"Beauty confronts us with the requirement that we place ourselves among...the redeemers, the leaders in the protection of life. Once you have seen the bush on fire, you are not going to get out of the assignment unless you close your eyes to the beauty.... [You] either have to close your eyes or go back to Egypt and set the people free." - Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, "Rising to the Challenge of Our Times"

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Of tiny outbursts and their benefit

Perhaps since I'm still not very fast at some things, whenever we change the sheets on the bed and flip the mattress and replace the mattress pad (you don't really want to know how infrequently I would perform any or all of these activities if not for the domesticating effects of my partner) I always, ALWAYS get stuck with the intractable last corner of the mattress pad that is obviously too small for the mattress at that point. Usually I can coax it on before reaching my frustration threshhold.

However today I think I was pushed over the edge by the hours I spent trying to put a slideshow together in iMovie; when I added transitions between the slides so one would smoothly fade into the next, it started making the slides themselves shorter and shorter until they were fractions of seconds in duration. Then going back trying to make the slides longer again resulted in others getting shortened. OK, so I probably don't know what the hell I'm doing, and my poor little PowerBook is stuffed to the gills with music, and this slideshow is supposed to make its public debut at a very fundraising event for Legal Services
(side note: my dad and I discussed the possibility of splicing Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves" into the slideshow soundtrack as it somewhat reflects the attitude of the establishment toward legal aid lawyers, and has a clear fundraising message, i.e. feeling that one must dance, etc for 'the money they'd throw.'

and, thus we see that the mattress pad was obviously the last straw. After at least 4 - 5 attempts to attach my corner, I roared and clenched my teeth and clenched my fists and stomped my feet in a circle. It felt very satisfying to do this. Then C came over and fixed the mattress pad. There is a trick, which she demonstrated, of bending the mattress to your will, and then it is much easier. On the multimedia front, iMovie may have bent me to its will as I'm thinking now that I don't really need transitions between every single slide. No foolishly consistent hobgoblins here.
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1 comment:

wordsfromhome said...

I was preparing to put into words the useful technique that I employ of lifting the corner of the mattress with my knee, with my foot on the box spring, when, as I continued through your post, I determined that C also knows the technique and has most likely already shown it to you. But if you are interested, next time we are together, I will show you.

12:53 PM

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