Treasures in the dust...

We had a wine tasting. Don't judge us.

This past weekend I met a very dear gal pal for a short retreat in Portland, ME. It was fabulous! We chatted late into the night, ate badly (eating fru-fru cheese, fruit, chocolate and wine for lunch/dinner seemed like a great idea!), ran the stairwells and halls of the Eastland Park Hotel at 11pm as penance for the copious amounts of delightful calories consumed, and spent hours discussing wishful renovations to my house and realistic ideas for the home she and her husband are currently designing/building. We also spent several hours in my new favorite place - Portland Architectural Salvage.

It is the holy place for anyone with big ideas about upcycling products - making the old into something new. With 12,000 square feet of display space on four floors, it literally takes HOURS to see everything! I skipped an entire floor because I wanted to focus on the items on the other three floors (I'm not in the market for tubs and such anyway) and I'm sure I still missed lots of things!

Hard to see but there are two drawers here. The shiny thing is
a glass block reclaimed from a glass factory.

I walked away with three items that I love. Two are the same - they are wooden drawers from an old chicken egg incubator. I wasn't sure what they were at first but ventured some guesses including incubator drawer but I wasn't sure. They were clearly of an agricultural nature judging from the wire bottoms and unfinished wood. The salvage store owner wasn't sure what they were either but having had three immediate alternative use ideas for them, I haggled a lower price and brought them home. Upon closer inspection at home, I discovered bits of egg shell adhered to the inside of the drawer and found images of similar drawers from 1950's incubators on the internet and therefore confirmed my assumption.

Champion Milk Cooler and Aerator circa 1892!

The third item is an old fashioned milk cooler and aerator. I grew up on a small dairy farm but didn't recognize it as something that we had used. It was, after all, patented in 1892. It is the perfect shape and height to make it into the base for a table so I bought it.

My thinking is that I'd like to start making unique upcycled items and possibly sell them. But... After some research about the milk cooler and realizing that it's a very hard item to come by... I'm pretty sure it's here to stay.

I have begun looking for salvage stores closer to home and am thinking that this weekend might find me at one in New Bedford. Apparently my husband knew there was one there but was avoiding telling me... I think he's afraid that our basement (aka my workshop) will begin to look like a salvage yard.

My greatest struggle in finding really cool things to upcycle will certainly be... letting them go. I'll do my best though!

Frifildi... A fun combination of letters... or is it more?

Recently I posted a comment on my friend's blog and her word verification popped up with a fun combination of letters that caught my imagination. Frifildi. Come on... That's a fun word! So I put it out there in Facebook-land for my friends to toss out ideas for definitions of this as-yet-undefined word. Below is what they came up with... what about you?

Frifildi. It's the jumbled code that I just had to enter in order to post a comment on a friend's blog post. It makes me chuckle and I feel that it requires a definition. Please chime in. Frifildi.

 ·  · January 5 at 10:08pm near Hyannis, MA

• • Lorien Silverleaf The crap that ends up at the bottom of your purse. You know, "My gum ended up all covered with frifildi from the bottom of my purse"

    January 5 at 10:11pm ·  ·  3
  • Jewels Hadman-Annino A rash...that you get in Italy.

    January 6 at 9:08am ·  ·  1
  • 

    Polly Tobin Goddard The joyful noise that bubbles out when you are having more thrilling fun than a mere laugh will cover. I'm pretty I'll frifildi the whole way down when I finally go skydiving. :-)

    January 6 at 9:55am · 
  • Jewels Hadman-Annino The next family to upstage the Kardashians....The Frifildi wedding will be the event of the century...24hrs later: Nicolettia Frifildi has filed for divorce...

    January 6 at 10:04am ·  ·  1
  • Polly Tobin Goddard Ha ha J - you've got some good ones!

    January 7 at 2:28pm ·  ·  1
  • Jewels Hadman-Annino Could also be a rare tropical flower that only blooms once every 122 years. "The Peruvian Botanical Institute anxiously waits for the Frifildi to unfurl it's delicate bloom."
    Or a Comet! "NASA has launched counter strike missiles against the Frifildi Comet. If they miss, most of the mid-west will become a lifeless crater."

A Meandering Path... The Early Years.

When I have conversations with people about jobs I've held or places I've lived, most look at me quizzically and wonder how I did all of that before I turned 29. Okay okay... I'm 42 but I did cover a lot of ground in my younger years. Since my resume no longer captures many of these gems, I am compelled to start at the very beginning and track what jobs I've had (and therefore, where I've lived) since I entered the workforce at the tender age of 13. Ready? Here we go!

Okay - I actually really first started earning money younger than 13 - I must have been 11 or 12 when I first started babysitting. The fact that the kids I babysat now have kids old enough to have kids is an entire blog post unto itself!

