Lesson Learned

I asked myself repeatedly why I had volunteered to do a job I knew nearly nothing about.  I kept asking that question.  I prayed about that question.  And through the long, arduous, pain in the ass process answers came to me in bits and pieces.

There is no doubt in my mind that the woman renting from Norby is in a domestic situation.  She spoke grateful words, but underneath there was this intense level of hostility that I did not like.  Not because it may not have been justified, but because it triggered in me something I didn’t like.  My own past came to the forefront and I really, really, REALLY wanted to haul off and smack this woman on more than one occasion.  Dealing with her in her hostility triggered that smash-it-down abuser quality I learned from my father, that aspect of myself I despise and struggle with.  My struggles with it now usually happen when I am very tired or extremely stressed.  Yet it is still there.  Strike out in anger.  Smack her upside her rude, ungrateful head.  I was ashamed of myself for having those thoughts.

I had tried to make friendly overtures to her.  The place was so Spartan, unwelcoming.  Empty beer boxes stacked by the front door.  When she once walked into the kitchen and I saw her face in the light I saw evidence in her face of long term alcohol use or abuse.  Her skin was pasty and mottled; her face bearing that swelling from kidneys that had processed so many toxins flushing the system of water was a chore.

I had taken time away from my family and schoolwork to fix something for this person.  She hadn’t even attempted to fix it on her own, which baffled me.  I’m a Montana girl, born and bred and I don’t know how they do things in Michigan, but here, if you have a problem you either fix it yourself or ask one of your friends or neighbors who might be able to help.  I was confused, and so was Norby, as to why she didn’t contact him about fixing it.  There was supposed to be a roommate that was fixing it, and he was doing nothing about it.

I wanted Norby to have peace of mind.  With that tumor taking up room and pressing on his memory circuits, he needs all the peace of mind he can get.  He has no family, and so far as I can tell, no one looks in on him.  This really bothers me because he is a really cool man.  He was crazy to trust me with his plumbing, but he did it anyway.  Now, that man either has a lot of faith or a lot of hope and I like being around people like that.  They are good teachers.

So, GM and I went home Tuesday night.  Wednesday came when we were supposed to return, at nine o’clock that night, but we had another family crisis when S had to put GM’s father B in the hospital.  He has pneumonia.  And a mass on his lung.  Needs and MRI.  Knows his time is coming.  It has been almost a year since B’s brother K died.  Will be a year the 29^th of this month.  B told me today that he wants to cremated and scattered on our land.  He told me he wouldn’t hurt the kids or nothing, just watch them play.

 

So I had called Kelly and told her we wouldn’t be there.  Told her I would come in the evening after class Thursday.  Norby met me there and I had the parts and thank God for Teflon tape.  Finally, I got the fittings on.  Just about that time, the roommate made and appearance with his girlfriend Sparky.  I don’t know if that was her real name and I don’t care.  Judging from her mouth and attitude, she had earned it.

The roommate’s name was Ken and he was shitface drunk.  Wow.  Put me on my Big Surprised face.  He proceeded to inquire how it was going and expound at length as to why he had decided he wasn’t going to fix anything under there because it would have been such a pain in the ass, blah, blah, fuck you, blah blah.

I needed another wrench and a breather and asked Norby to take me to his shop a block away to get it.  He had commented on my lack of communication once Ken and Sparky arrived. I told Norby that I had a low tolerance for drunken assholes so I was going to keep my mouth shut if I could.  He laughed and told me that was sometimes the best recourse.

We got back and I got everything attached, turned the water supply on under the house, turned it off again very quickly to fiddle some more.  I was running into some problems.  Like the fact the house and plumbing were old enough the ONLY water shut off valve was under the house, coming up out of city water.  And it leaked when you shut it off because it had been run in the early part of the township construction.  Not even close to being up to code.  The plastic drain fitting I had purchased was bumping into the metal pipe and I had cross threaded it.  So, when I loosened it to fix it, the pliable plastic threads had stripped.  I almost started bawling.  The faucet we had purchased fit in the sink, but the old pipes were too tall so it sits up above the sink leaving a ridiculous looking gap.  I really didn’t care as long as it worked.  Then the drunken expert came in and started messing with it, trying to push the faucet down.  I tried to explain but it didn’t penetrate the fog.  So I had to get a lot more firm.  He kind of got the hint, coupled with Sparky screaming at him to “Leave her the fuck alone, she knows what she’s doing!” (Ha! I though. Shows what you know!).

