Murphy's Law and the Guatemalan Worm

Murphy's Law, in so many words, says that anything that can go wrong in any given situation, will.  So true.  But Murphy's Law has been at work in my life with just a twist:  Anything that can go wrong will happen to the one person who can least handle it. 

In our household when I was a kid, dinner was all about my dad.  Were it not for him, I'm pretty sure Mom would have just made food that she knew we kids would like.  If Dad was expected, however, (which was almost always) dinner was a family meal designed to feed the hungry breadwinner.  The rest of us were expected to eat it, whether we liked it or not.  My father had been raised in a very poor home, and so, not surprisingly, he was a carnivore--trying to make up for the things he didn't get when he was a hungry kid.  We didn't talk about it, but I'm pretty sure my mother planned meals around Dad's likes and dislikes.  Even leftovers had a plan.  They'd be reworked into something just as yummy as the original meal.  It stands to reason that she would want Dad to approve.

My father wasn't much on sweets, but he did like cherry pie.  When Mom had access to fresh cherries, she would make one.  And this is where Murphy's Law came into play.  IF there was a stray cherry pit in the pie, it would be in Dad's piece.  Same thing with buckshot in the game he brought home from hunting.  Mom and Dad both would go through the squirrel, rabbit, or pheasant carcass, checking for those little lead balls, but if they happened to miss one, it would be Dad whose teeth crunched down on it while eating.  It almost became family lore:  If there is something that shouldn't be in the food, Dad will get it.  He never complained except for the time or two when he crunched down and it hurt. 

My very first year of teaching, I was employed at Heyworth High School, Heyworth, IL (1969).  The classroom had no air conditioning, of course.  One whole wall of that room consisted of a bank of huge windows (with no screens) that went from about waist-height to the top of the 15-foot ceilings.  In order to have any comfort at all on hot days, those windows had to be open, leaving my students and I vulnerable to wasps, bees, and the truck noise from the highway that ran right in front of the school. 

That year, I had what all teachers have at least one of per year:  The Class from Hell.  My CFH consisted of juniors--almost all boys (of course)--who prided themselves on their reputation as hellions.  (They claimed that they were single-handedly responsible for the firing/resignation of the previous English teacher because they were hanging outside those windows and she couldn't do anything about it.)  There was one kid in that class who got picked on a lot.  He was on the pudgy side and was a buffoon.  Enjoyed his notoriety as the pickee.  If anything could go wrong, it would happen to him.  It was all I could do to protect him from the others, which was a constant task, not always appreciated. 

On one particularly warm day, a hapless sparrow flew into my classroom and fluttered around, trying  to find its way back out.  Naturally, the CFH got a big kick out of that.  My lesson came to a halt while we all tried to figure out how to remove the bird.  Around and around the room it flew.  As Murphy would have it, that little bird pooped as it flew, and the splat landed guess where--(can you see where I'm going with this?)--right on the shoulder of that one kid!  The class hooted with laughter while the boy hopped around, holding the shirt away from his skin with his thumb and forefinger, yelling "Ew!  Ew!  Get it off of me!  How can I get this off of me??"  I sent the boy to the office for them to determine what could be done about his soiled shirt; the bird eventually went back out the window.  All sense of educational decorum was shot for the rest of the period, however.    There would be no American literature lesson that day!

So...who is the pickiest eater in my family?  Who is the one person who is the most germophobic and least likely to be able to pick a bug out of her food and keep eating it?  My daughter.  Thus, Megan is a target for Murphy's Law. 

I'm visiting at her house as I type.  Two days ago, she fixed a pretty good supper for us all:  chicken chunks in a savory sauce, wild rice, and broccoli flowerets from frozen.  Before she had even taken that first bite of broccoli, she noticed a tiny little green worm in it.  It was a dead worm, to be sure, since the frozen broccoli had to be boiled, but it was a worm, nonetheless.  (If you've ever grown broccoli in a home garden, you know that broccoli attracts little green worms that resemble the plant so much that it is hard to spot them.  Fresh broccoli has to be soaked in salt water before it can be processed for the freezer or the table, to get rid of the worms.)  Well!  That was the end of the broccoli for her!  Had the worm been in my portion, I would have removed him and continued eating.  I mean, he had been blanched before he could have been frozen...then boiled before he could be served.  I imagine there are starving people in the world who would have been happy to eat the broccoli, worm and all.  Unfortunately, that argument just doesn't fly with well-fed Americans.  Meg checked the bag that the broccoli had come in:  Product of Guatemala.  A well-traveled dead worm that Murphy put in that bag with Megan Shchepetov's name on it for good measure!

