Rambling Again

 I was thinking that it had been far too long - weeks, maybe? - since I had written.
Uh - it's been a week.

Still having a problem keeping a grasp on time.  I had to take NokoMarie to the vet for her annual checkup and was talking to the "new" vet there.  I've been going to that office for over 40 years now - originally it was Dr. Sanders and Dr. Hall, and later they were joined by the new vet, aka "the kid," Mike Pridgeon.  Dr. Sanders has retired completely and Dr. Hall is now part time - I was teasing Mike, telling him that I would always think of him as "the new kid."   I was trying to remember how long he'd been there.

25 years.  Yikes.

I've survived another July.  I've always felt that if somehow I made it through July I would manage the summer, which makes no sense because August can be unbearable, along with September and part of October.  I think it's because up through June it's not so bad, and by August I've either acclimated or just gotten resigned, but July makes me a little crazy, getting cabin fever, feeling like there's a monster ready to waterboard me the moment I open the door.  I purposely keep the air conditioning to a minimum (usually 78 degrees - any higher and the house wouldn't get dried out enough), and get adjusted.  One day last week I even had my afternoon coffee out on the back deck - 94 degrees, heat index 100 - with a fan on, it wasn't bad.  (Not today though - 95 degrees, but heat index 110 and dew point 78 - I'm staying inside).

Maybe it's that feel of a slight shift, the light at a bit of a different angle, the days a tiny bit shorter.  And all the Halloween stuff showing up in stores.  I love the Halloween stuff.

Catching up with the week:

Some excitement last Sunday evening.  A major storm rolled through.  I like storms, the chaotic energy of them.  The back deck is well protected, so I was sitting out there.  Suddenly there was a major explosion in the woods in front of me: lightening strike.  Enough that my eyes were blinded for a moment, my head ringing (*not* good for my chronic tinnitus).  I felt the pressure hit my chest, smelled the ozone and the burning wood.  I opted to come back inside.

That was followed by another scare.  I went in later to feed the opossum and my flying squirrel Dingo.  Dingo had managed to escape his cage.  He's clever that way.  Normally when I go in I hear him running around and then he'll come scampering across the bookcase and bounce over to me because it's possible that I will have a peanut.  But I heard nothing.  Not even when I made little tching sounds.  I searched.  Finally I turned back the bed covers and found him almost non-responsive, eyes cloudy.  Granted - he's a small animal, and now 9 years old.  But still . . .

I got him back in his cage, and was able to give him a little sugar water by syringe.  He could move a little, but he was uncoordinated and disoriented.  I was with him the entire night - as well as the sugar water, I remembered that he liked the special milk that I fed baby squirrels when I raised them, and I still had some powder, and he drank some of that.  So every hour or so I got a little more into him. By 4 a.m. he accepted a piece of walnut.  By 6 he could move almost normally, and his eyes had cleared.  A couple of hours later he seemed well enough that I went to work (not sure how useful I was - I am well beyond the days of being able to pull all-nighters).  He seemed fine by the next day.  I remembered once, a couple of years ago, that I saw him have a seizure, but then he recovered in a couple of hours.

Ragu, aka Waggy.  This past spring one of my friend Christy's sheep had triplets (unusual for that breed).  One was a little runt.  Christy and Rik are very pragmatic about their animals - they are given great care and lots of love, but whoever isn't kept for breeding stock or sold for same end up in the freezer.  But the museum needed another sheep.  I still have Bob's car trailer that I'll never use - but Rik wants it.  So with a little old-fashioned bartering little Ragu will now lead a long and spoiled life on the museum farm.

My poltergeist is still around, although he is slowing down a little.  I think it's because I do clean up everything daily.  Mostly now it's down to the whisk brooms, rubber strips, and a few feathers.  Sometimes there's something extra - a package of sandpaper or a shed snake skin (not sure where he got that).  The past couple of mornings he hasn't even bothered with the whisk brooms, just the rubber strips and a couple of feathers.  The AC is on in the cottage only when I'm in there, so maybe it's even to hot for Geist.

I've had the post-project malaise after finishing the griffin but spent some time just cleaning up in the cottage (I've found that cleaning up, just sorting and touching my stuff, will sometimes get the project urge going).  I spent a few enjoyable hours just playing yesterday with random stuff (a small plastic skeleton, some foam core, a picture frame) and made a simple automaton.  Just something a little different.  I might go back later and put in some landscaping or even a little friend.

I've always loved these little folk art toys, and it gave me a chance to use my scroll saw and get my brain wrapped around how the cams work (the lower one is egg-shaped and off center, so the skeleton goes up and down as well as around and around)

This is super simple, but I still needed to make it to try to understand it.  I have realized that grief fog is a real thing, and long lasting.  In many respects, 2023 has been very hard in that respect.  I huddled in the previous years (Covid was a good excuse).  2023 I've gotten out a lot - two trips, working the Highland games, 3 circuses, the Comic Con.   Which is all good - but it underscores that I'm doing it all without Bob.  And that hurts.

It made me think of my rattlesnake bite.  Rattlesnakes have neurotoxin as well as hemotoxin, which meant that all my extremities were pretty numb for a few days.  It was about 5 days after the bite (I was home by then) that I told Bob "I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that the feeling is coming back into my leg.  The bad news is (insert gritted teeth and pounding on the bed with my fist) "the feeling is coming back into my leg!!!"   It hurt like hell at that point.  But slowly got better, and now (15 years later) it's just a tingling in my right ankle, especially when the weather changes.

So I'll keep moving forward, and maybe someday it won't hurt so much when I do.