"Mysterious 2"

There were quite a few white apricots left over from the last food giveaway.  I took them home and canned them.  Since some people seem to hoard my pint-sized canning jars, I had to put the apricots in quarts.  I dislike doing quarts as it takes more hot water and everyone eating my bounty is a single person.  A quart of anything is a lot for 1 person.  Whatever.  The apricots went into the quarts and my single people snatched them up.

I also canned some papayas, but that meant I had to do 2 batches of canning.  When I took the jars of apricots out of the hot water, the water level dropped when I put in fewer jars of papaya.  Again, whatever.  I was hot and tired.  I just wanted to finish the steam bath I was getting on the hottest day of the year.  The jars looked sealed when I was done.  Since I'd run out of room in the kitchen, I put them in the outside sunroom to cool.

A couple of days later, I decided the sunroom was probably too hot for the jars.  I brought them inside and ignored them for a few days.  After a while, a not quite unpleasant and mysterious odor seemed to be in the kitchen and I couldn't find the source.  I also got invaded by carpenter ants.  Now, I'm betting you see the connections in this story.  I didn't.  I went on an increasingly frantic ant murdering spree until I picked up a jar of papaya and saw it was swarmed with ants.  The lid had popped off and there was an interesting, bubbling science experiment inside.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, compost fermenting papaya, wash everything... there were still ants.  I was losing my mind about then.  I finally found a second jar had exploded papaya all over the crowded table, the chair, the floor... There might've been some cussing.  Sooo, lesson for the week as stated by one of my apricot recipients, "Don't experiment with the rules of canning!"  Excellent lesson.  I'm hoping the ants died from botulism.

Properly canned papaya and apricots

On a happier note, I've been painting more flowers.  Bro2 said my other flower painting made him think of chakras, so I did this painting with that in mind.  Per Google, chakras are "(in Indian thought) each of the centers of spiritual power in the human body".  You can think of that as energy flowing through your body.  When all is healthy and good, it flows in a direct line bottom to top and you radiate joy.

You may have noticed some people aren't radiating joy.  They probably have a blocked chakra(s) and ought to meditate on the blockage.  Chakras are like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Each chakra is color coded.  From bottom to top:

root (red) - safety, stability

sacral (orange) - joy, sensuality, emotion

solar plexus (yellow) - will, power

heart (green) - relationship, love

throat (blue) - expression, communication

3rd eye (purple) - clarity, wisdom

crown (white) - transcendence

I have to wonder where black carpenter ants fit into the pretty chakra rainbow?  My flower has quite a bit of white in it though, so maybe I've transcended my cussing ant murdering spree?

Just in case

"Mysterious"

I'm sure a lot of mysteries will be explored with this week's word, but I guarantee you there is nothing more mysterious than plumbing, and I'll bet you didn't even think about it lately.  Your plumbing probably works as intended.  It's like aliens, you don't have to think about them unless you see a UFO.  You can go to church and the preacher doesn't even mention the subject that knocks grown men to their knees with muttered or shouted exhortations and imprecations at God.

My house is nearly 100 years old, and the plumbing is just as ancient.  Quality stuff for its time, but that time is long gone.  Though not usually a praying type, I said a stream of fearful prayers as I turned off the shutoff valves in the basement.  It worked on the hot.  It took some cussing, muscle, and tools (including a hammer) to force the cold.  Heavy sigh of relief.  Okay then.  More whispered prayers as I trudged upstairs to the tub.

I've had a minor drip.  I figured something needed a new washer.  This should be easy, but I know from past experience it isn't.  I took off the handles, then the escutcheons.  I'm showing off here because I know the right word for the decorative piece that hides the hole in the wall, something I learned from previously humbling experiences.  Anyway, I removed the escutcheons and recoiled in horror.  Someone had filled them with plumbers putty which was impregnated with black mold.  I knew I'd smelled mold before!  I'd cleaned everything and thought I was going crazy.

I disposed of the moldy putty and peroxided any remaining toxins.  I took apart the hot faucet, screwed in a new washer and breathed a sigh of relief.  I took apart the cold faucet and put on my puzzled face.  That doesn't look right.  It's not the same as the hot faucet.  Be that as it may, I replaced the washer and put the faucet back in the wall.

