Rules

    I’m really hung up on rules, far more than the average bear.
    In third grade, my teacher’s name was Mrs. Bunce. In a school where the average teacher was close to sixty years old, she was quite young, perhaps twenty-five years old. She had come from Kentucky and she was an exotic outsider in my little New England town. She only taught at my school for one year; I think her husband must have been in the Air Force, assigned to Westover Field in Chicopee, MA. She moved back to Kentucky at the end of the year and I never saw her again, but I really liked her. I liked anyone who was, in general, kind.
    Third graders are not as needy as first graders but they are still little kids. Mrs. Bunce was trying to wean us from our neediness while still maintaining discipline, so she instituted a number of rules for our class. One rule was that no could leave the classroom without her permission. Another was, no one was allowed to interrupt her while she was working with a group.
    I was sitting in my seat, working on math problems. Mrs. Bunce had divided the class of about twenty-five kids into four or five groups, according to our levels of comprehension. I was always in the top group and we were usually set to work without direct supervision while she worked with the kids who struggled.
    Drip. A large drop of blood had plopped onto my worksheet. I had felt its warm liquidity flow down the inside of my nose from wherever it had leaked, to escape through the tip of my nostril. I had seen it, like a shining crimson jewel, glistening in midair just before it struck the whiteness of the page. It was lovely. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I would suffer from chronic nosebleeds every winter until I was put on daily antihistamines for my allergies. Drip. My nose dripped a second time before I could stand up. I brushed the page with my hand, smudging the bloodstain, then cupped my hands under my nose to catch a third drop. I walked carefully to the front of the room, behind the teacher’s desk, to the circled small group, my face tipped over my cupped hands. Drip. I stood next to the back of Mrs. Bunce’s chair as she sat in the circle, leaning up to write on the blackboard, patiently explaining the lesson once again to the mathematically confused kids.
    I started to say, “Mrs Bunce?” but before I could finish my query, she held up her hand and in a commanding tone, still facing the blackboard and the group, said, “Wait. I’m working with this group.” Politely, I waited, my hands slowly filling with blood as my nose steadily and inexorably dripped.
    She continued talking to the group for about five minutes. My hands were just about to overflow when she finally turned, a bit annoyed, to see what I wanted. She gasped. I said in a nasal tone, trying hard to not expel any air through my nose as it would only exacerbate the flow, “May I go to the nurse?”
    She turned over her chair in her haste as she scrambled to her feet, grabbed my wrist, and led me out of the room. Some blood spilled onto the tile floor. This was before AIDS and any concern over biohazards; she was mostly worried about getting bloodstains on her clothing. I tried to continue catching the drops but my hands were too full and I left a trail of drips all the way down the hall to the nurse’s office. The nurse, seeing my bloody hands and face, grabbed a fistful of paper towels, dampened them, and cleaned up the worst of my mess. She then handed me a wad of tissues to with which to wipe my nose. Once I was safely in the care of the nurse, Mrs. Bunce quickly returned to the classroom, before the kids could go completely berserk in her absence. The nurse called the janitor and he cleaned up the blood trail; he ducked into the nurse’s cubicle briefly to get the last drops off of the floor. Swishing his mop across the tiles, he reassured me that blood was no big deal for him and a lot nicer than the usual mess of puke from a sick kid.
    The nurse sat me in a chair and tipped my head back, putting an ice pack on the bridge of my nose. Initially, the coppery taste of blood running down the back of my throat was nauseating but the ice pack quickly encouraged it to clot. The nurse gave me some juice to take away the worst of the bloody flavor. I had stuffed some tissues into the end of my nose to act as a cork. After a short time, my nose stopped bleeding and I was able to remove the blob of tissue. The nurse told me not to blow my nose for at least a day and gave me more tissues to dab gently at the tip. I washed my hands and face in her sink; I was pretty gory but my clothes had stayed clean. I rejoined my peers in the lunchroom, then went to read a book in the classroom when they went outside for recess. Mrs. Bunce was waiting for me.
    Mrs. Bunce was upset; she wanted to know why I had waited quietly instead of going to the nurse immediately. In a surprised tone, I reminded her of the classroom rules. She was speechless. She didn’t want to scold me for following the rules but she was also concerned about my bleeding while waiting for her permission to leave. She said nothing more about my behavior, just asked if I felt up to working. Again, I was surprised; since the nurse had sent me back to class, of course I could work. Mrs. Bunce gave me a new copy of the paper that I had been working on and suggested that I finish it for homework, and that I could do free-reading for the rest of the day. Since I loved free-reading, I was content.
    When recess ended and the class returned, Mrs. Bunce told everyone that while, in general, no one was allowed to leave the room without permission, bleeding or puking were exceptions. I nodded, but was often unsure what constituted an appropriate reason to break rules. Her rules stayed with me throughout my schooling and I always found it difficult to leave any classroom, not matter how valid my reasoning.
    In retrospect, I wonder what Mrs. Bunce thought. I was, and continued to be, her star pupil but I had little sense of self-preservation; I had exhibited no common sense. I was academically smart but I had a lot of trouble with the grey areas of social behavior. It wasn’t enough to comment about on my report card but, in retrospect, she was greatly troubled that day by my too-polite behavior. Later, there were extended discussions in educational literature about different types of intelligence, but at the time, I wonder what she thought about my dichotomous abilities. She may have just thought that I was overly socialized in stereotypical girl behavior, and I suspect that this is part of my problem with breaking rules.

