Hard Shelled House Guest

I've got four of these little guys sitting in a box in the guest room.  They were hatched at the museum and have been living there (they're about a year old now) but now they need to be released so I've brought them home to the swamp.  The next couple of nights are still going to be chilly, though, so I'll wait a couple of days.

Having them around reminded me of Bob's Great Turtle Adventure last year--which went unnoted because that's when the blog was in haitus.  Last June he found a disturbed turtle nest just outside the barn--where we sometimes have to drive one of the cars or the jeep.  Normally we just protect nests when we find them, but this was in a bad place.  Moving turtle eggs is tricky--just handling them can kill the proto-turtles inside.  But he carefully as possible moved them to a bucket of dirt that we put on the back deck.  And he cared for that bucket of dirt, day after day, week after week, eventually month after month--checking it, misting it to keep it moist, moving it so it was warm but not too hot.  Normally eggs hatch around August.  Which came and went, as did September.  One day in October we were out for most of the day, and talking in the car about that bucket, and saying that it was just about time to give it up.  We came home; I put some stuff away and then went out to see him on the deck, sitting and looking at the bucket of dirt that he had cared for, with an odd look on his face.

Because it was filled with baby turtles.

The miracle had happened--12 of the 15 eggs survived to produce wee turtles.

Then came the hard part.  After months of caring for that bucket of dirt that turned into a bucket of tiny turtles -- he let them go.  That's how it works in nature--they're on their own from the first moment.  He gave them a head start--they didn't get eaten as eggs (the most common fate) or upon hatching.  We gave them a day to get used to being out and around, and then took them down to an eddy in the stream and watched them slide into the water and paddle off in their 12 different directions.

Chairs with a View

We have a back deck on the house, off grade, with a lovely view of the woods.

  Most of the deck has been wired in for the use of whatever animal needs a little TLC (say, a sick chicken) or my various fosters (squirrels, opossums).  Otherwise it's for the use of the cats.  But a wee bit is for us.

But I don't spend much time out there.  It was sort of an area for general purpose dumping of whatever temporarily needed a home (OK,  I'll confess.  Mostly for fleeces I can't resist buying, even though I have enough fiber to keep me spinning for an unnaturally long life.)  I am putting this in past tense because I did clean it all up about two years ago when we had the house repainted, with the intention of having a sitting area for a cup of tea and a book.

Two years, and the sitting area hadn't happened.  What I needed was a place to sit.  I had a folding wooden chair out there, but it hits my back just in the wrong spot.  But my problem is that I'm really really bad at spending money on anything (except, it seems, for fleece and fiber).  When I do buy something, I want a certain degree of excitement over it, not "meh, it'll do."   So for two years I looked at outdoor furniture, and for two years I went "meh."  Especially since unless you go for plastic the stuff's pretty expensive.

Finally I spotted it.  At a new pop-up thrift store next to the gas station where we sometimes get a hamburger (don't judge--they make good burgers).  Two metal chairs and a love seat.   A style you used to see on front porches everywhere--so I don't know if I should call them "vintage," "retro," "old fashioned,"  or just "dated."   But I love the look, they're quite comfortable, and the price was certainly right.

Of course, they needed a bit of love (like a few hours with a pressure washer, wire brush, scraper, and a couple of cans of spray paint.)

But no table.  I was resigning myself to a couple of years of looking at "meh, it'll do" tables and not getting one when I remembered that stuck in a closet were a couple of sheesham  wood tables (which I liked well enough to keep but didn't really have any place to put them).  Dug one out, cleaned it up, and voila!  My sitting area!

Now to get that book and cup of tea.  Fast.  Here--the time between "uh, it's only 50 degrees and a little chilly to be sitting in a metal chair" and "ugh--it's 85 degrees and the biting flies and mosquitoes are driving me crazy" is about three days.  Better enjoy them while I can.

