Yet Another Ramble

 My brain is going all over the place, so time for another disgorge. 

My last post I mentioned that I was stressed out because RedBug was having surgery on his leg in a couple of days.  Didn't happen.  In the week between the time his surgery was first scheduled (due to a glitch in the matrix, no one was available to do surgery that day) and last Friday, the lump got big enough that the vet didn't feel she could do it and it needed an actual surgeon (there isn't much spare skin on a leg to be able to cover a big hole.)  I went a little crazy then, because I started calling vet hospitals and the nearest time I could get was three weeks out - and the longer the wait, the more complicated the surgery.  Dr. Farmer was able to call around to find a surgeon who can do it tomorrow (fingers crossed).  At least I'm the only one stressed; it doesn't seem to bother him at all.

I did get my teeth cleaned, and nothing conclusive on the crown.  I live with it until it gets too loose or painful and then we do something.  Sigh.

Another weird random Twilight Zone thing.  I'm reading a book (library book club - The Lost Story) that references the Chronicles of Narnia a lot.  So of course a question about Narnia comes up on Jeopardy.  Sometimes I think Jeopardy spies on me.

I had a funny flashback this week.  I was refilling the jar of red pepper flakes that I keep by the stove, and suddenly remembered the strange morning when I got out of bed and wandered to the kitchen to find Bob standing by the sink, stark naked, crying into his underwear.  I thought he had finally gone off the deep end.

There was a logical explanation.  The day before he had ground up his collection of homegrown dried peppers and put them into canning jars on the counter.  That morning when he got up (and, as usual, just put on his jockeys), he saw them, picked them up, and put them in the cabinet.  Then he yawned and rubbed his eyes - and there had been pepper dust on the outside of the jars.  So suddenly he's blind and in pain and he knew his underpants were clean because he had just put them on (and he was too blinded to be able to hunt for a towel) so he took them off, ran cold water over them, and was wiping his eyes when I came in.  It makes sense, right?

I got a helluva scare last Sunday.  There is a glass door (with a screen door) in my bedroom going onto the back deck.  At 1:00 a.m. I was awoken by something shaking the door.  Naturally, I panicked and froze.  It was too dark to see anything; all I could do was sit there and listen to random shaking.  I finally got up and tiptoed out of the bedroom so I could peek out the sliding glass door from the den.  It was that stupid opossum Maytag, who had managed to crawl through a rip in the screen door and then get himself stuck between the screen and the door.  Idiot animal.  I thought about finding a recipe for possum fricassee. 

He must have read my mind, because he disappeared into the wild a few days later.

Being possum free only lasted a few days.  Someone who works at the museum brought in a baby they found in their yard.  Poor thing was in bad shape - totally covered in hundred of fleas, and drained to the point that his gums, nose, and paws were dead white.  And fly strike.  A vet once told me that flies know death, and will lay their eggs.  I didn't know how much of a chance he would have, but at least I wasn't going to let him die like that.  He came home to get a good bath and then snuggled into a heating pad.  They're tough little animals.  He's still not eating on his own, but he'll take some formula out of a syringe.  Poor little guy - he gets active and squirming while I'm holding him to feed - and that exhausts him to the point that he just collapses when I lay him down again.  But he's on his second day, still alive, so he has a chance.

My bouncy brain has suddenly gone from no fun/artsy project to several going on at once.  I'm knitting a silk lace shawl, combing wool and spinning for the Dark Academia shawl (and just got some silk to go with that).  I found a place online where you could get a file to 3D print a mold to make medieval style spindle whorls (how's that for a clash of technologies?).  Of course the guy who could print them for me lives waaaaaay on the other side of town, because that's how it works.  I've played around with some air-dry clay.  They need a bit of refining - but I'll have fun painting or carving on them.

