Lauren

This is a story probably a decade in the making. Long ago, my parents brought my grandmother’s piano to my house. Dad would have taken it to Colorado but it came from Missouri and the humidity change would have been too drastic. So, it came to Nebraska to hold my mail.

Many, many years ago (8? 10? wait – 6. There is documentation.), one key stopped working. (Yes, I did try to play occasionally.) When I owned a crummy thrift store piano back in Maryland, I dismantled that and put it back together, so I thought I could diagnose this, too. I took it apart, put it back together….. and eight keys were not working. Rats.

I just covered it with more mail.

Well, sometime this fall I thought I should maybe think about fixing it. My motto was, “It’s already broken – I can’t break it more.” (I obviously forgot about the one key/eight key fiasco of yore.)

I opened the hood.

I saw that some thingies were broken: they’re called bridle straps. I ordered some more that just clipped on. In this photo, the red tabs are the new straps, the grey, crumbling ones are the old straps.

Now, this is where my ADD really bogged things down. I thought I’d just have to replace a few straps, but realized that ALL EIGHTY-EIGHT straps would have to be changed. The old ones just … disintegrated when touched.

88!! UGH! Ain’t nobody got the attention span for that. I came up with a system: change five straps, get a Starburst.

That worked for three rounds, but then I needed to go watch tv. Slowly, slowly over many many days, I got most of them done.

This brings us to Saturday morning. I was up bright and early and only had 30 more straps to do…. and I just DID it. It must be what people with real attention spans feel like. When Lloyd got up, we took the action out and I worked on fixing the eight broken keys. Apparently, when I took it out all those years ago, the broken straps let pieces get all caddywompus (technical piano term), and that was the problem.

When I got to the final key – the original broken one – Lloyd helped me figure out what was wrong and helped hold everything still so we could fix it. When we put it back in, there was one injury to a damper that required some Laurening.

But, it works!! It’s not 100%, but it plays! I was so pumped, I rewarded myself with a very, very simple book to try and remember how to play.

“The Easiest Easy Piano Songs”. That sounds perfect.

So, what should I say? We are months away from the last post.

August: School started. Some other things probably happened, but I there’s no telling what.

September: I don’t even know. Life is a blur of chaotic sameness.

October: I bought a food sucker! That’s the highlight of my life. If I ever get some photos up, I’ll show you. Until then, click this link to Souper Cubes to see part of my delight. We’re going to visit my Dad for Thanksgiving and even though he’s doing fine, I’ve been freezing some things to take out to Colorado. I found a Souper Cube mold at a thrift store, and currently there is no better hobby than freezing food into a perfect brick (I just have the 2-cup size) and then encasing it completely in plastic. (Sorry, Earth.)

November: Here we are.

• The roof is currently getting replaced, but the rest of the house is still on hold.
• Lloyd had his annual tech sale and I ‘helped’. (Sam really helped.)
• Keren was in Nebraska for work and stopped by for a night, which was lovely.
• I am making a batch of stew to put in my Souper Cubes!

Are you happy now, Sam?

(Reading the past entry: we did get a new a/c system, and the rash cleared up with the medication. If it happens again, I’m supposed to call for an oral steroid first, then go in.)

This entry is mostly about the storm. Other things have happened that I will surely forget (and already have), but let’s talk about the Storm of August 9. I have had some GERD issues for the past week and a half and have tried various ways to sit completely up, not just elevated in bed. I was propped up in the guest room when I heard glass break. I thought a cat had knocked something over and went out to check it out. It was something round at the bottom of the steps. As I got the broom to sweep it up, I noticed how bright and flashy and weird the sky was and that the power was out. Lloyd came down and I told him he’d need shoes. He was dressed and said the constant lighting was enough to dress by – he woke up from the power going off and turning off the fan, and also the big ‘booms’. * We could tell something was up … and then the storm alert came through the phones. Duh.

We had flashlights and shoes on, and we could tell that there was foliage of some sort up against the house. We could also hear….water? Sure enough, water was coming through the top of the kitchen window frame. What the what??

Well a huge chunk of the maple tree had blown over, hitting the roof (knocking a light fixture from the ceiling above the stairs – hence the broken glass) and damaging the soffit enough to let in the rain coming straight in.

Before the sun came up and after the storm passed, people were outside assessing damage with flashlights and already offering help to each other. Once the sun was up, you could see how bad it really was. We don’t have a lot of photos of the ‘before’ but Lloyd got out our chainsaw, as did many people, and set to work helping to clear the streets. I pulled branches as I could, and we met a lot of our neighbors. Several houses were in our situation – trees had pulled down the power lines – but the whole county was out of power.