Except . . . sigh.  I have often discussed with my friend Gill that I lack the "clean gene."  Other people seem to be able to clean--I just uncover more dirt.  So, sitting in my chair with my tea and book, I found I had to keep my gaze up to that lovely view.  Because right in front of me is the low wall of the deck.  Where we have the squirrel feeder (after I release my baby squirrels I of course forever put food out for them.  Where the squirrels run back and forth.  Uncontrolled, unhousebroken squirrels.  I couldn't help but notice that what was supposed to be a khaki tan wall was, well, sort of a streaky brown.  So out came the bucket and cleaning towel and magic eraser and *then* tea and book.  No--I'm not posting a before picture--it was sort of gross.

Odd Coincidence: Tablet

I was reading the Neil Gaiman short story "The Truth is a Cave in the Mountain."

Near the beginning, a strange wee man approaches a crofter's house, seeking a guide to a mystical cave in the mountain.

Sensing something supernatural, the crofter tells his young son to go inside:

"Calum, go back to the house."
"But da --"
"Tell your mother I said she was to give you some tablet.  You like that. Go on."

Expressions crossed the boy's face--puzzlement, hunger, happiness--and then he turned and ran back to the white house.


Hmmmm-- tablet?  When I think of tablet, it's this:

The current generation thinks of this:

Previous generations might have thought of this:

But, in general, it's something to write on ("quick, my tablet.  'Tis meet I write it down.")

On the other hand, it can be a pill.

Neither seemed to fit in with the context of the story.  I assumed it was something to eat, put it in the back of my mind to look up, finished the story, probably read another one, did other stuff, and forgot about it.

For two days.  Then, I was perusing Pinterest--that source of all things random.  There, amidst the pictures for tightening your butt, keeping the house from smelling of cat pee, how to make a salad in a mason jar, and steampunk costume--was a recipe for Scottish Tablet (did I mention the story takes place in Scotland?)

Apparently it's a cooked milk sweet, similar to the Latin dulce de leche.  (Combine milk, butter, sugar, and condensed milk and cook it down.  Sounds sweet enough to make your teeth curl)

In the back of my mind, I was hearing the theme music of "Twilight Zone."  Seriously--what are the chances that I would hear this obscure term twice in two days?

Now I want to make some.  And maybe write about it.  On a tablet.

And The Year Winds Down

Weird.  I was looking at the list of my posts and noticed that this one was still labeled "draft."  So although I wrote it in December I'm just now posting it.  Better late than never?  (Now that I've reread it I think it's because I stopped to take a picture of the finished project and never came back)

I was thinking about trying to catch up with 2018 before 2019 started--but that's two days to do 11 months so might not happen.  And it's really hard to remember what you did in a year.  As well as getting out of the habit of writing, I also got out of the habit of taking pictures.

So I looked back at my last post for 2017--with not so much resolutions as goals.  Some of them remain untouched--but glory be!  We did one!  The Den!

Some people are house proud.  They design their houses, choose the right furnishings and accessories, have a home they can show off.  Bob and I tend more to just sort of camping out, using whatever happens to be handy.  Over the last few years we've been making some improvements (like getting new countertops in the kitchen and painting the cabinets. and dumping the junk in front of the barn and putting in the carport).  The den had sort of random furniture shoved in willy-nilly--much of it Walmart pressboard which was supposed to be temporary but became permanent (because, honestly, entertainment centers don't excite me enough to spend a couple of thousand dollars on one).  Our shelf of DVDs and CDs had been on a shelf above the TV--then when we got the big screen they sort of became *behind* it and to find one you had to get a footstool so you could look over the top of the TV.

In the back corner there was the so-called "vet center" where anything animal-related and a lot of things not animal related piled up.  To get to it you had to squeeze behind a chair.

No, there are no "before" pictures.  I don't want to admit that a couple in their sixties live like frat boys.

First, as always, came the culling.  I wrote quite a bit about that last year, and it continues.  One just tends to gather things over the decades and then it's so much work to go through the pile.  But we did.  We have a lot of first-aid gear--but I decided that between us we have four arms so we don't need any more arm slings than that.  I have only one right wrist that acts up sometime so how did I get three braces?  It's just such a slog, but we slogged on.

