The Buffalo Tavern

April 17th  a young singer/ songwriter/ poet moved into our B and B suite for  3 months. .  It has been so enjoyable to have her in the mix.  Last week she wanted to  watch “The Voice” on NBC.   That sounds like a simple enough  request, but since watching TV is not a priority around here, I had my doubts that the rabbit eared contraption would be able to deliver.  Both the wife and I would much rather read a good book, or spend time in deep conversation.

If you ever come to visit, bring a favorite book and read me a chapter

Below is one of my favorite stories from one of my favorite authors, Robert Fulghum:

_____________________________________________________

One Portion Of A Minister’s Lot concerns the dying and the dead.  The hospital room, the mortuary, the funeral service, the cemetery.  What I know of such things shapes my life elsewhere in particular ways.  What I know of such things explains why I don’t waste much life time mowing grass or washing cars or raking leaves or making beds or shining shoes or washing dishes.  It explains why I don’t honk at people who are slow to move at green lights.  And why I don’t kill spiders.  There isn’t time or need for all this.  What I know of cemeteries and such also explains why I sometimes visit the Buffalo Tavern.

     The Buffalo Tavern is, in essence, mongrel America.  Boiled down and stuffed into the Buffalo on a  Saturday night, the fundamental elements achieve a critcal mass around eleven.  The catalyst is the favorite house band, the Dynamic Volcanic Logs.  Eight freaks frozen in the amber vibes of the sixties.  Playing stomp-hell rockabilly with enough fervor to heal the lame and halt.  Mongrel America comes to the Buffalo to drink beer, shoot pool, and dance.  Above all, to dance.  To shake their tails and stomp frogs and get rowdy and holler and sweat and dance.  When it’s Saturday night and the Logs are rocking and the crowd is rolling, there’s no such thing as death.

     One such night the Buffalo was invaded by a motorcycle club, trying hard to look like the Hell’s Angels and doing pretty good at it too.  I don’t think these people were in costume for a movie.  And neither they nor their ladies smelled like soap-and-water was an important part of their lives on anything like a daily basis.  Following along behind them was an Indian-an older man, with braids, beaded vest, army surplus pants, and tennis shoes.  He was really ugly.  Now I’m fairly resourceful with words, and would give you a flashy description of this man’s face if it would help, but there is no way around it-he looked, in a word, ugly.  He sat working on his Budweiser for a long time.  When the Dynamic Logs ripped into a scream-out version of “Jailhouse Rock” he moved.  Shuffled over to one of the motorcycle mommas and invited her to dance.  Most ladies would have refused, but she was amused enough to shrug and get up.

     Well, I’ll not waste words.  This ugly, shuffling Indian ruin could dance.  I mean, he had the moves.  Nothing wild, just effortless action, subtle rhythm, the cool of the master.  He turned his partner every way but loose and made her look good at it.  The floor slowly cleared for them.  The band wound down and out, but the drummer held the beat.  The motorcycle club group rose up and shouted for the band to keep playing.  The band kept playing.  The Indian kept dancing.  the motorcycle momma finally blew a gasket and collapsed in someone’s lap.  The Indian danced alone.  The crowd clapped up the beat.  The Indian danced with a chair.  The crowd went crazy.  The band faded.  the crowd cheered.  The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech.  Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, “Well, what’re you waiting for? Let’s DANCE.”

     The band and the crowd went off like a bomb.  People were dancing all through the tables to the back of the room and behind the bar.  People were dancing in the restrooms and around the pool tables.  Dancing for themselves, for the Indian, for God and Mammon.  Dancing in the face of hospital rooms, mortuaries, funeral services, and cemeteries.  And for a while, nobody died.

    “Well,” said the Indian, “what’re you waiting for?  Let’s dance.”

Excerpt taken from the book All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergartenby Robert Fughum

“The length of our days is seventy years- or eighty, if we have the strength;  yet the span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass….so teach us to number  our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  Psalm 90:10.12

Thursday and Friday night of this week  we stood in a funeral home receiving line to acknowledge the passing of two more people.   Combine that with my cousin Michelle’s unexpected passing and that makes for a busy month.   So, fellow bloggers and Internet surfers, make sure you are not just sitting on the side lines and watching life pass you by.  The Indian said it best.   “Let’s Dance! “

The Poetry of Anne Maren-Hogan

“I can feel the grit of dust and crunch of downed cornstalks in these poems.  They are not nostalgic ditties, but instead are strong songs, often in a haunting minor key, that remove me to a time when many footsteps, from many families, from many homes, sounded on the Midwestern farm scape.”

