Lindsay Mutch, sweet Kiwi friend!
My very good friend, Lindsay Mutch, died recently and I have been struggling for days to find the right words to pay him tribute. You see, Lindsay was quite the master of words and, although, I love words and consider myself somewhat adept at the art of articulation, my talents truly pale in comparison. So, with apologies to my late friend, I continue.
As it happened, one night while on twitter, I watched my computer screen in fascination as my friend @MisterNoodle, a funny and clever guy, traded quips with someone I had never seen before, @lindsa (Lindsay). Their banter back and forth was fast and furious and funny. I can’t remember now what the subject was, bacon comes to mind, but in the end, MisterNoodle cried uncle. And, that’s how I met Lindsay.
Of course, it was Lindsay’s words that first appealed to me. He was funny, brilliant, quirky, quick-witted. He had a natural talent, and could spew forth the most outrageous, ironic, philosophical stuff, in an instant, too, whereas I always had to work at it. Oh, I remember many times searching the internet for help with a word or saying so I could write a funny comeback to something he had just said, only to discover that by the time I came up with something somewhat worthy, he had already moved on to something new and equally outrageous.
Lindsay and I became pen pals. We corresponded frequently via email and twitter. We talked movies, music, books, authors, current events, sports, history, politics, religion, ghosts, entertainment and I don’t know what else! We sometimes discussed our most recent blog posts. But, what I liked best were our conversations of the mundane everyday stuff of our lives. We usually did not go more than several days without somehow touching base with each other. I looked forward to turning my computer on in the morning to check my email, always happy when I got one from him. We talked on the phone several times, too. Every time, it was like talking to an old friend. He had such a wonderful knack at making me feel I was important to him, so kind and big-hearted.
To his family and colleagues, my heart goes out to you.
To Lindsay,
I’m thinking of the farewell scene in Dances with Wolves. Lieutenant Dunbar is leaving the tribe forever. Wind in His Hair stands on the mountain top and shouts for all to hear, “Dances with Wolves! I am Wind in His Hair! Can’t you see that I am your friend? Can’t you see that you will always be my friend?” You know where I mean? Okay, so you are Dunbar and I am Wind in His Hair. Except, you are not on horseback and I am not standing on a mountain. Instead, I see you hovering in a spacecraft (Kiwi Space Patrol style) in the clouds. And, I am standing on the ground near sea level, no hill in sight, looking up to the sky. “Lindsay! I am Cindy!” Can’t you see that I am your friend? Can’t you see that you will always be my friend?”
I hear a hoot owl every morning, still dark, while sitting on my screened porch having coffee. “Who, who.” You know, your poem, A Whim, pertains to friends, too, just saying. To wit, to woo, Lindsay! I miss you, my friend.
Lindsay Mutch, May 15, 1968 – June 28, 2010 Journalist, poet, author, friend.
We have a period of time, right after Christmas and before early March that our weather is at its worse and we typically do not do much outdoors. It is a great time to do indoor projects and on our old fixer-upper house there are many to do. One year, Brian added shelves to our laundry room. Another time, we closed in the extra unneeded doorway to my office and remodeled. And in 
another year, we removed very ugly wallpaper in our living room and dining room and refinished the walls. This year we decided to re-do our kitchen floor. 
dishwasher for repairs, we saw underneath that our floor was hardwood.
the tiles and do the sanding. On the second weekend, we would stain and finish. Aaah, the best laid plans… We began scraping off the sticky tiles and discovered a sheet of luaun. We removed the luaun and discovered a layer of linoleum. We removed it and discovered a layer of tar based mastic adhesive. Underneath that was another layer of tiles and under that was another layer 
of the tar based adhesive. We scraped the linoleum and the next layer of tiles, thus removing the one layer of that tar based icky stuff, but the bottom layer was going to be problematic. We tried scraping, mineral spirits, goo gone, and other products to remove this icky coating, but nothing was working. I researched the internet on how best to remove this stuff and found out that even Bob 
Vila had no answers. Most sources said it couldn’t be done and to replace the flooring with new hardwood. One source suggested using hot steam.
from our hardwood floor had probably been on there for 60 years and probably full of asbestos, too. So, we needed to get the floor as clean as we could before doing any sanding. Five weekends later, we were ready to sand. 
refrigerator, too, but the only way to fit it through the doorway was to remove its three heavy doors. We decided we would try to work around it, pulling it out away from the wall to work on that area and pushing it back into place while we did the rest of the floor.