Niggle

Sunday February 14, 2016



This week has passed and not all that excitingly either, let me tell you!

However, I have a few things to talk about so lets get to it!

The weather has turned cooler and I didn’t take the girls to the campground below the dam until midweek. Even though Wednesday was warmer, it was a lost glove that truly motivated me to take the girls out this day. I set a course to where I thought I had lost it and off we went.

I didn’t find it.

Since we were out and it wasn’t too cold, we went on down to the campground.

Nothing was catching my eye and as a result I only took a few pictures and didn’t get anything fabulous.

The algae held captive by a skim of frozen water was the first picture I took. 

Then, coming back out of the campground, the sun coming across the pond was another.

Those were the only two subjects I photographed.

See.

Nothing fabulous.

>>>>><<<<<

I finished a set of chimes this past week. This is one of the very first designs of wind chimes that I’ve ever made. It is made up of sixteen paddles and thirty-two diamonds. Fifty pieces of glass in all, cut and ground with ninety-seven holes drilled.

 The cutting and grinding isn’t a big deal but have you ever drilled holes in glass?

The drill bits for my Dremel cost nine dollars apiece because they are diamond tipped. I am as careful with them as I can be. I drill slow and keep my glass submerged in a water/oil bath.

I drilled a lot of holes with the bit that was in my Dremel. I worked on several projects before this one, and I drilled almost all the holes in these chimes before it gave out on me. I bet I had less than a dozen holes left to drill. But it did. It quit on me and I broke the piece I was drilling. I dug around in my boxes until I found my spare drill bit, changed bits and drilled a couple of more holes before I called it a day.

The next day Mike was watching TV and knowing how he feels about not running out of things I mentioned that I was down to my last drill bit.

Mike shut off the TV, moved the puppy dogs from his lap, put his recliner down and said. “Let’s go get you one.”

Luckily, here in Missouri, things are close. It isn’t like being at our Mountain Home where everything is fifty - a hundred miles away. Menard’s and Lowe’s are only three and four miles away.

First stop, Menard’s. It’s closest. We park, get out, and go in. We find the Dremel section and I pull the card from my old bit out of my pocket. I’d kept the paper insert from the package because I knew I’d need the number to get the same drill bit. Past experience has taught me that when you are standing in front of the bit display at the store, several bits can look the same. I wanted the same bit and bringing the card was easier than trying to remember the number. We looked and looked but they didn’t have it.

Back out to the car we go, drive another mile down the road, park, and go into Lowe’s. They had it. Yay! We picked up the last three on the shelf.

I had left my drill setup on the kitchen counter because it hadn’t been in the way and the next morning, after my chores, I decided to finish drilling the rest of the holes. I bet you I had not drilled more than four holes when the tip broke clean off the bit. Four holes! What a waste of money that bit was.

“Doggone it!” I exclaimed as I turned off my Dremel.

I was feeling grateful that Mike had taken me out and bought me some new bits. All I had to do was change it and I’d be back in business.

Right?

Yeah. That’s what I thought too.

The shank was too big to fit in my Dremel. I dug around in my boxes and found the extra collars for my Dremel but I already had the largest one in. I was out of business.

Mike and Gary, Mike’s crony and maintenance man, came inside from whatever job they had been working on, and sat down.

“Mike, the new bit won’t fit in my Dremel,” I cried.

“We got the same number didn’t we?” Mike asked.

“Yeah but the shank is bigger.”

“But if it’s the same number, it has to be the same.”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you,” and as I was talking I opened the lower cabinet door, pulled out the trash can, and there on top was the old bit. I picked it out and along with the new bit, handed them both to Mike. He compared them. “It is bigger.”

“And it won’t fit in my Dremel.”

“Let me see it,” Gary said taking his glasses off and dropping them on the table. He took the new bit, got up and tried to seat it in my Dremel. “It doesn’t fit,” he declared.

My Dremel is over twenty years old and still works great. I don’t know why they changed the size of the shanks but they did.

“Well, let’s go look at Dremel’s,” Mike said.

And that my dears is how this girl ended up with a brand new Dremel for Valentines!

<<<<<>>>>>

We have a problem.

We left our houseplant, out big schefflera, outside all summer. When the weather started to cool we brought it indoors. Since then we have had these tiny little annoying flies all over the place.

