Anecdotal Evidence: Furniture

The weight of a piece of furniture is inversely proportional to its price.

Evidence:

When Son moved out to his own apartment (yesssss,  adulting!  but ach, I miss him!) he took some furniture from our house.  We did not allow him to take the dining room table, as it is currently needed here for storing mail, dishes, campaign literature, and baked goods. Occasionally we use it for Shabbat dinner.

Son moved on a Saturday; he had invited a couple friends over for Sunday evening to play games.  For this, he needed a Dining Room Table Of One’s Own.  On Sunday right after I got home from church Son called me and said, “Let’s go shopping for a table.”  I said, no thanks, but he said he needed my car to transport the table.  Okay, fine. 

We went to one Goodwill, which had nothing.  We went to another Goodwill, which had a very beat-up dining room table, but just the right size for his needs.  Price: One dollar.  I wrote it out in words because if I had put it in numerals you would think I had mismarked the decimal point.  (It was marked down from $10.) 

Price: $1.  Weight:  10 tons. 

According to my exhaustive research of looking at one random website, particleboard can be twice as dense as actual real wood.  I do not know nor care what Son’s ‘new’ table is made of, I just know that it was damn heavy.

Son's table, squinched in my car

So then it was up to Son and weakling-me to carry it out of Goodwill, squinch it into the back of my car, carry it out of the car, up the steps, and into his apartment.  We got it done, but I needed to sleep extra on Sunday night.

It cleans up real nice!

Hint to the wise:  If you are going to Goodwill to buy furniture, bring a tape measure AND two screwdrivers (flathead and Philips head).  That way, if you need to, you can detach the legs for transportation (not the son’s legs, but the table’s legs).

The 'new' table can also be used to store puzzle pieces.

Dear Reader, what is currently stored on your table? 

The Power of Lift

Thoughts while in Canada in December

The week before Christmas wouldn't be my first choice for a time to go to Canada. My brothers and I are here for the memorial service for my uncle, my father 's younger brother.  I am grateful we made our trip here in June, in happier (and warmer) times. 

The miracle is that my mother is also here. It is no mean feat for a woman of her age with various challenging physical ailments to get to this smallish town in Eastern Canada. My brother travelled with her. We shall have to submit his name for sainthood. First they flew from the States to Montreal, or as my mother called it, "That horrible city we had to go through."  Strictly speaking, she means "the horrible airport where we had to pass through customs."  My mother has many years of experience travelled internationally, mostly due to my Dad requiring her to vacation in Pakistan, India, Albania, Israel, Ireland and more. (I went on some of those trips with them.  My husband always says, "How come your family never wants to take a vacation in, say, Paris or London?") But it's been a long time since she made those trips, and air travel has changed considerably. 

To reach our destination here in Canada, she and my brother flew on a prop plane, a 20-seater.  I can only imagine how much their flight might have resembled a video game. 

Airline flight never ceases to amaze me. Every time I am in a plane I am astonished when we actually are able to lift off the ground.  My son has tried to explain the physics to me.  It's something about higher air pressure under the plane's wing compared to the pressure on top of the wing, and this is called "lift."  I can't say that I really understand the principle.  I have to take it on faith that air pressure is a strong enough thing to lift up an entire airplane with me in it.

The other thing that amazes me is that I am not frightened out of my wits to fly in an airplane. In my young adulthood I developed a fear of heights.  Acrophobia is supposedly an irrational fear of heights, but it seems perfectly sensible to me to fear falling off of high things. Yet on an airplane I prefer the window seat, so I can look down on the beautiful and fascinating world below.   My faith in lift must be pretty strong. I go with the notion that God invented physics and lift, so for me, faith in lift is a sort of faith in God. 

I have to admit that when we experience turbulence, and also during landing, I kind of abandon faith in lift and revert to Anne Lamott's prayer litany of saying "Help! Thanks! Wow!"  I can't say with certainty that I believe in the omnipotence of God (don't get me started on theodicy or we'll never be back in time for tea), but I do believe that in our struggles with lift, and with life, God travels with us. That's powerful enough. As we head off to the funeral home to honor the memory of my uncle, a kind person of great integrity, wit, and inner strength, that is the best place to leave my faith for the moment. 

An Uplifting Day

The Common Household Mom experienced lift this week.

I first learned about lift at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, on a date with a man who, being a biologist, knew as much about lift as I did.  I later married that biologist, so naturally I associate lift with good things.

As this non-physicist understands it, lift is a feat of physics requiring a curved shape of wing and speed.  The air pressure over the wing becomes less than the air pressure under the wing, and this lifts the wing up.  I find it to be an amazing concept, and even more amazing to experience it. Of course, it does require forward motion at a fairly terrifying speed.

I experienced lift because I went on a business trip.  It was a surgical strike on Chicago – in one day and out the next – for a 3 hour meeting.  This was the first time in three years I had traveled by air.  I didn’t think it was possible, but airline travel is even more annoying than it was three years ago.  Going through security is a demeaning process involving removing crucial items of clothing – coats, shoes, and – a particularly embarrassing requirement especially for men – belts.  In this state of humiliation, you must put these items in a bin.  And do it quickly, because the person behind you is wondering why you are so hopelessly slow.

After this partial disrobing, I was pulled aside for a full body scan.  Perhaps I look like a ter*ror*ist.  My husband said later that maybe it looked like I had a suicide jacket on under my coat.  I told him that I wasn’t wearing a coat - I had already put my coat in the Bin of Humiliation.  Perhaps they mistook my rolls of fat for a weapon.  “Put your feet on those squares, ma’am.”  “Put your hands over your eyes, ma’am, and raise your elbows.”  I realized a few seconds later that this was not to shield my eyes, but so the full body scan could get a good look at me all around, if you know what I mean.  So I posed for intimate pictures of my body in an extremely public place.  I wonder if they store those pictures somewhere.  They might be useful in a horror film.

After all that, I was glad to sit down and wait, and then finally get on the plane and experience that lift.  It thrills me every time when the wheels leave the ground and we begin to soar above God’s good earth.  The trees looked cozy in their red, brown, and burnt sienna hues.  There was an uplifting moment when the flight attendants served us what they called “breakfast peanuts.”

I have to say, though, that the best “lift” I got was when I arrived back home and saw my family.  Because for the Common Household Mom, one day is a long time to be away from home.