Author Archives: Maggie C

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About Maggie C

Stained glass artist, writer, respecter of life.

Weekend Coffee Share (1/8/17)

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#WeekendCoffeeShare is graciously hosted by Diana at ParttimeMonsterBlog.com.

If we were having coffee, I’d advise you to bring a sweater when you come over. The house was 59 degrees (F) when I woke up this morning. It has since warmed up to 59.5. This is despite my heat pump running nonstop.

I don’t really understand how heat pumps are supposed to work. Something about exchanging inside air and outside air, but with the outside air at 33 degrees, I’m not sure I want it being pumped into my house. Nor do I want 90 degree air coming into my 88 degree home in the summer.

The user’s manual for the unit says something about how the system doesn’t work that great when it’s really cold or really hot outside. Seems to me, those would be the times you would most need it. I must be missing something about how the heat pump works. Mostly – right now – what I’m missing is heat.

Okay, I’m done complaining about creature comforts. For now.

If we were having coffee, I would update you on my kitchen remodel. It has progressed from, “This will be a fun challenge,” to “Oh my God! What have I gotten myself into?!?”

I decided to replace the double doors on the utility closet at the end of my cabinets with a bi-fold door to allow for better visibility and access. I will likely redo the kitchen floor in the near future, so I figured I might as well remove the multiple layers of flooring where I’ll be installing a sill for the bi-fold. The build up from one floor being laid over its predecessors over the years has accumulated to about an inch in depth, so it’s been like an archeological dig getting to the original surface.

I removed the facing at the base of the closet and discovered a mass of what appears to be old wall insulation that has likely housed many a generation of rodents over the past half century.

Without much further investigation, I cleaned all of that out with my shopvac (I haven’t looked yet to see if I sucked up any mousies into the vacuum). Then I peeked under the closet to see what else I might find.

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At the very back of the space, there are two little holes leading to the outer wall of the house. They are cute little holes. In fact they look kind of like the holes drawn in cartoons, where cute little whiskered animals live behind the walls.

Today, I’m going to seal off those cute little holes and remove the boards beneath the adjacent cabinets along that wall. I suspect that entire area has served as a superhighway for rodents over the decades.

Please, have another cup of coffee. I’m in no hurry to get to that particular task. Maybe I’ll position my cat at the entrance to the kitchen in case any current residents become displaced from their nests. The cat would love to make new friends. Unfortunately that’s about all he would do with them.

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I wonder if mice like coffee. Excuse me while I set out an extra cup. Do you suppose they take cream? Or just drink it black?

What? You’re leaving now? Well, okay. Watch your step. We wouldn’t want you squishing any of my cat’s new pets.

I wish you a fantastic, warm and vermin-free week!

Change is Afoot; Change is Ahead

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Two years ago I began a blog about my favorite pastime, stained glass. In my first post, I indicated that the blog, Glass Manifestations, would be about:

“glass (sort of) because working with glass is how I do a lot of my processing (thoughts, feelings, ideas, inspirations…), and hence a lot of my thoughts, feelings and ideas are made manifest in my art. But… also about insight and growth, in the hope that what I manifest tomorrow, or next week or next year – in life as well as in glass – will continue to improve. In quality, in meaningfulness, and in pure, simple pleasure.”

A month into the blog, I signed up for a WordPress Blogging U course on writing poetry. With the very first assignment, I realized that my poetry attempts might not fit into my Glass blog theme of insight and growth and meaningfulness.

Nope. That first poem was about leaky water faucets and dental floss. I decided I needed a different venue where I could express those random, ridiculous and totally irrelevant thoughts that obviously didn’t get the “meaningfulness” memo. Hence, What Rhymes with Stanza came into being.

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In the two years since, my Stanza blog has grown and expanded beyond poetry to where now I express my random, silly and possibly meaningful thoughts through photography, prose, embellished conversations amongst animals, and sometimes art.

The Glass blog, in the meantime, just wasn’t as fun a place to hang out for me. And so the blog languished in neglect.

With the new year, I’ve done a bit of reassessing about my blogs and have decided to combine the two, moving some of the material from the withering glass blog over to this site. Hopefully that will occur seamlessly and behind the scene, so long as I don’t confuse the export/import process with the reblog function. (If you see fifty new posts from me in a single day, you’ll know I failed.)