“They like moisture,” Mike observed. “They get at the corner of your eyes and your mouth.”

Well, these little critters seem to crawl far more than fly flies do.

“Fly flies?”

You know, regular flies. These guys will walk on the surface of something, like the wall or counter top and if you swat them and miss they just run and you get another shot at them. They do fly, don’t get me wrong, but they seem to prefer to be land bound more.

Every morning I make the cats a dish of wet food mixed with dry. One morning I went for the dish and see that they hadn’t finished it. When I picked it up it was loaded with these little flies. Were they feeding? I don’t know. They came crawling up out of the food and I smushed as many as I could before they took off.

So, we have these flies and we are killing them left and right and it’s driving Mike crazy. But swatting them when we saw them was working, albeit slowly and the population seemed to be decreasing. I wasn’t seeing as many.

Then there was an influx and we had a bunch again.

“What can we do to get rid of them?” Mike asked.

“I guess we could buy something to kill them,” I said. So it was a trip to Menard’s for an insecticide to kill bugs in houseplants.

We sprayed the plant but that didn’t help the current hatchlings. We continued to swat them as we saw them.

They were obnoxious!

You would sit down to dinner and a couple of them little buggers would help themselves to your plate!

But with persistence they were getting fewer and fewer.

Then we didn’t see any for awhile and could almost forget about them.

Then all of sudden they were all over the place again! I’m guessing we had another batch hatch out.

“I think I need to dump the soil and put new soil in,” I told Mike. In the meantime, what about a fly trap. Would a fly trap even work with these guys? A fly trap works because they try to escape out the top and miss the hole in the bottom that they entered through, and they die. Wait. Maybe it’s bees I’m thinking about. But these guys crawl around a lot and I can see them crawling up and out the hole. Still, I had to try it, right?

My best girl Linda gave me a beautiful glass fly (or bee) trap and I knew right where it was. In the garage with other things put in storage.

They like moisture, Mike said. So I put some plain water in the trap and kept an eye on it. No flies.

The image of the exodus from the cat food dish kept coming to my mind. Was it because it was wet or was it because it was food? Water by itself wasn’t working. I did not catch one single little fly. I decided to up the ante.

“You put some cat food in the trap?” you guess.

Well, you might think that but it wouldn’t be so. Here’s the thing. We go through way more cat food in this house than dog food. Our little girls don’t eat much dog food and it might be because of treats and me always saving them something from my plate every meal, but regardless, a ten pound bag -- or maybe it’s only seven pounds -- of dog food will last months. On the other hand we go through a sixteen - eighteen pound bag of cat food in three weeks to a month (we feed the feral cats). So when I came to the conclusion that I needed a little bait in the water what did I do?

I put a little dog food in the water.

Every day I looked in the trap but didn’t catch a thing. I sorta stopped looking but not to be ignored, I started to smell something.

What is that smell! I wondered one day and looked all around but the only thing I could see was my fly trap. I bet it’s that, I thought. But did I do something about it? No! I got busy and didn’t think of it for another day or so.

Again, I was working in the area of where the trap was hanging and smell something. Something bad. I’ve got to get rid of that, I think and not putting it off any longer, I snatch it from its hook, uncorked it and dumped it.

Well, if I thought it smelled bad before, uncapping and dumping and running water in it and stirring it all up served only to release all the putrid nastiness into the air. I about gagged -- and I know how to breathe through my mouth!

My only regret?

“That you tried?” you guess.

No. My only regret is that I did it right before supper. I had to apologize to Mike. My timing sucks sometimes.

“How often can I use that spray?” Mike asked.

“I think once a week,” I answered.

He had only done it once in the past month so he put it on his Things To Do List and now does it weekly.

Come spring I’ll probably give the scheffleras new soil anyway.

>>>>><<<<<

Andrew.

What can I say about this little guy except he owns my heart.

Mike and I had been at Menard’s this past week…

“Menard’s! Again Peg!” you say.

Yeah. It’s kind of a cool store, but we had gone in for something and ended up finding a kid’s activity rug in the clearance aisle.

“Should we get that for Andrew?” Mike asked.

“Sure,” I said and we left with it.

Later, I texted Kevin and asked if they were going out for wing night Tuesday night and maybe we could have Andrew. Pop-pop bought him a gift.

“Andrew’s sick,” he texted back.

He was better by Friday.

