December Ramblings

 Well, that two weeks sort of slipped by.  What's up?
Pretty much recovered from the Covid, except for the damned cough.  I've always done this - any time I get a cold, or the flu, or whatever, I cough for 4-6 weeks afterwards.  So annoying.

Having the usual post-adventure doldrums.  One gets excited preparing for the trip, takes the trip (which I still don't believe I climbed down into that silo), comes home - and that's about it.  Back to answering the question of "what did you do today" with "not much."

I had a birthday.  Didn't make a big deal out of it (I rarely do; after all, it's also the anniversary of my mother's passing, and I do miss her).  I roasted some vegetables and a Cornish game hen for dinner, because I like being barbaric and ripping apart that little carcass with my fingers.

And of course Christmas is coming up.  It's a holiday that we never really got into.  We gave up the idea of a tree after we started collecting cats.  And somehow we never saw the point in putting up decorations for a couple of weeks and then taking them back down again.  But to show willing, I did put bows on the gargoyles and dragon and stuck a Santa Claus hat on my wendigo helm.

For some reason Bob never wanted to let me put the bows on the gargoyles - but now I can.

I've started work on making a Welsh Christmas Horse - more on that later.  And I tackled a job that I've been putting off for a month (although part of that procrastination was taking the trip and being sick).  One set of light switches in the cottage died - made some crackling sound, the overhead light flickered, and that was that.  I hoped that it was only that the light switches needed replacing - and I bought some.  And there they sat for awhile, because I've never done anything like that, and electricity scares me (as it should).  But the instructions seemed fairly straightforward, so I turned off the power and unscrewed the switches.  And then was stumped for a moment because all the instructions were about which colored wire would attach to which colored screw - and I was looking at just black wires.  I decided that it was the relative position of the wires that was important, so I tagged them with masking tape, got the old switches off, the new ones wired it, and everything put back together.  Finally came the moment of truth - I flipped the power back on, and nothing exploded.  Then I cautiously flipped on the switch, using a wooden ruler - and lo! I had light!

Yes, of course, I could have just hired an electrician to come do it - but where's the sense of satisfaction in that?

I even socialized.  A couple of people from the museum were going to have dinner with the former head keeper and former vet, and invited me.  I almost dodged - mainly because I really hate driving at night.  But I have also realized that I can't complain about never getting invited to anything if I never accept invitations.  So I'll give it a 50/50 - it was a pleasant dinner, but it was still about a 45 minute drive in the dark each way.  But I did it!

The second social was much closer - I found out that there was going to be a book discussion at the library - bring a book and talk about it.  The library is only about 5 minutes away.  About a half-dozen people showed up, and we chatted for an hour.  It turns out that it's a regular book club that meets once a month, so I'll probably start going now.

I had two choices for today for going out - Adrianne's medieval group was having their Yule festival, and the museum was having its Farm Days, and I thought about taking my spinning wheel and demonstrating.  But I did neither - because of this damned cough.  I can suppress it for about an hour, but I have to be careful not to talk much (both at dinner and at the book club I could mostly listen).  But more than an hour - or talking - and the uncontrolled hacking starts.  And I'm a little self-conscious about coughing a lot in public (and it hurts after awhile).

Instead, I tackled this winter's Big Project:  I want to go down to the stream.  There's a stream that loops around the lower 5 acres of the property, and it's been 6 years since I've been down there.  Hurricane Michael trashed our yard, and also Lord only knows how many dozens of trees fell in the woods.  By the time we got the yard picked up, the weather had turned hot and Bob had gotten diagnosed and, well, I've been dealing with other stuff since then.

But I want to see if the stream is still there (I assume so) and if I can clear a path around the loop again.  We used to enjoy wandering down there.  When we first moved here, there was an ornate (but non-working) wrought iron lamp post lying behind the barn.  We carried down and erected it in the woods (a nod to Narnia).  We used to let the goats and sheep follow us down for walks.  It was pleasant to go lean against a tree and read, or sling a hammock and take a nap.  Often we would light a little fire and roast hot dogs.  Sometimes we would spread out a blanket and get frisky al fresco.   We even named some of the areas, like Squeaky Frog Pond, and a rather twisty area we called Shelob's Lair.  I just want to go there again.

It's going to be a helluva lot of work, and I very likely won't get all the way around this year.  But I should at least get down to the stream.  And the only way to do it is to start.  I headed out to where the path used to be.

After a couple of hours, I was about 40 feet in - rather impressed with myself!  And then, of course, I had to drag all the cuttings over to the burn pile.  This is going to take awhile.

So I've been a little busy (and will continue - I'm working extra shifts over the break, and at some point soon I'm going to have a root canal done - oh joy).  More to come.