What Can We Take Apart?
I recently took out my chainsaw and took apart a bunch of tree limbs that had fallen over the winter. Was it a cheap little electric model? Yes. Did that stop me from loading up on the safety gear, putting on the steel toe boots, and playing Paul Bunyan? No! And now I have a pile of firewood and I no longer have a pile of limbs strewn around my backyard.
Deadsplinterons are makers — posts, ideas, gardens, recipes, Wednesday Steel, cocktails, you name it. But now it’s time to talk about creative destruction.
It’s a term that has been used to great ill by tech and finance bros as a stand-in for layoffs, penny pinching, and wiping out quality. But sorry bros, we’re destroying your meaning and taking it back.
Share stories of creative destruction. Bonfires you’ve made. Sledgehammers you’ve wielded and walls you’ve destroyed. Basements emptied of junk you’ve thrown into dumpsters and cleared for better use. Every Fourth of July I get together with friends and light off fireworks, turning randomly shaped things with fuses into brief displays of light and noise, and then leaving nothing behind but ashes.
Or in a virtual sense, talk about hard drives you’ve cleaned and systems reformatted. Tell us about the joy of going through your contact list and wiping out the names and numbers of awful ex-coworkers you will never need to deal with again.
What are some things you’ve smashed, burned, deleted or crushed and how has that made your life better and fun?
Let’s go back about 18 years ago when some coworker geniuzes in some European country that sits between Belgium, Spain and Germany decided to change their process to something really stupid. I objected (as my job was going to be affected in a really dumb way) and got kicked out of the project meetings as a result.
Fast forward some three years later and with a $100mil loss due to issues with the software exactly as I predicted. I was asked by my manager to “fix” it.
I fixed it the way I thought it should have been done three years earlier. I presented it to a bunch of very glum Europeans (the project heads had resigned or been fired as losing $100 mil wasn’t a good thing) and I was apparently so gleeful during that meeting that my boss called me later and told me that I shouldn’t have enjoyed it that much but to be honest I did.
No one likes a Cassandra, but more so when that asshole, er, Cassandra comes back to kill their project and rub it in their arrogant faces.
When I was 18-ish? I told someone that I’d create a kitchen-living room pass-through window for them as a favour. This person had no tools or knowledge of anything. For the destruction bit I said that all I needed was a hammer and a sawzall.
Measure. Draw square. Punch hole in the drywall with hammer big enough to get the blade of the sawzall in to cut square. “Easy breezy beautiful colour girl” is literally what I said. No problem.
I knew the house was relatively old but I knew nothing about lath & plaster.
I fucked around. I found out.
What I thought would take me an hour took over a week. It ended up beautiful after a lot of shimmying a bunch of small, oddly shaped, pieces of wood to add the drywall.
To this day, I am quite proud that I cut a perfect square through TWO walls of lath & plaster with nothing but a hammer and a sawzall.
No worries about live wires lurking?
I’ve never had a fear of death and it wasn’t my house 😛
Not to brag but I am a demo king. I’ve destroyed tile bathrooms, wood decks, lathe & plaster walls & ceilings, laminate floors & whole kitchens. I enjoy the destruction but the clean up can be a bitch. I also usually do this with a very strong old guy that won’t pay attention to safety so I have to know his whereabouts at all times. I can hit a deck railing with a normal large hammer & knock it down in one swing usually. The best one we did was my own deck when we took out every piece of wood & all nails & then used it to build a treehouse bar in my neighbors tree. It has 180 degree water view & is easily the coolest bar in my city. He even auctions it off for happy hours to make money for local charities.
My son and I replaced our back fence a few years ago and the biggest pain was dealing with the old nails.
We usually pound them all out before moving the wood or you will get jabbed. I’ve had enough tetanus shots that I don’t need more.
The neighbor just had a dumpster delivered today. We share the cost so it isn’t so expensive. They are able to drop it in-between our garages off the alley. If we decided to have it put out front we would need to get a permit from the city. That is always a fun experience.
Tomorrow will be my day of destruction. I have to break down old dining room chairs and a china closet. Looking forward to the release.
This might be a better fit on @keitelblacksmith ‘s sprots post but I attended the Leafs/Islanders game on Easter Sunday where we celebrated the legend Mike Bossy. I am not the type to get emotional but it’s hockey and I am Canadian so it got to me a little.
Today we learned the legend “Le Demon Blonde” that is Guy Lafleur has passed away.
This might be a better fit for this post?:
RIP Mike Bossy & Guy Lafleur
I few years ago prepped my backyard for the patio using a pickaxe to get all the rocks out before digging it up. It was a lot of work but very satisfying.
I also have backyard fallen trees and limbs to manage.
But first, I will sit dumbfounded for 3 hours after finding the first gray stubbles not on my face.
