Injustice

 People wonder sometimes if I really mean what I say about injustice in Michigan.  Michigan is the land of injustice.  Criminals walk away free, allowed to continue with their crimes.  Today was set a precedent that it was acceptable for a police chief to ADMIT he misused the law enforcement information network (LEIN) on someone he didn't know, without a valid reason.  Before today, people were FIRED for looking their own family members up, which is also improper LEIN use.  But today a jury decided it is perfectly acceptable.

To say I'm sick is an understatement.

So let me talk about injustice in Michigan.  Here's what it looks like:

Aaron was a classmate of mine in high school.  He had an absolutely amazing ability to imitate SNL, and some of my fondest memories of high school are of sitting next to him in math class on Monday mornings as he relived the best skits.  Somehow I always ended up in math class with him and ended up sitting next to him despite assigned seats.  At the time of his death he was working on some pop art/comic/ mix of crazy.  I found it after his death, and it took me back to high school math class.  Once in a while I still go look at it at Internet Archive, just to remember his unique sense of humor...

Lots of stories later, graduation, then I remember the last time I saw him at the grocery store in Richmond, ca 1997.  Fast forward to 2006, and a mutual friend from high school (best man at my wedding), who had NO idea Aaron and I had been friends in high school, said that he'd mentioned  my name to Aaron.  By then I had a husband and two kids who kept me busy, but I finally was able to type an email to him as our mutual friend's wedding came closer.  Aaron was supposed to be best man.

The morning I wrote my email, Aaron was sitting at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn so he could turn left and go to work.  A 17 year old kid, who was on drugs and drunk, on a suspended license, drove into his car at over 70 MPH.  Aaron's car started on fire.....  Look it up.  The article is still online.

The kid who did that, whose dad was in for dealing meth at the time, got 4 years of schooling on the state dime, and got to walk away. 

I still miss my friend.

I'm a (Sheaffer) girl...

 Anyone else remember the song Barbie Girl by Aqua?  (There I go, dating myself.)  I can't stand the song.  That's what makes it so funny it's in my head right now.

Anyone remember Sheaffer Pen Company of Fort Madison, Iowa?

I'm a Sheaffer girl... in a Sheaffer world.....

My first fountain pen was a Sheaffer No Nonsense, bought at M&R Drugs.  I still remember that day.  I was 12, it was 1987, and I still don't know why I knew what a fountain pen was or why I wanted one.  I had a choice of two -- red or green translucent, and I chose red.  I also remember there being jars of ink, but I didn't bring one home.  Wish I had, now.

That pen didn't survive the move to Richmond 4 years later.  I'm not sure why.   Neither did my two No Nonsense ballpoints, pale yellow and the Christmas one.   But by then, I had gotten a Parker Vector calligraphy set from Arbor Drugs.  Those were the days when little towns had real drug stores where all sorts of things could be purchased without needing to travel to large centers.  

In 1996, I  remember drooling over the ads for the Christmas pen Sheaffer put out.  That was way too expensive for my pocketbook at that point.  And then..... nothing.  No more pen ads.  I was in college and busy and no longer came across fountain pens anywhere.

When my grandpa died in 2012, I had a little break from the dying people in my family.  I started writing again and listening to music, and memories of the fountain pen came back to me.  For fun I started looking them up just to see if they still existed, and I found that there was a world beyond my dreams... 

Not long after I rediscovered there were still fountain pens, I found a pen that reminded me of that first red one.  But the memories of the first one haunted me... but what was it?  A lot of leg work and hours and I found something similar thanks to PenHero.  I was sure that the picture he had up wasn't quite right for what I remembered.  However, it gave me a place to start and I haunted used pens until I found it.....

Exactly as I remembered.  It even had a dried cartridge of Sheaffer Jet Black in it.

And then the rabbit hole appeared, as everyone knows in the sewing machine world.  At least these are smaller than sewing machines.  I am NOT trying to collect all the colors.  (I am NOT going to collect all the colors....I am not going to.... oh, that Bicentennial No Nonsense looks cool... )  Some of those have fine nibs, which I had no idea they came with.  And the blue one is the latest variant of the No Nonsense, meaning ca 2000.  That one has an italic nib.

I just recently added the two ballpoints, in memory of the Christmas ballpoint No Nonsense and the pale yellow one I wish I still had (it had the lanyard, not the clip.)

This is my whole Sheaffer family of pens.  

Top Row, L to R:  2 Sheaffer Imperial II Deluxe, Sheaffer 440, Sheaffer Stylist 444, Sheaffer Craftsman (non-working but cool), Sheaffer Vailiant Touchdown, Sheaffer Cartridge pen early 1960s.  

Bottom Row: 9 No Nonsense fountain pens, 2 No Nonsense ballpoints, and the rest are Sheaffer cartridge pens (aka unofficially "school" pens).  