I'm not suggesting that my daughter should have eaten the rest of her broccoli--only that I didn't stop eating it just because one lowly little Guatemalan worm had been found in it.  I'm just not sure how long it will be before she'll trust frozen broccoli again.   Only Murphy knows for sure!

Medical Mystery

So...

I drove to IU Health West this morning, after fasting after supper last night through this morning, to get blood drawn to test for blood lipids, etc., before my cardiologist appointment on Monday. I got just down the street when I realized that I had forgotten to bring the doctor's order for the test, so I turned around, got it, and headed back out.

I took the newly-opened Ronald Reagan Parkway between Pfield and Rockville Road for the first time.  Pretty slick!  Although it seems like a longer distance, there is a whole lot less traffic/stoplights.  When I arrived, I went to the lab, as usual. They told me that the doctor's order was over a year old, so it had expired. They sent me to the doctor's office (in the same building) for a new one. The place was packed, but I sat and waited patiently for quite awhile for them to obtain it.

Then they called me up to the desk and said they could do the draw right there in the office, if I wanted. It would save me the walk back down to the lab, so good for me. When that was done, I stopped back at the registration desk to give them my new insurance information--because no one had asked for it at the doc's office, then stopped for food andcame home. No problem.

I went about the rest of the day's business.  Then along about 4:00-something, I got a call from a gal in the doc's office saying I would have to come back for another draw because the guy who picks the specimens up to take to the lab had dropped mine. She suggested that I just go directly to the lab tomorrow morning between 8:00 and noon.  Oooookay.

But then I got to wondering if there would be a problem because I would not have a doctor's order in hand and didn't know if they would think to supply the lab with one...so I called them back. Talked to someone different this time after being on hold for about 15 minutes. I explained the situation to her and told her that I didn't want to have to be sent to the doctor's office for a lab order (again) and have to wait for that (again)...and would it be taken care of? She put me on hold for another 15 minutes. (By this time, it was well after 4:30 and everyone there was getting ready to go home...and I'm quite sure Dr. Gill won't be in tomorrow.) While I was on hold the second time, the gal I was talking to called "Beth" at the lab and was told that they would page Dr. Gill and get verbal orders from him for the second draw tomorrow. Glad I thought to call. Everything's fine now, right?

Wrong! A few minutes later, I got a call from Beth at the lab, asking who had called me the first time telling me that my specimen had been dropped. (I couldn't remember.) She was trying to get to the bottom of a mystery because MY blood specimen had already been processed and tests completed. If someone's specimen had been dropped, it wasn't mine--or so she thinks. As Alice in Wonderland would say, "Curiouser and curiouser".  Beth said she would leave it up to me if I wanted to come in for the second blood draw.  If, as she said, my blood tests were completed--and she was relatively sure that the vial was properly labeled--WHY would I want to fast again, drive to Avon again, and get stuck again?  If this were a critical blood test to determine if I needed surgery or something, I would.  This one, however, is just to see how I am doing in the department of blood fats.  (Not good, I'm sure.  If someone else's blood was mistaken for mine, I hope he/she had fantastic test results!)

When I left the house this morning, I was dressed in my signature white Grasshopper shoes, brown slacks, a hot-pink tunic top, and carried a black purse.  I was my very own fashion statement!  Know what?  I doubt that a single other person noticed or cared.  Old people don't count, you know...and it wouldn't affect the results of the blood test.  Blah!  I had grabbed slacks that were clean and a top that had sleeves I could push up above the elbow for the blood draw.  If I wasn't pretty, it's just too bad!

