Do Angels Cause Flat Tires?

When my van tipped over on its side in my accident, most of the oil drained out. I was told it was replaced by the men at the towing place before they tested the car and found it wouldn't drive (only to be mysteriously 'healed' after collecting $450 of storage fees from the insurance company). Once I got it back I drove it happily and often.

Every so often a still, small voice would tell me I needed to check the oil and make sure they had filled it up. I'm a little sensitive on the issue of oil deprivation having burned up an engine last February. That history notwithstanding, I ignored the still, small voice and kept driving it, always intending to check it 'tomorrow.'

After a few days I had my first flat tire. It only had a small hole and my dad was able to patch it. Whew! It did take him a day or so, during which I borrowed the little truck and my van stayed parked in the driveway. When it was fixed, off I drove again.

Psssst! Check your oil!

Fiddledeedee! Tomorrow's another day, and everyone knows oil is best checked then.

Within a day or so, my tire had gone flat again. By this time I was getting frustrated. I needed my van to work! I needed to not pay for a new tire! How was I going to get through the winter if every couple of days my tire went flat!!??

I was a little bit irritated with God, because I'd made an agreement AT Him that I would pray about the stuff I needed, and He would do it. It was a beautiful system and worked perfectly as far as I was concerned. Only problem was, God didn't always agree with my assessment of what best met my needs. But surely having reliable transportation was important!!

My van sat there another couple days before my dad gave his verdict. There was nothing wrong with the tire. It had been so cold that the seal hadn't sealed. The tire was fine and I was free to go. That evening I needed to make a 3 hour trip down to Glendive to pick up John. I wasn't thrilled, but OK. I went to fill the van up at the pumps.

PSSSSST! CHECK THE OIL!!!!!!!!! went the still, small voice.

This time I listened, figuring I really should check it before I went on a 6 hour trip through very deserted frozen farm land. I pulled the dipstick out. It was bone dry. There was no discernible oil at all. Suddenly I realized why I'd had all those flat tires. When I refused to listen to God's prompting, being 'too busy', God had saved me from a very expensive and possibly life-threatening disaster (my parents paid for a new engine and probably would not have been too thrilled to have me ruin it the same way less than a year later). I could just picture my angel crouching in the snow, letting the air out of my tires, all the while wishing I'd get the message!

After I put oil in the van, I didn't have another flat tire for a month and a half. Until last night. I don't think I've been ignoring any divine impressions, but you can bet I've been checking my mental voice mail for any missed calls!

Thankfully my tire went flat right before my house and I was able to make it home. My dad decided -30 degree weather was not the ideal time for tire changing and told me he would come out in the morning. So this morning, with the temperature all the way up to 10 degrees or so, I got to change the tire under expert dad-tutelage. I think he hopes if he shows me enough times I'll quit calling him to come help me.

First I had to let down the spare. That went smoothly until it was time to take it off its holder. It was frozen to the little metal piece. I took a crowbar and knocked it loose. That was when I saw the hole was filled with ice so there was no room for the metal piece to pass through. I let the cable out until I could drag the tire almost out from under the van and knock the ice loose. Good. Now the spare was free.

The wind was whipping fiercely--at least it felt fierce at those temperatures--and my dad had parked his truck to shield our workspace. I worked at the bolts, only needing my dad's help on two of them, then started cranking up the jack. My dad covered me with a quilt while I lay on the ground feeling the wind suck all moisture from my face, deepening my wrinkles with every turn of the ratchet.

At last the van was high enough and I was able to take off the bolts and slide the tire off. Did the spare fit on? Oh, no. It would take another five minutes of vigorous exercise in the arctic before I could at last slide the spare on. Time for a warming break in the truck, then back out to tighten the bolts, clean up the work area, crank up the spare tire's cable, and hightail it into town.

After a careful checkup by the town's repairman, I have a clean bill of tire health. There was no leak; it was only the cold. My wheel rim has a small repair spot that doesn't quite seal when the temperature drops too low, a fact I never had occasion to discover while in California. I think I will need a new wheel, but in the meantime, I think I'm keeping my spare in the back of the van where it will be easily accessible and not ice-covered!

A Fortified City

Yesterday was a cold day. A very cold day. The high was about -11, but the wind made it feel substantially colder. At those temperatures you don't notice a difference in coldness so much as an increase in how quickly you start to feel intense pain.

Because of this, our vehicles decided it was a good day to stop working. My van led the charge of immovability by having transmission trouble. It had been low on transmission fluid for a while, but I kept waiting for a warmer day to fill it up. That worked well for me, since I ended up re-filling it on the coldest day so far this winter. The transmission fluid was barely liquid and took forever to sludge its way through the funnel.

