Life

Knuckle Injuries

Trying to be a good husband last weekend, I committing to moving some plants and planting some new plants in the flower bed. While executing the plan, I neglected to plan for the injuries that so often accompany these landscaping moments.

The knuckle on the middle finger was created while using a pick to try and take out a very large root from our now non-existent magnolia tree. While lifting up the pick handle, my finger, although wearing a glove, became wedged between the handle and a barely visible sprinkler head. The other injury (on the top knuckle of the pointer finger on the same hand) was caused when I grabbed a tool out of the tool rack. This finger was slit by a sharp edge of one of the other tools. The “how” of the injuries is not really important. It is the challenge of living with injured knuckles until they heal that is the real point.

These are the things injured knuckles have made more difficult:

Tucking in clothes: Most people don’t tuck anymore, but I still do. So, it can be a knuckle-bumping opportunity.
Hand washing: The washing is not ALL bad. The soap may burn a little. It is the drying that is the worst. The knuckles tend to get a little abuse during the drying process. And, being a little nutty about germs, does cause frequent washings.
Flossing: My flossing technique has me wrapping the string around my top knuckles of both pointer fingers. While doing the “flossing” thing, the injury does get irritated. I am a big boy and can handle it. Finger injuries are just not forgotten while they heal.
Tying shoes: Again, fingers can be swapped while the knots are being made. Until the knuckles are healed, I am reminded many times during the day that my fingers are VERY valuable.
Digging into front pockets: I have to be careful here so I don’t dig into my pocket with the knuckles unprotected. If I dig in with the knuckles “tucked in”, they don’t rub against the inside of the pocket. If I don’t tuck, the scab is scraped off leaving a trickle of blood coming from the re-injured area.
Going outside when it is cold and your knuckles dry out: This happened just this morning. Even with gloves on, my knuckles bled. They were so dry a small amount of blood trailed off in the knuckle wrinkles.
Buckling seatbelts: It will hurt more depending on which hand the knuckle injury is on. In my case, OWWWWWWW!!!!

Do I mean to whine? I am trying to do a sub-par Andy Rooney impression? No, I am just doing a brain dump and capturing a few thoughts. I appreciate you reading. I will try to do better next time!

Leftover Breakfast

The satisfaction of cleaning out the cupboard

The kids know I am VERY big on getting rid of leftovers. This is normally a topic that comes up around dinner time. (If it is around the holidays, mom may have made a breakfast casserole that would also fall into the “leftover” category.) In fact, I often announce the night before tomorrows dinner will be leftovers. (This is sometimes determined by the number of plastic containers full of food in the fridges [there is a preferred leftover fridge and shelf in the fridge] or by the kids schedule and my ability or inability to prepare something of value.) During the summer time, I will often offer bribes of Yogurtville or picnics to entice the pool-dwellers to stretch a little extra as they make their dining choices. (Are you sure you want that? If you take a couple scoops of this we can finish it up entirely. Or, similar things a coach might say to his athletes to try and squeeze the maximum performance out of them or their appetites.)

No such excitement occurred today. (However, last night it was announced it would be warmups for supper because their was a High School away soccer game.) Due to the girls needing to get to school early (Rachel is on the scholarship team and had to go over her math problems), I needed to pull together breakfast quickly. And, cold cereal is often the choice of quick breakfast choosers. (I am not a fan of pop tarts. If I was, they would win both the quick and transportable award.)

My viewing of the cereal cupboard convinced me it would not be a normal breakfast. I knew 2 of the 3 open boxes were in the orphan category. (Where there is so little left and what is left is mostly crumbs or in the case of frosted flakes, it is was sugar.) After dumping a half cup or less of the raisin bran and frosted flakes, my bowl still looked very lonely and lean. My daughter volunteered the box of Lucky Charms. Not being particular partial to Lucky Charms (likely some residual belief from child hood. My mother could easily have told me once that marshmallows in your cereal gives you acne or some such thing. Whatever the story, I have not eaten marshmallows for breakfast in decades.) The addition of the Lucky Charms seemed to make the bowl “about right”. Once the milk was added and the “floating rules” were all applied, it looked like I was eating Lucky Charms with occasional variety in flavors.

Would I do it again? Oh, sure. I could choose it, but if it chooses me (or my OCD that demands the consumption of leftovers demands to be heard) I would fill the bowl. My spoon and I would enjoy another adventure.

Proactive Coke Rewards

Today’s outing (No, I didn’t drink all of these. It is recycle day, and I was going through everyones bins to collect the points. I do have some pride–I won’t dig too deep or dig down too many layers if the bins are stacked) consisted of 4 large cases, 10 small cases, & 9 lids. It almost cost me a set of keys (they fell out of my jacket pocket while I was scrounging).

What are Coke Rewards worth? Besides my wife’s undying gratitude, they buy her free Shutterfly albums. With the nearly 200 points accumulated today, a large dent was put in the next album.

Happy wife – happy life!

The Guy I Met At Jeff’s Physical Therapy

I met a very nice guy at Jeff’s physical therapy session today. (Really his only session. His wrist was doing fine, so they were just doing exercises to make sure it is gaining on the left hand.) Definitely not an intimidating guy. He used his wheeled walked and starting coming my direction, so I cleared the chair so he could sit down. He had a pocket on his walker with a few papers in it. It was cushioned to keep him from banging any of his aching appendages.

Our dialogue went something like this…

“What are you in for?”
“Bad knee.”
“The one God gave you or a replacement.”
“The original one.”
“That’s good”. (Me)
“Yes, I have some water on my knee. And, it needs to be trained and then some PT.”

