Look Ma! No hands

NightMist, I am so sorry that you've been ailing so bad. I wouldn't have guessed it from reading your posts - you always sound so ... jovial. I don't think I'd have been as helpful as you always are if I were in your shoes. Don't suppose you'd share some of your genes, would you? :)

Anywho, I hope you feel better ASAP. For pete's sake, get some rest ... and feel better!!

On the subject of mastoid bones, my DD, when she was 1 1/2 had to have her mastoid bone drained. She'd had an ear infection for over *6* weeks (took her in several times complaining that the antibiotics weren't working, but the doctor knew "all" and told me I was being silly) ... and finally one morning, she woke up with the area behind her ear the size of a tennis ball. She went into surgery the next morning.

Later, the surgeon told me that we were VERY lucky - she was about a week away from the infection turning into menningitis. So an infection of the mastoid bone is *nothing* to treat lightly.

Hoping you feel better soon!! Sending warm quilty thoughts and prayers your way!!

Hugs!!

-- C>

Since I have sworn off men for the rest of my life it's still an 'ain't gonna happen in this lifetime' thing. ;-) I seem to be too doggone set in my ways, opinionated and just plain ornery. I'm better off with a 'giggle' of HairyButts to boss around and have worshiping at my feet and doing my bidding with no questions asked!

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.

=A0@ =A0=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =A0purr . demon . co . uk

Actually, I remember doing that when I came up in the trades in the

1950's. The paraffin was used to make the nails easier to drive in because of the wax coating on the nails. This was long before the current popularity of nail guns when carpenters hung hammers in the loops on the side of their canvas overalls. What is known as the "good old days". They also kept their tools in proper tool boxes and not leftover sheet rock plastic buckets, a truly ignoble development. Don't get me going on the decline of craftsmanship, you wouldn't want to listen to the length of that rant. Suffice to say that there are very few carpenters today, and plenty of, "assemblers". End of short rant, and I now return you to the previously scheduled discussion.

John

Those good old days blew out dad's elbow though. My brothers run the contracting company now but they were trained as journeymen carpenters and as dad says they are 'real craftsmen' (in their 50's now). My brothers don't much actually do the physical work unless it is something fussy. Most of the carpenters here in SO cal are not American and I would bet almost none except on gov't. type stuff are not union. The last few years dad actually worked on a job site there were complaints of loud music and dog poop on power cords (late 70's). Yuck! My dad never wore overalls. He was a really poor kid that wore overalls and never wore another pair after he left home at about

14 years old. I'm still not sure if only poor kids wore overalls or he just related them to poor folk.

Taria

John wrote:

I dunno know as it is so much genes as bad brain chemistry. Remember all my "but hey I'm manic." comments here and there and hither and yon? I was serious. I really am manic. So when I am sick the computer is a godsend. Especially since I have read every book in the house 6000 times, and when Ash is home and awake you have to be very careful about marking tools. When I get going on a drawing or pattern drafting I don't even know he has snitched a pencil or charcoal stick right out from under my hand until I reach for it and find it gone.

Rest is hard. I am not very good at it.

NightMist Nothing has been the same since that house fell on my sister.

There you go again...NOT touching that!

Well dang! If that is all you need in a fella there are plenty out there that would be greatful for the opportunity! I know you could have a man about who would say "Yes Mistress", and sew your bindings on when you bid them do it. You probably have just been shopping for men in the wrong places. Of course could be you don't have a proper spanky stick to keep them in line either. With men spanky sticks work better than crate training. *nods sagely*

NightMist

Nothing has been the same since that house fell on my sister.

OKAY!!! LOL I have sworn off EVERYBODY and EVERYTHING except for innocent email contact with established friends and family and reading rctq and quilting websites exclusively- and my dogs in their proper and innocent canine places. Does that cover everything yet? (I just *know* you will find something to 'not touch' in that statement, too.....) ROFLOL

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies >

Yes. Yes, she will. ;)

-- Connie :)

lifetime....

For one thing, I don't remember you ever saying that ... for another, not to make light, but I can commisserate. I get like that, too.

About a year ago, I was working on a deadline and put in *16* hours straight (no breaks, other than snagging a soda from my office fridge and the occassional Twinkie - and a potty break every 4 hours or so). Next morning, I woke up and my left leg was swollen to three times it's normal size and

*blue* (I was so distracted, thinking about that deadline, that I only noticed it during my shower). Hubby rushes me to the hospital where we're told that because of my smoking, my low blood pressure and the 16 hours of sitting, I have a blood clot (the size of a large walnut) in my leg. And a few small ones in my lungs.

I've always been like that ... if I'm doing something, especially something that requires concentration, I go overboard. I've even tried using a timer to tell me when it's time to stop ... and it rarely, if ever works. I'll smack it to shut it up and then go right back to what I'm doing.

The funny thing is that more often than not, I have serious distraction issues (I was one of those kids that would have been diagnosed as ADD - if it had been around then). I can't concentrate on normal, simple tasks. I can't motivate myself to do stuff ... but when I *am* motivated or do concentrate, it's WAY overboard. I've just always been told that I'm OCD (my whole family is OCD - DS used to freak out if he had a spot on his shirt!!).

I'll probably sound like a total jerk saying this, but I'll bet it's the same brain chemistry that makes you "manic" that also makes you creative. Some of the world's best artists were manic. Would you rather be less manic and less creative? If I'm manic (I wouldn't know - I just think I'm weird), I wouldn't!!! I think that for artists, the need for expression pretty much supercedes the needs for everything else. At least, that's what I think.

