Hyperbole

 

This week my big ole rugged mountain man was reduced to a whining quivering baby by hernia surgery.

          Okay! Okay! That might be hyperbole.

          “What’s hyperbole?” you ask.

          Funny you should ask! My Miss Rosie has the perfect definition of hyperbole.

“It means exaggeration for emphasis.”

She’s had to tell me that succinct definition at least three times because I just couldn’t keep the words in my head. But I know something about that word and my mother that you may not know.

“What’s that?” you ask.

My mother’s read a lot of books over the years and she knew what the word meant, but she didn’t know how to pronounce it until … I don’t know exactly when, but I can tell you this. She lived most of her life without ever knowing the correct pronunciation.

“How do you know?” you ask.

I know because I was the one who told her. I have to grin as I see in my mind’s eye the surprised look on her beautiful face when she learned that hyperbole is pronounced HY-PUR-BUH-LEE with four syllables not HY-PER-BOIL with three.

I don’t want you to think I’m smarter than I am because it wasn’t very long before telling her that I’d found out for myself! And maybe that’s why we were talking about it, I don’t know. And like Momma, I was also pronouncing it HY-PER-BOIL in my head whenever I read the word.

But I digress.

Mike had a surgical hernia, a hernia caused because of his colon surgery. They scheduled the surgery for Tuesday but it was Monday afternoon before they called us.

“Your arrival time is eight a.m.,” she told us.

I guess it’s normal to be nervous before they put you on a table, put you to sleep, and cut you open. Me? I say my good-byes and I-love-you-always-and-forever’s to everyone I know before I go in for something like that, just in case. Heck! I even tell everyone the same thing if I have to get on an airplane, I’m so nervous — and so very aware that accidents, even freak accidents, can and do happen every day. There are so many ways to die. That’s why I tell my family and friends every single day that they are in my heart, aka, I love them.

But again, I’m off on a tangent and not sticking to the point.

“I know they’re going to make me get naked for the surgery,” Mike told me on the early morning ride to the hospital. “I dreamed I took my clothes off in the parking lot.”

The imagery was too much for me and I laughed. And I laughed. And I’m still laughing.

The sun coming up over the beautiful Susquehanna.

The whole way down our mountain I was trying to get a picture of the lit-up oil rig against the skyline but it was too dark and the pictures came out blurry.

It wasn’t until we’d gotten into town that there was enough light for a fairly clear photo. 

Crossing the Veterans Bridge going into Towanda. 

Heading up 220 toward Sayre and the Robert Packer Hospital I took a lot of pictures of the sunrise reflected in the side mirror and against the side of the car. These two are my favorites.

 We arrived at the hospital a half hour early. We checked in at the desk.

“And who do you have with you today?” she asked. You can’t drive yourself home from outpatient surgery no matter how much you whine.

“My wife Peggy,” Mike answered.

“Oh! Good name!” she says. “I’m a Peg.”

I glance at her name tag. Margaret, it says.

“Are you a Peggy or a Margaret?” Mike asked. Not all Peggys are Margarets and not all Margarets are a Peggy.

“I’m a Margaret,” she answered. “Margaret Ann.” She looked at me with questioning eyes.

“I’m a Margaret Mary,” I told her. “A good Catholic name.”

“Yes,” Peg agreed. “Irish Catholic.”

We talked about our ancestral homeland for a few minutes and I told her my cute little redheaded sister made a trip to Ireland and kissed an Irishman.

“I’d like to go to Ireland some day, but I don’t know about kissing an Irishman.” Peg handed me a paper with Mike’s patient number on it. “You can keep an eye on where he’s at on the monitors,” she said.

I remembered that from his colon surgery. The monitor changes colors to denote when he’s checked in, when he’s in pre-op, surgery, and post-op.

We thanked her and walked the whole way around the waiting room, almost making a complete circle before finding a seat. Peg had come out from the desk.

“You took the long way around,” she said.

“Yep,” I answered. “The scenic route.”

We waited almost an hour before they called for Mike.