Finally all was hooked up.  There were no noticeable leaks.  I turned the kitchen faucet on.

Nothing. NOTHING. No water.  Just a tiny drip.

Every other faucet in the house worked, just not that one.  I was floored.  There were no other valves so it wasn’t a water shut off.  We all agreed there was a blockage somewhere.  Where?  I was dumbfounded.  So was Norby.  Then the drunken guy went it, unscrewed the faucet end and turned the water faucet on.  It worked! There was some sand or tiny rocks that had blocked the faucet.  The guy started going on and on about how there was a ‘Piece of shit” stuck in there and he pulled it out and yes sir now it worked and if he hadn’t pulled that piece of shit out there would have never been water.  I told him he did a good job trying that since no one else had thought about it.  I noticed it was still leaking through the drain pipes and he went on and on about the piece of shit in the faucet.  As I was under the sink cleaning up he started talking about how he fixed the sink.  I just shook my head.  The one drain pipe was still not stable.  The threads had been stripped too far.  But I’ll be damned it I was going to bend over backwards on this project anymore.  I was done.  I Tef taped the hell out of it and called it good.  There was still a small drip but I told her to just keep the ice-cream bucket under there and keep an eye on it.  I didn’t volunteer to come back and fix it if it all blew apart.  In fact, I told her that this was the only time I would work on it.  A man I like and respect very much needed a hand with his income property.  These tenants may very well screw him over.  Kelly’s stuff isn’t in storage; she sold it all to move over here.  Her ‘boyfriend’ works in asbestos cleanup, which would be a pretty damned high paying job around here.  She lives in a shithole shack and keeps all her receipts.  But she is not a woman who is looking for a way out.  If she was, I would have been all over it.  But she is not.

I told Kelly to keep the cupboard door open so her nearby heater could help dry it out under there.  They were all happy it was working.

“Bathroom faucet’s broke too!” spouted Ken, “You coming back to fix that too?”

“Absolutely not!” I replied.

Ken started ogling the patchwork pipes and saying that he could ‘straighten out and brace up’ a section of pipe down there, it needed to be done, etc.  I told him politely that it would hold.  Alcohol seems to fog hearing as well.  So I interrupted him to speak in a louder, more firm voice in a language he could comprehend.

“Dude, if you lay a hand on those pipes I will kick you in the balls so hard your fucking head will fly off!  Everything under there is being held together by Tef tape and a prayer and if you touch them I will probably have to kill you.”

Norby’s cute when he chuckles.

I gathered his tools I had borrowed and walked him home. 

“I’m curious,” he said in his velvet smooth, gentle and well articulated voice, “What the motivation in all this was.  You are doing this for nothing.  You’ve paid for the parts.  What is this?”

Damned good question, I thought.  I mulled it over for a minute.

“About thirteen years ago I prayed really hard for teachers.  I had a lot of questions in my life.” I told him

“I got ‘em too.  Some of them are pretty hard teachers.  Things seem to go wrong and get all screwed up.  But the lesson is in learning to deal with the hardships and see what you learned from them.  To be a stronger and better person.  And to try and give some of that to other people, if that makes sense.”

“Perfect sense.” Norby told me.

The lesson here is in learning priorities.  Learning when to take on other peoples burdens and when to put them down.  Lessons of friendship.  Lessons of teamwork. Learning from those who you may not think could teach you.  Praying for healing to come to the lives of those you want to smack upside the head.  Trying to find that spark in a person that does a good job seeing something you couldn’t and giving that spark a boost of good mojo by blowing some gratitude its way.

Most of all maybe, of letting someone who may not have anyone know that he isn’t alone in the world.

GM and I will check on Norby.  There are more things going on with him that don’t involve plumbing and won’t suck the life out of me that we could help him on.  I would love to see my husband work with him more.  My husband needs role models like this gentle man.

As I had wiped up the last of that water underneath that disaster of a sink I said a prayer of thanks.

Lesson learned.