The potential gargoyle puppet is on the back burner at the moment while I (as the Brits put it) have a think.  In the meanwhile I'm making a potential head for a wendigo puppet.  Much as I do enjoy foamsmithing, I'm trying to work with plastics less, so this one is so far made with a recycled cereal box and hot glue.  Honestly - it's a lot harder to work with than EVA foam.  Eventually paper mache will be added.

I'm also trying to learn how to use Milanote, a web app that lets you organize your projects,with a place to put notes, pictures, mood boards, etc.  I'll see how that goes - I'm just not very tech savvy.

And one more project that just happened to me.  Ten or twelve years ago, we asked a carpenter friend to build us a coffin to use on the haunted trail.  Bit of a mistake asking a skilled woodworker to do that  - he did a beautiful job, using some red oak he had on hand.  It was way overbuilt for our purpose and weighed a ton.  If it had been cobbled together of, say, recycled pallet wood, we would have just had a bonfire after the Howl (we had very limited storage space).  As it was, we brought it home.  I had space for it, standing upright, in the cottage.  I wanted shelves it in to use for a bookcase.  That took nagging Bob quite a bit (the old adage comes to mind that if a man says he'll do something, he'll do it.  You don't have to keep nagging him every six months).  But it eventually got done.

So a few days ago, I go to the cottage, and my first thought was that my poltergeist is back because there are books all over the floor.  I discovered that the cleats holding one of the shelves had given way (and the falling books had knocked a cleat loose on the shelve below it).  Sigh.  I piled the books on the table and reviewed the situation.  I had to wonder just what he was thinking?  Maybe he didn't want to risk going all the way through the sides of the coffin/bookcase, or maybe he was just using the screws he had on hand, but the screws went only about a quarter inch into the wood.  I'm surprised they held this long.
I opted not to use cleats, but instead cut up a dowel into pegs, drilled holes, and pounded the pegs in to hold the shelves.  Of course now I need to wipe down and resort the books before I put them back up.

But this brought me to yet another personal identity crisis (as in "who the hell am I?").   Why had I nagged Bob to do this for me? Obviously I can do it.  But that was a dozen years ago.  Dealing with wood was his job, not mine.  But it goes a little deeper than that:  the wood stash, saw, screws, and drill were his. (Perhaps one of the reasons we could live together so well for so long is that we left each other's stuff alone).   But now they're mine, so I got the job done.

I always had my own set of tools.  I've since added to them with things like my lawnmower, brush cutter, and chainsaw.  I had one of my odd thoughts when I was cutting up the downed tree that was in the way.  After he was diagnosed, and at first we thought he'd have to go in the hospital here for a couple of months for his preliminary chemo, we talked about me keeping up the yard.  He showed me how to use the riding lawnmower (which I found I disliked and eventually got rid of it), and bought the heavy-duty battery weed whacker.  But looking back - I wonder how he felt, knowing that I would be there alone, doing his jobs.  Did that part bother him?  Or was worrying about the yard rather low on his list of concerns?  I'll never know.

When I first came back from Gainesville, it was one of my concerns.  I wondered how long I could still live out here.  Could I manage this?  I know how exhausted he would get taking care of the land, and he was so much stronger than I.
Turns out that I'm doing just fine.  We have different ways of working.  He would go out after a month or six weeks (we do let the place go "rustic"), then go work for four or five hours, and be wiped out.  I didn't know if I could handle it.

But my way of working is to grab the weed whacker/brush cutter/lawnmower and work for an hour (in the summer, maybe a half-hour).  Do just one section (you can get a surprising amount done in even a half hour).  Just nibble away in bits and pieces.   He, of course, had to "do it first thing."  I might wander out at 6 or 7 if an afternoon breeze has picked up.  It's even enjoyable, because I'm not too tired to look and feel my sense of accomplishment.

But I really wish the weather would a) cool off, and b) stop raining so much, because my burn piles are getting really big.  Maybe next month.  

That got long winded.  I had a lot to dump.  I should go sort some more books.