points out that I don't need another backpack - I could probably fit two backpack loads in a really big trash bag.

And the Gentleman quietly waits at Red Robin (not only do they have bottomless fries, they also have a bottomless root beer float), studying the section of Proverbs we're on tonight, waiting for The Powers That Be to inspect my work and allow that perhaps I can go home now.

And then he waits as close as he can to the gate (and gets reprimanded by a police officer for his troubles.)

And immediately lifts my SUV-backpack off me as soon as I'm in range, and carries it easily to his trunk (I'd been laboring under the thing.)



And waits for me to make a second trip so I can get everything out.

And has country music playing for me when I get in the car.

And makes the pretty drive up the hill, not the speedy one, all the while talking of happy things and his family (he knows I like his family...and I definitely like that his family likes me :P ).

And parks and hugs me, even though we both know I am filthy from work and need a shower - he's just happy to see me.

Then we get out into the bright sunshiny day, and he goes around to the trunk, throws my giant backpack on his back, grabs the trash bag (I had to set this thing down every 200 feet. It's kind of heavy.) in one hand, and the garment bag in the other, and RUNS up the dirt/gravel hill.

I got to carry his waterbottle. He said he can't run with it in his jeans pocket like that.

Then he slowed and waited to walk up the stairs with me.

And talked some sense and perspective into me, so that I realized I didn't have to unpack and put everything away RIGHT THEN - that had been one of the major stress points.

Then before I did anything with unpacking, he helped me find Viking's keys (I'd forgotten to bring them back to her Monday, and had work all day Tuesday - she wasn't able to find them in the room, either. Of course, silly us, we never once thought to look inside my running shoes.)



And talked with me while I unpacked one bag, just hanging out and discussing happy matters.

Viking came over, and we all went for Subway (since I'm in serious need of groceries).

Then we all stayed up, studied Proverbs, and sat about swapping work stories and legends.

And at the end, it was a really, really good day.

I wonder if it's just because he always decides to see them that way.

Well, I was about due for something like this.

The Ranger is a sort of rumpled red. It was less rumpled when Hammer owned it, but when Hammer transferred to a little island in the Pacific, he sold it to my dear friend, Viking. Viking maybe wasn't quite ready for her first vehicle to be something as big as the Ranger, but in time she learned how to take corners without taking them OUT, and it really does suit her personality.

That was about a year ago. This summer, we came back to hauling the rumpled red Ranger everywhere. We like it. This weekend, Viking had to work, and permitted me the use of her truck so that I could get a couple of the girls to Bible Study Friday night, and generally tool about with it all weekend.

Saturday afternoon, went to go see Oz the Magnificent (the message of which I actually really needed then, so, beautifully timed), and was lounging in the back of the truck, waiting for a friend, and observed a candy bar wrapper skittering across the parking lot.

The Gentleman's mentor, MedDad, has a saying about convictions - that a conviction is a belief you're willing to die for, or at least it's something you live out. You can argue about a belief without it ever showing up in your life - conviction does. I suppose that means I have a conviction about litter - it falls under, "If you see a problem, and you're able to FIX the problem, why wouldn't you?"

So, the plan was to hop out of the truck, capture the errant wrapper, stuff it in my pocket, and return to the truck.

The plan did not figure in one foot being slightly less committed to that hop than the other.
So I fell sideways about 8 feet to the pavement. Fortunately, training kicked in and I rolled, taking off a lot of the force of impact from my right shoulder. Unfortunately, situational awareness ALSO kicked in, and while I rolled facedown and could have continued to my left, I was also aware of that being the traffic lane, and I used my left arm to stop progress.

That may have been a mistake. Had there been traffic, would have been the right move, but there was not, and my arm wasn't strong enough to stop that much force without some serious damage. (And the Gentleman's appreciation for building physical strength to prevent injury suddenly makes much more sense now.)

What followed was pretty graceless, but I made it back to the truck.

Later that night, the Gentleman and I were joining friends for a cookout (read: throw a dead tree on a fire ring. Stuff some branches underneath. Set fire to it. Let hot dogs and marshmallows commence.), and while helping to clean up, I made the disastrous decision to lift a bag of marshmallows with my left hand.

That was about a 7 on the pain scale. (My pain scale has 8 as "curled up on the floor in the fetal position.") Hrm.

Monday morning, take my beautifully bruised (y'gotta see this one - it's a piece of work) arm down to medical. Our medical is a little goofy - just about anything but sheer stupidity is all covered under our work insurance, but if something isn't life-threatening, there are only specific hours when you can get it checked out. Weekend is not part of this.

X-rays say nothing is fractured. The nice friendly medic and I were both, "Yes, we already know THAT," owing to how it was performing. I can use the hand fine, I just can't rotate my arm or lift anything over two pounds (I tried lifting a filled waterbottle out of the Gentleman's sink the day before. It was a little humbling.).

The theory is that I have bruised/strained the tendons in and around my forearm, and managed one BEAUT of a bruise (this is probably my new record for bruising. As far as I can tell, that's not from the pavement at all - it's from the bones and everything else hitting the INSIDE of the skin really hard.) inside my left arm. The rest of me's got minor bruises and scrapes, but an unusable left arm has me a little queasy about the upcoming Tough Mudder on the 15th. We'll see what develops.