I passed the time reading on my phone. I don’t care what anyone says, I like e-reading and all my electronics sync. It doesn’t matter if I’m reading on my phone, iPad, or Kindle. I can open any one of them and it’ll take me to the page I left off.

People came and people went as I sat there and watched the patient monitor. It was ten o’clock when Mike’s number went from yellow, pre-op, to green, surgery.

I finished my book.

I returned it to the library and went looking for something else to read. Nothing was grabbing my interest. I looked around the waiting room and saw an older lady reading an actual paper and ink book. The cover picture and title were so large I had no trouble reading it halfway across the room. Educated.

That sounds like a boring book, I thought and glanced how far into it she was. Only about a third of the way.

I decided to go to the bathroom and let my water down. A walk would do me good. When I came back, I sat in a different part of the waiting room, in a seat directly in front of a monitor.

A group of people came in. Mom, dad, two daughters and a boyfriend. They sat right across from me and their banter was distracting. Knowing I couldn’t read with all that going on, I played a few games on my phone. Mom went into pre-op, dad put in ear buds and watched his phone. A movie, I think. The kids left and things quieted down. I went back to the library.

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger came up on Big Library Reads. That’s a global book club that recommends a book and has unlimited copies available. I borrowed the book and it was… strange. I went back to the library to look for another book and guess what comes up?

“Educated?” you guess.

And you would be right. Educated by Tara Westover. It’s a number one New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe bestseller. One of the most acclaimed books of our time, it says. An unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

I took a chance and checked it out. I’ll tell you what. I don’t normally read memoirs but this book grabbed me from the first few pages. It is so good and I’m tearing right through it. I’m only about a hundred pages from the end and I’ll probably finish it tonight. I can’t wait to see how her story ends. And as far as I can tell, this is the only book she’s ever written.

Around one thirty, they came to get me. Mike had come through the surgery just fine. It took a pain pill, me, his nurse Steph, and half an hour to get him dressed and in a wheelchair to make his escape from the hospital to the car.

It was way past lunch. Mike was hungry, I was hungry. We decided to use McDonalds drive thru. Having recently installed the app on my phone, I had to figure out how to call up rewards and offers so I could give the code to the cashier and get a free Quarter Pounder with the purchase of one.

“Stop right here,” Mike says.

I stopped but couldn’t get the code to load on my phone. It was taking too long. I decided to move out of the middle of the parking lot. I started creeping forward when Mike’s like, “Just stay right here.”

“I’m in the middle of the road!” I said.

“So. There’s no one behind you and they can get around you.”

I stopped and tried to reload the McDonald’s offers. Two guys came out of McDonald’s and got in a truck I was stopped behind. Now I had to move and took a parking space several spaces beyond them.

“I’ll just go in,” I told him since I was already parked. “I know how to use the self-serve kiosk.”

We got our food and ate in the car. Leaving the parking lot brought on another argument about which way to turn to go home. “Rather than go back out through the construction zone, we’ll just go a different way,” I said.

“That way will take you way out of the way,” Mike said.

I was in the driver’s seat, literally. I punched GO HOME in the GPS to help navigate the side streets of Sayre and went the way I wanted to go.

A few turns later Mike realized where we were and it wasn’t where he thought we’d end up.

Score one for Peg!

I’m already rubbed raw from our driving spats when we pull in the garage.

“Don’t let Raini jump up on me,” Mike said.

I started in the house but Mike says, “Come and help me get out.”

I reversed direction and helped him get out of the car. We’re heading in, I snag Raini and get her kenneled, there was a mess on the floor, I had Mike settled but he was being demanding, I had to get the car unloaded, clean up the mess, and I was feeling overwhelmed!

“Just give me a second!” I cranked.

Things got settled down. The car got unloaded. Raini was freed, and the mess got cleaned up.

“What mess?” you ask.

Yeah, I know why you really didn’t ask that question. You were thinking about a poop or pee mess. But you’d be wrong. Raini found an old straw hat and had torn it up on the floor.