He then goes on to tell me he has been married nearly 67 years. That he has been retired since 1987, and he used to be a engineer on the Santa Fe railroad. His great grand daughter (2 daughters, 6 grandkids, 8 great-grand kids) is a trainer for the Trinity football team–they are in the 3rd week of the football playoffs. And, he is a WWII veteran of the South Pacific. Before we are to far in the conversation, he handed me a religious tract. I was not offended that he handed me the tract, nor would I have been if I wasn’t a Christian. If all members of our society could discretely make others aware of their values without worrying about offending them, life would be easier and we would start to be more tolerant as a society. Right now, it seems the thin-skinned sissies are making the rest of us feel like we are horrible people because we have an opinion that differs from theirs! I may be a horrible person, but it is not because of my opinions. 😉

The Saga of the Dented Car

What has proceeded on Facebook…..

Andy Gruenbaum wonders if there is a nice way to ask your neighbor, “Did you back out of your driveway and hit our car and drive off?” He doesn’t have any good angles on this one…..

Ugh! Yea, good luck with that!
I would say; “Hey I don’t think you noticed but you hit my car on our way out the other day”
Andy Gruenbaum Unfortunately, he is of a different race than us. I try and be extra sensitive when being confrontational. It is just a little “ding” but we can see the white paint in the dent….
I wouldn’t worry about that, I wouldn’t be confrontational either, just mention it nicely and say something like “I wanted to talk to you about this instead of reporting it because I think neighbors can work things like this out since we live right next to each other, and its a small dent which you probably didn’t notice” this way you don’t sound like you’re accusing. They will probably respect that. Are they foreign?

That’s a rough one. I had a patient’s neighbor hit my car. My concern was the man was elderly and did not realize it (I saw it happen, but he was too quick for me to stop him). I was concerned that his awareness was decreased and next time it could be a child. So I went to the door and spoke with the wife. She was very gracious and the man did call and offer to pay the repairs.
Andy Gruenbaum The problem was we noticed at 10:00 the night before we went on a 2.5 week vacation. When we came back, we still saw the dent, but the critical point of contact was past. And, the neighbor hasn’t answered the door when we tried him after returning. And, he is almost never out, so the “easy” answer is not so easy….

Andy Gruenbaum The neighbor is a unemployed, black man from California who hates Texas. He has no kids, but his present wife has 4 daughters that visit way to much(in his opinion). AND, his mother-in-law lives with them and suffers from dementia. He is generally not a happy man, although, I have tried to befriend him. So, he may just be content to avoid us and not deal with the issue.
Isn’t your wife a lawyer?
Is the dent really a big enough deal to even worry about it? Maybe its better to forget if there is a posibility of a worse situation?
Many of California drivers don’t know how to drive…… not including me though It is good to notice them as to avoid the second chance…..
Judy Clausing Gruenbaum yes, the dent is pretty big.
Andy GruenbaumThe neighbor was out today, but the care wasn’t here. Maybe, we can find a way to casually mention it. If we keep our expectations really low, we will probably not be disappointed.
Wow, that’s a big dent! I don’t know what the answer is, but, I really think you’re neighbor owes you an explanation!

Hey Andy. Start out with something like, “Can you believe what someone did to our car?” Then “I can’t believe they left the scene” “Good thing is we turned the video over to the police but they said it would be a couple days before they could review it…See More
Try this. Call the police, indicate when it happened for the record, file a report, and ask their advise. I know the answer will be avoid the incident. Call insurance, and note a hit and run. Should be comprehensive coverage and not your incident for your deductible. If you have to pay your deductible, say $500, find a way to distribute $500 worth of, I don’t know, pea gravel, in the neighbor’s yard.
Andy GruenbaumI don’t think I mentioned his house was for sale before. If possible, I believe this would make our car dent an even lesser priority than before….
So, steal the sign tonight, and keep stealing it until he comes over and confesses. If he catches you, just tell him you are trying to “make sure the house does not sell before he gets a chance to tell you about the fender bender”.
July 26th: I am working on cutting some carbon filter orders (sell them on my eBay store) when there is a pounding on the door. It is the neighbor. She wants me to move our car out of the street. She has sold her “Skeedo” (snowmobile for water or whatever they are). It is on a trailer and when it is picked up she does not want them to hit our car. Ahhh…sweet of her.

July 28th

This is the moving van they were using Sunday morning. It made the street pretty crowded and my wife didn’t want to park in the street for fear there would be some sort of deja vu experience.

July 29th: The last time I saw the neighbor with a U-haul it had a picture from Ohio with the serpent mounds. (The one from Sunday was from Delaware) I saw it parked near the boys school. I thought maybe the neighbor was moving into some apartments a couple miles south of us.

July 30th: Spoke to the neighbor today. (If he were wise he would have put his big pile of garbage/non-moving items out last night so the trolls could go through them) They are moving out on Friday. The new house is somewhere in Keller right next to a golf course. And, he REALLY hates home owner associations. (HOAs) He said they are moving into a furnished long-term stay type place for a couple of weeks BEFORE they move into their new house. I chose not to mention the dent in the car. We were bonding so well, and I didn’t want to ruin it. And, once you are beyond the 1 month window, it is hard to be in the mood to “nail” him. The dent is there, and we will get it fixed eventually. If I see the neighbor again around town again, we can wave at each other and be cordial….while I grit my teeth. 😉

Winter 2014: We got the dent fixed while getting some other winter damage fixed.

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?

My wife makes fun of me when I have a stiff neck by looking up at me with a mocking stiff neck impression.
Sleeping REALLY stinks.
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)
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.
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…

Walking Down Life's Road With Andy