@The Holy Hand Grenade
Welcome to the club. Worst/best present ever.
It’s been a long while since I’ve done the physical version of deconstruct & reconstruct–iirc, the last time was back when my first homeowner-roommate refinanced her mortgage.
The house had been the model home for the old neighborhood, annnnd tons of corners were cut in the construction…
Not to mention, the fact that– unbeknownst to the roommates until after she owned the house–the previous owners had basically run it as a party-house.
And had “strategically staged” the domicile until after the final walk-through, with large “heavy” furniture they’d asked my roommate & her then-husband if it was ok to pick up after everyone signed the papers…
So that my unsuspecting roommate & her new husband had no idea there were massive holes in the carpet which had been covered by that “heavy furniture”🙃
10-ish years later, when Roommie was trying to refinance, she and I repainted most of the rooms. There was a fairly tight budget, and this was after the ’08 housing crash (she’d purchased in ’05–at nearly the top of the market😖😱), so we were trying to get the house’s valuation *up to or juuuust past* the $220K she’d paid for it.
She couldn’t afford new carpet, but we DID have some scraps of the berber down in the basement, in the laundry room…
So I got out a curved sewing needle, brought the carpet remnant upstairs, pulled out threads from the longest side of the remnant, and basically “darned” all of the rips, tears, & holes in that upstairs carpet, as well as I could, so that none of the giant “runs” in the berber were noticeable.
I couldn’t fix the holes, buuuut I was able to make the runs & pulls that had spread *out* from the holes unnoticeable, so that we were then able to “strategically place some furniture,” and make them “disappear” for the appraisal😉😁
Between that☝, the 1/4-round pre-stained oak trim strips we got at home depot (to replace all the terribly cracked and/or spliced pieces the original homeowners had Frankenstein-ed around the house!), and the quart of navy paint & white automotive pinstriping tape that I used some white that I used to make a faux “crown moulding” in the upstairs bathroom, we did a ton of “little touch-ups” (and I also ripped out all the old moldy latex caulking in the downstairs shower, and re-caulked the whole damn thing with silicone caulk!).
And after our work, we ended up getting her house appraised for more than the 220K she was hoping (iirc, it was around $230K?).
It was a shit-ton of work, but we were both damn proud of the fact that we got the value up that high, and neither of us had ever taken anything past about 9th grade “shop class,” and lots of HGTV and This Old House-watching.😉
I messed up my post,
But one of my non-physical & most recent “break things down, so they can get put together better” things, is that I had the privilege of helping some of the teachers whose classroom i was in recently, to break down their arguments in favor of getting a particular child’s family to allow that child to receive the Special Ed services that child is eligible for.💝
There are many reasons why families decide to not allow their child to receive SPED services…
But often, what it really boils down to, is that there is still a large fear outside the field of Special Education of “labels & stigma” when a child receives Special Education Services or has a “Special Education” label.
The teachers I was working with have a child who is seriously one of the most brilliant children I’ve ever seen in my life!💫💫💫💫
This little peanut is the kind of kiddo who makes my heart absolutely sing!!! And, as someone who myself tested in the 98th percentile of “Language & Literary” when I went through my own testing processes, and who is neuro-atypical myself, this child is mind-blowingly brilliant!😉🤗💖
For the folks who aren’t Dr. Lemmy, and to put “percentiles” into plain English;
If you were to take any random 100 people *my age* & “of my cohort”(English as a first language writers/readers/speakers, etc), and sort us into a line?
As someone in the “98th percentile,” there would be exactly two people in that line who love words, reading, and letters more than I do.😉
This beautiful little kiddo–were they to be tested--is probably person number 99 or *100* in their percentile!!!🤗😁💖 They are far and away, more advanced than I ever was at their age–and I loved letters, words, & reading!
They are the sort of child a good teacher hopes to come across sometime in their career💝💞💓💖
That child who is so brilliant they *sparkle,* who can soak up whatever knowledge you throw in their direction like a sponge, process the information, synthesize it, add ON to it, and FLY with it!
An absolute gem, and also a little one who has what are called multiple-exceptionalities.
The family has a medical diagnosis, but that diagnosis was evidently given to the family in a tactless & traumatic way.💔
Because of the way the explanation of the medical Dx was handled–AND the fear of stigma associated with receiving SPED services, this perfect little kiddo’s family wanted nothing to do with the services their child can access.
And y’all, as someone who could and *should* have had SPED support myself growing up?
