Tamara Unleashed

Thursday night I attended the taping of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me at the Tennessee Performance Arts Center. It was memorable for a number of reasons. It was my first time at TPAC and it will not be my last. The only thing I did not like about the theater is that it does not have a center isle which means there are A LOT of people walking by and stepping on your toes. Just an extra inch between the rows would have helped for those with long femurs and big feet such as myself.

It was a very fun show and I would highly recommend seeing it if you get a chance. It usually tapes in Chicago but apparently goes to different cities several times a year. All the way through residency, I watched Bill Curtis and Diane Sawyer while I ate my breakfast between 5 and 6 AM. It was fun to see him in a sparkly country musician type sport coat and cowboy hat. It was an all woman panel with very good humor and Brad Paisley was the special guest. ‘The show was about 90 minutes and they edit it down for the actual program. I am sure they edit out some of the funniest comments that are not appropriate for broadcast. After they end the show, they spend about 5 minutes going back and re-recording certain sentences that were not clear.

It was the first time I have been amongst that many people without a mask and given the audience, I was a bit surprised that I did not see anyone with a mask on. A couple of the ushers wore masks. As I prepare for another trip and with immunity from last vaccination waning, I will go back to masking everywhere very soon.

I had a GREAT day at Habitat yesterday. It was a bit drizzly all day but that meant it was not too hot or sunny so a positive in my book. I had a crew of 4, a good size. They had some experience. We made no mistakes and constructed a very complicated interior wall with 3 adjacent doorways. Next Thursday we start construction the houses out of the wall panels. The goal is to frame 4 houses in 4 days. I can’t wait to see this in action.

Carli wishes everyone a great weekend.

I started volunteering at Nashville Tools for Schools in December of 2021. This group of retired guys meet Monday-Thursday mornings in a very nice workshop. My first day there, they had labeled one of the two bathrooms for Ladies. They have had a woman or two volunteer for short times in the past, but I have stuck with it the longest. It has taken a while for the guy to realize they can still just are the guys when I am around.

Today we cleaned up the shop so we could have a group lunch. Each day there are generally 6-8 volunteers.

It is a great group of guys and I enjoy going and learning new things 2-3 mornings a week.

This area next to the Fine Furniture area used to have plywood around the pipes. Our area was always cluttered so Bill the Handyman tore down the plywood and built us custom shelves around the pipes.

We were able to go through our pieces of wood today and organize them which felt great. I should have the prototype TV tray finished next week.

While I wrote the letters to Allegiant and Princess yesterday, I needed to mail them today. There is not a mail box on this property. People just put the letters on top of the locked mail boxes which makes me a bit uncomfortable even though when I have done it, the letters seemed to arrive fine.

I often put my letters in my son’s mailbox that has a flag on it to raise when there is mail to pick up. I decided to do that today. On my way to my strength training, I stopped by my son’s to mail the letters. With the letters to mail in my hand, I opened the box and removed their junk mail, raised the flag and continued on my way. When I got to my trainers, I saw the letters I intended to mail on the seat with the junk mail.

I went back after training and the mail had not gone yet, so I was still able to get the letters mailed.

Pain: I have been putting off writing my letters to Customer Relations regarding my cruise suitcase not making it to San Francisco and the bad Customer Service that led to us almost not getting on the cruise. I find complaining pretty painful and I am not sure I expect anything to come from either letter but I hope to be compensated by Allegiant for the clothes and toiletries I had to purchase. I am most. concerned about the Princess Customer Service and the Princess requirement that is more stringent than what is required by US Customs and Border Protection which clearly states that an Enhanced Driver’s License is all that is required for a closed loop cruise which ours was. We were fortunate that we had family members available to go into our homes and take pictures of what Princess wanted, BUT others may not be so fortunate.

Joy: Today was a great day at Tools for Schools. The Executive Director for House to Homes Nashville that we build most of our furniture for mentioned that TV trays are very popular. I found a wood one at Habitat ReStore and bought it as a template. I took the doors off of my bathroom cabinets before they cabinets were taken out for the remodel and took them in to see if we could use them as the table top. Pictured is our first attempt. It is stable. It is a bit out of proportion – the top surface is a bit smaller than the prototype and we should have allowed more distance for the legs to spread further apart but it is OK for the first one. Tomorrow I will start the painting.

The most fun today was that I got to do my first beveled edges on the big saw. The big table saw scares me a bit. I learned how change the saw blade to bevel and how to line the board up to create the perfect beveled edge. I also learned what a dull saw blade cuts like; learned how to clean and replace the blade and feel the small bit of improvement with a cleaned blade while waiting for a new blade to be picked up.

