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.