*rereads post* TMI?

-- Connie :)

On Jan 9, 10:23=A0am, Taria wrote:

What I am talking about is the Pre-manufactured roof trusses that arrive on the job on a flat bed truck and get hoisted into place by a crane. I would bet you that not too many of the guys who install that stuff could even use a framing square to figure out the cuts for the roof pitch and then cut and install the rafters and roof joists. The same guys install pre-hung door jambs, with the doors installed at the factory. They just shim them in place and then nail on the plastic fake wood grain moulding, with nail guns, and move on the the next assembly. I doubt whether they could take raw lumber and frame in the door jamb and then fit and hang a door and then miter and install the trim to hold it all in place. They unload the factory made cabinets, and nail them in place. They are installers, and not the kind of craftsman I grew up working under and tried to emulate. That opinion is based on my observation of many years in the building trades. The reason your Father probably didn't wear coveralls in So. Cal is the weather is warmer there and they would be too hot. But in the Pacific Northwest and other colder climates, they made the whole thing possible. They also were a sign of your professionalism. Sadly, the Union carpenters are not as common as they once were. Now anybody with a pickup truck that is laid off from the widget factory, can call himself a carpenter and fake his way through the process, with his sheet-rock mud bucket full of rusty tools, because the customer is used to accepting the level of craftsmanship that passes today. You do get what you pay for, with some things, and this is reflected in the cookie cutter houses that you see in every housing development, that you drive through. There are framing crews, insulation crews, roofing crews, plumbing crews, electric crews and God knows whatever else type of crew. There are still some quality workers, but they are usually employed by the custom builders and they don't work cheap. I also have a tender right arm from all those days of pounding nails, so I can sympathize with him. I guess that is why they invented Advil.

John

Got a story for you, John.

My Grandpa was a carpenter. He was a house framer. Back in his day the tool boxes were often long wooden boxes with a handle across the whole length of the open top. Well on one job there was this guy that as soon as 5 o'clock came he would drop whatever he was doing and run to collect his tool box to go home. He never slowed down to pick it up. Just grab while running. The fellow had irritated all the other construction workers with his 5 o'clock cut and run. You just can't run off when you are not at a good stopping point and leave your coworkers in the lurch.

Well one day at 5 he tried to do his standard running grab for his tool box, and drew-up short. Extra quickly. He ended up face down in the dirt, hand still on the tool box. All the other men laughed so he got up angrily and yanked the box up only to find himself holding just the handle and sides of the box. All his tools lay in a pile where the box had been. The bottom board of the box was still there under the tools--with a handful of framing nails keeping it tight to the ground! Debra in VA See my quilts at

Jobsite humor is notorious for it's merciless nature. That is a good one.

John

Yes, I know. I've worked several male oriented jobs, and I love to see the pranks. I especially enjoy the ones that involve sending a newbie hunting for an unreal tool or part: meat dept. showcase stretcher, new bubble for the level "because this one's bubble is always at one end and just won't go in the center", stuff live that. Debra in VA See my quilts at

I will now tell a tale on myself. On my first day on the job, at 16 as a very green Carpenters Apprentice, with a freshly minted union card, I spent the day being sent from one end of the job-site to the other asking one carpenter or forman or another for the timber stretcher. After the second response that it had been given to the guy who was now at the other end of the jobs-site, or up three floors, I realized the joke but continued to play along until the superintendent realized that he was paying me to walk around the site and not carry lumber as was usual for the beginning job description. Now, I ask you, who was the joke on. I didn't carry any lumber at all that day, but I did get to meet some of the many guys on the job and provide them with a good laugh. I of course did the same thing, to new guys later on in my life when I had he chance. All good fun.

John

And when I worked in a grocery store and was stocking after we closed up, one of the guys had someone shake the display rack while another one sent the new guy (not me) running to the supervisor to get the "hydrolic shelf stabilizer".

I have always been fond the the left handed hammer. An oldie but a goodie.

Honest to gosh some of the newbies coming in when I was getting ready to move on from construction and woodworking didn't seem to know a hammer fom a bandsaw. Thus it was a moral imperative to send them looking high and low for a right handed hammer (gosh darn it! those guys on second shift never switch back! I always do for them! They know I am right handed!), nut or fruit glue (you have to use special food grade glue on fruit or nut tree woods doncha know, otherwise it will spoil). Though my supervisor did smack me on top of the head for sending a new and particularly ignorant fella searching high and low for rice paper when we were doing a special run of bedroom furniture in the rice pattern.

NightMist

great stories! i can remember my 1stXH telling me the one where the new auto mechanic was always sent to get the fan-belt-adjuster-wrench, or the air-torque- hammer. it was always something non-existant. of course...boys will be boys...LOL!

amy in....was raining cats and cows, now the sun is out.....CNY

One day some apprentice is going to *invent* tartan paint when asked to fetch it. That'll show 'em.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

You're never "one of the guys" until the hazing is done. It's a good way to break the ice and teach a kid to think for himself rather than believe everything he hears.

I worked in a truck shop once and the first day I had a mechanic try to send me hunting for a double ended trouble light---long cord with a light at each end. I didn't fall for that, but a week later I did go looking in the parts room for a reverse threaded item. I've forgotten what it was but of course it wasn't to be found in the parts room. Unfortunately I didn't realize it didn't exist until I tried to order one by phone and the parts sales person said "You want a what?". I repeated my specific part order and the silence on the other end was my clue. I had been had. Debra in VA See my quilts at