That night, when I headed in for bed, I see that she had a session with the hat on the bed, too! What a mess! She did a really good job of tearing it up and scattering the pieces.

Wednesday and Thursday were really tough for Mike. I had to help him get out of the recliner every time he had to go to the bathroom and I had to help him get settled back in the recliner, too. He watched some TV but mostly he slept.

Friday the pain was worse if anything. Mike was so frustrated because he didn’t want to hurt anymore and he didn’t want to keep taking Oxycodone.

“It really hurts, Peg. Shouldn’t I be better?” he asked.

“You had surgery. You’re old. These things just take time!”

By Friday afternoon Mike was convinced something was wrong because the pain was so bad. I called his doctor and after talking with Mike for a few minutes, Dr. Barrett’s nurse called in a prescription for a muscle relaxer. I ran to town and picked ‘em up. Mike took one and it wasn’t long until he was felling better. I’m guessing he expected it to hurt when he moved so he was tensing up, making it hurt worse.

“Can I show them your belly?” I asked. I know you wanna see it.

“No!” Mike said but he laid back and lifted his shirt for me.

He’s got a whole bunch of tiny little holes from the laparoscopic surgery, and a dimple below his belly button; but he’s on the mend.

Mike has started sleeping in bed again and is able to get himself up and around.

My best girl Joanie commissioned me to make her a double-sided porch sign. We nailed down Thanksgiving pretty quick and I practiced on Miss Rosie’s first. I showed you that one last week. I made a few changes when I made Joanie’s.

Joanie and I spent many hours designing the Christmas side. Later, she thanked me for my patience when I thought I was the one bugging her!

I was ecstatic when she picked a purple night-time nativity silhouette.

“I can do that easy!” I told her.

“Well, maybe with some color?” she adds.

Sh—I mean poop! “I can’t paint what I can’t see,” I told her. Find me a picture with color.”

She found one. It had a lot of stuff in it.

“Too complicated,” I told her. “Too much stuff in it.”

“What’s going on?” Mike asked.

It was evening and every time Joanie and I had a back and forth, the phone dinged. There was a lot of dinging going on this night, that’s for sure!

I scrolled back up to one of the first pictures Joanie showed me and turned it toward Mike. “She wants me to paint that!”

“You can do it,” Mike said. Boy! He sure has a lot of confidence in me.

“It’s got too much stuff in it!” I was overwhelmed just looking at the picture.

But by now I kinda knew what Joanie was looking for and I sent her a couple of ideas. She picked this one and the next day I prepared the board by painting the whole thing in a wash of dark blue and black.

You can’t paint on a wet board. It was a beautiful day outside so I went out to sand more boards that Mike had cut for me. I have two more commission boards to make and didn’t have two boards.

“What happened to all the boards you showed us last time?” you ask.

Well, most of them are reclaimed boards of varying lengths. Since this lady wants two the same, they won’t work. The two that are the same length got stained in two different color stains so they wouldn’t work either. Luckily, Mike had an extra board when he got lumber to finish the enclosed patio.

So! Joanie’s board is drying on the table, Mike was comfortable and in no immediate need. I took my phone, boards, and belt sander out to the back of the dog run where I do the sanding. There’s a small concrete patio out there from when this was a sawmill. What it was for, I don’t know. I pulled the sawhorses out from under the awning, got the extension cord, set my board down, plugged the belt sander in, turned it on to adjust the belt, it ran for a few seconds and quit. Just stopped.

The simplest answer is usually the right answer.

I checked the plug. It seemed tight. I tried the sander and that wasn’t it. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Still no go. Maybe the power’s out, I thought and waited for the generator to kick on. It didn’t. It wasn’t a power outage. Maybe I blew a breaker, I thought and went to check.

“The belt sander quit on me!” I yelled to Mike as I went through the kitchen to the wayback where the extension cord for the sander was plugged in.

“You burned up the belt sander‽”

I didn’t like the way that sounded but couldn’t deny it since I was the only using it. “I guess so! But I don’t know how I did it!”