Even after that the car refused to go into any gear but reverse. I sat there for about a half hour working the gears until it finally went into drive and I could head into Westby in a forward fashion. I got there to discover that the vehicle rebellion had spread to my dad's trucks and neither of them were working.

After a struggle he got the little truck to work, but the farm truck wasn't budging until its demands of warmer quarters were met. Only problem was it was parked out in the snow by the road, nowhere near the garage. I was the lucky duck that got to help solve that little physics problem.

We started by clearing the garage a little. At 30 degrees inside it felt positively tropical compared to the driveway. Then it was time for the tractor to leave its cushy quarters and bravely haul the large farm truck out of the snow while I cranked the wheel to line it up for a push down the narrow driveway.

Every moment outside was extremely uncomfortable as my dad hooked up the chain and prepared to tow. As I analyzed how my dad was able to work in so much more comfort than I, I came to the realization that to keep my cheeks from literally freezing I needed to grow a beard like him. Who knows what can happen in this climate.....

At last the chain was hooked, my dad climbed on the tractor, and put it into gear. I braced for the big pull. HUUUUUUNNNNNGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! I moved an inch. Maybe two. Turns out the tractor doesn't have very good traction on the snow. After about ten minutes of nearly fruitless pulling, my dad hooked the little truck up and pulled the farm truck out within 30 seconds.

Now I was lined up with the driveway. We were getting somewhere now! My dad turned the tractor around, placing the rear scraper thingy against the bumper and started to push us up towards the garage. HUUUUUUUUNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! With tremendous effort, tractor tires spinning, we made our way until we met the mountainous obstacle of a bump an inch high. The farm truck would go no further.

What to do? Why of course, the solution was for me to stay in the truck ready to jam my foot against the brake should we creep over the bump. My dad would drive the tractor forward, then jam it into reverse and slam into the trailer hitch of the truck.

"I'm not going to get whiplash, am I, Dad?"

"I don't know. We'll see," was the comforting reply.

I felt like a medieval city as I watched him churning towards me again and again. Brace for the slam, let off the brake at point of impact, jam my foot on the brake as soon as he pulled away again. Such fun! What girl wouldn't want to spend the day getting crashed into by a tractor?

At length it was declared that we were over the bump. Would the tractor push the trailer now? No. I was able to go inside for a while and defrost while my dad experimented and discovered that the bumpers of both trucks matched enough for the little truck to push the farm truck the rest of the way to the garage. Whew!

I would have had some pictures to accompany this blog, but tragedy has befallen our little family. My beloved camera...well...it's so painful to talk about...but after the camera got stepped on, this is what comes out of it.

A portrait of Tiggy and me:

Why Plumbers Wear Brown Pants

Yesterday I had put off the fateful hour as long as possible. After days of failed attempts with Liquid Plumber (just a tip: buy stock),it was time to deal with the Problem of the Clogged Sewer Line.

I dug out the access to under the house and took off all the protective coverings so carefully applied after the last time I went down into the yawning maw that is my house's underside. I knew where the clean-out was, but unfortunately it had about two inches of clearance between the pipe and the dirt. The last enterprising gents to work on it had laid a board under it and used it to guide the "material" down the slope and into the bucket. I started to work on the cap with a brave wrench nobly loaned by my dad.

The clean-out cover came off and I braced for a flood.

Spludge.

Spludge.

Spludge.

The liquid plumber had done its work well. Everything was congealed into a consistency not unlike pudding. And wonder of wonders, it only smelled like Liquid Plumber. I scraped what I could out of the line, down the board leaned against the slope, and into the bucket.

Spludge.

I put the cap back on and told Laura to go up and flush the toilet. Once. She did, and I had a front row seat listening to the water gush through the pipes to where I crouched. The gurgles stopped and I, somewhat more confidently this time, took off the cap.

Do you have any idea how much water there is in one flush of a toilet? And how far that water can gush against an embankment containing one wildly scooting person? Or how inadequate a board-and-bucket system can suddenly seem?

After the deluge subsided, I went to work on the remaining spludge, capped off the clean-out, and Laura and I went into Westby for baths. We hadn't eaten, but I for one didn't have much of an appetite. I tried some chocolate soy milk, but when I poured it out...well...spludge.

I poured the milk back in the carton.