    I continue to find it difficult to break rules, particularly ones that were instilled into me at an early age, and I feel guilty when I do break them. It took years before I could leave lights on overnight or turn up the thermostat. My town has mandatory recycling; I find myself saving recyclables for weeks or even months if I forget to haul out the can on trash day.  And I try to never waste anything. If something can be reused, I save it. I’ve got a house full of stuff that I don’t want but my father’s words about “Waste not, want not,” still ring in my ears. I’m going to get rid of a giant bag of old shoes on the next recycling day, no matter what. If someone can use them, terrific, but I want them OUT of my house! I’m working my way across my office as I write, bagging up things to give away or throw away. I just have to actually haul the bags out and deliver them to their appropriate destinations! I’ve got to make a new rule about getting rid of something before I can bring anything new into the house. May be that will work.

Scars and my Sense of Humor

A few days ago, I made a comment about being really sick last year. I was asked what happened and I explained that I had peritonitis as a result of developing a hole in my intestines. The guys were surprised; although I’d made remarks about being sick before, they hadn’t realized how sick I was. I’ve been thinking a lot about my recovery; I still have some problems but I’ve come a long way in the last ten months.

                Now, I can raise my feet (separately) to about the knee level if I hold something for balance; this is in contrast to how I had to use a walker to drag my feet along the ground when I first got out of the hospital. I can even climb stairs normally if I hold onto the handrail. And I can wear clothing with a waistband for an hour to two. I don’t have to wear sweatpants or baggies with suspenders all of the time anymore. I still notice what I can’t do and I usually take for granted what I’ve accomplished.

                My surgical scars are no longer angry purple slashes surrounded by a lot of inflamed tissue. They’ve calmed into light violet lines on normal-looking skin. I can see that eventually they will turn white. The one at my waist should be invisible in the normal crease. The emotional scars will take a little longer to fade.

                In the aftermath of getting sick, I’ve had to confront my own mortality. Why did I survive the same surgery that killed my father? Don’t assume I’m getting maudlin; I’m glad I’m alive! I’ve got a lot of things to do and I’d like the chance to try to accomplish some of them. It’s just that I don’t know if there is something specific I’m supposed to do in the future or if my survival was just random chance. My dad left a lot of things unfinished and there are times when I’m annoyed that he isn’t around to help me with my projects any more.  It was traumatic to lose my dad when I was a bona fide adult; to think that my son might have lost a parent while still only a big kid upsets me tremendously. I want to see him grown, married, with kids of his own before I consider shuffling off this mortal coil.

I’ve also come to realize fact that I do not see the world the same way as other people. Having so much time during my convalescence in enforced contemplation has made me confront my lack of normalcy. I’ve pretended to be “normal” for so long, this realization has also been traumatic.

I’ve got a prime example of how I am not normal - my sense of humor. Let me explain –

I’m not sure which cable channel is airing a show this week (Thursday night) that includes a segment on John. I thought it was The Discovery Channel, but the teaser on his Facebook page said it was on a different channel. I’m a little nervous that a wise-ass comment that I made on camera might appear in the finished program. I can’t help making certain comments in response to specific stimuli, and this was a doozy.