Woes of a Misguided Samaritan

I have really out done myself lately.  I told my husband I must be suffering from some sort of displaced hero syndrome or something equally bazaar.

Rewind to last Friday evening.  GM had the kids at home so I could finishing up laundry in town.  This is also my time to get away and do something solitary, or not, as it strikes me.  I decided, after briefly visiting a friend, to go on a walk around the town.

We have had a very long Indian summer, up until today when we have had rain and snow showers.  Nothing to stick yet, just Mother Nature’s early warning system of the season to come.

As I wandered town I was struck by the memories of this once small area grown larger.  I kept running into bits and pieces of myself on different streets.  Here, behind Duval’s, an empty lot where a very nice old Italian man had once lived.  I was very, very small.  I was with Mother. I have no idea who he was or what we were visiting him for.  He was very old and I loved the lyric music of his Old World accent.  I think he died long ago back then.  I remember he was lonely.  He had no family here.  Perhaps he was going back somewhere.  It was too long ago.

Just around the corner from Duval’s was our town’s original main street.  What had once been the post office, Krueger Drug, the Christian Bookstore and a lawyer’s office was now a few office buildings interspersed with vacancies.  My childhood best friend, Maria, and I used to pick my Mother’s flowers and sell them as bouquets by the fistful for a few coins to go buy candy.  We even got away with it a couple times before Mom yelled at us for picking her flowers, not realizing we were actually capitalizing on our destruction.

I wandered past the fire hall, down the street near the place GM lived during our separation, in the little shack that had memories for me dating back to high school.

I noticed a garden on the street and next to these beautiful sunflowers was this gorgeous plant about five feet tall and dripping with foot long magenta clusters of flowers.  I thought I knew what it was, and being the plant freak I am, I had to go over and look.  There were some young men sitting on the steps of the house and I asked if it was their garden then asked for permission to come over an openly gawk.  A handsome young man who introduced himself as Sky confirmed my suspicions.  It was the grain amaranth, also known, Sky informed me, as Love Lies Bleeding.  I didn’t know it would grow here in Montana, much less be so beautiful.  I have an open invitation to come back when the grain is ripe if it doesn’t freeze first.

I soon noticed a person walking over.  I have a big mouth and a loud laugh and the laughter must have drawn him.   It was Norby, GM’s old landlord.  I bid Sky good evening and proceeded to speak to Norby.  Turns out the rumor GM and I had heard about his having brain cancer is true.  Norby has a tumor in his brain.  He hasn’t been to see a doctor in a long time.  He probably couldn’t remember if her had.  It was soon evident when he told me he couldn’t remember me or GM, who had rented from him for over two years.

Norby is the owner of a couple rentals.  To say they are falling down pieces of crap would be not only accurate, but generous.  He has always rented out his places as ‘fixer-uppers’, encouraging tenants to do their own repairs in exchange for rock bottom rent prices.  Needless to say this has not always worked to his advantage, since the tenants who can usually afford rock bottom rent aren’t usually the kind of tenants that are highly skilled in the areas of things like, say, plumbing issues.  It doesn’t serve the tenants really, either, to rent these places.  They should all be bulldozed really, but we have a mentality here in Montana sometimes of mending up those broken down things.  And we’re just plain cracked at times as well.

Norby is an older guy, served his time over in Vietnam.  Apparently I have some sort of magnet.  There is also a connection between Vietnam vets and hoarding, at least in the two instances I am familiar with.  Only Norby doesn’t hoard dogs, just ‘useful’ stuff.  Beautiful stuff to mess around with, he called it.

So here is me, hearing his story, his frustration, especially his frustration with his current and only tenant in the largest of these three rentals.  The couple had some guy rooming with them.  Said guy kept telling Norby he’d fix the leak under the sink but instead was off fixing someone else’s house.  meanwhile water was leaking and no doubt doing more damage to the already damaged space under the sink.  The man has major problems.  This is near to his only income other than whatever he may get for disability or VA stuff.  It just didn’t seem right to not help.

I thought, ‘Leak under the sink?  How hard is that? I’ve done that for Mom before!  Some new pipe and tef tape, no prob!”

Isn’t the road to hell supposed to be paved with good intentions or something?

Norby was on his was over to talk to this woman about the leaks.  I volunteered to put on my Good Samaritan cape and tag along.

