Life

Can I give you a tip…..??

I purchased a business a few years ago on eBay, and, for a few years,  the boys helped operate it.  I was preparing to hand it off to my daughters, but my experience of yesterday will probably prevent that from happening any time soon….
The day started with the train ruining my dropping off of my daughters at school.  After running slightly ahead of schedule, the “train” completely ruined any opportunity of being early.  After making a “U-ee”, we navigated to get around the stopped train.  Is a train really allowed to stop for over 5 minutes on a train as traffic continues to pile up?  Just FOUR more train cars!!!!  I still had to modify my “commute” after dropping them off–the train was still sitting there.
After having been gone for a long weekend visiting Harding University, my laptop was anxious to be fired up.  But, it did not want to be fired up to allow me to do any “work”.  It was excited to let Norton scan all of its necessary innards for a FEW hours.  I was not completely unproductive due to my “backup” computer, but it was much less productive than normal.  And, it was the need to fulfill the filter orders that have allowed me to “provide” my tip….
The business in question is providing carbon pre-filters to customer who use small home air filters.  The carbon filter is purchased in bulk, and the filter is cut using circular scissors.  Each filter size has a separate template to ensure the filter is cut correctly.  If the scissors attempt to cut the filter but are not able to make complete contact with the filter, often the template needs to have the scissors ran along its edge more than once.  (The surface we cut on is not completely even, so we generally kneel on the template while the scissors run along  the edge.)  As I was cutting one order yesterday and feeling a little frustrated about my morning, I was doing one of those “secondary” cuts.  Unfortunately, the middle fingertip of my left hand was slightly outside the protection of the template.  It happened pretty quick, but it will be hard to remove the view of my fingertip (very thin, but yet recently a connected part of my body) setting on the cutting mat.  Since the injury was not cauterized immediately, my immediate concern became stopping the bleeding.  And, it took awhile….
  • Paper towels:  These were a constant part of the process.  The fingers are full of blood vessels, and the contents of a few of them flowed out my fingertip.  A few paper towels were soaked on that day!
  • Pressure:  I tried pressure, but since a tourniquet was not going to be self-administered, I moved on to plan C.
  • Cold:  Since it was on the fingertip, I put ice in a cup of ice and made my finger dive-in.  This had some success, but besides fully numbing my finger, it did not adequately slow the flow…
  • Elevate:   Finally due to boredom with the entire bleeding process OR an actual outwitting of the individual blood cells, this solved the problem.

Thankfully, this allowed me to “sort of” get some work done.  Not smoothly or without hiccups, but progress was made on my swelling list…  Two bandaids were needed–one over the top and down the sides and one around the tip.

A bandaid change and a bit of hydrogen peroxide and the finger was put to bed for the night…only a little seepage.  Handwashing has do be done to prevent gravity from prematurely soaking the bandaids, but the temporary modification shouldn’t kill me.
And, why do I write this out?  As on many days when I hope to be productive, God proves he has a sense of humor.  He reigns in our ambition and forces us to accede control to Him!

Chaos

As I took my walk today, I did my normal stuff:  mostly hoping and praying the whole family makes wise choices and seeks guidance when making those choices.  And, my a moment, I thought “I like a little chaos in my life”.  Then, I had to scale it back to, “I like a little unpredictability.”  And, finally, I had to settle for, “I can handle my car keys in the wrong place once MAYBE twice a week.

Honestly, I am probably a little more flexible than that.  But, the goal of flexibility is leaning on the ONE who can give you guidance.  And, when Mr. Flexibility demands a visit, you will ride out the chaos just fine.  Fine?  Hopefully, fine enough that next time there is a struggle Mr. Flexible will be greeted with same attitude of “I knew you would be coming, I just didn’t know when.”

The fish were telling us something

Our family is not a “pet” family. We have experimented a couple of times. We have had fish a couple of times in the past. Most of the fish lived a reasonable life, and then perished. Usually, they had plenty to eat, and often they had plenty of playmates.