The new blade was a day and night difference. The cut was so much smoother and it felt much safer. I am so thankful for these activities to get me out of bed each day.

Friday I found out that my daughter-in-law’s (DIL) band was going to be playing in Nashville Saturday morning at the Finish Line of the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon in Nashville – a 90 minute set starting at about 1030 AM. I hadn’t seen them play since last June when they just added a new member. I drove in with my DIL and her parents. In spite of road closures for the marathon, traffic was light. We were able to go to the “green room” area for the band and hang there until it was time for the show.

It was a gorgeous morning – sunny in the high 60’s. The crowd ebbed and flowed was runners finished the marathon and half marathon. We were amazed at how they still had energy to stand and enjoy the music. The dancing increased throughout the show. I was amazed at how much better the show was than last year. I really enjoyed it as did the crowd.

After the show was over, I was walking back to the “green room” and a young woman approached me. It took me a couple of beats to place her – a colleague form University of Alabama in Birmingham. She was one of the investigators in the PLUS research network. She had completed the half marathon. She knew the band was going to be playing and was looking for me. It was so good to see her. So impressed that she had run the half marathon. I had that on my bucket list at one point. It was fun to be able to introduce her to my DIL who she has heard me talk about for years. She was so excited to get her picture taken with the band.

Sunday was a cool, mostly cloudy day at Habitat Village by the Creek build site. Since last fall, we have been building wall panels for the houses waiting for the streets to get in so the slabs can be poured so we can erect the walls. There are stacks and stacks of panels around the site now. In early May we should get to start erecting the walls. It is hard to describe how rewarding this experience is for me. I am physically active and mentally challenged. I made way fewer mistakes on Sunday than I did with the crew on Thursday. When the reciprocator saw comes out, you know something did not go well. I am not afraid to tackle complicated walls – doors, windows, ladders and flats.

I can’t wait to help turn the wall panels into walls and start building the actual houses. The first few are supposed to be completed by the end of June. Stay tuned.

When I was young I couldn’t understand why my mom wore socks with sandals. In fact, it used to drive me crazy. It didn’t make sense. It seemed pretty easy to just take the socks off if you were going to put on sandals. Now I understand. Why bother to take the socks off to do a quick errand outdoors and don’t want to be barefoot when you come back in the house and take off your sandals. It is practical to slip on sandals with socks on. This is exactly what I do when I take Carli out. I smiled the other day when I looked down at my feet; remembered my mom and how ridiculous I thought it was at one time.

Yesterday was a much better day at Habitat. It was our first hot, full sun day. I was working with a group of adults – 3 men and a woman, I provided so many misdirections for one reason or another that it became comical after a while. The nice thing about carpentry is that in general, no one is going to bleed to death and there is generally a work around to most mistakes. And there is always the opportunity to take it apart and put it back together again. Even those with more experience than I have to take things apart sometimes. My group was really into problem solving and we came up with some creative solutions – some of which were helpful. Surgery is all about problem solving as well, however the tissue you are working generally has more “give to it” than wood so precision of measurement is not as crucial. I always tell my crews that we always discover why we do things a certain way when we get to the next step and have to deal with the consequences of not being “flush enough”.

It was so sunny that midday I decided to reapply my spf 100 sunscreen. I took my iWatch off so I didn’t spray it. After we got back to work, I realized I didn’t have my watch on. There was too much going on to worry about it so after we finished I decided to try to find my watch. I had done a cursory pat down of my the many pockets on my construction work pants and when it was not there so I assumed it was in my backpack where I kept my sunscreen. When backpack search was uneventful, I enlisted the help of two others to find my watch – only to find in in my back pocket. Why I put it there I have no idea.

At my visit with the dentist last November, they had this cool new camera that they used in my mouth to create a video imaging of my teeth. They then showed it to me and noted that my bite was off and it was causing me to bite down on my fillings. There was one filling that I could definitely see was not doing well but I have no complaints about my teeth except for cold and vibration sensitivity that I have had for at least 15-20 years.

I recall a Manhattan dentist telling me 20 years ago that my bite was “off” and that if I didn’t correct it with a jaw-breaking type of surgery I would get TMJ. While I had noted that the space between my two front teeth had increased a bit over the past 20 years no other dentist had talked about my bite.

Consequently, I was initially leery of the recommendation for an Invisilign and replacement of 7 fillings with porcelain implants. The pictures clearly showed one bad filling and others that didn’t look great. While I really didn’t like the gap between my teeth I never would have done the Invisalign for cosmetics alone. With little idea of what Invisalign would entail I agreed. I was shown computer images of how the bone around the teeth would gradually move and the process would take 5 months. I was asked to pick out the color for something that would be applied to my teeth. I was told I would need to wear them 22 hours every day and that I couldn’t drink anything besides water with them in. I would need to brush my teeth after I ate or drank anything that wasn’t water. I would not be able to chew gum.

