Things where they shouldn't be.

 Sometimes things are just not where they are supposed to be. I walked around a house to shovel the sidewalk on Wednesday and saw a hole had been dug down through the snow, through some dirt and into the crawl space under the house.

The next morning I was stunned at what I had caught coming back out from under the house. I have nothing against rabbits in their place, but digging under one of our houses is not their place. I took the rabbit out to a wooded area and set him free. Now it is where it belongs.

On Friday I went to one of our storage buildings to get some air diffusers for furnace ducts. I keep the key to the door on my pickup key fob. Pulled the door shut behind me as I left and then put my hand in my pocket to get my pickup keys. Empty pocket. I remembered I had dropped my keys in the snow and hadn't put them in my pocket I had laid them in the building. Maybe I hadn't locked the door, right? Oh, I had locked it. I called Matthew and asked him to bring his key. Then I thought, wait there are only a few locks I can't get open. I try not to share that with very many people ( so don't tell anyone, Ok?), but if you know how, locks just slow you down not keep you out. First tool I tried failed, second tool I tried failed, third time was the charm and the door swung open. No damage to lock or door. I called Matthew, he answered the phone with the words "got it open didn't you?"

Oh, yea, and there were my keys lying where they shouldn't be.

We purchased an antique table to extend the one we have for family meals. When we looked at it we failed to notice it had some orange marks on the right corner. Those orange marks looked like some one had made a mistake with a permant marker. I have some pretty good cleaners but nothing was touching the orange so I have sanded the top down to bare wood and put on the first coat of polyurethane. 

The orange marks were definately not where they were supposed to be.

I have been trying to avoid taking statins for high cholesterol, but this week I had a long vist with my cardiologist. He wrote in his notes "I spent a long time discussing treatment goals and options with the patient for his LDL cholesterol". Yes, he did, but in my defense I think he had a few cancelations because of the snow and he had time on his hands. I thought I had done well getting my LDL cholestrerol down by 25%. After the calcium score test he wanted it down another 50%. He told me " you can lose weight until you look like a third world starvation case and you will not make that goal. Diet is not causing the high LDL it is hereditary" Major arteries sending blood out were open but I have a small amount of blockage in the "widow maker" artery and he is concerned. I told him a heart attack doesn't concern me a stroke is what I don't want. 

Statins it is. I know 3,000,000 people start taking statins in the USA every year, but I was proud of the fact I had made it to 66 and was taking no medication. Well those days are gone.

The plaque in my artery is definately something that is where it shouldn't be.

When I was in High School, the literature teacher handed me this book (this is my personal copy) out of the school library and asked me to read it and write a book report on it for his class. Looking back I wonder if he hand picked the book for the report for every student or if I was a special case. I remember him inviting me into his office to talk about the book after I had read it. What I didn't know at the time was, it was a banned book in Strongsville Ohio. It was unbanned in Strongsville about 6 months after I read it.

It is a novel that saterizes the absurdity of war and the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy. Today it is being banned in schools across our nation. Should the book be in a grade school? Most likely not, but it should be in our high school libraries. We need to have our young people read Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, I Know Why the caged Bird Sings, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I don't trust politicians who try to tell us what to read, Don't care if they are "progressive" or "conservative". Everyone should read, not only what they agree with but also what they disagree with (I don't agree with the Koran or the book of Morman but I have read them and know why I disagree with them). It helps to form an educated opinion that will never be balanced if you stay in an echo chamber.

So are some books where they shouldn't be? Could be, if they are not age appropriate, but we should trust the local school boards and libraries with that and keep the politicians out of it. 

Politicians could focus on important matters. Ban wallpaper. Come on people, I have tried to get this going before, write your politicians. No more wallpaper, no more wallpaper. I can't hear you chanting with me. Outlaw wallpaper, outlaw wallpaper. Wall paper is definately something that is not where it should be. It shouldn't be put on walls. It should be sent to the landfill or burned.

Moderation

Our home heating system is hot water. Water is supposed to be more efficient than forced air, I remain unconvinced. Last year our old furnace developed a leak and we had a new one installed. Our old furnce was just a large gas burner and a heat exchanger full of water that was pumped through copper pipes. The new furnace is a "smart " furnace. It moniters the temperature outside. Controls how hot the water is when it is pumped out and the temperature when the water returns to the furnace. It has a 150 page manuel with all the various settings that the installer can manipulate. All wonderful until the new furnace would not keep the temperature steady in the house let alone increase it once the outside temperature fell below 5 degrees. It could hold it at 65 degrees which is kinda chilly when one has a very expensive new furnace.

It would heat the water to 180 then shut the burner down to maintain the water temperature at 157. 157 is not hot enough to heat the house when it's below 5 degrees outside. Too much heat loss through the windows and not well insulated walls.

Our HVAC man is a great guy and he was trying everything he could think of to make the furnace heat our house on cold days. I was thinking this thing has a defect and needs to be replaced under the warranty. The day before it fell to -11 during the night Tom said he had one more thing he wanted to try. That evening and the next morning were wonderful. The temperature held and I could even get it to rise. I called Tom the next morning and I know he didn't really want to answer. I said, "I don't know what you did but the furnace works." He said, " I didn't think that would work". Turns out the "smart" furnace thought we were losing too much heat out the exhaust if the burner was burning too hot so it would shut down the flame to be efficient.

I don't need a furnace that wants to save me fuel when it is -11 degrees outside. I want a furnace that keeps my house warm.

In November, while running tests to figure out why my blood pressure had risen so fast and why my heart was not pumping blood about every 4 beats, they found my cholesterol was "kinda" high. I was told that it would take a change in lifestyle, (that means no food that tastes good) and at least 2 cholesteral lowering drugs. I decided to try getting the junk food out of my diet route.

