Barn Obsession and the Great Comet of 1812

 Just like flipping a switch, the barn obsession ended.  I did a little work Sunday morning (still taking things easy) and then yesterday all I had to do was clean out a cabinet and about four drawers of a tool cabinet.  And suddenly I almost couldn't do it.  I've been hitting this hard for six weeks, and the barn has gone from having paths you could get through (barely) to being almost empty.  And all but two cabinets and all of the drawers are now empty.

And empty was how I was suddenly feeling.  It had just hit me last month that the barn has been hanging over my head for four years.  I've just been dibbling at it, now and then.  So I hit it, hard, for six weeks, and it's done (well, Stage One.  There is still a ton of stuff in the rafters, but Yours Truly isn't reckless enough to go up a ladder and drag down heavy stuff, especially since the ladder I have is a bit wobbly and those rafters are high.  Someday, maybe next year, I'll hire a couple of people to come drag it down)

The barn, as it now stands.

(There are still a few piles of stuff on the floor - that goes to the dump next weekend)

I need to organize some stuff, and go through a few things - but suddenly, I can't handle it any more.  I've done enough.  I even hung on to a memento.

He loved SkyFlakes crackers.  They're not much, really, sort of like a thick Saltine.  I think it was the tins that he loved - they used to get them in the Philippines.  So if he ever saw them anywhere, he got them.  Like the empty cat treat boxes and peanut butter jars, I tossed them (they get rusty after awhile.)  But I'm keeping this one.

Sunday I walked away from it all and went to a play.  A couple of years ago, random music on my Google portal decided that I might like the soundtrack to a musical called "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812."  And it was right.  I've had it play from time to time since then - really fun, toe-tapping music.

So I was surprised one morning when my alarm went off  - I still use a 40-year-old clock radio - I was surprised to hear that the musical was going to be performed at the FSU School of Theatre.  Of course I had to go.

How could I not love the idea of a funny, thigh-slapping musical based on Tolstoy's "War and Peace"?  It was brilliantly done.  I just had to be careful not to be That Person - I was familiar with the music, and used to singing along with it when I do dishes.  I'm not sure if the people sitting next to me would want me doing that.

I find it ironic that in a post last month I talked about really making an effort to get out last year, and all that happened was that I got really tired and I wasn't going to push myself like that again.  And yet - three weeks ago I went to the Highland Games and then I went to the theatre.  But it's a difference in attitude.  Last year I was doing it to Put Myself Out There.  I was Going To Meet People.  And when I did go out - to the circuses or symphony - I would find myself looking around, wondering if maybe I would hear some old familiar voice going "Ann?  Is that you?" (Never happened).  There were at least four occasions where I was to be with other people, who didn't show up.

So this year, if I do something, it will be for the sake of the thing, or the event.  No social expectations.

Today is February 27.  One of the hard days.  I wrote about it extensively in 2022.  We were living the the hotel, but coming back to the clinic every day for tests, and whatever he had to have done that day (platelets, blood).  We knew that he was going to be admitted and starting his second chemotherapy on the 28th.  We would have one last night, in the hotel, together in the queen-sized bed, big enough for two.  One last night to cling to each other.  By then he was very sick, very weak, and because his platelets would somehow disappear almost as soon as they were infused, a fall could cause internal bleeding and kill him.  They decided to readmit him immediately.  I remember crying, begging for that one more night.  We didn't get it.  Four years later, it still hurts.

It's my fourth year at the memories rodeo.  I'm trying not to dwell on it.  I work on the barn and the yard.  Work at the museum.  Had a blast at the play (I was lucky that one of my co-workers also went, so I actually had someone to talk to about it).  But it's there, playing in the background.  Gonna be a rough month.

Break Continued; Kalesa Lamps

 "When you lose someone, it creates a hole in the world that lets sorrow in"

(Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay)

Day Three of Taking It Easy.  It's driving me a little bonkers.  I've gotten so much done in the last 4-5 weeks.  And I'm close to what I wanted to accomplish this year ("this year" meaning after it got cool enough to work hard outside, and before it gets too hot again, which here is a pretty narrow window).  But I had to admit that this frenetic gathering and tossing, dragging, loading, unloading literally hundreds of pounds of stuff was taking it's toll on this reluctantly aging body.  And on the days "off" - when I was working at the museum - I was normally doing the cleanup at the farm, which is also pretty heavy duty work.