Timothy Fay  (taken from  the back cover of Anne’s book of poetry)

Anne and Sam  with the Mrs and I  March 23 2013

I was introduced to Anne Maren-Hogan’s book of poetry this past November by her nephew Chris.

I would be the first to admit I am not a big reader of poetry….which makes what happened to me all the more powerful.

I can still remember sitting in Ms Burns 7th grade class reading “Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “

I got the impression something deep and profound was  going on in that story, but it was  beyond me.

(The same thing happened in Mr Newland’s slide rule class…..I felt  over my head and could not swim)

NEVER  wanting  to find  myself in that sort of discussion setting again.

Flash forward 40 year .

Chris  hands me a little book of poetry @ coffee break written by his aunt Anne. (Chris works with me)

In my mind, I’m thinking...oh/ no/  if I take it, he’s going to ask me later what I think…?

I will be exposed for the uncultured farm boy that I am.

I took the book.

I inhaled the book.

I discovered a writer that drew me in.

She wrote about growing up in a large farm family , not too many miles from me.

Here’ another quote from the back of the book:

“With narrative grace and keen insight, Anne Maren-Hogan celebrates the strength and perseverance of women.  Spanning two decades, the poems in The Farmers Wake offer a thoughtful meditation on family, place and culture.   The poems move beyond a chronicle of farm lief in the Midwest to remind us all of the very human connections we share with each other and this earth.  The landscape in these poems may be harsh and isolated, but the writing is rich and rewarding: stitching it all together with this certainty/ of leaving and returning as  Maren-Hogan writes in “Lifting My Eyes”  Pat Riviere-Seel

_______________________________

Anne and her husband Sam were back in the area this past week visiting family.

I’d built a multipurpose addition to our shop this Fall and had been wanting to do a “German Building dedication”

Last Saturday night, was the dedication.

Anne and Sam, joined us for a night of poetry/ music and mirth.

I asked Anne,  if she cared if I included one of her poem on this post.  So I did get her blessing.

I intended to include my favorite poem titled The Farmer’s Wake”

(It is about her dad’s wake)

I’ve had a change of heart.

I’m going to hold off  because  I feel like she  has shared something with us very precious and sacred.

A  glimpse into her heart.

I will instead give you a link to her book of poetry, so you could have your own copy.

_____________________

In case you stumble across this post later Anne, I just want to say  thank you again for  sharing your heart, both in your poems and for actually coming and reading them aloud .

I am a wealthy man.  DM

German building dedication

Lead carpenter (me) nailing the evergreen branch to the gable. 

“Also” Did he just say “also”????

A pit you don’t want to fall into

Jim  told  with  me  yesterday  he had been thinking about  the things I’d shared with him  the week before.

“What things?”  I asked with a smirk,   “What  did I tell you? “

(That’s one of the beautiful things about short term memory loss….every day is a new day)

He reminded me I   had vented some  anger  frustration  in the realm of relationships.  I had been  feeling devalued.

(Last week’s blog post came out of that stuff) 

Well, He said, “I thought more about it  and by the middle of the week  I  was also battling self pity.”

“also”…did he just say “also”?

Self pity is  what Junior High girls do, right????

_________________________________

After my conversation with Jim  I decided to look up the definition for self-pity:

     Psychiatrists have an interesting name for people who habitually indulge in self-pity–it’s “injustice collector.” These are the folks who are constantly dwelling on their hurts and hardships – whether real or imagined – and they enjoy thinking about them and talking about them. They lovingly collect and number each and every offense that others commit against them, and they search out people who will sympathize with them and commiserate with them. All this keeps the focus on themselves, which is what they want most.”

Dang, some of that felt a little too close to home.

That is the last thing I want rolling around in my brain!

I”m beginning to  think self pity is a lot more common than I realized.

I’ve been calling it other things  like ” being in a funk”,  “being down” “discouraged” “feeling rejected” feeling down”

My wife’s  daily devotional  had a warning about self pity this past Saturday:

“Be on guard against the pit of self pity.

