j's Hand: The First Cut is the Deepest

Call me Firstelle Nightingale. When Elletu needed surgery, I was there for her. I picked her up when it was still dark outside and drove her to the hospital. I signed in as her 'family,' because I am family. I got to sit with her and make jokes with her while she sat in her little bed in that cute little gown. I took pictures of her, I took pictures of her nurses. Then I waited in the lobby while the doctor explored her inner parts. I enjoyed sipping Tully's coffee and learning how to use my new phone while waiting for word about Elletu. I was relieved when they came to get me and took me back to post-surgery Elletu. She looked wonderful considering she just came from the operating room. She wasn't even groggy like I had expected. She was checked out to my care, and we had a delicious lunch at the tea room before I took her back to my house and had her firmly ensconced in a big, comfy recliner. We watched movies, and I made her hot chocolate and fed her chocolate while we watched "Chocolat." She recovered nicely and was an excellent patient. Later in the day a friend and then Elletu's daughter came to visit, and actually her daughter took her home with her. I knew she would be in good hands. And to be a good friend, I had made and framed a large, beautiful subway art project centered around all the words and phrases like 'barf' and 'praying to the porcelain god' to represent throwing up. This she hung over her toilet to encourage her, because post-surgery people sometimes get very sick. Turns out she didn't, but still, the Barf Art, as we call it, was an act of love. We are BVG's, and BVG's help each other out. Our motto is, after all, 'Love us!'

And so it was that when j had to have hand surgery last month, I was more than happy to be her family, her ride, her caregiver for the day, as her husband was out of town and her daughters live far away. So I picked j up and took her to her clinic, and thus began The Tale of j's Hand. I was happy to be able to sit in her little pre-op room too, and I got busy taking pictures and doing all I could to keep her stay positive that everything was going to be okay. She had opted for a local anesthetic and might have been hesitant about that. I think I noticed her blush when her very handsome doctor came in to label her hand before surgery. Her little gown had a neat feature that Elletu's did not. They had a hose going in to the lining of her gown, and this blew it up and injected warm air in the lining to keep her warm and comfy. She looked so cute like that, looking kind of puffy, with her head wrapped up in something like a shower cap. I'd love to show you some pictures, but we have a blog rule: Unless the eyes are covered with cucumber slices, no face pictures. Rules are rules.

Soon j was whisked off to surgery, and I was sent back to the waiting room. When they came back to get me she was looking good, with her hand all bandaged up. Because of that, she couldn't put her clothes on. And so, j and I took our friendship to the next level: I dressed her, including putting her bra on her. Then she wanted to take me to lunch to thank me--for the whole day, not just putting her bra on her. She took me to what is now my favorite restaurant, a cozy little Italian place not that far from her home. Yummy! And speaking of taking our friendship to the next level, it was in this restaurant on that day that I actually had to cut up her food for her. That hit me as something very special, something we did for our little children and maybe for our aged parents.

Later, back at her house, there were a few more things she needed me to do for her. I had to undress her and help her in to her nightgown. I am not complaining here, I'm just saying that j couldn't do it. This time I took her bra off of her. She also couldn't undo the caps on her bottled water. She couldn't take her pillow out of its sham. She needed me, and I was glad I could be there for her.

I'm happy to report j's hand healed very nicely, and her problem is solved. I don't think anyone would notice her scar. She has since retired (on April 1) and has turned 65 (on April 2). To celebrate both her first day of freedom and her birthday, Elletu and I--Cool couldn't get off work--took j out to lunch, back to the restaurant where j had taken me the afternoon of her hand surgery. We had lots of fun taking pictures and texted them to Cool, letting her know that we missed her. We purchased a $40 bottle of wine for $20, just so we could get the cork of course, and toasted not only j but also Cool in her absence.

And the best part is that j came with her bra on and she cut up her own food!

Firstelle's Hand: The Horror of Gorilla Glue

I have a perfectly good reason for taking this long to get back to The Blog. It was fun writing about Elletu's hands at last year's Spa Day. Since I wrote that post, this year's Spa Day has come and gone--it was on April 20--and Elletu's hands have once again been dipped in the wax and are looking and feeling quite soft and beautiful. Spa Day will do that for you. But the tale of my hand, in particular my right one, oh, that is not a pretty one. My hand was not left looking and feeling soft and beautiful after what I call 'The Incident.' They are fine now, but my fingernails may never be the same. It was an experience I don't really like to think about, let alone write about, but here goes, 'The Tale of Firstelle's Hand,' as recounted by me, Firstelle.