Friday, in case you didn’t know, was a holiday for the state employees. Andrew’s mom is a state employee and so is Krystin, her twin.

“Krystin and I want to go shopping Friday,” Kandyce told Kevin.

“Mom and Mike wanted to keep Andrew, do you want me to see if they’ll watch him for you?”

“Yes, please,” Kandyce says in a voice like an angel.

And Andrew came to spend some time with us.

“Look what Pop-pop bought for you!” I told Andrew as I pulled the rolled up rug out from under the RV where it had been stowed.

“Mine?” he asked.

“Yep!”

He fumbled with the plastic stretch wrap that kept it rolled up but I knew he’d never get it open. “Mimi help me, please,” Andrew says.

“Okay,” and I sat on the floor, pulled my pocket knife out and cut the binding. Together we got it unrolled.

“Racetrack!” Andrew exclaims with pure joy and went to pull out his toy box.

“Bye Andrew,” Kandyce says once he was happily entertained.

“Bye Mommy,” Andrew says.

“I love you!”

“I love you Mommy,” Andrew replied as he pulled out race cars and cows and pigs and his favorite crane and he played as I took pictures. 

It was getting towards lunch -and naptime- and I wanted Andrew to eat a bite before he laid down.

“Andrew, are you hungry?” I asked him.

I expected him to say no, but he said yes.

“You want a hot dog?”

“No.”

I opened the fridge and saw the Jell-O I had made the day before. “You want some Jell-O?”

I expected a no, not knowing if he even knew what Jell-O was but was surprised when he said yes.

“You do?”

“Yes, please,” he said again.

He got his little plate and got up to the table as I sat opposite him and I spooned a piece onto his plate. I thought he would pick it up with his fingers (I made the Jell-O a little stiffer by reducing the water) but he picked up the plate and ate the Jell-O. 

“More please,” he said and I gave him another piece.

As a parent I probably would not want to clean up after an unnecessary mess. As a grandmother, I don’t care. I have him a few hours and send him home. Still, I don’t do his parents any service when I let him get away with bad manners. “You’re getting it all over your face!”

Andrew agreed. He bobbed his head up and down, said, “Yeah. More please.”

What could I do? I gave him more. He chased his Jell-O around the plate and when he got to the edge I yelled at him. “HEY! Don’t eat the plate!” 

He couldn’t contain his laughter. Even a three-year-old knows you can’t eat the plate.

“More please,” he said setting his plate down.

We played this game for a round or three then I told him we had to stop. He was making a mess and I didn’t need Jell-O stains on my carpet. Andrew got down, found his bag of dishes and came back with a fork, spoon and knife, which he named for me as he set them down. He’s so smart.

After his Jell-O and milk it was time for a nap. “After your nap we can play in the water,” I told him hoping to transition into naptime easier. And it seemed to work. He was open to a nap.

“You want to lay on the bed?” I asked.

“No,” he shook his head.

“The couch?”

“No.”

“Where?” I asked and he pointed to Pop-pops seat where he had napped last time. “Okay.”
Andrew climbed up into the seat, turned around and sat down. I don’t know that he needed a little toy to hold until he fell asleep but I remember the last time he sat and held a little plastic lizard or something and rolled it around in his fingers until he went to sleep. I went out to his toy box and picked out several little animals.

“Andrew, do you want one of these?” I asked coming back in the RV.

“Yes please.”

I held them out and he took them all.

Okay. I sat down in front of my computer.

“See my pictures,” Andrew said pointing to the computer.

“You want to see pictures of you?” I asked.

“Yes please.”

I turned the computer towards Andrew and opened a file I keep with photos of just Andrew. He watched, with a big smile on his face, as I scrolled through them.

“Who’s that?” I asked when we got to a photo of Andrew at eighteen months.

“Andrew,” he answered and that surprised me. He usually says me.

We got to the end of the file. “That’s all now, take your nap.”

Andrew played quietly with his toys until he dropped one.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

“Well get it,” I told him.

He climbed down, got the critter and climbed back into his seat. After about the third time I told him he had to leave it on the floor and he didn’t fuss. Five minutes later he was laying down and then sleeping.

He is almost always so good for us.

I sat working in front of my computer while Andrew napped - fitfully. He kept stretching and turning and I was afraid he’d fall off. After about forty-five minutes I tried to move him but he wasn’t having any of it. He was awake and wouldn’t lay back down.

