So after the chicken coop fought me in the last post, I walked away for a day. I spent it catching up on stuff in the house that was neglected during The Great Barn clean out -cleaned the bathrooms and the fish tank, swept the deck, baked bread - that sort of thing. Then yesterday I tackled the coop again. Instead of mounting the boards over the coop flat (and where I couldn't reach to fasten it) I shifted the upper one down a little to shingle over the lower one and toenailed it in. Then I screwed through both of them in a few places. It feels pretty sturdy.
Today I worked on a lot of little things. I put hardware cloth over the windows inside the coop. I started going around just pulling on the wire and using either zip ties or fence staples in any area that seemed loose. (As for the fence staples - that's one of those things that sounds good if you say it fast. The reality is that the loose area was where the post is right up against the coop itself, so there was almost no place to swing the hammer, much less get fingers in there to hold the staple. I finally ended up holding the staple in a pair of needle-nosed pliers and then hammering on those. Whatever works, works).
I think I'm almost finished. I still need to finish painting but it might rain tomorrow. That might be a good thing; I still haven't done my taxes.
I'm finding it difficult to stay indoors. I've been doing a lot; I've been energetic and almost hyper. There are a few reasons - it's getting closer to what my friend Los calls The Day, so I can either stay busy or just curl up in a corner and eat Nilla Wafers (I'm still planning on doing that but it's too soon). A lot of it, I think, is Better Living Through Chemistry - I'm taking my antidepressants daily now. Usually I balance them throughout the year. If I hit one of my "troughs," those days where my first thought in the morning is oh-my-God-I-hope-I-can-make-it-through-today and I can't seem to get out of the funk, I'll take them for a week or two until I get back on my feet. But I've been taking them steadily with only a couple of breaks for the last month or so, and I'm getting a little wired. Hyper. I sort of like it, but I also thing I'll wean myself off a bit after The Day.
The other reason for being out is simply because spring is such a beautiful and ephemeral season. We've already had a couple of days where it's been in the 80's, and I'm just not ready for hot weather yet. The azaleas are almost surrealistic.
It's raining tonight, so a lot of those blossoms will be gone by tomorrow. On the other hand, just as a fond farewell, the weather is going to be cool - to - chilly next week so maybe I can get some more yardwork done. I've got almost a month before taxes are due, right? I can do them later (I do this every year - swear I'm going to do them in January and actually do them in April. Part of the reason I dislike it is having to sign in as being single).
Other random stuff. Had a neighborly sort of experience today. Someone posted on the local FaceBook page that they were given a puppy, and did anyone have a carrier she could buy or borrow? I have 6 or 8 extra ones in the barn, so I answered that she was welcome to have one. When she came to get it, she gave me a flat of various seedlings that she had started - tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers. That was nice of her. Of course, I hadn't even thought about doing a garden this year, so getting those planted has been added to the "things to do list."
Finding an old friend, sort of. There was a woman's blog (Sarah Swett) that I followed for many years - she's a tapestry weaver, and makes funky clothes, draws watercolor cartoons, twist cordage out of any plant that happens to by lying around or makes odd sculptures out of willow stems. Before that, in the 90's, she sometimes wrote articles for Spin-Off magazine. Back in Fall 2021, though, she said it was time to move on to other things and finished the blog. I suspected what the "other things" were; she had mentioned from time to time that her husband had pancreatic cancer.
I just recently found out that she started another blog almost a year ago (she had sent out notifications to her followers but my email had changed). Her posts are still quirky and fun - but, as I had feared, also sprinkled with the challenge of being a widow. So I feel a kindred spirit. I wrote a comment with my condolences, and mentioned that I would always laugh at something she mentioned in a Spin-Off article many years ago, that he referred to her indigo dyebath as "The boiling pisspot of science." She wrote me back that is was such bliss to be reminded of that.
I understand that. I know that sometimes people don't mention Bob because they're afraid that it will remind me that he's gone. It's the opposite - I love it when other people think of him. At one of the museum parties when I was talking to a woman I hadn't seen since The Day and let her know that Bob was gone, she pointed to a bench and said "I remember sitting on that bench and talking to him." I loved that she carried that memory of him. My friend Los told me of a time that he was talking with Bob when he came to pick me up, and Bob for some reason had a little matchbook car in his pocket and Los was fascinated and they talked about it for awhile. I love those little glimmers that people still carry of bit of Bob with them, and glad that I could give a glimmer like that to someone else.
And now it's late, and as Samuel Pepys used to end his diary entries, "and so to bed." Tomorrow - if it's not raining I'll work on the coop, and if it is I might get my taxes done.
Addendum : Hamish just wandered over, and as he didn't get to be in the last set of pictures I snapped one for today.
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