We Bethel Valley Girls do enjoy a glass of wine now and then (and then and now). This didn't really take hold for me until we moved in to our present home two years ago. It happens to have a wine bar built in, and goodness, we need to make use of it, don't we? So we keep it stocked, and when bottles are uncorked the corks go in the drawer. I never thought of wine corks as being useful for craft projects until Cool totally surprised and overwhelmed me with a large and gorgeous wreath made out of a large number of wine corks. This was for Christmas 2011, and I have the wreath  hanging on the wall inside our wine bar. Last year I was in a second-hand shop in Port Townsend and found a wine cork trivet with 50 corks glued in to a wood frame. I got it for a mere $3. I couldn't pass it up, and it is propped up against the side wall in our wine bar. I love that thing so much, I decided I wanted to make one for each of my BVG Sisters for Christmas 2013.

Another friend of mine--not a BVG and not a wine drinker--had been with me when I purchased my own trivet and spoke of wanting to make some myself. Shortly after that she was at her friend's house for a garage sale and saw a big bin full of wine corks. She asked, "What are you doing with these?" and her friend asked, "Why? Do you want them? You can just take them, bin and all." Free corks! A zillion of them! (A zillion means too many for me to count.) She was excited to tell me about them and offered her husband's services to make and paint the wooden forms for the corks. When all was said and done, he made eight forms for me at $5 a piece and two for her as she wanted to make one for her and one for her daughter-in-law. We set the date of the Saturday of President's Day Weekend for our joint venture and decided we would do it at her house, while our husbands would enjoy a day up in the mountains together doing guy things. And in my mind everything was awesome, because I was getting such a head start on Christmas for this year. The first three trivets I was going to make were for the Bethel Valley Girls. I was so PROUD of myself, but as one of them said to me after 'The Incident,' "You know, Firstelle, pride cometh before a fall." And that is exactly how it all played out.

Finally the day arrived, and Charlene (her real name) had her dining room table covered with a pad and butcher paper. I asked for an extension cord so I could plug my hot glue gun in to the nearest outlet. She said we should skip the glue gun and use Gorilla Glue instead. She described it as 'the best thing to use.' I said no, I thought my hot glue gun would be better, and in fact I had spent $12 buying new glue sticks for the two of us to use. But she insisted, and off she went to the store to buy me my own bottle of Gorilla Glue just like hers. While she was gone I worked on getting the corks sorted and organized and set up five of the trivets. The small bottle of Gorilla Glue was $12. At this point I had $52 invested in my Christmas craft project.

The sorting and organizing actually took several hours, and then we stopped and had lunch before we set out to glue the corks in place inside the trivet forms. I was still hesitating about the Gorilla Glue but then said okay, one try, see how it goes. Charlene did mention, "They say to wear gloves, but I never do." I took this to mean she had worked with Gorilla Glue before and was an old pro at it. And so we began. The first thing I noticed was how long it was taking to do the gluing, and then it became apparent that the corks were not sticking in place well at all. She looked at the directions on the bottle and said, "Oh, this says one of the surfaces should be wet down," to which I said, "Oh well, too late for that." We continued on, using a little bit more glue, hoping that would hold the corks in place.

When she had her two done and I had three done, we decided to take a break from our labor. She read the directions a little further and said we needed to put something heavy on top to help with the drying process, so she got out large, heavy, beautiful travel books to do the trick. Then we went in the kitchen, just as our husbands arrived back at the house. After visiting with them for a time, Charlene went in to her dining room to check on our projects. The first hint that something was wrong was when she picked up a book and the trivet raised up with it. On further investigation, she was horrified. "They're GROWING!" she cried out, and then, "You better come and see this!"

I will just interject that when he saw what had happened, my husband took the bottle of Gorilla Glue and read the directions to himself. Then he read them to us and asked us if we had not read them before we started, because the directions clearly state that Gorilla Glue grows to four times its size! It was growing, that's for sure, and it was oozing out the top as well as the bottle of the trivets, covering the special corks I had lovingly chosen for my BVG Sisters. Horrified, Charlene got wet rags for us to try washing the glue off the corks. (Of course first we had to separate them from the books....what a mess!) When that wasn't working, I rushed mine out to the sink and started digging the corks out with my hands, thinking I might be able to salvage them that way. No way! I only managed to get the ugly, frothing yellow gunk all over my hands, particularly my right hand. Almost instantly the glue hardened on my hands, and within a very short time I could not bend my fingers at all. My right hand had a hard-shell yellow finish, and it was driving me absolutely insane that I could not get any of it off of me.