Her name is Kelly.  When we got there and Norby asked to speak to her, she wouldn’t let us in the house because, she told us, her boyfriend was sleeping.  Odd, I thought.  It was chilly and drizzling out.

When I began to ask when I could come over to check out the pipes, she told me Tuesdays were her day off which is my field work day at the college.  I inquired about her weekend schedule.

“Oh, no.” she said in her east coast just-moved-from-Michigan drawl. “My boyfriend’s home on the weekends and all my time is taken up by him.  You can’t come here on the weekend.”

Huh.  Red flag #1.

I was completely sympathetic.  So I asked her, if I was really quiet if I could come in and take a quick glance under the kitchen sink.  She agreed, somewhat reluctantly.  There was a comment made in passing about the leaky faucet and me, being the kind of person who will actually sometimes only be able to focus on one thing at a time, sort of let that wash over me.  Besides, I was on a stealth mission and silence plus rapid assessment were my goals.

Walking in to that house though, was more than a bit like walking into a minefield.  The place was very neat.  It was the air that held the charges.  Deep, tightly held, with an almost palpable viscosity to it.  I kept my voice low and quiet, but on one point, in peering under the sink at plumbing from when my parents were married in the 50s, I chuckled a little too loud, my voice grew above a whisper and Kelly shushed me, her “SH!” falling like a dagger between my shoulders.

So that’s the way it is here, is it? I thought.

I discussed a plan of action with Norby and the tension at my back grew until she curtly asked us, “Are you done here?” and we got up to go outside.  We hadn’t even been in three whole minutes.

I told them I would come back Tuesday.  Kelly said that was her day off and her boyfriend of twenty years was only home on weekends.  I spoke a bit more with her.  Just moved over from Michigan.  No friends or family here.  Doesn’t know anyone.  Works within walking distance.

I was aware of a whole other level of communication going on.  I don’t know if Kelly was aware of it, I know Norby wasn’t.  This is what I got that wasn’t being said;

This is my place.  You have to be careful here.  No one comes around when my boyfriend is here.  It’s not safe then.  You come when I tell you.  When it’s safe.  When it’s ok.  Only if you come to fix stuff.

At least that’s what I got out of it.

Tuesday rolled around and all hell broke loose for us.  My second Monday, having missed my Resources Calculations class on Monday.  Our explorer’s tire had gone flat Monday night so we decided to drive the Bronco in Tuesday.  Until its transmission started to majorly screw up.  I ended up thumbing a ride with a nice lady who lives up our way.  She gave me an my older school kids a ride into town and cell phone service, then dropped me off at my mom’s while she took my daughter to the junior high.  I owe her one, I tell you, and I love living here for the kindness of strangers.

GM called to tell me he had the Bronco running enough to limp it to town.  So, early in the afternoon I went over to Kelly’s after calling.  She and Norby were waiting.  It was then they showed me the faucet and how I missed it, well, I missed it.  It wasn’t just leaky, it was broken.  The pipes underneath were out of alignment and a mix of plastic, copper brass, and maybe even lead.  When I looked at the faucet the corrosion on the fixtures was something a stalagmite cave would envy.  I called GM.

This is where I am kicking myself for not seeing if I could have maybe just replaced the handles and washers in the faucet.  I probably couldn’t have but after last night I would have tried it had I known.

I arrived at Kelly’s at 3:30 yesterday afternoon.  By 11:30 yesterday evening, GM and I were taking a couple huge water containers over to Mom’s to fill up until we could get the parts we need to maybe, hopefully, with direct Divine intervention and a plain old miracle, fix that piece of shit sink enough it doesn’t spray water every time the main is turned on.  The whole house out to the city water needs to be renovated.

Here’s a lesson from this: You volunteer to help someone do something then there will be a liability and responsibility to make it right if there is a screw up.

Here’s another lesson: When you volunteer to help someone, make sure it is not a soul sucking venture, especially on the day your cars crap out and it being the eve of a big test you haven’t studied for.