  When you are weary or unwell, this demonic trap is the greatest danger you face.

  Don’t even go near the edge of the pit. 

Its edges crumble easily, and before you know it, you are on the way down. 

It is ever so much harder to get out of the pit than to keep a safe distance from it, 

That is why I tell you to be on guard.            

   from   “Jesus Calling”     

A Desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul

I had an opportunity to have several desires of my heart fulfilled this past week….

1.  Take a cross country train ride with my  girlfriend

2.  Spend my birthday in Seattle hanging out with  a blogging friend and her family.

3.  Check  out Pike’s market while we were in town

4. Experience the music scene of Portland Oregon with our musician friend Katie.

And best of all, I came home refreshed…I have  honestly figured out  how this leisure thing works.

If you’re a regular reader  on my other blog, some of this will  be old news.

 

Train pulling into the station

Last Friday night we boarded The Empire Builder in La Crosse Wisconsin.

We were headed for Seattle

Wife has taken the Amtrak a couple of times to Denver and Chicago, but I’ve never been on a train  before. (unless you count that tourist train in Boone Iowa  that takes you on a ride through the woods and over a bridge)

_________________________

Lacrosse Wisconsin. 

Friday night

As we waited in the Depot I  bantered  with an Amish farmer who was also waiting for the train.  He looked to be in his mid 40′s .He and his wife were getting away for a couple of days to see friends in Minnesota. He told me with a twinkle in his eye  they had 10 kids @ home who were keeping an eye on things.  I told him this was my first real train trip. He  didn’t know what to think about that.

About 7:30 PM the train pulled into the station…

There was a light snow was falling as  the conductor  scanned our ticket and told us which car to get on.

It felt like a “Norman Rockwellian” moment…

Or  I was about to step into a time machine…

 

Saturday morning Date 2

We woke up the next morning near Devils Lake North Dakota.

Blowing snow

wheat fields for as far as the eye can see…

Harvested wheat field of North Dakota

As we continued west, we went through towns with names like Wolf Point, Malta, Cut Bank, Sand Point…

Train station in Malta MT 

(didn’t realize it until after I took this picture but  it looks like a young Amish mother  and 4 of her children waiting for someone)

I kept thinking..I wonder how many more years these communities will have  train service..

50 years ago, 1000′s of small communities each had their train stations..You could hop on a train and travel to just about anywhere you wanted.

The train doesn’t come to our town any more.  The tracks  are no longer there….they are just a memory. I remember a work crew tearing out the tracks in the late 1970′s   The depot disappeared  in 1972 I’m thinking..

One of the highlights of the train ride was meeting Linda….a fellow traveler.. I think she’d gotten on shortly before we boarded..When she told us she was also headed for Seattle..there was an instant connection.  We were all in this “adventure” together.

She told us she was heading west to spend some time with her daughters and help out with a new grand-baby.

Sunday morning Day 3 of our trip

We woke up the second day in Eastern Washington state.  Barren apple orchards flashed by my window for several minutes.  As a fellow orchardist , I  would have loved to see those trees  in the Fall….

As we neared Seattle, I texted Kristina our soon to be hostess and told her I thought we would be about an hour late…not bad for traveling  2000 miles in the dead of winter through the Northern plains and Rocky Mountains…not  bad @ all

I heard someone ask the conductor about our arrival time?. Conductor said we were going to be on time…

whoops…

I retexted Kristina told her what  I’d just found out and told her we would be fine..didn’t want her to  stress out.

Got off the train, asked one of the rail car attendants if he would take our picture…

Just arrived in Seattle via Amtrak

I felt like Country Mouse coming to visit his cousin City Mouse

Here’s a view of part of the Seattle train station…

Train Depot in Seattle

Let me know if you’d like to read about the rest of the  trip…I’ll give you a link to the other posts.  g-nite. DM

“You can sit by me if you like….”

“You can sit by me if you like,” Jarret said to me at lunch today

“Do you know why I asked you to sit by me?”, he asked.

“No, Why do you ask me to sit by you?” I replied.

“Because I like you! “he said with a shy smile.

Jarret is 4 years old.

He has been asking me to sit by him now for the past three weeks.

Our crew is building a shop at their farm.

The family  has  invited us in for  lunch  almost every day we’ve been on the job.