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This blog-meld won’t change the Stanza site to any significant degree. You’ll likely see more posts about stained glass and art, and I’ve added a gallery of my glass work for those of you who care to look. Other than that, you can expect my usual deep and evocative take on what chickens discuss when no one else is around, fascinating tips on how not to handle home improvement projects, copious photos of my pets, and maybe even a poem or two.

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I’m looking forward to a fun, random, insightful, meaningful year! I hope you stick around to share it with me.

Supercize Me

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Today’s Daily Post Discover Challenge asks us to celebrate our Superpower.

I don’t generally contemplate superheroes and superpowers. I didn’t read comic books as a kid, and I didn’t play with superpeople action figures.

If there were superhero video games – actually if there were any video games – in those long ago days, I was oblivious to their existence. The only game I knew that employed a joystick was Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.

I do recall watching Batman and Robin on TV, but the only real superpower they seemed to have was the ability to slide down a fire pole and arrive at the bottom dressed in full crime-fighting regalia. I don’t recall ever seeing how they got back into their civvies after saving Gotham City and returning to the bat cave. Maybe they shinnied back up the pole, gathering back the bits and pieces of clothing from where they had been shucked on the way down.

It would appear that superheroes don’t generally get to choose their special powers. Spiderman was accidentally bitten by a radioactive spider. He may have wanted to grow up to be a human cannonball, but no – the errant arachnid consigned him to scaling walls and spewing dental floss from his palms.

Superman was born with his powers, which weren’t even “super” on his planet of birth; they just appeared so to the non-super types here on Earth. Wonder Woman’s powers were gifts from the Greek gods. I doubt she got to pick her gifts. You know how Greek gods are, always wanting things done their way.

As to my own superpower… well, I have the power to see things that aren’t there. No, I don’t hallucinate. Let me rephrase a bit. You know those intuitive types of people who can see past facades and insincerities? It is often said of them that they see situations and people for what they truly are. I, on the other hand, see things for what they’re not.

It usually starts innocently enough. I’ll be going about my own business when something random unexpectedly catches my eye. A thought bubble appears above my head that says, “Hmmm.” Which is shorthand (or short-brain?) for “That looks interesting. I wonder what I could not do with that.” And then I turn it something it’s not.

My superpower takes hold, and suddenly my paint pants become wall art:

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or my yard debris turns into a wood carving:

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or a sheet of carbon paper becomes a photo series:

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One might think this superpower of mine is not very useful for fighting crime, evil and injustice everywhere. And one would be correct. But it does fight boredom, taking-oneself-too-seriousness and creative block.

I think I should get a costume.  And a sidekick. And an alter ego moniker. Hmmm…

Just call me the Hmmm-inator. Or not.

Weekend Coffee Share (1/1/17)

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#WeekendCoffeeShare is graciously hosted by Diana at ParttimeMonsterBlog.com.

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If we were having egg nog, I’d wish you a hopeful, healthy and safe New Year!

I have issues with wishing for happiness, but perhaps we can postulate that if one has hope, health and a sense of safety, there’s a good chance they can find happiness as well.

Oh, the egg nog ran out last night. No problem, I’ve got coffee brewing as we speak.

If we were having freshly brewed coffee, I’d tell you I’ve vowed to put 2016 behind me come this year. No ruminating on fears, disappointments, anger, sadness and doomsday prophesizing. I’ll try to build on the many, many positive moments of last year.

So here is a partial list of what I am wishing for and anticipating in 2017:

♦  The continued blessing of sharing my life with a loving family, companionable pets, and myriad hand tools and DIY project supplies.

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♦ Opportunities to contribute to preserving and expanding the beauty and health of this planet.

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♦ Tenacity to hold to an ethical, honorable and selfless ethos, such that our society can rise above the mires of that prior year I said I wouldn’t ruminate upon (hint: 2016).

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Oh, alright…

♦ ♦ ♦  I also wish for happiness for all! ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Welcome to 2017! Let’s make it a year to cherish!