Because this story is so long, and because it still makes me nauseous, I will just say here that in the next few hours Charlene's husband tried to help me by 1) rinsing my hands with gasoline, and 2) rinsing my hands with paint thinner. This was done outside, and he told me to rub my hands together while he was doing this. I cannot begin to explain the horrendous feeling in my hands while doing that. This only made things worse. Getting more and more frantic, I soaked my hands in warm soapy water at their kitchen sink while my husband checked out solutions to my problem on the Internet. The only problem was there was no solution. The Gorilla Glue people said don't peel it off because you will pull off skin with it. At that point, I didn't care. We decided to try scrubbing with a pumice stone, and that did a tiny bit of good. After a few hours of this I was willing to get in our car and make the hour drive home, but it was hard because I didn't want to leave the comfort of the warm water. Once home, I began soaking my hands in warm soapy water at my bathroom sink. I began at 11 PM. I would soak, then scrub with pumice stone, then soak again, then rub with Aveeno Lotion, then soak, then peel off little patches of the Gorilla Glue---along with little patches of my skin.

I hate Gorilla Glue. There, I said it. I will never use it again. The other night I had the guts to try another trivet, and this time I used my hot glue gun. It worked perfectly. I love my hot glue gun. I'm trying to love Charlene again.

Over 250 wine corks were sacrificed that day. If the bottles of wine averaged $10, that's really $2,500 worth of wine! Right now I have two restaurants saving their corks for me, and some of my friends have given me their saved corks, perhaps out of pity. I don't tell this story much anymore. I think my friends are tired of hearing it, and I suppose in the grand scheme of things, 'The Incident' is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I'm still going to make a bunch of these trivets for Christmas presents this year, but way before Christmas, just a month from now, comes Charlene's birthday, and what do you think I'm giving her for her birthday? It's a bottle of something, but it's not wine...

Elletu's Hand: Spa Day

Every spring we BVG's look forward eagerly to our Spa Day. Well, to be honest, we're coming up on just our second annual Spa Day, so I should say that two years in a row we have looked forward eagerly to the BVG Spa Day. Once again the BVG's will gather at my home for a day of pampering ourselves and being pampered by a massage therapist coming in with her spa table and her assistant, who will tend to either our HANDs or our feet. We choose. Last year Cool, j and I chose to have our feet soaked, waxed, cleaned up, massaged and softened up with soothing, fragrant lotions. On the other HAND, Elletu chose to have the same treatments applied to her HANDs. I find the picture above of her right HAND to be of particular interest now that my own HANDs have recently been similarly immersed, not in hot wax to make my HANDs softer but rather Gorilla Glue to make my HANDs.......oh, wait, that's for another post. Let me just say here that it was a bad experience, one that was hard to HANDle. Elletu's HAND pictured here represents the 'best of times,' whereas my Gorilla Glue story represents the 'worst of times.' Instead of helping my HANDs, it hurt my HANDs. That's why there will be no Gorilla Glue at our upcoming Spa Day. There will definitely be soft, relaxing music (and maybe a little HANDel music too). There will be sliced cucumbers to rest upon our weary eyelids. (After they are removed I will use the cucumber slices to clean the faucets in my sink. We learned all kinds of wonderful uses for cucumbers at the last Spa Day. We don't just relax, we learn things.) There will be delicious, nutricious snacks leading up to lunch served in my dining room. My family room, on the other HAND, will be rearranged to accommodate the massage table, foot bath and HAND bath. The big question is, what will Elletu choose, the HAND therapy or the foot therapy? I think she'll go for the HANDs again, and I think Cool and j will go for the feet again. After what my HANDs went through with the Gorilla Glue, I'm sorely tempted to have them pampered this time around. Either way, it's going to be another wonderful day of friendship. I have to HAND it to the Bethel Valley Girls---we know how to have fun!

Just one problem for the day---apparently the plant couldn't HANDle the mimosas!!!

No problem. I was its designated driver.

A Tale of Three Hands

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...........we always make it fun!"
                                              --Firstelle

Three Bethel Valley Girls, three days, three hands (or, to be exact, five hands), three very different experiences, three stories of friendship, all with ties to the BVG's. These stories will follow. They are each deserving of their own page, their own title:
   Elletu's Hand:  Spa Day
   Firstelle's Hand:  The Horror of Gorilla Glue
   j's Hand:  The First Cut is the Deepest

Coming Soon:  Getting to Know Cool's Hand Like You've Never Known it Before

Retirement Poem: Ode to j - April 1, 2013 - Free at Last!