When I sit down at their  14 ft farm table  I think,...this is what it must have felt like to be a part of a large threshing crew..

Grant Wood’s Dinner For Threshers

People with a real gift of hospitality are a dying breed.

Even here in Iowa.

It’s one thing to invite a few close friends over for  lunch once in a while..

I scratch your back, you scratch mine..right?

Well, …it’s a completely different ball game to cook lunch for  a construction crew of 4 , 5 days a week, for the better part of a month.

Today lasagna  was on the menu

Yesterday I thought  Jarret’s mom had asked if I wanted a piece of “cheese cake” for desert?
“Yummy I said..I love cheese cake…!

“No” she replied, I said  “sheet cake”

my bad.

Well, today, guess what we had for desert?

Cheese cake topped with a blueberry filling.

I had to pry the guys away from the table today….

They did not want to go back to work.

John said it was the best tasting lasagna he’d ever had.

While I’m thinking about it..here’s a recent crew photo

Crew photo

I work with a great bunch of guys.

The morale on this crew is second to none.

Nothing worse than working around someone with a bad attitude.

At this point in my life, when I’m looking to hire someone, the numero uno thing I am looking for is

ATTITUDE.

I don’t care if you don’t know how to properly hold a hammer or read a tape measure.

I can teach you those things.

What I really detest is a whiner or someone with a dark cloud following them around.

I am really enjoying  the guys   that is helping me out this Winter.

As I write this, I feel like I’m starting to fade….4:30 AM comes pretty early

Jarret’s comments were still rolling around in my head when I got home from work, and I wanted to tell you about it…

Yea, I’m assuming I have a couple of regular readers 

There is just something serendipitous about a 4 year old   requesting that I be his lunch buddy 3 weeks in a row.

I am a rich man.

I will miss Jarret when the job is done…

Heck, I will miss the whole family…

Here is a picture of the shop we’ve been working on:

End view of shop

One last thing before I sign off…

Did you know what the word Hospitality literally means?

Hospitality:  Lover of strangers

I believe it is more caught than taught…

Jarret is growing up in a home where it is being modeled in a powerful way….

If I were a betting man, someday when he has a home of his own, he will also know how it’s done….

Is there anyone in your life, with the gift of hospitality?  Tell me about them.

Grandma was wrong

Picture of me at work yesterday….20 feet in the air/ living the dream ….my dream that is;-)

________________________________________________________

“Oh Doug.. You were such a good student…I really hoped you would go to college.”  grandma said when she found out her eldest grandson was NOT planning to go to college..instead, I had decided to follow in my dad’s foot steps and work in construction.

There was disappointment written all over her face..

I felt bad.  Not until she was dead and gone did I appreciate where she was coming from.  Not until I had children of my own, watched them make life choices  that would affect them  long term… in ways they didn’t understand…then I was finally able to understand my grandma’s concerns…

But Grandma was wrong.

There is more to life than money.  A meaningful life  has nothing to do with material things…

I have a couple of friends who are making 2 and 3 times the amount of money  I do but hate their jobs….

They have full benefits, a 401 K… and they are quick to talk about what they want to do when they retire.

No thank you.

Quoting my dad now...”The word retirement is not in my vocabulary”

(Dad just turned 80 this past year and is still active in construction)

Last week I stopped @ Loes to buy a new  skill saw.

Good morning”  I said to a woman about my age.   She looked tired.

“How are you?” I asked…”(It was about 7 AM..she was  checking inventory)

“I wish I were home” she  replied.

I felt for her..  Her life was not her own.  There were bills to pay…only God knows the series of life decisions and circumstances that have brought her to this place in life….

Last April I was invited to speak at a jobs fair for high school students.

Started by sharing a quote that has cast a long shadow over my life :

“Do what you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Don’t just settle for a job where you punch the time clock.

You may have to work @ a job  (or three) where you  “punch the time clock” in order to get where you really want to be….

but don’t stop there.. God didn’t create you to be a mindless worker ant ..unless that is what you really love to do.

I remember the pressure I felt  in school trying to figure out what I wanted to do once I graduated.   A real part of me thought I should  be a vet…that was until Mr Guard pulled me to the side one day in the guidance office  and  “suggested ” my grades indicated I probably couldn’t handle vet school.  I know he was only doing his job..but “dream killer” comes to mind  when I think of that conversation.