Well, our most recent trip down the pet road, has not been quite as pleasant……our three fish lasted only a couple of months. The first fish died, apparently, due to some failure on our part while we were on vacation. The fish crawled up into a shell in the fish tank, and, it seems, couldn’t find its way out. His death would be considered “normal”. The other deaths have been deemed suicide. After the NORMAL death, my wife cleaned out our the fish tank. It wasn’t REAL dirty, but the mega-food pellet we put in while we were gone, does get messy. She pulled the fish out of the fish bowl and put them in a cup temporarily. And, the next time she looked at the cup, one of the fish seems to have jumped out of the cup. And, once he was discovered, he could not be brought back.

The last is the hardest to believe. The fish bowl is a BOWL. It is curved at the top. And, this morning, as I was getting breakfast, I saw something on the floor by the trash can. Upon closer examination, I discovered it to be the LAST fish. So, we now had to be led to believe that the fish JUMPED out of the bowl. And, we are talking a jump of very nearly 2 inches in height. And, then, we need to believe, he flopped on the counter for 6 inches or more. Then, when he fell to the floor, he may have flopped some more–but, not much. He was pretty crispy when he was discovered. No formal ceremony was given.

Are we ever going to have pets again? Likely, we will . But, we may need therapy before we do…

My Post Office Friends…

The Ebay business I purchased a few weeks ago has continued to get the sales it seems to have gotten before. My sons and I prep the orders, and we place the items in the USPS Priority Mail boxes. I print the labels and sales receipts and stack them for my trip to the Post Office to mail. Someday, I will be ambitious enough to use my scale and to learn how to do the customs paperwork on-line, but until then, I have my post office friends.

  • There seem to be the regular visitors who check their PO Boxes every morning at about the same time. One man and one woman come specifically to mind here. There is also a gentlemen I see about once a week. He brings a big bin in and walks out with it full–he has one of the BIG PO boxes.
  • There is the fellow Ebay seller. I am not sure what he sells online, but he unloads his “Critter Catcher” truck of 3 to 4 items most every morning. He did give me a piece of advice as to what Post Office in the city always has plenty of Priority Mail boxes available.
  • The staff also has its personalities. Most of them are men, but their are two women. The crankiest of the gentlemen is nice enough, but when you look at him, his body language says, “Cranky”. The ladies are very helpful. When I purchased the business, I was not sure how to best use the “self-help” machine to mail my Priority Mail boxes. She sat over my shoulder and confirmed I was making the right choices. Now, I use the machine most of the time, but I have had a few international orders. So, until I do the online paperwork, I have to use the staff.
  • Truly, the most interesting personality is “Bob” (not his real name). He appears to be a permanently happy man in his early 50s.. He yells “Hello” and “Good Morning” to all he sees. I believe he may even shake hands with some of the staff through his PO box. I have seen him at the gas station next door, and he was getting his donut and coffee and giving all he met the same friendly treatment as his postal friends.

I list the people I see at the post office regularly, but the real focus is on Bob. He may not have been blessed with all I am blessed with, but he is very happy and spreads happiness. Some may be annoyed by his lack of a volume control and others by one of his other challenges, but he is happy and he will certainly be missed when he is gone. Sometimes people don’t remember what big things you did, they just notice how consistent you were while doing it.

Visit from the crick in the neck

Daddy [me] suffers from an annual [or more often] visit from the “stiffest neck in the Midwest”. And, after two visits this fall, I needed to come up with a solution. Beside the obvious why do I need a solution to my fall/winter neckache?

  1. My wife makes fun of me when I have a stiff neck by looking up at me with a mocking stiff neck impression.
  2. Sleeping REALLY stinks.
  3. Getting out of bed is more a rolling out of bed because my neck won’t allow me to lift myself up. (I said it got STIFF)
  4. Driving is rough–looking left, right and left again when coming out of the driveway is an opportunity for my kids to see what their dad will be like all the time when I am REALLY old.
  5. At church, the bank, or anywhere I go people look at me and try to figure out if it was a sledding or car accident.

Well, no more….I hope. I have decided to give up sleeping on my stomach. One theory is the night chill in our room causes it. So, if I sleep on my side or stomach, I am not exposing my neck directly to the chill. (the sheet or pillow or whatever protect my neck) And, I pop a couple of Advil in the morning if I feel my neck is wavering between stiff/flexible. [Another theory is possible neck strain from shoveling snow etc.] So, December was free of stiff necks, and I am hopeful my stiff neck will reduce its visits to annually, or even further apart…