Today I went back under and dug out the dirt around the clean-out so if anyone ever has to do it again a bucket can fit nicely underneath. It gave me a fresh appreciation for the Allied prisoners-of-war who dug escape tunnels every chance they got. They had to dig hunched over or lying down, in terrible conditions, and all the dirt had to be hauled to the surface. From there it had to be scattered carefully since the Germans would have been a tad suspicious if large dirt piles had started appearing around the camp.

All my hunkering and squatting muscles are severely tried today, but as Noni said, at least I didn't have to put the dirt into sacks in my pant legs and scatter it slowly while I walked. Of course, since everything is snow covered and white that really wouldn't have been very effective anyway.

January Synopsis: Part 2

When I started this blog, it was with the intention that it cover only the happier areas of my life, areas more suitable for public consumption than those covered in my private blog. However, some events are so big that they need at least a little explaining. I can't have one of my kids completely disappear from the stream of blogdom without making some sort of an explanation.

Six and a half years ago I adopted three children as a single parent. Brave? Bold? Courageous? Crazy? Maybe all of those things, but there was never a question in my mind that I was going to make that choice. Would I have made the same choice had I known how things would go for the next 6+ years? Maybe, but out of mercy God didn't give me all the info ahead of time.

Our little family has had a lot of rough times since the adoption. Children who have been traumatized have a very hard time healing; meanwhile they lash out at those around them. I happen to have been around them a lot!

One decision that I made at the time of the adoption was to not sever contact between the kids and their biological family. Our families had been linked since before the kids were born, and with the kids so old it didn't seem like the right thing to do. Was that the right decision? I don't know that either, but I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was NOT the easy way.

Two weeks ago I made the decision to send John to live with his biological father. It was not an easy choice to make; there are really no words that can convey what it's like to send your child away knowing they don't want you anymore, but I felt that was the direction God was leading.

I realized John was allowing no part of our family to reach his heart; anger and bitterness, now carefully nourished by his biological father, was blocking any possible benefit he might have received. Meanwhile he was causing deliberate harm to the others and destroying their chance at having a peaceful and safe home to grow up in. (Note: Caleb is still in his program, so he wasn't as directly affected at the moment, but would have been extremely harmed if he'd been home. And since I do expect him home again, I brought that into my consideration) I couldn't continue to damage the ones struggling to triumph over their early trauma because of my desperate attempt to save one who was resisting all help.

I could go on and on, unleashing just a fraction of the rage and hurt in my own heart, but this is hardly the place for my therapeutic release. Suffice it to say that while life goes on because it must, I have not been unaffected by the wreckage left by self-centered adults and angry, hurting children.

But that is why John won't be mentioned a whole lot in the everyday goings on from now on. By his own choice, he lives elsewhere.

January Synopsis: Part 1

It's almost the end of January, an important fact that means winter is over in ONLY 5 MORE MONTHS!!!!! YEAH! It also means another busy month is about to be tucked safely under the belt of time, never to be dealt with again (thank goodness!).

The day after Christmas was my last day working for Walmart. Since then I have gotten a lot done on the ol' homestead. Unfortunately, most of what I've done has only made it uglier. For instance, one (not-so) fine day I decided to change the rubber strip in my threshold. I quickly discovered that the strip was so old I could not get it completely out of the threshold. But not before I took the threshold off. And the door.

I put the door and threshold back on, then purchased a new threshold the next day. Door and old threshold came back off. I measured carefully, cut the aluminum of the new threshold with a hacksaw, installed it. Door went back on. Beautiful!!

Now the door wouldn't shut.

Door came back off. I tried cutting the door with the hacksaw. A butter knife would have been faster. Tried a little Roto-zip, but the blade broke off in despair. Then I sent out an emergency call for an electric saw. Noni brought me out a Skil-saw. The blade was bent and cut crooked. Changed the blade and cut the door. Yeah! Door goes back on. Door now fits perfectly in the corner where I measured from. Floor slants down the rest of the door width.

Most of door now 1 inch off beautiful door jamb. Arctic breeze gusts through gap. Sigh.

So now swinging over my beautiful door jamb I have a door with half of a draft stopper insert (a full one wouldn't go all the way across because one corner was the right height, remember), a little plastic draft stopper stapled all the way across the bottom of the door, and then 3 inches of putrid pink carpeting, wrong side out, stapled across all of that.

But that coordinates with the black trash bag stapled over the window, the carpet strip across the top, and the neon 70's pink and green flowered blanket hung between the door and the storm door. This much ugly takes time and planning!

One 'beautifying' project I was able to complete was painting my living room a soft, butter yellow. Sigh. The paint was called 'Asian Silk'. The name brings to mind something dignified, hints at the mysteries of the Orient. It lies.


