What is it with parents these days?

Posted on by under Musings

David and I were born tail-end of the baby boom. After 20 years of boom, parents had gotten pretty fed-up with too many kids and right good at spankings.  The decades of “children should be seen and not heard”–yep, we were still in them.  Touch something you shouldn’t and “smack” your hand was hit by parent, aunt, teacher, or other adult with fly-swatter, stick, switch, ruler, or whatever tool capable of inflicting the most pain with the least real damage to a small child’s body.  OK.  Those were NOT the good ‘ole days at all.  I recall “Don’t touch-don’t touch-don’t touch!” was the mantra running through my little 3 year old head with an occasional throbbing hand as a reminder as well.

However, the pendulum has swung way too far the other way. Now just about anything a child does which involves messing with strangers’ property seems to be encouraged by the parents even if the activity is entirely inappropriate.  Two cases in point involve our tenders to Mahdee, the Merrimack canoe and the Tinker inflatable:  Last September, whilst we were sailing down the California coast, we anchored at San Simeon and David took the canoe over to the beach, hauled it up high away from the shore where neither tides nor unruly children would likely touch it.  The Merrimack canoe is lovely but delicate as it is a very lightweight fiberglass over thin cherry ribs and can be easily damaged.  He set out on a hike and upon his return to the canoe found two small children (approximately 3 and 6 years old) running up the steep incline from the water and jumping in and out of the canoe while the parents, camera in hand, stood by and chuckled about how cute the antics of their little ones were.  They were miffed when David told them to get their hooligans out of the canoe and that it wasn’t “cute” to play with other people’s stuff.  The canoe actually suffered several small cracks in the cherry ribs during that playtime; I repaired it with epoxy and fiberglass this winter.  A decade of use from wilderness canoe trips to tender duty for Mahdee hauling hundreds of pounds of water, coal, wood, and other stuff vs. the damage that 10 minutes of jumping children managed to do–amazing.

Yesterday, David took the Tinker inflatable to a nearby beach where he left if for many hours while he was off running errands.  The Tinker has dinghy wheels which slide down along the transom and allow us to roll it onto shore high above the tide line and to keep the bottom off the scratchy rocks and sand. The transom sits 8″ above the wheels and the dinghy doesn’t manage to touch the ground until the bow so the entire plywood and rubber bottom is unsupported, just hanging in air. The wheels and their aluminum legs aren’t made to withstand the weight of anything other than the dingy itself but the system works quite well.

I was on “dinghy watch” meaning that if I saw something going on like, oh, say someone stealing it, I would make a ruckus and get a nearby boater to assist.  Things generally don’t “happen” to dinghies left on this particular beach.  We’ve anchored here many times and see dinghies safely sitting ashore.  So, dinghy watch is really pretty much a joke.  However, I was a little irritated yesterday when I saw a little toddler playing in the sand in and out of Tinker.  I knew that the dinghy would be covered inside with sand and that we’d have to hoist and rinse out the boat with salt water and then wipe it dry with fresh water simply because of the little toddler playing there under the poor supervision of toddler’s mom.  Yet another case of “isn’t my kid cute playing with other people’s stuff?”  Can you imagine the same parent watching while the child climbed all over a strangers’ car in a parking lot?  “Oh, how cute little Suzie is getting sand tracks on the hood and windshield.  Oops there goes the windshield wiper?”  Then, I was horrified when I saw Mom pick up little Suzie and plop herself down onto Tinker with the toddler in lap!  Yikes, those aluminum legs are only held on with a couple little screws though the plywood transom.  And further yikes, the dingy was partially deflated (in the hot sun we do this while we’re away to keep it from bursting) so the floor was in an even more delicate situation and could be damaged by heavy weight on or in it.

Since I’m pretty much stuck on Mahdee with this whole hip thing (not to mention the dingy is ashore…) I called a nearby boater, Don, and asked him to please go “shoo away” the pesky mother & toddler from Tinker.  He kindly obliged, rowing to shore and telling the mother to remove herself and child from the Tinker. During his row to shore, I watched as mom poured saltwater over toddler’s feet IN THE DINGHY and wondered what kind of crazy people were out on the beaches today.  Don kindly stood watch on the beach near to the Tinker for 15 minutes during which time Mom became uncomfortable enough to move herself and toddler away from the area.  Thank goodness.

I love babies, I love toddlers, I love little kids, but seriously what is it with parents these days?

If I can’t spell it…

Posted on by under living aboard

The last few months have been full of can’t spell and can’t pronounce words for me.  The swing down into illiteracy comes from a diagnosis this winter of acetabular dysplasia.  It’s a condition that ballerinas and large dogs manage to get.  Since I am neither a ballet dancer nor canine, I just don’t understand how it could be me that is tagged with this hard to spell/hard to say bone condition.

It’s  been bugging me for much of my life but sadly, with our crazy health-care system, each attempt, post-adolescence, I’ve made to obtain a diagnosis has ended in “oh, you don’t need an x-ray, just “blank””  we fill in the blank with “take it easy”, “lose weight”, “do physical therapy to strengthen muscles” and so forth.  Finally in January, after 4 months of killer pain which has been making it impossible for me to even do a good job sailing, and 3 months of trying to get an appointment with my doctor in Maryland, I called my HMO office and said “I’m going to be there camped on your doorstep from January 19-26.  You WILL do an x-ray of my hip.  I will pay for it out-of-pocket if I have to, but you WILL do it.  And, indeed, they did the x-ray and found a severe case of developmental dysplasia.