The only other medical mystery of the day is why I wake up with a hip that hurts but feels better after I've been up and around for awhile.  Getting old sure isn't fun! 

Sticky Wiki

Any time I think I need to look something up on the Internet, I usually wind up relying on Wikipedia.  There's a problem with that.  Wikipedia can be changed/edited by anyone.  It is monitored, however, so outrageously false information won't stay on it for long, and they do require citations by way of proof for what has been posted. 

In making my last blog post about my father, I was trying to remember the school shooting at his high school back in the 1970s.  Went to Wiki, naturally, but found it not listed in the article about school shootings.  Hmmmm...  I began to doubt my recollection.  Did it really happen?  Why wouldn't it be listed?  It met all the criteria of the article, but it just wasn't there.  Know what?  It wasn't ANYWHERE.  Meg and I searched online for a couple of days for news articles, etc., using several different search engines, to no avail.  Turns out, I was searching under the wrong year.  Once I got that corrected, a promising newspaper article showed up, then I found a link that referenced The Chicago Tribune's archives.  Found it!  Unfortunately, reading the article meant I would have to buy it from the archives...which, this morning, I did.   

Meg suggested that I should add it to the Wikipedia article.  Ack!  Had never done anything like that before, but I decided to try.  Had to make several attempts to get it in the proper format, especially for the cited reference, but I got it done.  Yay, me!  So...if you read the Wikipedia article about school shootings, my entry is for October 1, 1973.  (Just don't expect me to do anything like that again!)

Addendum

I should have added to my last post that my father made more things than just my furniture treasures.  He built the kitchen cabinets at my grandparents' farmhouse when they remodeled a garage into a house after a fire that destroyed the homestead.  He made picture frames as needed for paintings.  (Shari, take note that Dad made the frame for the Hawaiian seascape painting hanging on your stairs and the "Christina's World" print that Lynn has.)  He also made wooden boards for my sister Shari's decoupage projects many years ago.  He was also frequently working on projects for friends, using his wood shop at Elmwood Park High School, to the point that my mother used to complain.  She had been requesting that he make end tables for years, but he was always doing other projects.  (You know--the cobbler's kids don't have shoes!)  Finally, Dad got around to making those end tables.  They were modeled after cobbler's benches and were quite big and sturdy.  Don't know what happened to those...

In my days, I have refinished many a piece of furniture, stripping off the old finish, staining, and varnishing.  Dad always claimed that he would rather build furniture from scratch than have to refinish it.  I don't blame him!  He jokingly called himself a "wood butcher", but he was good at what he did.  He was a great athlete, a good Navy officer, an admirable wood butcher, an excellent provider for his family, a Commander at the Streator, IL, American Legion and VFW for many years, a fantastic gardener and farm hand for my grandparents, and PROBABLY a good teacher. 

There are stories about his teaching.  He used to tell his classes that he beat his wife and children on a regular basis to keep them in line.  Once in awhile as a teenager, I would attend a football game that he was coaching or a basketball game that he was refereeing, and a student or two would ask, "Does he really beat you?"  I'd just laugh.  "He's never touched me in anger."  Those poor duped students!  There was also a time when a parent called the administration because Dad had called their son a "punk".  When Dad was asked to explain himself, he told the principal that yes, he had...and would again...because the kid was behaving like a punk!  And I vaguely remember a story in which he grabbed a kid by the collar and shoved him up against some lockers.  I didn't get the details, but you can bet the kid was fighting with someone or being disrespectful.  My father had no patience for disrespect!  Nothing ever came of that.  Today, there would be a law suit. 

The football team that Dad coached consisted of big Italian kids.  He called them "jelly bellies".  If one of them came up with a bloody nose, he'd tell the kid, "Wipe it on your shirt.  It'll make you look tough."  That probably wouldn't fly in today's schools.  Then there was the day that one of his students cut off parts of three fingers in a saw.  Dad said he had his back to the kid but could tell by the sound of the saw that something had happened.  He grabbed the kid's bleeding hand to apply pressure and hold it up in the air so he could escort the student out, but first had to deal with another student who fainted at the sight of blood.  He said he picked the faint-hearted one up and laid him on one of the work tables, admonishing the others to watch him until an adult could be there.  Then he took the injured student out for medical assistance.  Not sure how I would have reacted in the same situation! 

