Sparks don’t always go up

So we’ve got this beeyootifful faaar going but nobody is really back in the Back Room to watch over it so every time I hear a popping sound, I have to go and check to make sure a spark hasn’t landed on the carpet. And, if it has, grab my big faaaaaar glubs and remove/extinguish it before it has a chance to burn our house down.

This mid-century modern faaaarplace has “screens” that you can draw across it to keep sparks from escaping. I HATE the screens. I once bought a stand-alone screen off the intertubes but I didn’t like it. It just did not fit my [ratty old] mid-century modern house. I have a 1st cousin once removed who is a GENIUS and if he lived closer to me, I would commission him to make a mid-century modern type faaaarplace screen for me.

This cousin lives in Utah but he and his fam do NOT belong to the Mormon faith (and never have). I know as much or maybe as little about the Mormon faith as anybody else. I have been pretty familiar with TWO Mormon women in my life.

One, when I was a kid, I worked with Ava (who is long dead now so I think I can use her real first name). She was hired as a keypuncher (yes, it was that long ago) and she wasn’t really very good at her job and wasn’t very teachable although she wasn’t totally stupid and really wasn’t cut out to be a keypuncher.

The specific incident I’m thinking of is when she grabbed a co-worker’s bag lunch and scrunched it. She thought it was funny. Another co-worker who immigrated here from Chile, said “Ava is dangerous”, dangerous in a Spanish accent.

And then we got involved in YAG (a youth theater group) and one of the first directors we encountered was a card-carrying Mormon. I will never forget when she told us parents (in Mouse’s first play) that her religion didn’t allow her to teach children how to fight (on stage I mean) so she had HIRED some other folks to do it for her. She is a Force of Nature and YAG is gone but we are facebook friends because I love her.

One Response to “Sparks don’t always go up”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I have a gas fireplace which is misbehaving right now. I love the ease and lack of mess and spiders in the house. In our old house we had a wood burning stove and it was a lot of work! And we did have a few burns in our carpet from flying embers, even with a screen.