Flirty Owl, Bug in the Sun, Another Big Project

 I didn't go to the circus.
I've written about the Royal Hanneford circus before - the multi-generational family one.  I first went in 2023.  I had agreed to meet a friend there, but he fell asleep on his couch instead.  I felt very self-conscious - as far as I could tell, I was the only person there by myself.  But I eventually realized that no one else noticed, or cared.
In 2024 I went by myself, no worries.  Same for 2025.
But this year they caught me a little off-guard.  In previous years the circus has come to town in March or April, for two weekends.  This year it was the first week in January, for just one weekend.  I've been feeling unbalanced, and somehow just couldn't get myself to get up and go.  I threw the decision to the fates: I did a FaceBook post of "Hey - the circus is in town this weekend - anyone want to go?"  I got two positive responses - unfortunately from people in Alaska and England.
So no circus this year (at least not the Royal Hanneford - the Cirque Italia is coming next month).

Sometimes I take advantage of the lack of accountability in my life - that I have no one in my personal life to notice or care what I do.  I wrote last time of losing my tooth.  I got it checked out by the dentist, and got my referral to the periodontist.  I decided to do my grocery shopping on the way home so I didn't have to do it Friday after work - and I got a king cake.  I love those things.  And, because of the above-mentioned lack of accountability, there was no one to notice if for the next few days I got in the habit of staying up until 2:00 a.m., eating king cake (yes, one person can eat an entire king cake in 3.5 days) and flipping aimlessly through YouTube.  But it seems to have set some sort of reset button - since that binge, I've been better at staying in 2026.

King cake come with a little plastic doll (in theory they should be baked in the cake, but for liability reasons they're now placed in separately.)  Because of this annual indulgence, I now have three little dolls.  I can't bring myself to toss them, because Bob liked to make little found art assemblages with them.  Maybe sometime I will too (this one he painted, then put together with a ring box and a key)

 

I'm still knitting on the Forest Walk shawl.  Five panels done, four to go.  It's cold right now but by the time I'm done it will be too hot to wear it.  But it's more of a process than a product thing.  It's particularly pretty just piled up on my lap while I'm working.

Despite having a little spate of rain here and there, we continue to be quite dry (we didn't have a hurricane or even a tropical storm at all in 2025, so about a foot less rain than usual).  Lakes and ponds are way down.  But I rather like the very eerie effect of the cypress trees with their enlarged trunks exposed - very Jurassic Park.  This is also where quite often a deer will pick their way through the trees to come to me, adding to the otherworldly effect.

I had a cute flirtation at work.  It's courtship season for birds of prey, so our great horned owl Wilbur has been hooting at us like crazy (he was hand raised, so somewhat human imprinted).  When I went in to clean, he was standing right at the door, madly hooting, very excited, and showing off his dead rat -"see what a good hunter I am??"  (I did not tell him that I knew we had given him that rat, already dead, for the dinner the day before.  These days he's more likely to save his food and show it off rather than eating it).  I was too much in the moment to take a picture, but it was quite cute.  When I went in, he flew off to his nest box, turned his back on me, and buried the rat in the leaves.  At first I took this as a bit of an affront (No rat for you!) but actually that's part of the courtship - showing that you are a good provider, and have a cache.

I finally got started on this winter's outdoor project.  After Hurricane Michael in 2018, we had 20+ downed trees.  Over the next few months we got them cut up, split, and stacked.  Bob laid down about a 30 foot length of cinder blocks, with metal fence stakes between them about every 3-4 feet, the wood piled up between them.  We used up some of it and gave some away, but most of it has still been sitting there (there were plastic covers but they often blew off in storms).  It has become something of an eyesore - a long length of bug infested rotting wood.

The wood (and the cutting stand in front) is now gone - I had hoped to burn it as I hauled it, but punky wood burns at a rather leisurely pace so the rest is piled by the burn pit for future fires. 

I do like fires - and I especially like taking breaks to sit beside them and read.  But there were also memories of the two of us working so hard to clear up the acres of wood debris after the storm.  Usually if we ever had one or two trees down, we'd cut and split by hand - he with a sledge and maul, me with my wood splitter.  But 20 trees?  We went into town and rented a hydraulic wood splitter - and that was a fun bit of kit.  We'd put in a chunk of tree trunk, press a button, and wham! Split into four to be gathered and stacked.  We had to make ourselves slow down a little  - we were hoofing it to try to keep up with the thing (and kept thinking of the song "John Henry.")  Now I was sitting by that hard-won wood, rotted and burning.

 Back to the former wood storage: all but 5 stakes have been pulled up to be bundled - I'll keep a few, just in case, and the rest can go to the reuse center at the dump.  That doesn't sound like much - but in order to get to the stakes I had to move the wood first, then pry up the now-buried cinder blocks on each side.  The stakes have a wide flange at the bottom, and in many cases roots had grown around them, so it was a bit of work to loosen and pull them.  I was going to push through and finish - but my back was giving me signals and I know when to listen to it.  In fact - after three days of working on this project, I decided that I should take today off.  The next big step will be to dig out all those cinder blocks and stack them somewhere - but that will have to be spread out over a bit of time.  

I got a reward for all that hard work.  When I came in side for a nature break, RedBug was lying in a patch of sun in the den.  I realize that doesn't sound like much, but it was only about three weeks ago that he stopped staying under the bed 24/7 and starting sleeping on top of it.  This is the first time he's left the bedroom.

So at the moment I'm on a somewhat even 2026 keel.  I imagine that I'll come and go - but after 6 years, I know that's the rhythm.  Tuesday was rough, and I just let it be - it was Bob's birthday.  I went to work - quite cold for Florida, 25 when I got there and still under 40 when I left.  I treated myself to a bowl of Pho for lunch - but as I sat there with my hot soup and pot of tea and my book, I just felt so terribly alone.  I wish I could have met him for a birthday lunch. (Which probably led into my throwing myself into hauling wood - hard work helps).