Here are just some photos from our street. This is our neighbors’ garage. I don’t have a photos of the back of their house. Two enormous tree chunks fell and put a hole in their roof.

Here are photos from our house: The big chunk of tree in the light of day. It has a five-foot circumference. (I know because I hugged it.)

Here’s the edge the roof: It smashed the soffit so rain got in the corner. Fun side note: I’m writing this the next morning. We had more rain last night and it is wet in the kitchen again. Fun times.

Concordia has their athletic camps now and the football and volleyball teams cancelled practice and instead went around volunteering and helping people move the trees. It was awesome watching them work. This photo is down the street from us.

I’m trying to get a little movie to load that shows our street after the first clean-up, but it’s having trouble. I’ll work on it.

So, insurance has been contacted, there is more work to do today, and oh – the new school year starts in three days. Fun. Go to Brad’s site for photos from Beth and Harold’s situation.

(*Everyone else I’ve talked to said how the storm sound was actually like a train and I didn’t know why I didn’t notice that. Then I remembered that I’d been sleeping in the room with the air filter that is RUMBLY and LOUD.)

If it weren’t for this site, many things would be lost to our poor memories. Not posting very often has put me in a bit of a mental bind lately, so I’m jotting this down for Future Me.

1. Our air conditioning conked out. It did last year, too, and the repair guy said it needed more freon, but it was on its last legs. Both legs broke this year and it died. We have been making do with two window units (thank goodness), and the new one is coming next week. Sooooo glad we are having a heat advisory over the weekend……..

2. I can’t remember if I wrote about my Horrible Rash last spring? It started with a puffy eye and some itchy, fluid-filled dots on my hands that SPREAD – neck, face, arm, torso…. it was awful. I went to the dermatologist and had them biopsied. All they could tell me was, “Well, it’s not from gluten.” They wound up giving me medicine that helps with leprosy.

This Monday, my eye puffed up. *GULP*

In some ways it has been better – the spots are not all over, mainly my face and back of neck, but the whole right side of my face puffed up and I had a hard time seeing out of my right eye on Wednesday. People at work have been asking a lot of questions – either to me or whispering behind my back to see if I was in a fight.

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and he didn’t know either. He prescribed antibiotics and an oral steroid and said to keep taking the antihistamine (which I am doubling up on). Lauren, you have a health document in Google docs if this should happen again.

Anyway, we are heading to a wedding today, and thankfully I just look like someone slapped me and it’s a little red, puffy and scaly. I’m going to blame Lloyd.

Have a good Saturday!

Whenever we attend a get-together, Beth always brings a veggie tray. She has the divided Tupperware tray that has seven spots for different things. It’s always nice to have vegetables around, and this is a good way to do it. She says she keeps in in her fridge all the time for handy munching.

When the Peperkorns came for graduation, I thought it would be nice to do the same. Our local thrift store had a round option, but with no dividers. It works great when it’s full, but when it’s empty it’s a little weird.

I looked online for a loooooong time for a rectangular option. There’s a cool one for traveling because the lid is level with the tops of the sections, but that’s not very useful for heaping stuff. Plus, it’s small. I wanted bigger with a taller lid.

So, I bit the bullet and bought it. It takes up less real estate in the fridge, and I’ve gone through three rounds of vegetables with the old one (that is on it’s way back to the thrift store) and one full cycle with the new one.

(The round one had just been washed – it’s not really that spotty.)

Let’s see how long I keep this up!

Anyone who reads this thing knows that we are not big spenders. I can be incredibly cheap and later have regrets, but we’re also frugal. For instance, I spend the big money on Smartwool socks, but they last For-Ev-Er. The cost per wear is pennies. Maybe ha’pennies.

The current problem, though, is that Lloyd has developed some sort of sock vanity. “My socks are pilling,” he whined said. “I want one of those things that shaves sweaters.”

Good grief. 1) Nobody is looking at his socks, and 2) he knows how Amazon works.

I later realized that this was a hint to buy a present for him. That is, I think it was. I don’t pick up on hints and I’m really bad at presents. Anyway, I went to Amazon and found the second-cheapest shaver they had. Battery operated or USB and it came with two extra blades.

Now, in the cool of the evening, Lloyd shaves the pair of socks he’s wearing and I don’t make fun of him at all.

Huh. They do look better. Can you tell the finished one? (Different night from the first photo.)