Untethered

 I've been feeling oddly untethered.  Sort of free floating.

For the past almost 2.5 years, I've been doing the online Conquerer walking challenges.  They're fun, and have motivated me to get off my backside and move.  You pick a challenge - say, to do a Day of the Dead walk in Mexico, or hike Hadrian's wall in England. You pick a time frame-which will tell you how many miles a day you have to log.  When you finish, they send you a quite nice medal (actually enameled metal).   I did two walks of only about a hundred miles each, one at 180, and then a big one (around Iceland) of 830 miles.  Then I decided for the really big one - the 1084 miles from Land's End to John o' Groats in England.

In my previous walks I set my goal at 1.5 miles a day, 7 days a week.  Honestly, easily achieved.  For this one, I upped it to 2.5 (2.6 actually, to get the math right).  I had 424 days to do it, and it did in in 400.  I also learned that getting that extra mile a day turned into a real slog.  I don't like wearing anything in bracelet form, nor did I want to buy anything just for this, so I let the Fit app on my phone count my steps.  That meant that I got a little (a little?  More like totally) obsessive about keeping my phone on me at all times, even just in the house.  I could also enter steps manually - for instance, I know that from the house to the chicken coop  round trip is 150 steps, so if I ran out to check for eggs and forgot the phone I could enter it manually.  But it got to the point that if I checked on the chickens, then realized that they needed water, I had to count the steps from the coop to the faucet and back so I could enter those too.  I would get annoyed with myself if I ran out to put something in the car, and then realize that I hadn't picked up the phone.

But it's done, and I'm free.  But it's feeling a little strange not to have my phone in my pocket all the time, and just leave it on the table.

I'm also floating because March 30 has come and gone.  That weird feeling of living in 48 years simultaneously, while leaving the last 6 years blank, has gone.  I'm back to being just me now.  But I remember how I was floating the first couple of weeks of April 2020.  I had been three months living in the goldfish bowl that was the hospital room. I wasn't even supposed to use the bathroom in the room - that was for Bob only.  I had to go to the public bathroom outside of the ward.  That was a little embarrassing at 3:00 a.m., wandering down the hall in my jammies with everybody knowing where I was going.
Then, suddenly, I was back here, alone in the woods.  I could use either bathroom. I had a kitchen to cook in.  I had total freedom (well, as much as anyone could in those first days of the Covid shutdown).  I damn near exploded from all that pressure suddenly being gone (I think I did a few times.)

I'm also feeling untethered because my ring is still at the jeweler's (I had hoped they would be done by now).  I'm having the setting removed so I can just wear it as a plain band.  When I first had to stop wearing it (and before I took it to the jeweler) I would sometimes at home slip it back on just because my hand felt too strange without it.  Even now, almost a month later, I can still feel it (or feel it's absence) like some amputees still have the ghost limb syndrome.  Heck - I can even see the ghost ring.  The indentation in my finger, and the faint scarring from wearing a ring there for 54 years.

Soon, I hope, soon.

Cat news.  RedBug lived under the bed for two months after his amputation.  After that, he stayed in the bedroom for another month or so.  Finally, in February, he started venturing a few feet out, and by now he's back to his old normal self, even managing to get up on the cat shelf.

Such a relief.  I was hoping that I hadn't saved his life, only to have him always be afraid to come out in the open.

As he emerged back into the house, Hamish started acting up.  It was sort of to be expected; he and RedBug have never gotten along and Hamish probably enjoyed being the only boycat.  And the more Redbug emerged - laying on the couch, snuggling with me, getting on the shelf - the more Hamish acted up.  He seemed stressed/agitated.  Would walk around the house meowing (very annoying at night).  Even more annoying - to the extreme - he started spraying a lot, everywhere.  That got old really fast.  I tried not to get angry, thinking this was just jealousy.  I gave him a lot of attention, played with him, gave him treats.  But he just wouldn't settle.

Then it hit me.  Acting up.  Acting stressed.  Behaving badly.  Meowing a lot.  And the kicker - ate like crazy but not gaining any weight.  I ran him to the vet and asked to get his thyroid tested.  Yep-crazy high.  Fingers crossed that the meds to get that under control will help settle him down.

A few posts ago I mentioned seeing a friend and coming home with a spinning wheel and a ridiculous amount of alpaca. That huge bag turned out to also have a tanned sheep hide, and a sheep fleece which I inspected and then tossed in the ditch for erosion control.  That still left about 20 pounds of alpaca to sort, skirt, and wash.  I'm still not done - I think the stuff is breeding in that bag.  To give an idea of the amount, this is about 2 pounds after washing, laying out to dry.

I had an oddly meta moment this week.  The library is having its annual comic con in August, and their theme this year is sea monsters and mermaids.  It might be time to make another puppet.  I was perusing Pinterest for sea monster ideas. I came across a series of pages that looked very much like some books that I own on mythical creatures and dragons.  In theory they are made for kids, but I love them.  The pages are sepia and look worn, the writing is cursive, and there are a lot of fun things like envelopes that you can open to read letters.  These pages were of fantastical sea creatures.

If you're lucky on Pinterest, the poster will show links to the original pieces.  No such luck here.  I checked the two publishers that I know do this sort of book (Spiderwick Press and Candlewick Press).   I was getting determined - I *really* wanted to add this book to my collection.  Google Lens didn't help.  So finally I turn to my chatbot; I showed it a couple of the pages and asked if it could find the source.  What I got back was "I really hate to disappoint you, but those images are AI generated.  There is no book."

There is something very surreal for an AI to be apologizing for something that is AI generated.

That about sums up the past week.  April is filling up- there's a play I want to see, I have to get my dexa and mammogram (oh joy), the museum is having the annual volunteer party, and I have to try to find someplace to get my oil changed and the car checked out.  The last makes me sad - for 21 years I took my car (first the old Honda and now the new one) to the dealership, and had no problem.  But they've gotten sloppy - year before last they broke the clips on my hubcaps (they replaced the two that fell off - the other two I've got held on with zip ties) and last year they caught the underskirting of the car on the lift and ripped it loose - and then got annoyed with me when I pointed out that it was dragging on the ground and insisted that they repair it.  So that long relationship is over.

And so (in the words of famous diarist Samuel Peeps) to bed.