 

The red and black No Nonsense pens belong to this kit:

Parker makes good pens, and I'm very fond of my Edisons .... but I keep coming back to my Sheaffers.

House drama, part 2 -- success

 My life lately seems to feel like it is one failure after another, which is anything but the truth.  Life can be like that.  One is on a beautiful road, but you only see the potholes which threaten to eat your tires.

That said, it has been long enough I can post about this success.  I'm going right to the best picture first:

Look at that!!!  I don't think it has ever looked that nice, not in the 23+ years I have lived here.  It was a process.  For anyone who comes across this and wants to know what I did, here are the gory details:

Mix peroxide and baking soda into a paste.  I wish I had learned this years ago.  It works well to take iron off of tile and tub.  You just use your hand and fingers to rub it.  No other tools necessary, and it washes off with water.  I will say, after a while you have to just walk away.  I don't know if the peroxide continues to work or if the brain holds the old memory.  When I think it doesn't look like it's working, I walk away for an hour and come back.  Peroxide and baking soda got me to this point below.  Did I mention that there was no finish left on the tub in places?

So I slept on it.  Something triggered in my memory, and I mixed up some iron out and made my own spray.  If you do that, WAIT to put in in the spray bottle until it is done foaming.  I killed a spray bottle by not waiting.  Another word of warning here: DO NOT MIX ANYTHING WITH IRON OUT.  I sprayed and walked away a few times.  

Once that was finished, then it was time for Porc-a-fix.  If one is a perfectionist, trying to match color is the difficult step.  I didn't care enough to try harder, because seriously, a 1976 bathtub is going to be hard to match.  I suppose had I really wanted to get creative, I could have picked another color and made polka dots.   Husband and I tag-teamed the patching.  He'd see a spot I missed.  I found one he missed.  I decided that since there was no finish at all around the drain I was just going to paint it like crazy.  

After the Porc-a-fix was set, then we used a tile and grout sealer (smallest bottle I could get from Home Depot) to seal it.  Bill did that part.  Two coats, and water actually *beads* now.  That has never happened in 23 years.  

It's not a new bathroom, but it sure looks better.  I hope this inspires someone.
   

Growing up in Richmond

 I have been going through my mom's things, cleaning things out because my dad can't and won't try.  While going through some of the stuff that miraculously survived my half sister and her two -- ahem! -- kids, I have found a treasure trove of high school memorabilia from my mom's times at RHS from 1962-1965.  The class prophesy, which has my mom 10 years later married to Alfred E. Newman and working like MAD on their March edition.  You know, the good stuff.  Like her pins, the GAA letter and certificate, and reading all the stuff people wrote in her yearbook.

Is this the point where I mention that only ONE of her classmates finally commented on her death on "Memories of Growing up in Richmond Michigan" facebook page?  And only after I posted through my mom's account in the thread discussing the members of 1965 who had died.

Yup.  Good Old Richmond, Michigan.  You can spend your whole life there, and generations of your family as well, and, "Who are you?"

As Emily Dickenson put it so eloquently, in what I call "The RHS poem":

I'm Nobody, who are you? 

Are you -- Nobody -- too? 

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell! 

They'd banish us, you know.

Here's a picture of nobody.  My mom is in the last row, second from far right

House Drama for a change

 So, for the couple of people who might actually check this out... I know it's been a while.   More drama than I'm ready to discuss.  (TLDR, my mom died, battle and court case with their adopted grandkids with State of Michigan, dealing with Dad who has dementia, and Mom did everything until she literally dropped dead walking into the house.)

Back to the house of a thousand stories.....

The biggest gripe I have had over the years are the people who say, always with that snide tone, "Oh, it's so nice your husband makes enough money so you don't need to work."

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here are two thousand:

This, dear reader, is our bathtub.  Original to the house, I might add, so from 1976.  Yes, I have been working on the iron stains (there is no finish left in part of the tub), but if you look closer you will see the chips in the porcelain.  I spared you several others.  We have patched some of them for years.  This poor beast isn't getting better with age, but replacement isn't in the near future.

There is white tile around the tub (of course, with all the iron in the water) which I'm also working on.  I'm trying to get the tile clean so we can actually seal it.  😏

In case you wondered, the floor in the bathroom is peel-and-stick tile.  When we had to redo it a few years ago, we found remains of the burgundy carpeting that was original.  Did I mention our house was built in 1976?

This is how we have made it on his salary for so long.  Cheap furniture.  I've re-upholstered, used sheets for furniture covers, and mended and patched until I am sick of doing so.  We still have original carpet in the house, too.   I had to fight for insulation and got it when I proved the wind was blowing through the house.

And now I'm learning how to try to save a dead bathtub.  

Useful hint, which I wish someone had told me about sooner -- making a paste with baking soda and peroxide is the best iron remover.  Unfortunately, the finish was already off the tub when we bought the house.