I suspected the center handle was where my problems really lay.  I took that apart and it looked like the cold faucet...  I won't bore you with all the details and the much trudging up and down basement stairs.  I replaced the washers in the sink since the water was off.  I got everything back together and prayed some more as I turned the handles on the shut off valves...  and panicked because the cold handle wouldn't turn on.  More muscle and tools... I have a minor drip in the tub which is slightly more minor than when I started.  If I really use muscle I can turn it off entirely.

The sink faucets shrieked when I turned on the water, but they worked fine.  I considered living with the shrieking, but I went to the hardware store to buy different washers.  A helpful man opened a drawer and showed me his array of brightly colored circles.  "1/4", 1/4",1/4",1/4"" he said as he pointed to 4 different sized washers.  "That makes no sense!" I exclaimed.  Nonetheless, each is 1/4" even though I don't understand why.  The nice man offered to sell me a variety package for $5, 1 washer looking to be about the right size.  That meant $10 of washers to fix my sink?  Grrr.  But far be it for me to question the divine rules of plumbing.  I picked 2 sizes from the tray and spent 29¢ each instead.  The sink no longer screeches.

I don't know if I can handle tempting fate again on the tub mysteries.  I'm certainly not calling the last plumber who must've been the one to pack my escutcheons with moldy plumbers putty.  My best advice is if you can relate to any of this it's time to brush up on your prayers or buy a new house.

The part used for both the cold water faucet and the shower diverter.
I'll happily accept advice from plumbers who know if I should replace it on the cold water.

"Mysterious"

I love mysteries. Not so much mystery novels, but the actual mysteries that surround us all the time – and we’re surrounded by them. Why do some cancers spontaneously go into remission? What’s really inside the nucleus of an atom? How does a whole tree come out of an acorn? What really happens to us when we die? How does intuition work? What’s outside of our universe? Is there an end to space? An end to infinity?

Some people roll their eyes and tell me I think too much, but I can’t help it. I never grew out of my terrible twos phase of questioning. There are endless mysteries and conspiracy theories and ghost stories and so many other things for which we’re never going to know the answers. Why shouldn’t I be open to the idea of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot, or Chupacabras?

Professional debunkers make me about as crazy as the government policy to spread stories of swamp gas. Debunkers make their living from merely saying “No”, but you can’t prove something doesn’t exist. Scientists used to think a certain fish existed only in fossils and became extinct millennia ago… until someone caught one. If the scientists had listened to the local fishermen, they would’ve known that the fishermen had caught that kind of fish before. If more scientists listened to stories about lights in the sky, maybe we’d know what’s up there by now?

Or for a different example, let’s think about acupuncture. It was mocked in the west as an Eastern superstition until somebody actually dared to ask the question of “Gee, does it actually work?” Well, as it turns out, yes. Now we have a whole new tier of questions about how and why and where can we go from here. As long as people remain in lock step with each other, the world is going to remain flat.

I know I’m not alone. Conspiracy theories and ghost hunters wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people who wondered or saw strange things. Religions wouldn’t exist if I was the only one who wonders what happens when we die. Colleges wouldn’t have research labs if somebody somewhere didn’t ask exactly the same kinds of questions as children before children’s questions are squashed into conformity.

When I was a kid, my dad had a squeaky old oil can like the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man. I thought it looked a lot like a watering can, and I liked the smell of the oil, so I “watered” all the flowers by the side of the house. The flowers didn’t look too good the next week, so I “watered” them some more. The flowers got progressively more sickly looking, so redoubled my efforts to help them. For some reason they eventually gave up the ghost and died. Hmm… Interesting fact. Flowers don’t thrive in oil. Now how would I have learned that important fact if I wasn’t open to experimentation?

The crystal ball is super old art, but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the word for the week. I made it for a newspaper section about predicting the future of business. I’ll admit it was never one of my favorite pieces, but I liked bits of it like the bird. I could do this piece so much better now. Ahhh… life before computers :)

The acorn is a quickie from today. I often type and free associate when I see the IF word for the week, and the idea of a whole tree in an acorn seemed like a logical visual.