There’s an electronic mouse thingy plugged into the same outlet I was using (those things don’t work) and the light was on so I knew there was power to the outlet. I unplugged the extension cord and plugged it back in. All the while I’m thinking. There’s a button on the side of the belt sander to keep it on so you have to keep the trigger depressed.

“You shouldn’t use it because the sander can get too hot,” Mike told me when I first questioned him about it.

Did I listen?

NO!

I use it because it’s so much easier for me. If I burned it up, that’s how I did it.

Coming back through the kitchen, Mike yells, “There might be a reset on the sander.”

I went back out to my sanding station and the sander still didn’t work. I looked for a reset button but didn’t find one. I started banging the sander against the sawhorse. It already wasn’t working so there was nothing to lose. Nobody was more surprised than I was when it roared to life.

I tried not to use the button that holds the trigger in but it tired my arm out. I compromised. Rather than sand all my boards at once, I decided I’d just take one to the sanding station and let the sander cool while I made the trip back to the kitchen patio and pick up another board. I only had four to do.

The weather was beautiful! Did I tell you that? The sun was shining and I was getting hot in my long-sleeved oversized paint shirt. I tore it off and tossed it aside, working in just my bra. The sun will give me a good dose of Vitamin D, I thought. And with no neighbors close by there wasn’t anyone around to see me. Just then I heard a car on the road and looked as he passed the house. With all the leaves gone I could see it. If the driver looked at just the right time, he might catch a glimpse of me. My bra is way more modest than a lot of bikini tops I’ve seen! I justify and don’t give a flip if they see me or not.

Raini and Bondi pretty much stay with me all day wherever I am. They ran and chased each other around the dog run. Tiring of the game, I see my shirt dragging behind a certain Blue Heeler. Raini played with my shirt. I turned off the sander and grabbed my camera.

“You silly girl!” I told her.

She stopped playing and looked at me. 

                                         I finished the board I was working on, turned off the sander by pressing the button, picked up my board and headed back to the patio for another.

I was surprised when Raini wanted to help me carry the board.

I let her.

She wasn’t able to keep a grip the whole way and had to bite at the board several times before she got another hold on it.

Is that going to leave a mark? I wondered.

Silly me! Of course it is!

Looking at it reminded me of a conversation that took place years before.

“Peg, you do know how they get those marks in there, don’t you?” my handsome redheaded brother asked when he saw a cool table we have.

“How?”

“They use a nail.”

We use a Blue Heeler and we’re gonna call it character.

By the time I finished sanding the boards, Joanie’s board was dry. I sized the picture to fit the board, found a sheet of carbon paper, taped it on and went to work transferring the image. It was less than ideal. Black carbon on a dark blue board is less than ideal. I suspected I was going to have problems and might need to redo a couple of lines so I left the tape on and just flipped the picture back out of my way.

Then I set to work blocking in color. It was actually looking pretty good!  

Guys, I’m not an artist. I’m just a crafter. I don’t have any real talent, I just know how to do stuff. And in this case, after blocking in the faces, I had to put the carbon paper back in and find my eyes and noses and mouths again. It’s a good thing I had the foresight to leave it taped in place.

I built my colors slowly and with a few happy accidents, was fairly pleased with the outcome.

“I knew you could do it!” Mike praised.

“I didn’t know I could do it!” I said.

Joanie wanted her board to say, “O’ COME LET US ADORE HIM.” I didn’t want a repeat of low contrast that I’d gotten using the carbon paper and I knew we had a box of chalk. I printed the words, cut them out, coated the back with chalk, placed them as best I could, and using a pen, transferred the words. It worked beautifully!

Two coats of protective spray and it was done! 

I’m pleased with the outcome.

Joanie is pleased with her porch sign.

And everyone who saw it was impressed. 

“It’s really good,” Miss Rosie said. 

I also made this one when I had some down time and sprayed the protective coat on it the same time I did Joanie’s. This one is like twelve inches wide by ten inches tall.

Sometimes you just gotta make a fun piece, know what I mean?

 Let’s call this one done!