“You want to play in the water?” I asked

“Yes,” he says and we got him set him up with toys and water.

“Bubbles or no bubbles?” I asked.

“No bubbles,” he always knows his own mind. He played happily for a while then he started to get wild, flinging water all over the place as his toys crashed and roared and attacked each other.

“Andrew stop. You’re making a mess.”

He stopped splashing and after a bit he asked for bubbles. 

I got the dish soap out, squirted some in and swished the water to make bubbles. He thought that was fun.

Andrew only played for about thirty-five, forty minutes then says, “I’m done playing in the water.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he says brushing his hands together.

“Okay put your toys on the towel and pull the plug.”

Andrew did as I asked then we dried him and got his shirt back on then I set to work drying the counters -top and fronts - and put the step stool away. I sat down at the table and wondered what Andrew would get into now.

Andrew took the kitchen towel from the hook and reached up on the counter and got one of his toys. He dried it and looked around trying to decide what to do with it. You could see his little mind working. Finally he found a spot on the floor that suited him and he dropped it then he reached up for another toy, dried it, dropped it and got another. Andrew dried all of the toys he had been playing in the sink with and had them all piled in one spot on the floor. Luckily it was on the concrete and not the rug because I noticed a big puddle forming around them. 

“…gummy bears?” I only caught the last two words of what Andrew asked me but that was all I needed.

“You want your gummy bears?”

The little head bobs up and down, “Yes please.”

“You know where they are,” I told him.

“You get them for me Mimi?”

“No, you get them.”

Andrew walked over to the bay door of the RV. “Here?” he asked pointing.

“No, the next one.”

And that confused him because there were bays on both sides of the one he had pointed to.

“This way,” I said as he started for the wrong door.

He came my way and pointed at the right door. “This one?”

“Yep.”

Andrew opened the door that held a stash of his favorite candies. He picked out some Gummy Bears and Twizzlers and got up to the table. He ate the bears first.

“You want some milk?”

“Yes, please.”

I got his baby mug out of the cupboard and poured his milk. Andrew drank two glasses before he slowed down. As I sat there watching I spy his Twizzler laying there.

“Andrew did you know you could drink your milk through your Twizzler like a straw?”

“Hmm?”

I picked up the Twizzler and showed him the hole. “See?” And I dropped it into his milk. 

Putting the candy in his milk seemed like a scandalous idea to Andrew but one that absolutely delighted him.

Andrews milk mug with the Twizzler straw is my current desktop photo. 

Three-thirty rolls around and we were still playing with the Twizzler straw and milk when Andrew’s daddy came for him. All day long Andrew was asking me to take pictures of him and now that I asked for a picture with his daddy, he didn’t want to do it! 

Yeah, he can be a stinker too.

>>>>><<<<<

Niggle.

Isn’t that a great word. It’s kind of a cross between a nag and a wiggle, don’t you think?

Niggle has several meanings. It can mean to criticize in a petty way. It can mean to be preoccupied with details. It can also mean something that is a source of worry or irritation in a small way over a long period of time and that is how I am going to use it today.

I have a niggle.

I have something that has been bothering me for a while now, actually since Thanksgiving.

I made a mistake.

I could fix said mistake…and never did.

It’s been bothering me…

…wiggling away at the back of mind.

“What is it Peg? What did you do now?” I hear you ask.

Well, the last time we went camping with Mike’s brother Cork and sister-in-law Pam they made us breakfast. They had a NuWave cook top and cooked the breakfast potatoes right outside on the picnic table. “We never fry anything inside the RV,” Pam told us.

Mike and I thought that was a pretty good idea and we bought a NuWave cook top on a buy-one-get-one-free offer. We like our cook tops, we use our cook tops nearly everyday these days.

Then Mike saw an infomercial for the NuWave oven. Buy-one-get-one-free plus get three free gifts! What a deal - what a deal!

The day came and two boxes arrived at our door. Excitedly, like a kid at Christmas, we open the biggest box first. And just like Christmas it had free gifts inside. The Party Mixer, the Twister Blender, and the carrying cases for the NuWaves were in there. In the bottom of the box was one of the ovens. I pulled it out of the box and set it aside. In the other, smaller box was the other NuWave oven.

I opened one of the oven boxes and pulled the oven from the box. I fit the pieces together and flipped through the cookbook.