Kelly wasn’t too happy with us.  For one, we were there way longer than it felt safe for us to be there, even with her boyfriend out of town.  She has two beautiful husky mix dogs.  The one, Chevelle, with her floppy bobbed over ears and blue eyes was most intrigued by the hole in the floor leading under the house.  Cloe, the shy sheltie/husky cross of one blue eye and one brown warmed up after the first few hours enough to come ask for pets.  When GM came in the house, Chevelle tucked her tail and barked.  For a while.  She hadn’t done that to me or Norby for that matter.  Just the younger man in the baseball cap.  Huh.  Dog’s afraid of men.

What red flag am I on here?

House neat but Spartan.  A couple candles.  Knick Knacks to a bare minimum.  Could be everything’s in storage….could be my imagination?

My gut doesn’t think so.

Finally, after GM working for HOURS on that faucet, we were leaving.  I knew she wasn’t happy, but she thanked me.  Thanked me for all my hard work.  Just me.  My husband had worked more hours on it than I had.  Why wasn’t she allowed to see him?

Really, I am afraid to know the answer to that.  I am afraid I already do.

WalkingThrough the Fog By a Thread

It sits above my brows like a low level drift, thick, impenetrable, sometimes with a low level buzz that keeps me on the edge of irritation at all times and is most likely caused but an overabundance of caffeine sizzling through my bloodstream.  This is the fog in my head. I have been asking myself lately, “What the fuck were you thinking, going back to school in the fall semester instead of waiting for spring?”

I do this to myself periodically. I have some diabolical insane part of me that decides that life isn’t stressful enough trying to live the life of a modern pioneer, with children,  but I must further complicate it by going beyond the bounds of even my own oft times questioned sanity.

Sometimes I think I have two crazy people sharing my brain that are in a constant competition of one-upsmanship.

Then I reflect in a more relaxing moment that I went back to school after a lot of thought and prayer and after truly feeling as if that were the direction I were being guided in.  The challenge is to try and keep on top of it all.

Keeping on top of it is something I aspire to like a crack addict hoping for the next fix.  Problem is I have no supplier and me and organization is not something that goes together.  ‘Keeping on top of it’ implies that I should have (sh)it all together in a tidy pile to be able to surmount it.  Reality shows in fact, that it is in a constant state of cave-in and I am more like an ant scrambling madly up the perpetually sliding sand hill.

My husband has accused me of being a hummingbird, flitting from one thing to another and never finishing.  I do finish things….just not all together or all in the same day.  He doesn’t realize that I have many personality aspects vying for control in my head.  They don’t always agree on what should come first.  So I end up sabotaging myself in quite a few areas and productive turnout is pathetic.

Take my kitchen for example.  My hearth.  The center of health, communion and sustenance for my family.  The place that, traditionally, as a mother, should be warm and peaceful, a place of nourishment for mind, body and spirit.

What I have for a kitchen is a 15 foot camp trailer.  It has two bunks that are used as storage spots.   The regular table broke and I tried having a small coffee table in there.  It serves as a place to pile stuff.  Some useful, some not so.  The same can be said for the seats.  In fact, the seat by the door is piled with boxes from our storage unit and cases of canned goods from the case lot sale at B & B last month.  I have a small propane cookstove barely large enough for a cake pan and not tall enough to brave baking an actual loaf of bread.  I only have an icebox style fridge, so in the summer months there are things I just don’t buy.  Like mayonnaise, butter or milk.  They spoil too quickly.  We get either enriched rice or almond milk, which keeps longer, or powdered milk, which tastes disgusting but works for cooking.  We can’t keep ice long enough in the coolers.  If we buy fresh produce it needs to be eaten within one or two days max to prevent spoilage.  This does not always happen so I always have a gallon of white vinegar on hand to kill off the science experiment that grows inside dark moist coolers when vegetables or dairy products cross over to the other side.

It’s not like I don’t know what I should be doing.  I know there are things I could or should do.  Sometimes I even make lists.  Where I consistently fail is in the practical application.  Often I feel as if I am facing this maelstrom of ‘stuff that needs to be done’ and it hits me in the face as soon as I open my eyes.  I don’t know where to begin.  Or, if I begin, I am easily drawn into the next ‘important thing to do’.