Other things were harder--sentimental.  We don't even have a record player anymore, and we really don't listen to music that much, but we still had about four shelf feet of records. Moody Blues from high school.  60's rock.  A Nutcracker Suite that was my favorite Christmas record when I was a kid. The problem with things like that is that you really can't bring yourself to toss them in a dumpster.  And hey!  Some of them might be valuable.  Those we finally bundled up and took to Vinyl Fever (a vintage record store) and told them to take them.  Flush with success, we did the same thing to our weeded-out DVDs (those went to a video lounge).

In the meantime, we looked at entertainment centers.  Meh.  Then one day we were in Home Depot and this was on a deep discount sale:

I don't know who called whose bluff, but there's our new TV stand.  It's the right height, it's got a ton of storage, and it ever has a power strip for charging our various devices.

After that, the rest fell into place.  I had told Bob that if I could have the corner where the vet center had been for my spinning supplies, he could have its previous spot for a new gun safe.  With those two in place, we could then build some shelving (black pipe, keeping with what seems to be an industrial theme, with burned wood shelves) complete with a bespoke niche for a spinning wheel.

Oh--and I got bored with the plain white lampshades in that room and steampunked them:

The finished lineup:

And yes, we kept one section at the end of the shelf clear because there is usually a cat on it.  We bow to the inevitable.

So one goal for 2018 at least was met.  The rest?  To be continued . . .

Another One Bites the Dust

I do my best (and actually usually succeed) to take a daily walk around our property.  I worked it out that three laps around equals a mile (I have no idea if it really does.  I just counted the number of steps to walk around and calculated at 30 inches per step, so maybe.  Does it matter, as long as I get outside and walk?)

This daily walk was disrupted by Hurricane Michael (aka The Storm).  I literally could not find the path because everything was knee-deep in what used to be the tree canopy, and there were trees down over much of it.  Three months later, we got the last loop of the path cleared.

Until last week, when another tree hit the ground.

We've been keeping an eye on it.  It was in a group of 3-4 trees that came down behind the house, still sort of upright but leaning.  The lean was parallel to the house, so it wouldn't hit if it came down, and with the tangle of other trees it would have been too dangerous for the tree guys to try to take it down.

The root end of the group of trees.

  The one that just fell is the one going across the picture

--the root ball is hidden in the underbrush

So we just let it stay there.  But recently it started popping and cracking and slipping a bit.  Then one night I went outside to call for one of the cats.  With a sound and feeling hard to describe--cracking and rending and swooshing  (picture the old Batman sounds--BAM!  SWOOSH!  THUD!)  it came down.  I was about 20 feet away and could feel it hit the ground.  I yelled--I like to think I was using colorful language, but I just wasn't that coherent.  It was like all that energy had to be released from me somehow.  We paced the tree out--over 100 feet tall.  That's a lot of power when it comes down.

We wondered why it fell when it did.  For once, we haven't had much rain.  Or wind.  It takes a lot of force to drop a tree.  What could have caused it?

The answer:  Life.  Spring comes early in the south.  Although about half the rootball of this tree was pulled up, the other half was still in the ground.  The tree doesn't know that it's, well, dead.  So it's budding out.

That's hundreds of gallons of water being sent out to the tips of the branches (as I said, this was a *big* tree).  Enough to tip it over.

It's sort of philosophically sad.  The attempt to continue to live is what finished it off.  But who knows?  We're going to (very carefully) cut back the branches that are in the way, but leave the others alone.  We might end up with a leafy arch over my path.  Life finds a way.

Neil Gaimen's Handwriting

I like journals; at least, I like the *idea* of journals.  I collect notebooks--and then I don't ever write in them because I have lousy handwriting and I don't have particularly deep or pithy thoughts and it seems a shame to mess them up.

I've started at lot--but then they go by the wayside.  Except for my first blog that lasted for something like 7 years before I loss access to write in it.  Maybe it's because a blog doesn't mess up the paper or depend on my handwriting.