13 years old (Summer of 1983) - Moved to Ogunquit, ME and lived in a family friend's dingy basement apartment with three other 17 & 18 year old girls for the summer. I worked as a chamber maid at an inn next door, a dish washer at the neighboring restaurant, and a bus-person at a restaurant way down "the drag" on Route 1 - a long-arse bicycle ride away... especially in the pouring rain.

14 years old - Home (Cornwall/Kent, CT). Began teaching skiing at Mohawk Mountain Ski Area. I did it because I enjoyed a free season's pass as an elementary student in town but that opportunity dried up when we graduated from 8th grade. I ended up loving it and taught skiing at Mohawk off and on until I graduated college in 1993.

15 years old - Continued working at Mohawk and began my career as an ice cream scooper at Stosh's Ice Cream in Kent, CT. We dished up homemade (still one of my favorite brands ever!) ice cream to the likes of James Taylor, Kevin Bacon, and Michael J. Fox. Yep, I'm dropping names! While I'm at it, I should admit that I didn't know who James Taylor was until after I had served him some blueberry ice cream made from Henry Kissinger's (yep, THAT H.K.!) blueberry bushes. I was a pretty cool scooper until my co-worker said "Don't you know who that IS???"  I worked there for the better part of two years and loved it! It was the hub of our small town social life! My favorite dish to scoop was called "The Dip-a-dopolis" (sp?) and included something ridiculous like 32 scoops of ice cream and every topping on the bar. To this day I still can't offer anyone ice cream without asking "One scoop or two? Cup or Cone? Sugar or plain?"

16 years old - Ice cream scooper by summer (with mega buff right arm) and ski instructor by winter (with mega buff thighs). I also did a short stint working at the local dry cleaners. It wasn't my favorite gig as I hated the smell of the cleaning fluids and it was b-o-r-i-n-g when nobody came in for hours!

17 years old - This is when my lack of academic ambition came into play and I managed to convince myself, my parents, and my guidance counselor that it was a good idea to go on "Work Study" for my senior year of high school. I had two jobs: In the winter I ran the ski school desk and taught skiing (and skied during every free time we had - yeah, it was hard) and year-round I worked for Kent Carved Signs as a sign finisher. I blame my poor long-term memory on the long hours in the paint and stain room with zero ventilation.

From here on the ages get a little fuzzy so I'll ditch that format.

Garage Lacky at Tobin's Garage, Kent, CT. You might figure out that from the name of the business that it was a family business. This means that you do what needs doing no matter what it is, what time it needs doing or what other plans you might have had. I did everything from shuttle vehicles for the dealership and service department to drive school buses to invoice customers and do sales paperwork to bank/post office runs to lunch runs... it was my year of bouncing after an unsuccessful semester as a graphics design major and motivated me to find what I wanted to do and get to it!

Recreation Activities Aide (not sure about the title) at Lakeridge in Burrville, CT. This was a long way from home (45 minute commute) but it was my first stint in the world of recreation. I enjoyed it for the most part but soured on the job after continually being treated like a " second class townie" by the wealthy folks that weekended there. Ick.

That brings me up to around 19 years old. Not bad for just a few years in the work force, eh? Oh... it gets better and more varied as time goes on. Tune in for the next post!

Spring Cleaning... Not Just for Spring...

A year and a half ago when I was having bit of an existential crisis my dear dear dear friend asked what she could do to help. I blurted out, "Help me clean out my basement!" I tried multiple times to withdraw the request - they live in northern Maine for Pete's sake! - but they would hear nothing of it. I should have known that within weeks she and the troops would roll in. By "troops" I mean her, her wonderful husband, their two adorable little girls, and a babysitter.  Her two great loves had been called to duty - helping someone she cares about and organizing stuff - how could I deny her? At some point I had also mentioned that I wanted her to teach me to sew some day as I wanted to make some slip covers for some God-awful chairs we had bought. What did she do? She arrived with her sewing machine!

Between popping down to help her husband and me in the basement as we sorted and hoed out multiple moves worth of stuff, she sat on my living room floor and made slip covers for my chairs.

That, in case you are wondering, is the very definition of a very dear friend! We didn't have to talk about my existential crisis (I had just learned that biological children were not to be a part of my future and that trying to have them had given me a dangerous blood clot in my arm which prevented me from lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds for six months) because she knew... when faced with a setback, I drop back, punt, and keep myself very busy until I figure out a way around the roadblock. Unfortunately this was not the type of roadblock that I could get around so my E.C. was deeper than any that I had ever wrestled before. I needed a fresh perspective and she could help me by covering the navy blue with gold pinstripes chairs (seriously, hello Captain Steubing!) and helping haul away stuff that we had been dragging around due to a lack of actual time to sort through it.

It was the clean slate that I needed. They spent a long weekend scurrying about our home in October and by December my funk had lifted and I faced life with a new energy.