Still, when my father retired, he got an engraved scroll plaque that said, "With Deepest Respect, Your Homeroom Class of 1975".  Dad treasured that more than anything else he could have gotten as a good-bye gift.  It went on the wall at the farm and stayed there until we sold the place after he died.

There was also an incident at Elmwood Park High School back in 1973, during which a male student shot and killed a female student during a passing period, then ran out into an alley and took his own life.  Dad wasn't witness to that because his shop was on the back side of the building, but it did cause him to say, "I've been teaching too long."  He never talked about it to us.  (He came from The Greatest Generation--the group of our beloved care-givers who believed in protecting innocents from the ugly side of life.  I wish we had more of that now!!)  After my grandmother died, he took advantage of a new deal going around back then that allowed for early retirement so he and Mom could move to the farm to take care of my grandfather.  By that time, his arthritic knees had become so bad that he had given up coaching and could barely stand long enough to teach.  It was time.

When my dad the wood butcher retired, he had a full military pension from the Navy, a negotiated teacher's pension for early retirees, Social Security Disability, and crop income from the farm.  This man, even in retirement in the 1970s on up, brought in more money per month than I do so many years later!  His legacy?  Lots of memories.  But here we are, already in a generation of children who never knew him.  What he leaves behind for future generations are the wooden things that he made, with his signature, somewhere.  Tangible evidence that this man existed, did what he did, and loved.  I need to figure out what I can leave as tangible evidence of MY existence when my time comes!

Whew!  I didn't intend for these last two posts to be a shrine to my father.  He was no saint, for sure, but, in my old age, I have come to understand the man that was my dad.  A long time coming!         

Things My Daddy Made

I was cleaning up my kitchen a few minutes ago and sprayed a bleach solution on my cutting board to let it sit for ten minutes, as recommended, to sanitize before I propped it back up at the back of my stovetop.  This is not your average, run-of-the-mill cutting board.  This is a cutting board made of laminated plywood layers with brown Formica as the top layer.  This cutting board is in the shape of a pig.  And my father made it.

My dad graduated from college in 1941--the first and only of his huge family to do so--with a degree in Industrial Arts and (probably) a minor in Physical Education.  He started his career as a woods teacher and coach, with a wife and one baby.  Then, World War II happened.  I wasn't around for the conversations, but he (and Mom, I guess) decided that he should take a commission in the US Naval Reserve for the duration of the war.  After a little training in the Navy, he went off to war, spending some time on an LST, then as Navigator on a troop transport, the USS Henrico, APA 45.  When the war was over, he was put on inactive duty just long enough to take on another teaching career and have me....then the conflict in Korea started, and he was off to war again.  This time, he was kept on active duty for quite a long time.  Lt. JG Floyd D. Covill eventually became Commander Floyd D. Covill, and his little family followed him all over the place.  My brother was born while we lived in Coronado, CA, at one of his stations.  When we were in Japan, in 1958, Dad got orders that the USNR was cutting back on active duty personnel, so we became civilians again, although he was still on reserve duty.  Back to teaching again, this time in the Chicago area--Elmwood Park High School.  Industrial Arts, and coaching.

Dad was always on the lookout for easy little projects for his Beginning Woods students to do.  The piggy cutting board was one of them.  About the time I was graduating from college and planning my wedding, he brought one home.  I snatched it up immediately.  Thus, the pig became a part of my kitchen from 1969, onward.  I've never had another cutting board.  I've never found one with the same character! 

For decades, I only used the wooden side to cut.   Didn't want to scratch up the Formica side.  But eventually--not so very long ago--I figured that all of my sanitizing attempts probably weren't good enough due to the porousness of the wood.  I made the mistake of putting Piggy in the dishwasher.  Not good!  It came out dry...cracked...and very, very sad.  Thereafter, I decided that if I wanted to keep it longer, I was going to have to use the Formica side.  That has worked.  'Tis much easier to sanitize with the Clorox Clean-Up, and no one has died from germ exposure.  Whew!