Maybe it's because I look at examples of other people's journals.  Even the currently popular "bullet journal" where you keep track of day-to-day stuff seems a bit fancy.

Examples:

A reading list (some journals have "blank books" so you can write titles as you read them)

Resolutions

The day the dog stole their shoes

Have to admit that I really like the last one.  And you can find sites that tell you how to draw banners and borders and how to mix fonts and sample pages such as coloring in your daily moods.  Sometimes it seems that journaling is about journaling.  And all I want to do is sort our my life, keep track of things (from details on an art project to remembering to make an appointment at the vet).  Just some scrawls.

So the books remain blank.

But I've been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman lately.  Often, at the beginning of his books, he tells you a bit about the craft of writing, what inspired him, where he wrote it.  What really comes through is that writers write.  That may seem obvious--but it doesn't mean that they sit down and write a novel (or a poem, or a short story).  It means that they write *all the time*.  Whether inspired or not.  Words have to go down on paper, and eventually, if you're lucky, they turn into something.  And a lot of writers actually write--pen on paper (the Harry Potter books were written by hand in a coffee shop).  Gaiman often writes by hand (he likes using a fountain pen).  One of his books--Coraline--had a sample of his notes and rough draft.  And I stared at it for awhile:

Because that's not great handwriting.  No banners.  No flowers (OK--there's a sketch).  It eventually became a book which became a movie.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this epiphany.  But maybe I'll mess up some of those notebooks.

T(iberius) N(eptune) R(ex)

TNR is short for "trap, neuter, release" which is a program for dealing with feral cats.  The concept is that a cat will defend its territory and keep other cats from moving in, and a neutered cat won't create more cats.

I'd like to think that this really works.  But several of my cats (Nazgul, Apache, and Wilhelm) spend most of their days outside, and the yard is their territory, but that didn't prevent Hamish from moving in last year.  So now I have Nazgul, Apache, Wilhelm, and Hamish patrolling *their* territory, and that ought to be enough.

In theory.

Shortly after The Storm, Wilhelm (the tuxedo cat) started acting a little freaked out.  He'd be out in the yard, see me, and dash for cover under a bush.  I figured he'd settle down after a bit.  After all, The Storm had been pretty horrendous, and now all of the yard looked different, and there were three strange cats in the house.  One day I saw him run under the deck, and got down on my hands and knees to peer under it with a "hey, little guy.  What's the problem?"   Picture me kneeling there, head sideways, right eye peeking under the porch.  The left eye can see on top of the porch, where I see Wilhelm sitting with that "Whatcha doin'" look on his face.

Hmmmm.  I switch back to my right eye.  There's still a tuxedo cat under the deck.

No. Way.  No. Freakin' Way.   There is no way I'm adopting another cat.

Of course the first step to adopting is to stick a name on a critter, so we didn't.  But we did tag him with his destination:  TNR: Trap.  Neuter.  Release.

The trap part was easy.  Sit down and wait for him to jump into my lap.  Neuter, equally easy.  Take him to the vet in the morning, bring him home,. slightly altered, in the afternoon.  It's the release part we're having trouble with.  He didn't get the concept of "be free, little cat."   He just moved onto the front porch.

And yes, we could take him to the shelter.  But they're pretty full right now because The Storm left a lot of animals homeless, and they're taking them in from Bay county as well.  An adult male is rarely a top choice for adoption, even a healthy friendly one.  So he has living space here.

It's caused a bit of a problem trying to let my cats in and out because they don't want to go past him.  So in the evening he gets moved to the back screened in deck (with heated kitty cave) and back out the next morning after our guys go out. Yeah, nothing complicated there.  For times in between,  Wilhelm has come up with the "Kitty Uber."  If he wants in, he makes a fuss until I go outside with his carrier, whereupon he jumps in it and talks smack as he's carried past Tiberius.

Uh, yeah.  Tiberius.  Really couldn't have a cat with just initials.  We threw out a few names (including Trevor Nigel Rothchild) but ended up with Tiberius Neptune Rex.

Sigh.  At least (so far) we haven't let him into the house.  Have to stop somewhere.