60 days later the numbers are consideralbly better. Not where the doctors want it to be but about what the cardiologist thought was best case with change in diet and 2 drugs. My doctor wrote in the notes after she saw the last test, progress is being made but the cholesterol still needs to be lower. Keep taking the pill and we will check in March. 

Yea, I never took the pill, just got the highly processed foods out of my routine. I have a ct scan in early Feb to see if there is artery damage. If there is minimal damage, I will stick to diet change and still avoid the drugs. 

My blood pressure is now actually low for a man my age. I am now drinking coffee again. I am drinking a lot less than I was before when the old blood pressure spiked. What I find odd is I was so cold when I was caffiene free. Now after a couple of mugs of coffee in the morning I can walk out side and be comfortable without a coat at 10 degrees. When I was not drinking coffee anything below 32 degrees and I was shivering and my fingers hurt from the cold even with gloves on. No idea if that is really a thing or if it is a strange mental effect my mind is playing with my body temperature.

I cleaned all the stickers a tenant had adhered to this door this week. Not sure why the need to affix so many, or for that matter any at all. I don't have any stickers on our front door.

We are in the process of closing on a house this week. We own the house across the street and last year a truck pulling a trailer went down the street and clipped off the electrical wires. Our house's wires repair was paid for by the insurance of the driver. We failed to look up for the wires on this house when we made the offer. Wouldn't have known the wires were gone now but the mast fell off the house last week. It is owned by a firm in New York, so we have padlocked the doors and I check it every morning to make sure there are no squatters. Low and behold what do I see Friday morning but the mast blown off the house. When the truck clipped the wires he must have pulled the screws holding the mast on and down it came 6 months later. 

Moderation, now there is a wonderful thing to practice in life. Moderation in how efficient we want our appliances to be. Moderation in what we eat and moderation in what we drink. Maybe moderation in how many stickers we put on doors and moderation on how high a load we take down a street. 

Moderation in our relationships with others. I know I need to be open and accepting to listening to others opinions instead of thinking I'm right and they're wrong. I know some will tell you compromise is a terrible thing, but it isn't. We should be a community, working together for the good of all.

Moderation instead of fanticism, knowing that no one has all the answers. Sadly not even me.

 

Who fixes it?

I know none of us sees ourselves as others see us. Most of us think we are doing OK and have everything under control.

One of our rental house looks clean and neat from the street.  I walked around behind the garage and was appalled. They were storing their garbage in a huge pile. It had overflowed on neighboring property. This is when I do what I call shake the tree. 

I went up to the house and pounded on the door. The door swung open on its own.The lock was broken out. I asked the young man who came to the door what happened to the lock. I might have used what I will call my firm voice. He asked "are you the landlord?" "Yes, what happened to the lock?". "Someone kicked the door in." 

"You were going to tell us when? How are you keeping the door closed to keep out the cold?"

"We put a bag of dog food against it?"

See, here I thought there was a problem but they had solved it. Just lean a bag of dog food against the door. Now how that worked when they left the house is a bit of a puzzler isn't it?

I told him we would have someone there in the morning to fix the door and asked about all the garbage in the back yard.

" Oh as soon as my sister has a day off work we are going to haul it away."

My response was a little more direct. "It will be gone this week!"

It was one of those weeks where we find a lot of "mistakes" made by others. One of the lights and an outlet in a house we just purchased didn't work. Whoever did this wiring should never, never ever wire anything never, ever again. Was I redundant enough to make my point? He, she, or it has no clue how to run a switch leg to a light. No idea of electrical code, and I am not sure why this didn't spark and burn.

And then we had the tenants who moved out still oweing January rent. Glad they are gone, but they really shouldn't have turned the furnace off when they left. We didn't find out they moved out until we received notice from MidAmerican Energy that the service was going into our name. Funny, but did you know when it is 5 degrees outside and you turn off the furnace the pipes freeze? Another case of we found someone had kicked in the door when we went to check out why the current was going into our name, (remember how I shake "shake the tree") we didn't need a key to get into the house. 

Still trying to figure out how this spiraled down the drain. They had stapled blankets and even T shirts over all the windows.

Must have made the house pretty dark. We are still pondering why they had taped cardboard over the furnace registers. Makes it kind of hard to get heat if you close off the heat source and the cold air returns. If they thought they were solving a problem, they were going about it all wrong. 

It looks like they were trying to help keep the house warm by putting plastic and cloth over all the windows and then stopping the flow of heat from the furnace. Now that is what I call self defeating. 

That is a lot like trying to earn our way into heaven. On our own we just do everything wrong. No one is ever going to be good enough to earn Heaven and all our efforts work against each other.

I am sure the tenants with the mountain of trash never intended to fill the back yard with garbage. It just started with a bag or 2 and kept adding up.

It's a lot like our lives. We think we know what is right and if it is a little wrong we will clean it up later. God has a different approach. He wants it cleaned up now. He has sent Jesus to pay for our sins but we have to admit we have sinned and we need a savior.

If you think being a good person will get you into heaven you are like the person who wired the light switch. No clue. Only admitting your are helpless and asking Jesus to save you gets you into heaven.

We are in the process of buying a house. We do not have possession yet but the owner has told us we can fix the door. The door on the house is broken and will not lock. It is an odd sized door with a metal frame set in concrete. That means the door either had to be custom ordered or we had to build it. The new door is built and ready to be installed. Once in it will keep the elements out and be a nice point of access.

Jessu says "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."

Jesus is knocking, He wants everyone to spend eternity with him. That is more important than any other trials or problems you might have right now. Open the door and let Jesus make you right with God.