The first week is a “practice mold”. It isn’t designed to move the bone, but to give you a chance to get comfortable wearing the retainers and getting them in and out. When I went back after my first week, some “spikes” of a some sort of compound was applied to several teeth. These spikes would help move the teeth/bone to the correct position gradually.

The first 4 months I took all of the instructions very seriously. I always had them in at least 22 hours a day but gradually I started drinking some soda with them in and when not convenient to brush, I would just put the retainers back in.

I changed the retainer every Wednesday for 18 weeks. The gap is closed; my bite is different/improved. I did not really have pain or even discomfort but I hate eating with the spikes on my teeth.

The spikes were supposed to come off tomorrow and I was REALLY looking forward to it. I would be able to chew gum again when I work out. I got a call this morning that the dentist has had a family emergency and would not be in the office tomorrow and they were not sure when he would be back. So I will be with my week 18 retainers and spikes on my teeth for a while longer. When the spikes come off, I will get measured for the retainers that I will use at night to keep the teeth where they should be.

I truly hope the dentist’s family emergency resolves quickly and that all is well. Getting the spikes off of my teeth is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things but I was so looking forward to it. Gum chewing will just have to wait.

Yesterday was my first day of Habitat build since the cruise. This is half of the crew I had. While it is hard to appreciate from the photo, these are high schoolers. I had a crew of nine of them which is way too many to keep engaged. We are building wall panels for the houses we will begin constructing in early May, There was a delay in getting the street into the development so there was a delay in getting the cement foundations poured. Starting last fall, we began building walls panels for the houses and we now have all of the panels done for the houses that will be built this summer and some of the houses to be built in the fall as well. Because of the delay in getting the foundations poured, there were not as many dates for the the volunteers this spring. To accommodate all of the groups that have donated, more groups are coming on the same days. We had a total of 50 volunteers yesterday including the high school group.

I have noticed that as one of the few women SOS (Supervisor on Site) on the days that I am there, the young, inexperienced women tend to come to work with me which is fine. My groups are generally less productive than groups with more upper body strength but it is fun to watch the women go from 20 strikes with the hammer to get the 3 inch nail in to 7 or 8. A typical groups size is 4-6 which is a reasonable number to make sure everyone stays busy. I had worked with groups of college students before, but not high schoolers.

My group was primarily women and all were very nice. There was just too many to keep engaged. The minute they were not swinging the hammer, they were talking to each other. Two would become 4 which would become the entire group. I would then be giving instruction about the next step to myself. This happened several times.

I was physically and mentally exhausted when I got home yesterday. I did a reasonable job of not showing my frustration (but I could have done better). Next year when I see “University School” on the schedule, I will know it is high schoolers and adjust my expectations. I look forward to having a smaller group next time as well. I think would have made a big difference.

To the right is a picture of me at the Cedar Rapids airport yesterday, Sitting outside on a patio near the gate with fire pit in the background.

Carli was very happy to see me last night. Because the temperature in my condo was over 80 to help the paint dry, I slept at my son’s and let Carli sleep with me. She let me sleep all night. I started putting her in a kennel at night last October because she was waking me up two or three times. I will probably try to sleep with her again tonight but I doubt that her good behavior will last.

I had originally planned to work on Habitat build site today but decided not to when I started coughing on Monday. Fortunately the cough has gotten better but I don’t think I would have been thinking clearly enough this morning to be responsible for anything. I have managed to get my nails done and get some groceries.

I forgot to post this on Thursday… I have rested, worked out with trainer and went to Cheekwood Gardens this morning. Weather has been fabulous and tomorrow is Habitat. I need to review the video tapes on joining the wall panels into walls for the work tomorrow.

My new shower and toilets work and the new cabinets are to be installed on Monday. I can’t really fully unpack until the renovation is complete and I can use the master closet again.

All is well….

At this moment “unleashed” means off-duty. Aunt Carol just dropped me off at the Cedar Rapids airport for my flight to Nashville. As I sit looking at the Allegiant desk, I think back to nearly 3 weeks ago with a sense of wonder. I could NEVER have predicted all that was to be be managed and survived with as much grace as I could muster at each moment.

While I am very ready to get home and “let down”, I am very happy that I was able to give my aunt this experience of her lifetime (and mine for very different reasons).

Thanks to friends and family who all contributed in one way or another to this adventure.

I will have a functioning toilet when I get home and by the end of day tomorrow I should have a functioning shower.