Note: Yesterday, April 1, 2013, I composed this poem for j. Yes, it was April Fool's Day, but she really did retire yesterday. In honor of this milestone in j's life, Elletu and I are taking her to lunch today. But today, April 2, 2013, is not only noted because it is j's first day of freedom, but it is also her 65th birthday. So Happy Birthday, j, as well as Happy Retirement. We love you! And as our motto says, LOVE US! And now, I give you:

 

           RETIREMENT POEM: Ode to j

 

75% of the BVG's are happy for j's retirement today,

But 25% of the BVG's hope it's just a joke for April Fool's Day.

75% of the BVG's will celebrate j's retirement and birthday tomorrow,

But 25% of the BVG's not being there will fill the 75% with sorrow.

During this last day of work j might be a little wordy,

And then,believe it or not, she just might shed some tears at 4:30.

Can any of us imagine Cool in the jury office without j?

It's so hard to even contemplate this on this April Fool's Day.

75% of the BVG's need to let 25% know we have her back,

And if she grumbles while training Lori, we will cut her some slack.

j is gleeful now, but should retirement turn out to be a bore,

Firstelle's job will be to encourage j to get out more.

As the 50% duo who are turning sixty-five this month--no kidding!--

They will do volunteer work that to them is most fitting.

They will exercise their brains by studying things that come from vines,

And do 'coffee' runs for 50% who have no time to stand in lines.

So here's to j, your freedom is less than five hours away,

And 75% of us salute you on this, your Retirement Day!

Coming up, the day of love...

Coming up this week is a day many people love and others speak of hating. Perhaps it's true, Valentine's Day has been commercialized way out of proportion. Case in point: The other day I saw the perfect Valentine for my husband with the shocking price of $7.79!! I thought to myself, I could buy two lattes with that kind of money. So I put this high-priced card back in the rack and remembered that I can write my own poetry for free. For instance, my children loved (?) this:

FRUITS AND VEGGIE TALES

by Firstelle

I fell in love with a PICKLE,

But it was really no big DILL;

I fell in love with a BANANA,

Until it lost its apPEEL.

I fell in love with an APPLE,

It was such a DELICIOUS affair!

Then I fell in love with a FIG,

Until I found out it was really a PEAR.

I fell in love with a PEPPER,

But I just didn't ring its BELL;

I fell for a shy PEANUT,

But I couldn't get it out of its SHELL.

I fell in love with a TOMATO,

It was really quite diVINE;

Then I fell in love with a GRAPE,

But I couldn't stand its WINE.

I fell in love with a POTATO,

But we didn't see EYE to EYE;

So I'm giving up FRUITS and VEGGIES--

I think I'll give GRAINS a try!

***************************************************************

If you don't like this poem--if you think it's CORNy--I don't CARROT all PEAcause I had fun writing it. I've BEAN interested in writing poetry since childhood, and even if you criticize me, I'll stay cool as a CUCUMBER and refuse to be BEETen by your lack of support for my poetic talent. You may TURNIP your nose to my prose, but please don't SQUASH my enthusiasm! LETTUCE not argue over it, because when criticism SPROUTS up, in THYME the whole thing MUSHROOMS. When you become ARUGULAmentative, I become MELONcholy. I know I am PARSLEY to blame because I allow myself to get hurt by it, but you know that I YAM what I YAM.

I should probably heed some SAGE advice and CURRY your favor by not making this blogpost too long this week. But since it is the week of LOVE, I want to express mine to each of you, BVG's, sisters of the Sisterhood, friends forever................................................Love us!

BVG's: The Next Generation

As previously noted, I was the last of the Bethel Valley Girls to become a grandmother. My two grandsons are soon to be seven and four months old, and although one lives in Hawaii and the other in California, we were all together in California at Christmas and we Skype to keep connected. It's a new year, and I don't know when or if I will see either one of them in person during this coming year. After family trips to New Orleans, North Carolina, Greece, Hawaii and California three times in the past year and a half, we're staying put and they'll have to come and see us in 2013. This may or may not happen. But they are always close in my heart.