I am the owner of a Bad Back.  Double scoliosis.  

I know how to listen to my back.  Sometimes I ignore it.  Then I know when to listen to it.  And when I wake up at night, in too much pain to be able to go back to sleep, when I have to get up and walk it off, it's time to listen.  Alas.  Time to rest.  And take ibuprofen on a regular basis.  I don't take it while I'm actively abusing myself (that sounds wrong taken out of context) because I use the pain as a guideline to when I need to back off.  So it's feeling better, but it's annoying.

Yesterday I took advantage of the down time to work on those kalesa carriage lamps that I found.  They were a bit grungy.

To remove the tarnish, I covered them with a paste of vinegar, salt, and flour.

They looked a lot better, but there was still a lot of discoloration.  These were often made with white metal (which is often a tin/copper/whatever alloy) and then a thin plating of brass.  Although they are interesting, they are not "valuable antiques" so I spent some time on one with a toothbrush and some gold wax (similar to Rub &Buff).  I polished it down with a microfiber cloth.  The idea was to still leave some discoloration.  It looks much better; now I need to do the other one.

(The waxed one is on the right - it looks better than the picture.)

I did want to make at least one trash run this weekend, but I split it into two parts: I loaded it yesterday and then took it in today, so I wasn't picking it all up twice in one day.  And I did one barn project.  In the front of the barn was a small cabinet, rather rickety, and no longer holding anything (because I tossed it all).  I wondered how hard it would be just to tear it apart.  The answer?  Not very.  It was rather gratifying; I grabbed the doors and twisted them backwards and just pulled them off.  I was able to pull off the back with just my hands.  The sides took a couple of taps with the small sledge hammer.

The rest of the day was peaceful.  I had, a couple of days ago, burned off some of the scrap wood from the barn, and covered the rest with a tarp.  So today I burned off the rest of it (and that cabinet) which gave me the whole afternoon to sit by the fire and read, just getting up every few minutes to toss on a bit more wood (it was a bit windy today, so I kept the fire small).

And as I sat there, reading, by the fire, listening to the wind in the trees, I thought again just how much I love living here.  I can't imagine not living surrounded by trees.  When Bob thought that he was still coming home, he had promised to himself that no matter how he felt or how long it took, he was going to walk up the driveway.  When Jeff brought me home, I had him drop me off so that I could do that, to honor Bob's wishes.  When I got to the house, I remember saying to Jeff that I had forgotten just how damned beautiful it is here.

Tomorrow I'll be taking another day off, because I'm actually going to the FSU School of Theatre to see a play - Natasha and Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.  It's a musical based on Tolstoy's War and Peace (I'm not kidding).  I'm familiar with the music (it's come up on my random music playing) and like it.  I'll post about that later.

Taking a Break

 "My God, Miss Ann - how have you done this?"

That was Rik looking at the barn today.  He came by for some stuff I had set aside that he could use.  He looked around.  "The last time I was here there were just paths you could walk through."
Now there are wide open areas.  Nothing is stored on the floor any more.  I pointed out what he couldn't see - all the cabinets and drawers (except for the last two) are empty.
So I have two cabinets and one tool chest to go through, and a few more trips to the dump.  I'd like to finish by the end of this weekend, except that I might not.  I forced myself not to do any of it today.

Why?  Because I have been hauling and lifting and dragging hundreds of pounds of stuff, and any day now I'm going to find a note on my pillow from my back reading "I can't handle this any more - I'm leaving."

Here's a sample.  Bob saved anything metal - from old coax cable to rusted jacks.  There was also a large number of rusty tools.  I have taken several loads of metal to the dump - that stuff gets heavy.  The dump is only open three days a week.  In between times I just drag it to the front of the barn.  It got to be quite the stack.  Then serendipity hit on the local FaceBook page: someone posted that they were a scrapper, and would be happy to come by and haul off any metal scrap.  Here's my scrap piled into his trailer.  Remember that I had dragged all of this out of the various recesses in the barn.