“Let’s not open the other one until we need it,” Mike suggested.

“’Kay,” I say dropping the ‘o’ in okay. And it was fine by me, I doubt I’ll ever need more than one at a time anyway.

“Maybe we could gift it to Kandyce at Christmas time,” I suggested. I always think about our kids.

I started picking stuff up, cleaning stuff up and find the packing sheet. 1ST BLACK NUWAVE PRO PLUS EXTENDER RING KIT it said - $154.80 - check.

BOGO BLACK NUWAVE OVEN PRO PLUS ERK - $34.95 - check. Free (in this case) does not mean free. You have to pay extra shipping.

NUWAVE OVEN CARRYING CASE - $29.94... I read out loud.

“I didn’t order the cases,” Mike said.

FREE TWISTER - $0 - check.

PARTY MIXER -$0 - check.

FREE GIFT: SUPREME PIZZA KIT -$0 …

“Hey! We didn’t get the pizza kit!” I say to Mike.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I went through everything again; all the paper and packing material and boxes. “Nope, it’s not here. I guess I have to call them.”

The next day I get on the phone and the operator was very nice to me. “If you didn’t order the carrying cases you have to send them back and I’ll credit your account,” I was told.

Well, we’re probably not going to do that. Frankly, I thought they would take the charge off. Mike says he didn’t order them, he didn’t order them, but we had them and it wasn’t worth the hassle to return them.

“I didn’t get the pizza kit,” I told her.

“Did you open all the boxes?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I said yes and I hadn’t. Technically I think that’s called a lie but we all know that I’m special. I would never lie. I hadn’t opened the other NuWave box but I didn’t have to. It was exactly like the first, therefore it contained the same thing, right?

I said yes.

I heard clicking as in keys of a keyboard. “I’m sorry for your inconvenience, I’ll get that right out to you.”

And sometime later I got my free pizza kit.

We use it. We use it every week to make pizza for Sunday dinner because someone is too busy writing to make anything else.

Thanksgiving came.

We live in a grouse. Do you know that? We have a sink and a fridge but no stove. Thanksgiving this year would be courtesy of NuWave. And I needed two. One for turkey, one for stuffing.

I pulled the second NuWave box from storage, opened it and what do I find?

Yeah.

I was ashamed and embarrassed.

Their packing is so proficient that a box without the pizza kit inside looks exactly like a box with a pizza kit inside.

They didn’t screw up. They had sent me everything I was entitled to, everything we had paid for.

And it has been bothering me. Niggling away at the back of mind.

You gotta fix this Peg. You gotta make it right.

Who cares! They’re a big company! They won’t miss it, I justify. Besides it was an honest mistake! I didn’t do it on purpose!


You still gotta fix this Peg. You gotta make it right.
I’ve not been sleeping well.

Friday morning I did it. Regardless of the consequences, I needed to make this right. I got on the website and got the email address. I contacted the company.

Hi there! I wrote. I should call you but I find it easier to write, especially when I have a confession to make. Okay? Here goes… When we ordered the NuWave ovens, we got all the free gifts except the pizza kit. I called and your operator asked if I had opened everything. I lied. I didn’t mean to, it’s just that I only opened one oven box and I thought both boxes were the same (they looked the same to me) and I only needed one oven and wanted to keep the other in storage until I needed it. Long after you sent me the replacement pizza kit… I needed to use my second oven…I opened the box…and there was the pizza kit. I’m so sorry. Do you want me to send the pizza kit back to you?

It was Friday. I didn’t expect to hear anything back from the company until Monday at the earliest. But Friday afternoon it was there. Ashley, a rep of the company thanked me, then said I may keep the extra pizza kit but asked for the information so she may put a notation on the account.

Whew! I felt better.

It’s not that I wanted an extra pizza kit, I didn’t, and if she had asked for it back or for us to pay for it, I would have done it.

Put a notation on the account, she said. I know what that means.

I worked for a company at one time - and not for very long, but I pulled orders. When an order that I had pulled had been delivered to the receiving company they checked the order. If I had sent the wrong motor or the wrong amount, my company had to make it right. They did that by telling the other company they could keep any overages as long as they reported it. Then it came back to me, the employee, and went on my record and went against (or for) raises.

Confession - and restitution - is good for the soul.

And with that we will call this one done.

>>>>><<<<<