So God bless all of our friends who live close. God bless the Bethel Valley Girls! Girls??? In two months, 50% of us will turn 65---Hello Social Security! Hello Medicare! Is it time to 'pass the baton' to a new generation of 'girls' to carry on the BVG tradition? Do we have a legacy to pass down to our sons and daughters? Have they learned important things from us that will help them navigate through the 'Blur Years' of marriage, child-rearing and careers? Have we set good examples for them? These things are on my mind on this rainy morning.

As my readers might have guessed, I love BVG demographics. I already wrote that 50% of the BVG's turn 65 in two months. The other 50% are still in their 50's. However, as of this July, 75% of the BVG's will be in their 60's and only 25% will be in their (her) 50's. A full 50% of the BVG's have three children, while the other 50% have two children. Elletu is part of the first group, with two daughters and one son. I am also part of the first group, and I have two sons and one daughter. Interestingly, j has two daughters and Cool has two sons. To me, this is beautiful symmetry. In the grandchildren department we're pretty spread out. Elletu has ten of them, and yet she is the youngest of the BVG's. I have the two grandsons, as does j, but she also has a granddaughter, which I don't have, but Cool does have. Only Elletu has grandchildren living close to her, but she also has three grandchildren living far away in a foreign country, so we all do grandparenting from afar.

Alas, our child-rearing days are over, done with, we've moved on to a new season of life. We can only hope and pray that our children will be blessed to find lasting friendships like ours to carry on after their child-rearing days are completed. I think that's happening in my daughter's life, so I've made a mental note and I'm praying over her and her friends Nicole and Katie. It's not Bethel Valley, it's San Mateo, so I'll dub them the SMG's and picture them as grandmas years down the road. They'll be old and exhausted too and will need that yearly Spa Day to look forward to (ours is coming up in two months---yay!).

So Angela, Nicole and Katie are the SMG's (San Mateo Girls)--sort of like the BVG's: The Next Generation. Angela worked with Nicole years ago in California and then later with Katie as a different company. At some point he introduced them to each other, and the three of them became fast friends. Nicole and Katie were both married but childless at the time. Angela was "never going to get married, and I'm never going to have children"---clearly, she is not clairvoyant! When her job took her to live in London, I was sad to see her leave all her close friends behind, especially Nicole and Katie. Fast forward to last year: Angela moved back to California from London,and she moved in to a house just five minutes from Katie's. Then she had her wedding in Greece, and Katie was her maid-of-honor, Nicole her bridesmaid, and her other bridesmaid was a London co-worker, her friend Leslie who was there with her husband and their two-month-old son. Sadly, both Nicole and Katie had divorced, but Nicole had since married a wonderful, wonderful man. I got to see my daughter with a zillion of her awesome friends from truly around the world, but nothing was closer than her bond with Nicole and Katie, and Leslie seemed to fit right in with that tight trio of friends.

Now Angela is not only happily married to her soulmate but she is an awesome mother. I wondered if this would throw a monkey wrench in her friendships, but then the most amazing thing happened: Nicole announced she is pregnant, and what joy, she's expecting twin girls three months from now! As if that's not exciting enough, she and her husband realized their third story condo in a Victorian in San Francisco wouldn't work well with twin babies. So they found a fabulous smaller Victorian home to rent in San Mateo, and Angela is over the moon because they are going to be two blocks away from her. With Katie five minutes away, that makes the three of them exactly as close as I was to the Bethel Valley Girls when I was raising my children. Hmmm...could history be repeating itself?

My daughter said to me the other day, "Mom, when I go for my daily walk with my baby, I can walk over to Nicole's and see her twin daughters." She was excited at the prospect of this, and immediately this conjured up visions of me getting Angela and her two brothers strapped in to the car and driving the five minutes over to Bethel Valley Lane to play with the Bethel Valley kids, the children of Elletu, Cool and j. The kids played, we moms bonded, and what we realize now but didn't realize then is that those bonds were irreversible. Right now I'm praying a good man in to Katie's life, with healthy children to follow. I want these three friends to have what we BVG's had at that stage of life and have today. And why stop there? I'm bold--I'm praying that Leslie, the other bridesmaid, and her little family will move back to the States and choose San Mateo. The thing is, IT COULD HAPPEN! I was gone to Hawaii and Virginia for 11 years, and here I am. If the BVG's are a group of four, I think the SMG's should also be a group of four. So I pray big, realizing GOD CAN DO ANYTHING HE WANTS!

And that's what's on my mind on this rainy morning in..........well, here. And if we BVG's are here, it doesn't really matter where here is.