Looking at those pictures of F’s filthy kitchen made me realize the only difference between our housekeeping styles at first glance is that I put all my food cans in a huge laundry hamper outside to take to recycling, and I have mouse poison under the trailer bed to discourage any would be tenant vermin.  Ok, probably there is a lot less animal filth too, though the level of food spillage my children and I seem to generate is horrifying.  Bunny, my now five year old daughter also has a penchant for conducting cupboard recon for the sole purpose of commandeering cereal.  There is now an amazing amount of Count Chocula in the potato and onion bucket from our meager garden harvest.

I have NO PLACE to store anything.  So things get piled on the bunks, on the table, on the counters.  Then it avalanches and I cuss and shuffle it around and try to form new stacks.  I swear I am cleaning the place up, but then I have kids who are hungry RIGHT NOW and will DIE OF STARVATION if they are not fed within ten minutes.  But now I need a cooking pot because we got home too late the previous night to heat the water and do the previous nights dishes and they are all sitting, dirty, in the huge purple wash bin outside.  An I can’t find my frying pan because there is still a bag of canned goods sitting on it from the groceries we bought two or three days ago that I have been meaning to get into the cupboard if only I could reach it because there are two coolers, a shallow pan of hand washing water and half a case of Coca-Cola sitting between me and the teeny tiny little cupboards I have to cram everything to feed six people in for two weeks.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola and curse the company for ever taking the coca out of it, because, having gotten to actually try chewing some coca a former employer brought back from her trip to Peru, I could sure use that kind of caffeine-without-the-jitters-or-irritability energy boost to get this shithole cleaned and I don’t think I am getting to South America anytime soon to lay in my own supply.

This is usually when I leave the trailer, step outside, right into the face of the entire full length trailer house GM used to live in that has completely collapsed, exposing its guts of moldering books, bed frames, clothes, car parts, tufts of hairy insulation, mouse shit, furniture and some appliances mixed with God only knows what else in a musty smelling carnage.  My only bright spot in that view is that there is a boreal toad that lives somewhere in it, possibly under that bed frame pedestal and he croaks briefly throughout the day.  Trailer trash habitat.  Adaptive species amaze me.

Then I go hide in my outhouse.

This is pathetically, one of the only places where I can invoke the “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE” rights to privacy laws so scarce in a parent’s life.

Back when I lived in a house in civilization with actual running water I would lock myself in for either a library period or a hot bath.  I don’t have the bath luxury now, and the length of library period depends on the weather temperature and whether or not my enzymes are doing their job at odor control.  But for a time, it is a place where I can hide and they can’t come in.  Oh, I do take off up the mountain sometimes, and Boo, my foster dog turned family member will sniff me out every time.  But I can’t just leave the kids like they used to do in the olden days to go out and get wood or work the distant fields.  Not only is this frowned on now days, but modern kids aren’t equipped to deal with things on their own.  In fact, you can bet that as soon as I am out of the house Bunny gets it into her head that all former house rules about safety, respect of others property, and general rules of proper conduct have left on my heels and there will soon emanate from our humble domain such a shrieking, caterwauling, thumping, or worse, ominous and pregnant silence you have ever encountered.  Most times I will return to find my baby, Nunkee, with new war paint either in the medium of marker or biggest sister’s pillaged makeup, objects once high upon the shelves stomped into the floor, every toy box, jewelry box, container, or suitcase upended and scattered, and a five year old Bunny proclaiming in prim report, “Nunkee did it, I saw her!”

Which is usually where my voice maxes out at the sound barrier, children attempt to flee in terror or pick up as quickly as humanly possible, and I stomp back up to rail in vain at the general disarray of my life and kitchen space.

Then I kick that Coca-cola box again.

I know one thing that will help me maintain my sanity.  I can keep writing.  I will be making time every week, possibly more than once (baby steps!) to come into the college library and maintain my thread of communication with myself through this outlet.  That way GM won’t be trying to sneak peeks over my shoulder to read what horrible family secrets I may be spilling and I won’t have to minimize the damned screen every two minutes, breaking my thread of concentration.  That thread is the only way I have of finding my way through the fog.

I know there are few certainties I can count on in this life.  I am certain hanging on for dear life to this thread is my necessity.  My emotional sustenance and survival.  My way of seeing it through and maybe, just maybe having it make sense in the end.  It is my one, unbreakable link to sanity in the chaos.

Or so the voices tell me.