Just a random design of pills against a piece of trim sparked my memory.
Then I had to get more OTCs and picked some up and dropped them on the counter and it was weird. One of them broke away and went up to the edge, right on the other side of this one lone pill I had left up against the edge. Out of the entire room I had one pill out and up flush against the wall (it's a little closer to the wall than the other one because there was a piece of trim out at an angle and the green one is closer to the wall, even flush against the trim, than the red one). This other one rolled right over against the wall flush and about 1 foot away from the first pill. I know it sounds weird but I don't know. The first one was a round green pill and then the one that rolled over is a red round pill. Sort of brick red or muted. It makes me think of my duo cameras on my laptop, both round with one of them larger than the other. They are about the exact same size. I just looked more closely again and noticed there is one other item competing and it's a grain of wheat and to the far left. Grain, green pill, red pill. They are all the same distance from eachother. Anyway. Maybe I'll take a photo for novelty. The grain is closest to the wall and then the green pill and then the red pill.
I think it fell out when I was sunning my sprouts, the grain.
I guess I'll just put the photo of the pills here:
The green one doesn't look green there but it is. It's an echinachea tablet. The one to the right is an ibuprofen and then further to the left is the grain of wheat (you can't see it, but it's there to the further to the left of the echinacea). The pile of tablets is down on the bottom of the screen and that's where the one ibuprofen rolled out from. I took another photo that shows all three, with the grain, and then the pills, but it's not showing up yet in my files. It shows up but I can't post it yet. It shows how they are all exactly the same distance apart.
And I noticed these scratches on my hand after I put up the photo. They're from cleaning the yard up today--I had to get through the blackberries.
The trim is gold on the top. It sort of makes me think of one of those levelers used for construction with the bubbles inside that tell you if something is level or not. The trim is thinner, but the objects and their distance is the same as this leveler I liked in the 80s. My Dad had it for working around the house and I guess it was one of my favorite tools, liked watching how the bubbles moved for telling how even something was.
I am looking it up. It's called a level tool and sometimes builder's tool. The one he had was shaped like a ruler, but was filled with bubbles that moved to let you know how level something was. It was maybe 2 feet long which is sort of the length of this arrangment here. I think it was separated into sections too, but the bubble would move left or right or middle depending on where it was level. I loved that tool! It was like a Museum store or science store novelty but practical. Anyway, have no idea how I got onto that tangent. He might still have the same one. Will have to find out. I think it was yellow. I can't remember for sure, but I remember something being yellow about it.
I looked up wiki on "Spirit level". It's also called a spirit level. I don't remember him calling it that. It was "level" or surveyor's tool? and it wasn't the carpenter's level with sections going different ways. It was all one long thing and the bubble moved left or right down a rectangular thing. Not tubular, flat but a 1/2 inch to an inch thick. The fluid inside was yellow--the spirit. It had markings on the plexiglass all the way up and down. I can't remember the color of the frame but it was metal. My Dad would remember. I never personally used it, I just looked at it a lot while helping my Dad with projects or just to look at. I learned to use a hammer and screwdrivers when I was a kid. I helped on this one long project, holding plank after plank of wood still while my Dad cut it. Different sized boards and planks. My arms got very buff that summer. I held them still so he could cut through them evenly and straight, cutting through long vertical planks and boards. Then I watched him work, using the level. I did some hammering. He used a chainsaw. So since he was using a chainsaw and holding it, I had to keep the boards from moving around so they didn't move with the force from the chainsaw even though he usually brought the blade straight down onto the wood. We didn't have one of those chain machines where you feed the wood into it. He used a chainsaw for every single plank or stack of planks. It was a TON of wood.
I am telling you...a TON of WOOD. And I can't even remember what it was used for, I just remember it was hours and hours so how could I ever forget it my entire life? I could never forget it, of course not. It was burning hot too, and I sweated like the pig. I somehow don't think that is correct grammar ("I sweated like the pig") but I did. It was blazing hot out and I had streams of sweat coming off of my face and got very tanned and my arms were like steel--all muscle. My back got strong because of holding heavy lumber and then even my legs. It was a huge work-out.
Anyway, I was between 8-11. I think I helped on projects like this from 8-13 maybe. Later he got one of those round blades shaped like a semi circle with teeth that cut and he didn't need my help. I remember this because it was one of my primary chores for years and it was hours of work several times a week. Not every single day, but often. The work was all done out by the shop. I guess I refered to it as "shed" but it was "the shop". So he set up the sawhorse and then laid the planks over it (I think one of them with something balancing the other end) and I held them together. First he taught me to hold one still, perfectly still, while splitting it with the chainsaw. Then, he introduced 2 at a time, one stacked on top of the other one and it took a lot more muscle to hold these still and keep them together. If they slipped, he could get hurt, so it was really important and I remember, physically very strenuous for me.
I know it sounds like a joke to say it was a work-out, but it was. Between my doing this and pushing a very heavy steel electric push lawnmower, my arms and legs and even back and stomach were all lean muscle. I was always a skinny kid, but then I had lean muscle definition from the chores. The boards I remember holding together which were stacked were thicker, about 2 inches or a little less, thick, and as wide as 6 inches. Like a half foot across and then very long. There were other sized pieces too, but it was like wood for frames. Light to medium color. Usually it was in the morning early for several hours until lunch. The summers because we were out of school and had time.