(years later I built a house for a vet/ told her my story, to which she replied, “Doug, if you really wanted to be a vet,one way or the other, you could have done it.  I didn’t make it the first time or two when I applied to vet school either..if you want it bad enough, you could have done it”)

Two  of my daughters , have  the desire to be a wives  and mothers.

Period.

I remember being @ the ripe old age of 20, having the strongest desire (nesting urge?) to settle down and start a family.

So  I did.

Best decision I ever made.

Pop culture today  mock those kind of  dreams…and I’m here to tell you, pop culture is full of #@$%%.

(that’s  German for incorrect…I’ve been using more German in my blog posts lately  you may have noticed )

If truth be told, pop culture is wrong on just about everything it promotes.
“We’ve  got a form of brainwashing going on in our country.”  Morrie sighed.  “Do you know how they brainwash people?  They repeat something over and over.And that’s what we do in this country.  Owning things is good.  More money is good.  More property is good.  More commercialism  is good.  More is good.  More is good. We repeat it – and have it repeated to us – over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise.  The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore….

from the book Tuesday’s with Morrie.

_______________________________

If there is more to life than money…what do you think that “more” is?

What in your life brings you satisfaction?

What would you tell the person who is up to their eyeballs in bills, who feels stuck in a dead in job they hate?

DM

If you were my daughter, if you were my son…

Had a little drama on my other blog last night.

A mother  recently left a comment on a blog post sharing about the heartache she has been going through with an older son….well, Son got onto the computer that was still logged onto my post  her comment  was still visible.

He was not a happy camper.

Having personally experience 18 years of parental hell myself, ( it started when our oldest was about 14..and is only just now tapering off 19 years later as child #4 is finally getting his bearings)  I have some perspectives on parenting I wish I could have tapped into so many moons ago.

So for what it’s worth, if I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with this distraught mother (and her slightly dysfunctional son)  here is what I would tell them…

First to the Young man.

I would sit across the table , look him in the eyes and  say.. ” It’s time you grow up.   You need to move out and get a place of your own.  It’s going to be tough…financially and every which way..but the truth is, you do not appreciate what your parents have been doing for you  and you  need an  attitude adjustment.  I might (might have) considered letting you stay here a little longer if you had been willing to play by the rules of our home..but as it is, the drinking, smok’n and blatant disrespect for your mama is the last straw…. You need to be out by the end of the week.  period.”

“Mom…I know you love your little cub.. you love him dearly..unfortunately, at this point, he doesn’t feel it. and he will continue to disrespect you and break your heart until he comes to his senses.  and that may take getting to the end of himself.    When that finally does happen. he’ll be back and you’ll have a new son.”

_______________________

Parents..(especially moms) have a tendency to short circuit the natural consequences of of poor life choices ..the result is, our children continue to flop and flounder and get into all sorts of heartbreaking  situations…heartbreaking.  and we keep bailing them out... you need to stop.  if they get busted, let the natural consequences of their choices  unfold…period.

When I was in the middle of it all, there was a time when I felt like an elephant was stepping on my chest…the stress and pressure was crushing.  I told someone yesterday, I felt like I went through an emotional wood chipper.

I am not the same dad I was going into the parenting gig, 30 plus years ago.

I’ll never forget the time I sat across the table from my 14 yr old daughter who I had just brought home..she’d ran away for 3 days, had no intention of coming home..( I knew where she was, it was just a matter of reeling her in)…

I sat across the table looking @ her …anger, defiance rebellion,contempt written all over her face

She was our strong willed one….that rebelliousness needed to be broken… to break the rebellion but not break the spirit..  you can do it..in fact, if you don’t you will never have real peace…  so I gave her two options…put her in a girls school, or spend a week @ my cousins and his family..(which she really , really did NOT want to do either,for reasons I am not @ liberty to tell you)…. It was a watershed moment in our relationship.  She is still a strong willed young lady.  Yea, we went through a lot more after that, but @ least she knew if push came to shove, I was not going to back down.

I taught a high school shop class for a year…I discovered the same dynamics that made for healthy relationships with my older children also made for healthy relationships in the class room with a group of rowdy young men…

First they needed to know who was in charge…call it what you want, respect/ fear..maybe a little of both…

Secondly…love..they needed to feel that I genuinely liked them… and I did..

