Catch Up

 I've been bummed this week.
Of course, I'm upset about the chickens.  I gave up after Lizard died - I apparently did enough to keep out the raccoon, but there's no way I can block everything those little clever paws can reach through.  So the chickens have moved to the back deck.  I'm not feeling any safer, though.  It's screened in with just chicken wire, and a determined raccoon can get through that.  As an extra precaution I lock them in a dog kennel at night.   It's not ideal - for one, they're little poop machines, and for two, they don't have any dirt to scratch in - but I hope it will keep them alive.  I'll probably keep them there for a couple of months, until raccoon babies are old enough to stop nursing and Mom isn't so hungry.

Some things are moving along slowly.  The rosacea medication is kicking in, so I don't look and feel quite so much like a radiation victim.  But I'll be on sunscreen and moisturizers a lot.  I've started using a very old-fashioned (Victorian) moisturizer, which is simply a mixture of rosewater and glycerin.  No oils, not greasy, but it's a humectant which holds moisture in the skin.  Good for those hot days where a regular moisturizer would just make you sweat more.

And I'm waiting on the tooth again.  Good news on the root canal front - the dentist wasn't quite sure what was causing the toothache; the Xray didn't show anything definite.  He thinks that it just could be that my bit changed a tiny bit, and I was biting down too hard on the "temporary" crown.  So, to experiment, he ground it down.  If it quits hurting, we'll give it three weeks for any inflammation/irritation to clear and then put on the permanent crown (I put the "temporary" in quotation marks because I've had it on for 10 months now).

Adrianne had Friday off so we got together for ice creams and spinning.  Normally we have a lively time together, but she was very subdued.  There's a park that she likes not far from her apartment, and where she usually gets together with her SCA friends about once a month.  Thursday night there was a fatal shooting there.  That rather puts a damper on a place where you felt safe and had fun.

So, feeling bummed in general, I've been missing Bob a lot. Desperately.  Really didn't help when I was doing some cleaning up and found some pictures from our old SCA days - people in funny clothes having fun.  Except that you can't look at pictures like that without your brain going : Heart attack. Leukemia. Breast Cancer. Suicide.   I wonder what my prize will be for Last Person Standing?

I've been having an earworm of Jason Isabel's "If We Were Vampires"  

Maybe time running out is a gift

I'll work hard til the end of my shift

And give you every second I can find

And hope I'm not the one who's left behind

I work it out by tackling the yard (early morning, with sunscreen on).  I've been focusing the last few times on the driveway - the underbrush has been growing in enough that the driveway is getting a bit narrow - fine for my little car, but someday someone else with a normal size car might need it (who knows?  It's been six months since even Rob and Amanda came to visit).

I finished the pink linen poet's shirt tonight - pictures later.  Who knows when I'll wear it - but it does feel lovely to put it on.

And the little wrens on the catio have hatched and will be fledging in a week or so, and the poor housebound cats will be able to have some fresh air again.  So life goes on.