There was also an equally huge stack of various lumber, intermixed with wheel rims, ax heads, plexiglass, chunks of drywall and hardie board.  I dragged it all out and sorted it.  The metal will go to Brian (the guy who took the above load).  Plexiglass to the re-use site at the dump. The miscellaneous stuff will go to the dump.  A quite large pile of small wood pieces, pieces with splits or rot, delaminated plywood, etc. got dragged to the burn pit and burned.  All the usable stuff got sorted according to type and size and restacked (neatly).

The end result of all this is that I've been taking a lot of ibuprofen.  I had been having a lot of problem with my left hip anyway (my chiropractor thinks I somehow pulled a piriformis muscle.

So I took today off (swept the deck, baked bread, made a big pot of root vegetable soup, did laundry - but no heavy lifting).  

I also should take a psychological break.  I had a dream a few nights ago and Bob was looking in the barn and going "What the hell?"  I was crying and saying I was so so sorry, but "please try to understand - you died."

But hitting this so hard in the last month has been satisfying and sad, cathartic, giving me a sense of accomplishment but also sadness.  I think it's because it's hitting me that it's coming up four years now.  I've been working on the barn in bits and pieces, but it was always just too overwhelming - yet hanging over my head that I should do something about all of this.  Well, it's almost done.  I feel lighter.

But sore.  Time for ibuprofen and bed.

You Never Know When It Will Hit

 Three trips to the dump today (and can pack a lot into my car).  Then more going through shelves and sorting stuff for at least one more trip this weekend.  Tomorrow morning (hopefully) someone is coming by to pick up scrap metal - some of the big pieces are too heavy for me to heft into the car, and there's buckets and buckets of random scrap, which I could haul to the dump myself but I don't mind someone else doing it.

I got a "gotcha" this afternoon.  I was working through a set of shelves - and found yet *more* reloading stuff, bullets and brass and equipment.  All heavy. This stuff goes to Rik, and he said he'd come by next week and get it so I don't have to haul.  There are more ammo boxes of stuff on top of the top shelf; maybe he'll pull those down too.  On top of those was a large plastic storage bin.  I went up on the ladder, and found it was lightweight so I pulled it down.  I suspected it would be full of empty cat treat containers or small cardboard ammo boxes.  I was prepared for that.

But it held a few smaller plastic boxes, like shoe boxes.  They were lined with thin styrofoam, some of it with carved hollows, and there was bubble wrap and other padding.

Boxes to carry his models.  Bob had a lifetime love of building scale models, and once or twice a year he would go off to conventions, taking few of his models for competition, usually coming home with medals.  Sometimes he would road trip with his modelling buddies.  If none of them were going, then I would go with him, just to keep him company.  Most of the conventions were 3-4 hours away.  That can be a boring drive, both ways, to do on your own.  With someone else, it's fun.  And he knew I could carry my knitting or a book and find a corner to keep myself occupied for a day.  I thought it was funny if I saw him talking to a vendor and would walk over to see what he was looking at.  Sometimes he would be debating between two models, and I'd say "why not just get them both" and he'd get looks from the other modelers of "where on earth did you find her??"

We'd have a lunch date.  One trip it took us three times around the block to find our hotel, but we also spotted a tiny hole-in-the-wall Thai place that had excellent food.  So even though scale models are not my thing, I enjoyed those trips.  Getting to watch him in his element, having a chance to share modelling tips with other modelers, finding obscure tools or after-market parts.  Sharing his excitement, his pleasure.  Conversations on the way home.  Just being together.

All those memories flooding in, just from looking at shoebox, foam, and bubble wrap.

February 15; More Barn Cleaning

 February 15, 2020.  Bob was out of the hospital and we were living in a hotel room. Even though we knew things weren't right, we were still pretending that things were going according to plan, and part of that plan was that Kim was going to come spell me off for a couple of days, taking care of him while I went home.  We both wanted me to go - to be able to see the house, check on the cats, pretend that everything was all right.

My friends Gill, Rob, and Jeff even came up with a plan.  Rather than me driving (they knew that at that point I had been over a month on extremely limited sleep), they said I should ride the Red Coach to Tallahassee (a bus service more upscale than Greyhound) and they would all take me back to Gainesville so that they could see Bob.  So I came home on a Wednesday and they took me back on Saturday.

I loved being home.  I loved being with the cats.  I loved being able to sleep without buzzers or alarms going off and nurses in and out.  And it was the longest two days of my life.  It was all I could do to keep myself from getting in a car the next day and coming back.