Once in a while, they would test me just to see if I was still in charge….

Here’s how it works in Realville :

teacher first- friend second..

Parent first- friend second.

boss first/ friend second.

Feel free to do otherwise   DM

 

__________________

This post is still in a rough draft form, but wanted to post it, so I could get some initial feedback. DM

No more shame

“I’ve thought about every word you said,” Dan told me on Friday….and the shame is gone…completely gone. I haven’t felt this light and free in years.“

___________________________________________

End of November I (Douglas)  spent an extended weekend high in the mountains of Colorado at a men’s retreat working through some issues.   I wasn’t sure quite what to expect as I got there, I told someone later, I felt like I was going to have a “spiritual colonoscopy”

Colon cancer runs in our family, so I’ve had the “opportunity” to be scoped on more than one occasion. Once you hit 50, it’s recommended everyone get’s one of these, but if you’re like most chickens (I mean people)  we put it off and put it off…the thing is, if you catch the polyps early it is a very treatable cancer..the problem comes when you wait….

So too, in life,  personal  issues that are ignored usually don’t  just magically go away…they tend to grow and fester…so early on in our marriage, when  I found myself completely stuck and confused,  at a point of desperation, I reached out for help.  It taught me a valuable lesson.  Why  should I  spend months (or years)  struggling with the same old crap  when an answer may be forthcoming in  a 60 minute conversation if I have the gut’s and I’m humble enough to say “I’m stuck, I have a problem…can  you help?”

This stuff was never modeled for me growing up.  I’ve had to learn it the hard way.

So, over the years in our marriage, and through the turbulent teenage years, we’ve proactively sought out help, whenever it became obvious, we were over my heads…after the 2nd or 3rd issue, it isn’t really that much different from  making an appointment to see the dentist if you have a toothache….

I am not at liberty at the present to talk about specifics..there may come a day in the not too distant future where I will write about it but not yet…    Some long standing, buried, pain has been  coming to light this Summer and Fall, and I decided to step up to the plate and deal with it head on…hence my trip to Colorado.

Most of us have painful “stuff” in  our lives no one else knows about…I don’t have to list it here…if you have it, then you know what I’m talking about.  Well, stop for just a second and try to imagine the sting of that pain being gone…not just suppressed but gone…..

After my trip to Colorado,   I  happened to tell Dan about some of the radical  emotional freedom I was  experiencing…I wasn’t  even aware of the hurts in his life…he trusted me enough to tell me his story He told me he had been having flash backs and night mares…dark shameful memories had dogged him for years…. I listened, and encouraged him…and hadn’t thought any more about our conversation..then he told me on Friday,  “I’ve thought about every word you said,”….and the shame is gone…completely gone. I haven’t felt this light and free in years.“

I have no idea who may stumble across this particular blog post at some point.  God has an amazing way of allowing people’s paths to cross in the most serendipitous fashions….anyway, if you’re reading this and are at a broken stuck place in your life and need someone to talk to…(or are not there currently but have something to add to this conversation, let me know)

Time to get moving.  Sincerely,   DM

 

Whoops, Duuuu’s , and Oh fiddle sticks

I  had to return a 10 ft section of plastic 4 inch PVC pipe last week to Theisens.  When the cashier rang up the transaction, I noticed she had accidentally rang up a 4 inch splicer instead of 4 inch pipe.  Simple mistake.   She had to call her supervisor over to override the transaction, which in my mind was no big deal.  She apologized to me and said, that was the first time in 6 months she had made that type of mistake.   I told her, “heck”,  I try to make at least one mistake every day..just to stay in shape.” 

She didn’t know what to say.

My point was, she was being way too hard on herself, and needed to lighten up just a wee.   I had watched her wait on another customer before me, and could tell she was “wound tight”

wound tight:  hard to live with/ perfectionist/never makes mistakes.

Last night our son was lamenting on the fact he had bought a used set of Disney books off his sister for $50, thinking he could re-sell them for $200.00…He found out, they might be worth $25.00.. Oh well

I told him about the time I got caught up in a bidding war on e-bay for an “original” Grant Wood water color.