I realized that one of the reasons that I hadn't gotten into the basement myself before that was because I wasn't committed to living in this house for more than a few years. I like it but I don't love it. It is missing key things that I can't live without - a mudroom and a garage being the primary missing elements. As I dug deeper into those feelings (without even going to counseling!) I realized that part of my E.C. included the fact that this was the first time ever that I had unpacked my things with the very real possibility of staying in one place for more than two years. It was a little scary. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was more exciting than scary and I began to embrace it.

Isn't this magnificent?  This isn't mine but I covet it
 and have a similar item bookmarked at Ikea. Settling in affords
me the opportunity to find just the right piece for its purpose. 

Since then, I've been realizing the benefits of being settled in one place. Here are a few benefits in no particular order: I can find our Christmas decorations and I don't feel guilty about adding new items to the collection; I can design and re-design the use of a particular space until I find a use that works (see former 'dining space' that is now a sitting area. And when the cat goes to kitty heaven, just wait to see what I do with his sunroom!); I can get creative about some of the items I have collected from my family farm and have actually used an oxen yoke as a hanging pot rack and some old clapboards for additional shelving in the kitchen; I have taken a full inventory of the towels and sheets that I have collected over the years and (aside from my Sesame Street sheets) have pared them down to a reasonable amount that I can legitimately use and store; I can find a place for everything and put everything in its place... and get rid of the extra stuff that we don't really need or want; and I can feel good about choosing paint colors that we like, not fretting about if it is something that the new owners might appreciate (I'm pretty sure the carrot orange living room in our old house got painted over quickly, but that's okay).


Why am I writing this post? Well... because my husband has to work at midnight tonight and I am bored with watching TV and I just found myself down in the basement just hanging out and putting away all of the blankets and sleeping bags that I have spent the past week washing. I am now a basement junky! Oh... did I mention that I also carved out a crafting area in the corner of the basement? I'm not much of a crafter right now but it's part of the answer to my e.c. (notice it's lower case now? It's because I'm over it and that's all it deserves) and I'm going to be a crafter in my tidy, organized basement.

Healthcare - What a Mess!

A volunteer that I work with frequently has been keeping me in the loop about his healthcare issues. He suffers from a variety of issues including clinical depression and heart-related issues. I've known him for about six months and the depression has been debilitating for him. Some days when I've seen him, he can barely move or talk and he is pretty open about the medications not working and the doctor not believing him that he's having problems with it.

Last week he called me to check in about a project and he was... upbeat. It was the first time EVER that he answered "Good!" when I asked him how he was doing. He even laughed at himself recognizing this. This response was far different from the man who, the first time I met him, cried as he told me about his wife's passing and his inability to feel it because they had him on the wrong medications for his depression. Since that time two years ago, he has gotten off medication (and could barely function nearly losing his home and more) and tried new medication. His doctor told him to "get over it" when he talked about how his wife's passing had affected him deeply because of his inability to feel emotions during that time. "Get over it". Really? That's the best the doctor can do?

I am not a medical professional but after the first few interactions with him, I could tell that the guy had a will to live. He was trying to engage in life. Three days after having a stent put in, he showed up to help me do a trail maintenance project (which I never would have allowed had I known!). A week later he showed up to help with another project even though he was having some trouble with the surgical site (I managed to send him home early from this one). This guy was making an actual effort but his doctor's best advice was "Get over it and keep taking the medication that isn't working".

Finally fed up with a lack of response from this doctor, he changed doctors in December. The new doctor switched his medication immediately and within about a week, he started feeling different - better!

During the first week of January, he went to the pharmacy to get his new prescription refilled. He was clean-shaven, had gotten a hair cut. He was smiling. He felt... good. When he got there, they told him that as of 1/1/12, he no longer had any health coverage or prescription coverage. He was heart-broken. A different person would have quit. Had he not had a recent break-through with the new medication, maybe he would have quit. He had certainly considered suicide in the past! But he didn't quit. He called me and signed up for another trail project and he set about trying to get his insurance re-instated. 

After several calls he reached one person at the Medicare office who gave him the attention he needed. She helped him to get back onto a healthcare plan (without understanding why he had gotten kicked off in the first place) and even helped him select the right prescription plan based on his various medications. She was the bright spot in the darkness that is the current healthcare system.

I won't wax poetic about how to fix it. I'm not nearly informed enough to really know what needs to happen. I do know that in December I spent several hours sorting out my father's Medicare and prescription coverage because it was so confusing for him. I may not have the answers but I know that kicking people out of the system isn't it. I do know that they system is broken and needs serious attention!

The fellow I mentioned has gotten his healthcare squared away. He's got his medications covered. He's doing well. But how many other people got kicked out of the system and either don't know what to do to fix it or don't even know they don't have healthcare and may not know until they are in a bad situation? It's a mess.