But Saturday finally came, and they took me back to Gainesville.  We walked into the hotel room, and I yelled out "Honey!!  I'm home" and I expected him to say "Annie!" and be happy to see me and give me a big hug.

I was not expecting to see his face break, the tears, the reaching for me.  I ran over to him, sat beside him on the bed, rocked him.  He was able to pull himself together enough for a short visit with our friends.  Then they left, as did Kim, and once again I was the one to care for him.

I miss being loved that much.  I miss loving someone that much.

Hence, the barn.  I've gotten a bit obsessive about it.  For the past four years I've gone in from time to time, picked up stuff that had to go, and hauled it off.  But it's always been Too Much.  I sigh, walk out, and it's hanging over my head that I have to do something.  So, about a month ago, I just started.  Pick one spot, maybe one foot of a counter, and deal with what's on there.  Don't overthink.  There are four possibilities:  Keep. Trash. Donate.  Metal (subsection of trash).  That's it.  If I don't know what it is, or what it was used for - it goes.

It's all starting to open up.  I've emptied cabinets and drawers and cupboards and pulled out literal piles of rat's nests (one reason for doing this in the winter - the rat nests aren't occupied, although I did scare the heck out of a little mouse today).  It's been quite the workout - what's leaving (which is most of it) get hauled to the front of the barn.  Then, on weekends it goes into the car, then I had to pull it out of the car and toss it at the dump.  Repeat for many hundreds of pounds of stuff.

I stopped taking before-and-after pictures.  Although I liked seeing the progress and it gave me a sense of accomplishment, it was also seeming somehow disrespectful of Bob ("see how I'm cleaning up his mess?" while patting myself on the back).  He never meant for it to get in this condition.  I'm not erasing him, but perhaps refining a little.  He enjoyed making nichos, strange little art assemblages; I arranged some works in progress on a counter.

He also showed his sense of whimsy by doing things like putting an alien figurine on a bird swing and hanging it from a light.

Today I didn't go through stuff.  I brought the car around and loaded it up for the first run tomorrow (I'll do 3-5 runs to the dump this weekend).  But mostly, I burned.  He saved every scrap of wood, every bit of cut-off from a project, random stuff like broken wooden toilet seats and the blades of ceiling fans.  30 year's worth - it was a lot of scrap wood.  So I got the fire going, and eventually got it all dragged over and burned, along with pickup up some yard trash.

I don't know how long I can keep this obsession going, but it's good.  I'm getting a feeling of accomplishment, and I'm getting really really physically tired, also a good thing.  Get wiped out enough, and there's no tossing and turning at night.

Speaking of which - time to crash.

 

Highland Games; Up and Down Day"

 "If you do not admit kindness from others, you cannot be too surprised when they fail to offer any."
That was just a quote from a book I'm reading (Encyclopedia of Fairies) that struck me.  I think it's because one of the hardest things I find to do is accept help from anyone.  The absolute hardest thing is to ask for it.  I need to upack this thought.

Yesterday was an up-and-down day.  It started with that story that I posted yesterday showing up in my FaceBook feed.  A friend made a comment two years ago when I first posted it; Kim, who stayed with Bob for two days while I came home to check on things and try to wrap my head around the idea that we were fighting a losing battle.  She said that the last conversation she had with him was about me, that I was his everything.

Then I went to the Highland Games.  I was definitely not looking forward to driving there.  I remember it being a hard drive last year.  Well, last year I was going very early to get the booth set up before they opened the gates to the public.  I was on the road at 6:30 a.m., in the dark and the rain.  This year - 10 a.m. and clear and sunny and it wasn't that bad of a drive. Surprise, surprise.

My demonstration was to be at the Heritage Stage; I was the 6th demonstration of the day, so I figured there would be enough people there to make my demo worthwhile and get people to participate.  Well . . . the first five people bailed.  So there had been nothing going on in that area all day, and hence no visitors there.  One of my coworkers came by, and a couple of people who had seen it in the program - but that was it.  So I grabbed the microphone and harangued random passers-by until I had enough people to do it.  So there was only about 8 of us, but we had fun.

Later, I got a meat pie and sat in the sun and enjoyed my lunch and the live music.  But I couldn't help but notice that in all the crowds, I appeared to be the only person that had come by myself.