The picture went from $1600 to over $3200 the last 30 minutes of the auction, and when the dust all settled, I won

I knew that if it were an original, it was worth 3 times that amount.  After we received the picture, I took it to an art appraiser, who informed me it was NOT an original Grant Wood…and might be worth a couple of hundred dollars…tops.

Side note…we did not have $3000 of discretionary money just laying around…..It came from a line of credit which made the whole thing that much more painful.

Why is it we tend not to tell other people our screw ups but are more than willing to talk about our successes?

I could tell my son felt much better about himself when he heard his dear old dad had dropped a couple of thousand dollars he couldn’t afford to loose

That picture I had paid $3200  it lay around here for a couple of months…but it was sending out some bad vibes. .long story short, I relisted it on E-bay and sold it for $400.00   (do the math if you haven’t already

“Tuition”

That is what I call those life experiences…I paid $2800 in tuition to learn I am weak willed when it comes to auctions…the best thing I can do is stay as far away from  high stakes auctions  as I can.

I’ll tell you one more story and call it good..

In 2007 I was asked to general contract a home for someone with a beautiful lakeside view.   The neighbors in the area were none to happy about this new home blocking their views of the lake.  Oh well…

The day we were scheduled to dig the basement, things were really hectic and crazy on the job site.  It was my responsibility to calculate the finished depth of the basement.  After the wall was poured, I started second guessing my calculations,  realized I may have made a 2 ft error  and the house might be sticking out of the ground 2 ft higher than it was supposed to…@ which point, I just knew the neighbor across the street was going to take me to court and have me tear out the wall and re-dig (that would have easily been a $25,000 to $30,000 error)…When I was able to finally  re-check my numbers  I discovered I  had NOT made a math mistake and swore I would never let someone pressure me when it came time to do important math calculations on the job.

Lesson learned :  NEVER ever be in a hurry when it comes to math calculations when building a house.

OK it’s your turn…tell me a story about one of your screw-ups…. (or more)

you need to do this..

it will be good for your soul    DM

No More eggshells

   “Check on me in a half hour.” I told my wife this morning.

I planned to knock down 20 feet of rock wall  on  our 130 old barn.

The barn was built in the 1880′s.  I  can  still see broad ax marks  on many of  the supporting beams.

As a builder, I am in awe at the type of workmanship that went into this barn . Last September, I noticed the rock wall on the North side  starting to lean.   I knew if I didn’t do something about the rock wall soon, it was going to collapse.

As I tore into the rock wall , my mind went back to that season in our lives where we lived in a  Christian community.   For 18 months…. even though we had our own apartments, we shared  a common kitchen with two other young families.   Boy was that an experience.

Imagine 3 different households trying to coordinate  meal times, grocery shopping, and  parking.    There were some  intense moments….
(plus some great memories)

   One of the most valuable life  skills that came out of that  season  in my life was learning how to address issues instead of simply ignoring them.  Not only did I learn how to address and work through conflict with  the other people in our building,  we  learned how to work through conflict  in our marriage,  with our children, and on the job.

Our children are now adults.   I can see the fruit of conflict resolution skills  in their lives 20 years later.  They are much quicker to address things in their relationships than most of their peers.

Going back to that barn I was working on this morning, I couldn’t help but see some parallels to that time in our lives….

#1   Sometimes it can  get pretty messy when  I  first  wade into a problem.

#2  The bigger the issue, the more time and energy  I  will probably have  to expend.

#3  When I ignore a problem, it doesn’t mean it will somehow magically fix itself…all I am doing is postponing a bigger problem for  later…

guaranteed

#4  Living life this way (addressing problems instead of ignoring them)   has made my life so much richer…  I prefer relationships based on reality instead of  walking around on egg shells.

Another example….

Several years ago now,  we were attending a church  with a single  man  who had “emotional issues.”

Long story short,  he started wanting to hug my teen age daughters every week.    (Not the older women mind you, just the  young ones).  I approached the pastor and said,  he was making my daughters uncomfortable and someone needed to say something to him privately or I would  do it myself.

The hugging stopped.

One last story…

Healthy conflict resolution skills were NOT taught  or practiced in my family of origin..

They were not part of the family business I grew up in either.

I’ve refused to play along with the passive aggressive mind games and as a result, I am the black sheep.

Well, it’s about time to eat..better wrap this one up….

Thoughts, comments, questions?

As always,  thanks for stopping by the blog!  DM