                When John and I were together, he routinely teased me to the point of torment. He never understood when he had gone too far. After I bought a big chest freezer for the basement and, once again, he was teasing me about something, I suggested that he might find a new home in pieces in it – and he stopped teasing me. I continued to use the line as needed during our marriage to rein him in and even afterwards, whenever anyone asked if I might ever consider getting back together with him. The worst happened – the interviewer asked me “what if” John and I had never separated. I said, with totally deadpan demeanor, that there was no way – that he would have ended up in pieces in the freezer. The whole crew apparently thought I was serious and they were hideously shocked.  They didn’t know it was a long-standing joke!

                So, my big fear is that I’m going to look like a homicidal maniac to the general public, either on this show or on some other one where they might use the footage. Sigh. IT WAS A JOKE!  A bad one, I admit, but nonetheless, a joke. I have no plans to chop anyone into bits and put them into the freezer. It’s full. Besides, there are so many better ways to get rid of a body (IT’S A JOKE! A JOKE! Jeez!).

                A friend of mine belongs to a writer’s internet discussion group. Several years ago, someone started a thread about how to hide the evidence of a murder indefinitely, despite future advances in DNA analysis. My friend posted a comment that he had a friend who was a grad student in anthropology named Mary, who thought the best way to get rid of a body would be to deflesh it with beetles, denature any remaining DNA with formalin, and hang the skeleton in the lab alongside the other study skeletons. Another member of the discussion responded, “Are your friend’s initials MR? Is she in school at UMass/Amherst?” Yes, a second person in this international group knew me well enough to suspect that this was my suggestion for the perfect crime. I want to be clear - I have no access to a beetle colony. I have no plans to dispose of any bodies. Really. I don’t even have any bodies that need disposing. I have NO plans to wind up with any bodies. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

                I guess my subconscious has the very odd sense of humor. Sometimes, the damnedest things just fly out of my mouth and I don’t know where they come from. I think the problem is, I act seriously a lot of the time so, when I pull someone’s leg with a straight face, they take me seriously. I’ll give you one more example.

                Last year, I was teaching high school math in an inner city school. One day, when class was essentially over, I was taking questions and killing the last minute before the bell.  A kid asked me about a piece of artwork on top of my bookcase, a life-sized plaster head of Maya king K’inich Janaab Pakal I (of Palenque) as the Young Corn God. I said I got it when I lived in Mexico. Another kid, new to the school, said, “Mexico! What were you doing in Mexico?” Without a pause, I replied, “Running from the law.”  He squealed, “Running from the law! Why were you running from the law!?” I couldn’t continue to keep a straight face and burst out laughing. He believed me! This otherwise street-wise kid really thought that I had been a fugitive in Mexico! The bell rang as I was reassuring him that I had a completely legal reason for living in Mexico. I’m still not sure which story he believed.

                I don’t know where the line came from. I’d never considered telling anyone that I had been on the lam in Mexico before and I don’t know how it just popped out of my mouth. These things happen. Just like the line about the freezer.

                I think I’m being funny but many people don’t know when I’m joking. I don’t know how to better signal that I’m joking. The problem is, many jokes are funnier when told with a straight face. It’s a dilemma. Any suggestions?

I'm not a software person

Sometimes, my kid makes me feel so incredibly stupid.  He doesn’t mean it; it’s just that he’s very, very smart. He shows me how to do something once and expects me to understand it completely and I’m not wired that way. Writing software is a prime example. He wants me to learn some essentials of C++, a common programming language. I haven’t written any computer programs since high school, when I learned a little Basic and APL. That’s it. Until now, I’ve always depended on other people to write my programs; I understand hardware pretty well but software has been something that I avoided messing with.

                In August, I bought an Arduino, an open-source microprocessor that is easily modified. I want to make it light up an array of LEDs. I also bought an LOL shield; shields are little circuit boards that are designed to plug into Arduinos, and LOL stands for Lots Of LEDs, so my LOL shield is a circuit board filled with as many LEDs as could be packed onto it and still attach to an Arduino.  Jack immediately figured out how to program his (he bought one, too) and mine sat in my project box.  Until two nights ago.