There were a lot of vendors there, and I treated myself to a new shawl pin (or hair pin)

There was that part of my mind that knew I could get it for about a third of the price on Amazon or Temu - but I had a friendly chat with the vendor, and she's out there trying to make a living.  It's a problem so many people are having now - people are seeing something, decide that they like it - and then go order it.  Later, they complain when the brick-and-mortar stores go out of business and they can't see thing things first any more.

So I watched some games, had my meat pie, enjoyed the music, wandered the vendors, and eventually came home.  I laughed a little at the dinner that I fixed - one of my "fix it in 10 minute dinners," this time some sauteed mixed greens and sesame crusted ahi tuna steak (a special from Aldi) on a bed of brown rice.

Then I got a text from Suzie that Hank the armadillo (the one napping in front of the space heater a couple of posts ago) had died.  He's been having some problems for awhile (which was why he was living in the kitchen) and she had even taken him home with her.  He was just such a goofy little guy; I loved holding his scrambled egg (his favorite food) in my curled up hand so that he would get excited and try to get his nose stuck in there.  And we all enjoyed having him run around the kitchen while we worked.

So an up-and-down day yesterday.  Today I had planned on finishing cutting down that area of underbrush that I've been working on, and then lighting a fire (yard waste and a lot of wood trash from the barn).  But it was pouring down rain today (I really feel sorry for the organizers of the Highland Games - that's two years in a row that one of the days has been rained out).   There are plenty of things that I could do in the house, and I could have worked on the barn.  But somehow staying in my pajamas and cocooning with the cats seemed like a better idea.  I can get back to it tomorrow.
 

Blacksmith and Witch

 This is a short story that floated past on FaceBook a couple of years ago.  It just showed up in my memories today.  It really hits home.

So now to save it to the blog (the format will be a little weird but it's easier than retyping it)

He was my blacksmith.  I was his witch.

Dithering

 I've been dithering today.  Just sort of fluttering around, knowing that I had to get stuff done but somehow not doing it.

I didn't have that much to do.  I just felt that I did.  The Highland games are this weekend, and I'm giving a demo tomorrow.  That was sort of my compromise between not going at all, and going to do a spinning demo for the full two days like I did last year.  Details are in last year's February blog.  Basically, I was fed a line of goods by the volunteer coordinator, who had asked me to participate in a "heritage crafts" tent, with other spinners, knitters, weavers, whatever.  I found out a few days before the event that it was really just going to be her, her daughter, and myself - and then she and her daughter bailed.  So I was scurrying around the last few days beforehand, because suddenly I needed display materials, display stands, and a plan to be solo for two days.  Which meant that I didn't get to go see anything.

So this year I was just going to go as an observer, but I'm the original Girl Who Can't Say No, so I'm doing a waulking demonstration.  It will be fun - you get a group of people to bash around a length of woven cloth while singing slightly off-color songs.

I think the dithering is because there's not much to do, as compared to last year.  I need the piece of woven cloth (which I had because the games got rained out one day last year) and - well - that's about it.  I've had it soaking because it needs to be wet, I have a towel to dry off the table afterwards, and I've been practicing the songs.  It just seems that I should be doing more.

So finally this afternoon I stopped dithering, got out The Beast (my name for the brush cutter) and tackled more undergrowth.  Even with The Beast  it's slow going, because after you cut a swath you have to rake it clear before you go in for the next sweep through.

I worked on another section of the barn this week.  This is the back of the shelving unit that was in the last post.  The before and after shots:

And that entailed another trip to the dump today.  The nice thing is that now that I can actually get to that wall without all the stuff on the floor in the way, I can put The Beast and my weed whacker on those hooks instead of storing them on the floor.

I realize that I am slowly laying claim to the barn.  I never went in there much before; the chicken feed was kept just inside the door, and sometimes I used the chop saw.  I got my own set of tools for the cottage so I didn't have to go searching in there (sometimes I would see something I needed, but couldn't figure out how to get to it).  Mostly I would just look around, shudder a bit, and roll my eyes when Bob said he just wished he had more space.   I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but at least I'll be able to walk around.

Clearing the barn and the underbrush just feels good right now.  I'm facing the anniversaries of the slow realization that Bob's first transplant failed.  I was so helpless to do anything then.  So doing this now gives me some sort of feeling of control. (It also really tires me out so I can get some sleep)