It was killllllling me, that this beautiful little nugget, with the sparkliest smartest brain I’ve EVER seen irl, may be getting set up for a K-12 education where they are seen by their Gen-ed teachers as “Too Much Work!” to stay ahead of, or where some of those teachers may decide it’s their mission to assign labels like “Can’t Sit Still,” “Too Talkative,” “Won’t Listen,” “Just Too Much!,” etc., and then start trying to dim the light that naturally shines out of this brilliant little gem of a child…
This child loves learning, in a way you simply can’t tteach–they’re the sort of self-driven curious who hungers to learn about the world and everything in it, and has the sort of multidimensional intellect that can take them anywhere if it’s encouraged & not quashed…
They could be a rocket scientist, theoretical physicist, US Supreme Court Justice, International Lawyer at the Hague, Scientist, Surgeon, Doctor of any type, Artist, Coreographer, or the best “stay at home” parent ever, if that is what they choose someday.
The sky is *seriously* the limit for this child!
But in a Gen-ed classroom of nearly 30 kids?
There are many Gen-ed teachers who would find that sort of child “too much,” and would constantly try to whittle any child like that down into “a manageable size for my classroom!”…
And sometimes, there are adults who take kids who are at *this* level of smart as a personal affront to their authority, or hate them on principle, because of the teacher’s ego…
Knowing that, and also knowing how beautiful, sweet, and tender-hearted this little one is? I wanted them wrapped in the protective armor & “bubble wrap” of a “SPED label.”
Because what lots of folks don’t know or understand, is that–unlike when my generation (Gen-X) were kids, nowadays a SPED Label can protect kids from getting kicked out of a General Education classroom.
It protects a child from teachers labeling them “Too Much!” and makes it so that the teacher has to keep them in the classroom, rather than sending them “to the office.”
A Special Education “label” basically wraps the child in armor-plated bubble wrap, and gives the child their own personal dragon, to protect them (their SPED teacher😉😁💖), who can and will fight battles if necessary, to make sure that child is in the Least Restrictrive Environment (LRE) for their education.
The fact that this perfect little sparkling diamond of a child wasn’t being protected yet was killing me!!!
Because I don’t want to see their wings clipped as they head on to K-12. This child has too much to learn about themselves, and too much good they could accomplish in the world, to have their internal light dimmed by future scared, uncomfortable, or even petty adults they might encounter…
So I was bouncing ideas off both the “Regular” Pre-K teacher in that classroom and the SPED teacher in there, to see if there was an angle they hadn’t yet tried, so we can protect this little one…
We talked various ways to approach the child’s parents, angles to try explaining that SPED can be armor to protect their child, that it can be a superhero cape to help them fly, and/or bubble-wrap to protect them from the American Education system’s sharp barbs…
And then last week, I asked the teacher if they’d tried approaching from the “SPED can also help meet the *gifted* needs of multi-exceptional children” angle.
Because we can–and for gifted children we HAVE to!
If we know a child falls into the “gifted” ranges of their own percentiles, we have to support those gifts! (It’s federally mandated!)
We can’t simply allow them to languish in a gen-ed classroom, if their educational needs show they have a higher need than a gen-ed classroom can offer…
And Y’all?
Today I got an email from that child’s teacher!🤗🤗🤗
She had some conversations about how incredibly gifted this little one is with the child’s parents–and how even though “that label” sounds scary, it can 100% help support the little one’s incredible academic gifts as they go on into the K-12 setting.
And the parents are now receptive to allowing the Special Ed team to support their little one, because they UNDERSTAND that we see their child as an incredibly bright & precious little one.
That we aren’t trying to stigmatize or diminish their child, rather, we want to support and protect this BRILLIANT little nugget, and help them to reach the full potential they have, because WE SEE THEM SPARKLING, TOO!!!😁😃🤗💖
I am so hoping that the family allows us to team with them soon, to protect their precious little one. This child is phenomenal and an absolute joy to be around!
Whoever has the privilege of becoming their teacher as they grow is going to teach one of the best pupils they could ever hope to have the privilege of educating💖💝💫
If the teacher had failed to convince the parents – I think this comment would have convinced them.
@Lymond, this little one really is that special!😉🤗😃
One of my Early Childhood professors ( who was advising me in my first EC program at the time, and who has now become one of my mentors) once talked about how *once in a while* we’ll have those kids who let us pull out all our tools & all the knowledge we’ve acquired over the years, and are just a joy to get to work with…
Her explanation was,
“Remember when you were little and had ‘Reading Groups’ with names like the Cardinals, Robins, and Bluebirds?
In your career, you’re going to have lots of Sparrows & Robins, a few Cardinals & Bluejays, and every so often, you’ll be lucky enough to encounter a Bluebird or an Oriole.”
Lymond, somehow we ended up with a whole damn Rainbow Lorikeet, who was born in a suburb of Minneapolis!😉😁🤗💫
That’s just a great effort. Taking the time to break things down to the basics and then building back up is exactly on point.