                Jack has been after me to learn how to program an Arduino, so I finally took out my kit – my Arduino (actually, an even tinier knock-off called a Picoduino with an adapter to attach shields), LOL shield, and connection cable. He walked me through using the library of programming examples and how to load them from my laptop into the Picoduino via the special USB cable. Last night, I was at the laudromat, about to look at a new example and realized that I needed my internet connection to look at the files. It wasn’t an internet-equipped laundry – after all, this is South Hadley, not New York City. Sigh. I bet Jack could have figured out how to look at the files despite the lack of a connection. Instead, I felt stupid, like a kid finally sitting down to do her homework and discovering that she forgot the book at school.  

                My little LOL shield was busy blinking away from the pattern that I had sent it days earlier. It was pretty cool, but I wanted to learn how to make it display something else.  I knitted. I’m not very good at that, either, but at least it didn’t require an internet connection! I've got to get a newer Android phone so I can attach my laptop to it and connect to the world – the original Android doesn’t support a mobile hotspot. On the other hand, Verizon would want more money for the service, so maybe, in the same situation, I’ll just wait until I get home or I’ll go to an internet cafe.  

Snowblowers

                After my snowblower couldn’t finish the driveway, I decided to be independent (a good thing when you’re broke) and found the manuals for my snowblower online, looked up the part number, and went off to my local dealer, All-Power.  Although there is usually a line at the All-Power parts desk, it's a good place to go because they are very knowledgeable and if they don’t have a part in stock, they will find it for you at another local shop if they can. I’ve been trained to always bring the model and serial numbers with me as even bringing the part with me may not be enough.  The guy looked up my part number and discovered that the cable now only came as part of a kit, with a gear and another part that looked like a miniature door stop. Although I only needed the cable, I had to buy the whole kit for $30.

The kit included two pages of instructions on how to replace all three parts. I decided to live dangerously and only replace the cable. Bent over the snowblower in the open door of the unheated garage, I struggled to remove a nut while I was swathed in my winter woolies - fleece vest, parka, hat, and gloves – The gloves were too much; they made the job impossible. How do astronauts work in their heavy space suits and attached gloves? It must be the practice before every mission. I only wore lightweight leather driving gloves and I still kept dropping the wrench! I stripped them off and worked barehanded. I removed a cover plate and the old cable, then routed the new cable properly, attaching it by little end/knobs. Then, I replaced the metal cover plate over that gear (the one that I could have replaced from the kit). The new cable had a little piece of bent wire that snugly held the cable while lightly attaching it to a control rod, to keep the cable off of the muffler. The old cable had a plastic doohickey that was supposed to do the same thing but it was slipped under the gear cover. I adjusted the cable tension and went inside to warm up my hands. The hardest part was working barehanded in the cold.

An hour later, hands completely warm, I put on my heavy gloves and went out to finish clearing the driveway. Hurray! My snowblower works properly (finally). Now, I just need to continue to feed it good gasoline and it should be good for the rest of the season. What would I do without it?

                I’m proud of myself for fixing the snowblower. I messed up the carburetor on my lawn mower two years ago trying to fix it. I don’t want to mess with small engines or carburetors again but the mechanical parts are pretty easy to figure out. I understand the workings of the internal combustion engine but I don’t have the tools or inclination to fix small engines properly. Before Jack was born, to teach me, John had me remove and dismantle the seized engine from a six-cylinder gas Mercedes-Benz automobile. I did it, too, and drove the repaired car for over a year. On the other hand, Jack tried to teach me about automatic transmissions, even showing me how the parts all fit together, but I still think they operate by magical principles, so there is a limit to my mechanical abilities.

Chicopee

Without looking outside, I can tell when the weather is bad because I find myself watching a lot of television in between bouts of snowblowing and shoveling. At noon today, as the storm's end was anticipated in the next few hours, the TV weatherman was on location in downtown Chicopee, MA (an oxymoron if ever there was one). All of the stations had been running hundreds of cancellations, including some businesses. The weatherman discovered that only two businesses were open, the "Family Dollar", a discount store, and the local package store (in Massachusetts, liquor stores are universally referred to as package stores). He even interviewed the proprietor of the packie, who, in the midst of the interview,  suddenly scampered back to run his establishment as a line had formed in his absence. The humor of the moment overcame the weatherman and he quipped something to the effect that if you needed gift wrap or a twelve pack, Chicopee center had everything. I'm never going to be able to shop in the center of Chicopee again - not that I did very often, but from now on, I'll only be able to associate it with cheap gift-wrapped beer. And I'm not often in the market for cheap gift-wrapped beer.