I have three other treasures that my dad created for me as a result of my requests at wedding time.  One is a wagon seat that I commissioned to stay at the foot of the bed to hold bed linens.  That silly thing has seen a lot of use over the years.  Then there is the bookcase with three adjustable shelves.  OMG!  Whatever would I have done without that through the years??!  It wasn't always easy to find a place for it, but it holds a multitude of treasured books.  Once, very early in my first marriage, I saw a picture in a catalog of a rack to hold cook books, with two index-card-sized drawers underneath.  I asked Dad if he could make one for me.  He requested a picture and dimensions, so I cut out the catalog pic and gave it to him.  Voila!  In short order, I had a place to stash my cook books and recipe cards.  Most years, it has been on top of the refrigerator.  Love that thing!

Oh...I have one more treasure, mostly not seen.  It is in a box of my souvenirs.  I think I've written about it before: a gold-painted wooden star on a square wooden plaque background, which was nailed to my bedroom door right after I got the lead role in the Fall Play during my senior year of high school.  I didn't see that one coming!  I went on to get the leads in the other two school drama productions that year, so it stayed up until my parents moved out of that house after I graduated from college.  I don't know who commissioned that star--whether my mom asked Dad to make it, or if Dad did it on his own.  I only know that it thrilled me to know how much my parents valued my achievement at that point in my life.  (Note to my daughter:  Don't throw that away after I'm gone!!)

When Dad made furniture, he signed and dated it somewhere out of sight.  The piggy cutting board doesn't have a Floyd signature, but you can be sure the rest of the stuff does.  Treasures, all!       

Eye Dislocation

Are you aware that you can dislocate an eye out of its socket by coughing?  Yep, you can.  It happened to me this morning in the wee hours in bed.  It wasn't even a particularly violent cough.  I just felt something weird in my eye.  Reached up to touch my lower lid.  It didn't feel right.  I pressed on it just a tiny bit and felt it pop back into place.  It wasn't horribly dislocated.  Just a bit.  So there you are.  No repercussions.  No need to go to a doctor.  No harm; no foul.  But now I know the possibilities and will be more vigilant.  Weird!

My attempts to diet have been unsuccessful.  Haven't weighed myself in a few days, but I have been up and down the same 2-3 pounds for several weeks now.  It isn't funny anymore! 

I'm still doing battle with the Dayton Hamvention people for SATERN booth privileges.  This should be a whole lot easier than it is.  I am going to go this year and pray that I can make it through three days.  I will be using a rollator--a rolling walker with a built-in seat that I have purchased for emergency use.  I'm afraid it will shock a lot of people, but life goes on. 

Keep praying for better weather.  Spring hasn't really shown up consistently yet!

Gearing Up

Starting at the end of this week, my schedule will heat up.  I'll be attending a seminar at DePauw on Saturday with my friend and co-grandma Judy, for a church history project.  Then I have a doctor's appointment, long overdue, which requires a blood test just prior.  Then I will head up to my daughter's for a week to assist getting some stuff done in prep for her guests-to-come.  Immediately thereafter, I will go to Dayton for the radio Hamvention.  Just a few days after that, I will have houseguests for Race weekend.  While I sit on my butt and do nothing around here, I realize that I need to get the posterior moving in order not to embarrass myself!!  Busy month!  I don't mind.  It's just a bit challenging because, normally, if I can just accomplish one thing a day, I consider myself lucky. 

Yesterday, my lawn was mowed by my friend James.  James is a young man (40-ish) with multiple health problems but has a work ethic out the roof.  He and his wife--my former student Amy--are struggling to support four kids (two his; two hers).  They are never out of my heart.  It hasn't been easy for them.  One of the young-uns has an anger problem and has caused no end of concerns, but I pray for him/them and hope for the best.  It isn't because he isn't loved...

When May is over, I may fall into a dead heap.  Not sure what my grandchildren's summer schedules are, but I hope to have them here some this summer without parents.  Grandma isn't as much fun as everyone else, but I have other grandparents to help!  Only God knows how much more time we will have together!