The x-ray tech said “well, this will give you something to talk to your doctor about!” The x-ray was one day, the Dr. appointment the following.  She walked in the room, said “there’s nothing you can do–no PT, no lifestyle change, no weight loss, nothing…you need surgery…here’s a consult to a surgeon.” and accusingly “I don’t how you could have lived this long without KNOWING there was something seriously wrong with your pelvis.”

Let’s not go there.

After staying in So. Cal thinking we’d have it fixed any week and could then sail North…5 months of trying to get it sorted out and fixed have come and gone.  This included several visits to surgeons and talks on the phone to my insurance company and a change in insurance region to cut down the paperwork, I had a total hip replacement surgery on Tuesday June 14th and went home in the morning of Friday June 17th. Ahh….my hip feels better.  Though I must admit my muscles feel awful, David has to help me get into bed (I can stumble out on my own); we’re on a dock rather than at anchor, and I’m clunking about the pier with a walker.  I’ve got another week or so of giving myself shots in the tummy of the blood thinner Lovenox, I’ve got a huge prescription of Vicodin for pain.  Pills I keep forgetting to take until I’m wincing and sniffling from the pain, silly me.  I have a follow up visit with the surgeon tomorrow, should have stitches out next week and have 20 visits of PT to do between now and August 1st.  Then, with the surgeon’s blessing, we should be sailing up the coast to San Francisco Bay.  Yea!

For all of you who didn’t know about this health issue, sorry not to share before.  I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about it while it was all still so open ended without a fix in sight!

Now, back to that wrinkled varnish….I tried hard to get it done before going into surgery, but that seems to have been a total waste of effort.

Next…

Varnish Wrinkles

Posted on by under Projects

I’ve been in a frenzy to get some varnishing done on Mahdee–in particular this weekend.  It’s been very cold and drizzly when ever I’ve had time to do it but it seemed that this Friday-Sunday would be perfect for it: daytime temperatures in the low to mid 60’s, overcast mornings and sunny afternoons.

My favorite varnish is “Behr Spar Varnish” and better known to me as the “Varnish for Idiots” because you really can’t screw up putting on Behr.  It is very thin and that’s the ticket to not messing it up it seems.  You’d think that thin means it runs–right?  Ah, but that’s the opposite of what happens.  If it is very thin, the varnisher (that would be me) has ample opportunity to see it running and do something about it.  Whereas thick…well that’s the real culprit.  Thick varnish can look just fine but turn your back on it and during the time between your last look and the varnish drying it can drip or “curtain” on a vertical surface.  Evil stuff.

Well, the state of California has managed to outlaw all varnishes with a decent level of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and that has created a few problems for those of us who are, well, challenged varnishers.  When California starts something, the rest of the country follows.  First, it meant that Behr decided to get out of the spar varnish trade entirely.  All that “thinness” of the varnish was actually a nicely high level of VOC’s.  So, sadly, the wonder days of “Varnish for Idiots” is gone and everyone is now in search of other good (read “easy to apply”) varnish that also still happens to have a decent quantity of UV inhibitors as well.

I started my search using Petit’s “Captains” varnish and the West Marine knock off of the same.  No go, that stuff was as thick as molasses.  If I thinned it to proper brushing thinness, the gloss was entirely gone.  If I didn’t thin it enough, I ended up with curtains and drips…and…Horror of horrors, the dreaded varnish wrinkles.  Those make areas look like my fingers after I’ve been in the bathtub lounging way too long.  Wrinkled like a prune.  In varnish this happens where varnish is too thickly applied or when it is too cold or windy.  This is because the varnish skims over on the top but the underside is still wet and goo-ey.  It never dries and you pretty much just have to scrape it off and start again.  So, I did quite a bit of scraping when I used Captains.

After I ran through all the Captains varnish (and West clone) I then consulted with Dan at the San Diego Marine Exchange.  Dan gave me the low down on varnish and from him I learned that Captains and Interlux Schooner varnish were the two favorites of his clients.  So, I thought I’d give Schooner a try.  I bought a quart and did some interior varnishing.  All seemed good.  It was a little thicker than Behr but I could work with it w/o thinning.  Or so I thought.

I bravely found a sale on Schooner Varnish and purchased a total of 12 quarts.  That sounds like a lot but really it is about enough to last Mahdee through 2 complete re-varnish sessions where I put 3 or 4 coats on everything.  In other words, I’ll need more varnish in a couple months.

So, back to this weekend’s weather.  David sanded about 1/4th of the exterior brightwork on last Thursday and I started varnishing on Friday.  I was so pleased until late Friday when I saw all the little prune lines here and there.  Oh, no! I was going to have to scrap and redo several areas of varnish.  So, at anchor in La Playa on Saturday, while David was off replacing a ball joint on Wesley, I scraped and varnished and crossed my fingers.  On Sunday, I saw that even more prune lines had arrived and mentally cursed at the windy and cool conditions we’ve been having.  I scraped and scraped more and then did another very thin coat.  Today, I admit defeat.  Even more prunes.  I will have to learn to just put a lot more thinner in the varnish and take the consequences of reduced gloss if it comes to that.

The “Varnish for Idiots” days are gone and this is a tough learning curve, I must say.

Google Analytics Alternative