Magic and snow

    I’m watching “Nova Science Now”. I’m a total geek for science and natural history shows on television; it’s a good thing I only have basic-basic cable or I’d be watching these shows 24/7.
    Penn and Teller were performing their “appearing balls” trick - the one where foil balls keep appearing underneath cups. I had only a little difficulty in seeing Teller loading the balls into the cups and I wasn’t sure if it was the angle of the camera that allowed me to see most of the action but it seemed to me that they were implying that people didn’t see it at all. I’m “people” and I saw it! They then did it slower and Teller’s action was clearer to me but not to their human guinea pig, who was carefully watching. Then, they repeated it, blocking out Teller’s face. Suddenly, it was also clear to the human guinea pig. They said that the presence of a face was enough of a distraction for people to not be able to see most “magic” tricks. I’ve almost always been able to see what magicians are doing but attributed this to my having tried to do slight of hand while in college. Now, I’m not so sure that’s the reason.
    I often don’t look at people’s faces. Particularly when I’m watching a magician, I watch their hands. I may glance at one’s face, but only for a millisecond. I want to see the action. The face doesn’t really distract me; I blur it out. Magicians like to pull your eyes up to theirs so they can do something while you aren’t looking. I guess most people can’t ignore someone staring at their face. I’m conscious of it but I chose to ignore it (it’s not hard).
    The next article on the episode showed a man coming up to a woman and asking her for directions. While she was thinking, two guys carried a board past her, masking the face that the fellow who asked for the directions left and another guy took his place. I would never notice this, unless his voice was different, but this is part and parcel of my issue with faces. One looks pretty much like another and a pair of strangers don’t have to work hard to fool me.
    Another article in the same episode was on TMS. John’s friend, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, was shown. Alvaro and others talked about using TMS to modify depression and even moral judgements. Hmmm. This looks potentially pretty ugly to me.
    Ahhh, I just went to the show’s website and discovered an older show where somebody is using this idea of “joint attention” - that people will generally look at what the magician looks at and not at what the magician is doing - and using slight of hand to help autistic kids learn how to follow social cues. Apparently, a lot of autistic people aren’t fooled by magicians. Is this more evidence that I’m probably also on the spectrum? How many times do I have to be hit in the head before I accept this?

    Well, we had yet more snow, but not quite to two feet that had been forecast for the last three days. Actually, we had two storms, 24 hours apart. We “only” got another 15 inches. There is so much snow, if I could stand on the grass of my front lawn, I’d be nearly chin-deep. When I was on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” the first things I bought were a snow blower and an Ipod. Jack got the Ipod but I’ve been thanking the producers in my mind every day for the snow blower! I’m a bit distraught right now; one of the cables has never been attached properly (the goons at Home Depot did a terrible job assembling it five years ago, so much so that the first thing it did after I bought it was lose a wheel!). This cable controls the shute lock. The cable wasn’t properly adjusted; the shute swung around wildly. I sent the machine back to be adjusted and it worked pretty well afterwards but the cable was always loose.
    During the last storm, the shute started swinging again. I looked up how to adjust it and got out my wrench but it didn’t work. I figured out tonight that the cable had, most recently, been resting on the muffler and the cover melted. I’m going to have to replace it tomorrow. I’ll figure out where it should be attached and this won’t happen again but in the meanwhile, the shute is now jammed and the machine only blows snow to the right. This is a hassle so I didn’t finish clearing the driveway from today’s storm.
    I can get my car out, though. I’ll get a new cable and I’ll finish the driveway tomorrow or Friday. The weather forecast said that both days will be ideal. And I’m worried about my roof. I used the rest of the “Millionaire” cash to put a shed dormer on the back of my house and the roof is pretty flat, now. A number of local buildings collapsed yesterday from the weight of all of the snow. A barn full of horses, a lumberyard, and an abandoned house, are some examples. I think my house is sturdier that any of them but I’m getting worried. I hired a guy to chip off the ice dams on my front eaves but the snow has shifted, creating new dams. I’ll have to get to these, too. I want my summer back!