The Daily Post daily prompt: Year

Strong as Iron

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“After arriving from China my dad took a year to save enough money working in San Francisco and he then walked to Astoria.” [ 718 miles ]

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“My grandfather brought home salmon cheeks, a delicacy to the Chinese but a waste to the cannery owners.”

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“He was a veteran of World War 2 and the Korean war and he filmed breaking stories on the coast for news stations and he was the official photographer for the Miss Oregon pageant.”

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“We went to American school in the daytime and Chinese school in the evening.”

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“My mother graduated with a college degree but Chinese women seldom had job opportunities so she…”

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“Grandma said dad was so sick on the boat from China that he would have been fed to the fish if he had died. Now a seafood lab is named after him for the fish feed that he and his team developed.”

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“The tongs formed in the 1870s and grew to as many as nine but began to disappear in the 1930s. Remaining tongs were known more for their…”

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“Chinatown was like a playground. We had no…”

These photos were taken at the Garden of Surging Waves, a city park in Astoria, Oregon, which was built to honor and celebrate the Chinese heritage of that area. The Story Screen in these photos is an iron structure that includes the entry gate, and these large panels that tell about the hardships, struggles and contributions of some of the Chinese immigrants in Astoria as well as their descendants who remained in the area and who continue to be vital components in the fabric of the community.

The Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Resilient

Light Bulb Moment

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One of my favorite posts from 2016 was one I wrote for a second blog of mine, Glass Manifestations. I won’t be posting any recap for the year on that site, mostly because I only averaged a  little over one post per month (excluding the month I participated in the “A through Z” challenge). I hope to be more active with that blog next year, but in the meantime I wanted to repost this story from April 12, 2016 for my Stanza readers. I hope you enjoy it.

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Light Bulb Moment

So I had a “light bulb moment” the other day. You know, that moment when you have a sudden realization, an enlightenment of sorts, when the metaphorical light bulb turns on in your brain and you say, “Aha!”

Oh wait… that’s an “aha moment.” But anyway, that light bulb moment when you are struck with a sudden insight or inspiration that leads you on to new discoveries?

Yeah… that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a real light bulb. You know… bulbous, light-producing… something that you screw into a socket so that someone doesn’t come along and stick their finger in it. That kind of light bulb.

Okay, on to my moment. I bought a light bulb that is supposed to have a 27 year life span. I can’t remember how much I paid for it. That memory is probably repressed to protect me from the trauma.

Nor can I remember what I was thinking when I decided that I needed this acme of amperage, this wonder of wattage, this lion of lumens.

Perhaps I just felt that, at some point in my dotage, I might want to switch on a lamp, and I could rest in ease knowing that my trusty light bulb would be there waiting to brighten my day. Or night.

So here I was, in possession of this almost ageless light bulb, and – as luck would have it – there was a burnt out bulb in one of my lamps. A perfect opportunity to begin my decades-long relationship with Brighton. (I figured if we were going to be together that long, the light bulb should have a name.)

I pulled Brighton out of my light bulb storage area (I seem to have quite a collection of light bulbs), and began wrestling with the packaging that was doggedly defending Brighton from harm. With a sudden shift of surrender, the packaging gave way, the bulb sprang free…

and began its unstoppable freefall to the hardwood floor.

The bulb crashed to the floor. My dog Chules came running to see what happened. I began to have visions of doggie blood spurting everywhere if Chules stepped on shards of Brighton. In one swift motion, I pushed Chules aside and bent down to assess the damage.

There lay Brighton. In one piece. On the floor. Where he landed after a four foot long plunge.

I tenderly picked Brighton up, held him to my ear, and gently shook him to see if I could hear that tinkling little noise that light bulbs make when their filament has broken. Mind you, with Brighton being the Superbulb that he is, I don’t even know if he has a filament. But I figured no sound is good sound.

I took Brighton to my bulb-less lamp and with trepidation screwed him into the socket. Holding my breath, I reached with quaking hand to flip the switch.

And then there was light!!!! Brighton’s alive! Metaphorically speaking, of course.

As I sit here basking in Brighton’s warm glow, I have every confidence that we will be together for a long, long time.

Hey, wait! Did someone turn out the lights? Brighton…?

Brighton?!?

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