I told my mom if the sun and a yellow crayon had a baby, and that baby spit up mustard, that's what my living room looks like. The room will have to be repainted anyway since my renovating plans have been recently modified. Still, for all 'Asian Silk's' overpowering nature, it's a nice antidote to the winter blahs.








Another much more wonderful improvement was getting my interior water supply back. My pump broke near the beginning of December and I was without indoor water for nearly a month. Oh, how difficult it was pumping all that water by hand and then hauling those buckets through the snow, the wind, the cold.



Just kidding. I had to walk 20 feet to a heated well house and plug in an electric pump. I was still glad when I didn't have to do that anymore! That cleared the way for the next problem, the Problem of the Clogged Sewer Lines. Every time the temperature drops (and it's North Dakota, folks. That happens a lot!) my sewer line backs up. Tomorrow I expect to go under the house and take apart the line to clear it before the weather gets bad again. That's OK. Winter can't last forever. Soon all these problems will be distant memories.

Something else splendid was getting to say a permanent good-bye to my walk-in front room refrigerator. If you recall, my front room was (and still is) a nice crisp 39 degrees, so in the absence of my fridge, I stored the groceries in the living room. My dad helped me haul my fridge from Noni's house out to mine before he left for another trip to California. First I had to get it from the mother-in-law cottage out to the road, so Tiggy helped me push it through the snow. Have you ever pushed a refrigerator on its side through the snow? It does not make a good sled.



The last week of weather has been wonderful. Temperatures all the way up to 30 degrees and lots of sun, but there were plenty of cold days before that. I also understand that the usual weather pattern after a January thaw is to have a dreadful February.


The deer have been in great abundance. They winter in large herds, some in abandoned farm yards and some right in town. On almost every drive you are bound to run into a few, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. The snow is so deep this year that if they leap off the road they sink up to their necks. A maneuver like that leaves a deer perilously vulnerable to coyote attack, so they are loathe to do it, choosing instead to run panic-stricken along the road for great distances. It's inconvenient, but I can't bring myself to resent it too strongly. After all, any animal that has to spend the whole winter outside digging up grass crumbs to survive deserves a little understanding.



Amazingly, these were the cheerful news items for January. My next post will deal with the non-cheerful news, but it seemed a little, well, out-of-place to mix it in with the rest.

Fun With Stock Photography

I've been mildly interested in stock photography for a year or two now. It first started when my Yahoo page would take a moment loading the picture and all I'd see was the title, things like "attractive couple looks at computer" or "concerned doctor and patient." It started me thinking about the photography work that we see all day, every day as part of nearly everything we do.

Everywhere we look, we see stock photos. Health article? Need a picture of an ethnically diverse doctor with elderly patient. Losing weight? Need a picture of a healthy and attractive model (who does not need to lose any weight) happily exercising. Ad for a daycare? Need a picture of happy children finger painting with bright colors.

This past week, I decided to look into it more seriously, by which I mean randomly selecting a site on the internet, applying with impulsive submissions, and getting turned down flat. I still plan to work on it, but with purpose and self-education this time. Even if I never gain anything monetarily from it, it's great discipline as a portrait photographer. For one thing, since they are for sale every picture must be technically perfect. For another, you have to get very good at composition, because you have to make ordinary actions and objects look vibrant and dynamic.

It also serves to prove a truth that anyone can be a model. Sure, there's more of a market for happy, pretty people, but there's a certain need for ordinary-looking people doing mundane jobs. As part of my 'research' into what sells, I've been going through some of the already-accepted stock photos. If you ever have an afternoon with absolutely nothing better to do, you can spend it in this fun and diverting manner:

Go to a stock photography website. You should be able to browse all the pictures.
Search for fun and random images like these:
Bad Teeth
Diarrhea
Bad Breath
Male Pattern Baldness
Heartburn
Fungal infections

Be Creative! Come up with your own! And since most sites keep track of the most popular searches, there's the potential to re-shape the entire industry.

Mwahhahahaha!

My Accident Photos

The highway patrol in North Dakota is a full service organization. The responding officer to my accident said I could get copies of the photos he took for their records if I contacted the HP office. I would have to pay a small fee, but I could get them no problem. When I finally got around to asking for them, the Very Nice Lady sent them, on a CD no less, free of charge.

I couldn't take any of my own because I forgot to grab my purse when I climbed out of the van. Poor planning, that.

The white pick-up truck that is stuck in the snow is the one that stopped to see if I was alright and just slid sideways into the snow. They had a hard time getting back out again, but made it eventually with another truck's help.