So I pushed a steel electric push lawnmower, helped with a LOT of lumber project, including doing some hammering later but mainly holding it still while my Dad was hammering or splitting lumber. And then I weeded and picked berries and watered the garden. In my free time if I wasn't playing with kids next door, riding my bike with my brother, or walking to this Japanese man's grocery store (Frank's Superette), I was indoors reading books on my bed. We did a lot of swimming actually, every summer. Hours in the pool.
(While I still bought candy from Frank's Superette, I started out buying a little mini box and then thought, why not buy a whole box?! So with allowance money or money from my paper route when I was 11, I bought Whitmans, Queen Anne chocolate covered cherries, and Russel Stover boxes of chocolate for myself later. One box at a time of course--I got into it then, before I was 13 years old. I usually ate them all in one day while reading one book. I liked buttercreams, not the nuts and caramel. I liked Rolos, a caramel chocolate candy, but I never liked the caramels in the box and gave them away or they weren't first. I was so-so about nuts, not crazy about them. I liked toffee and buttercreams and solid chocolate. Then I found belgian chocolates and bought belgian chocolates with buttercream fillings and other kinds. The belgian chocolates I found were not just solid chocolate, though I may have tried that too. I first had a big box of belgian chocolate buttercreams. Much much later as an adult I got into truffles, but not as a kid. We always got red licorice vines for the movies, popcorn, and sometimes good n'plenties or raisonettes. Boxes of licorice vines were big in the 90s, along with popcorn, if we went out to movies. Otherwise, there was usually no candy in the house save lifesavers/breathmints and chocolate chips for cookies. That was it. We didn't always have cookies or cake or dessert. Later we had dessert sometimes but not growing up.)
I remember someone on the East Coast at The Post Pub bringing in a box of caramels with and without nuts and it was like this big deal, or a big inside joke. They assumed I wanted caramels with nuts. I wasn't going to turn it down for sure and just nodded or said yes not to make a big deal about it. I like them now more than I used to, but that wasn't my preference. My preference was always buttercreams, different flavored buttercreams and toffee. Milk chocolate for me, but I didn't turn down dark chocolate. Now, I like dark as well. Also, as an adult(over the age of 21) I liked this polar bear (?) paw chocolate (turtle) from Sees that was white chocolate over caramel nougat with nuts, and then I got buttercreams but I never loved Sees after having had belgian buttercreams as a kid. They were my choice (the belgians). If I'd known about truffles, I would have been thrilled but I don't remember seeing such a thing back then. The belgian buttercreams were lemon, strawberry, orange, fruit kinds, coffee, and then rum flavored and different chocolate liquor flavors. My mother was the one who liked the caramels. To me, as a kid, Rolos were okay but I didn't feel like gnawing on a rock hard square of caramel from the boxed variety and I usually gave them to my Mom. After I moved out of the house, when I was 21 I made popcorn balls or crunch with a kind of caramel/toffee but I never got caramels for myself. My Dad got them all the time and gave us some. And we had whoppers malt chocolate and m&ms.) I just wrote a lot about candy. That was a tangent but at least I wrote something new that the people in D.C. thought they knew but didn't know. I was just talking about it recently with my Mom and she nodded because she remembers. I brought it up, saying these people on the East Coast assumed I liked caramels but I had always prefered buttercreams. She remembers. The only time I was into nuts was for pralines and cream ice cream or almond roca.
I look back on it now and it was definitely like Karate Kid, with the Japanese guy at the grocery where I bought candy (the only international person in the whole town to my way of thinking, besides some hispanics but I didn't think they were international bc my cousins were half-Mexican so I never thought about it). Yeah, splitting wood and building muscle and balance and Japanese grocery store. I bought all kinds of candy but always bought some Japanese candy too, the kind with pectin and then rice paper that was wrapped around it and melted in your mouth. They had stickers in every package. I actually think all of this was going on before the movie Karate Kid was even made. And then it was a big deal when it was out and we all watched it in Moses Lake. And then the next one. I told my mom please don't let Levi see anymore Karate Kid or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons.
(First we agreed on the same cartoons and then he wanted to watch He-man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers all the time and I wanted to watch Smurfs, Alvin & The Chipmunks, and that was about it for me. I didn't care for most of the cartoons. I liked the two I mentioned, and Jetsons a lot because it was imaginative, and Gilligan's Island (imaginative), and then classic cartoons like Tom & Jerry, Warner's Brother's cartoons. I remember I didn't care for the artistry of most cartoons, or content. I was picky about it and we only had one hour each to watch cartoons on Saturday anyway.)
But yes, my Dad split wood with the chainsaw and me holding the boards still. I think he maybe split firewood for camping or the fireplace at our house too but I didn't have to help with that. We had a fireplace in Moses Lake at this time and I loved the fire.
But it was like Karate Kid. Never thought of it that way until tonight, but that's what it was like. We cut all the boards right in the middle, in half. (Go to the middle, get SQUASHED). I think I will make this a separate post bc it has nothing to do with "malicious hacking". My job was to hold the boards straight and keep them from moving. Hold the line in a figurative way. Now I can think of symbolism but I didn't then.
I think he enjoyed my company and having me out there helping but then came the semi-circle saw with teeth. Kind of looked like a swordfish. I didn't help him anymore. I think I did help receive them on the other end. He fed them through and then I was on the other end, picking them up and stacking them.
I know some of the boards were used for our fence around the property and there was acreage, and then he build his own "shed" which was sort of an insulated music studio basically. Inside, all kinds of musical instruments, music, mics, recording systems, everything and he played it very loud. He had a baby grand out there at one point, along with electric keyboard, and mics, speakers, everything.
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