Home Sweet...

2011-11-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to announce that my first official chapbook Palimpsests is in pre-production. (I've self-published two chapbooks previously.) The publisher is offering a $3 discount for pre-orders, and says it will be out by the end of the year. Check the UC website www.utteredchaos.org if you want to pre-order.

UPDATE: I discovered their website is not quite updated on these details, so I've included them below. I hope to have an image of the cover up here soon.

Pre-order your copy by 12/7/11 for only $7.00 + shipping
To order a copy: Send a check for $10 (pre-order, $7) plus $2.00 shipping/handling (per book)
Uttered Chaos
PO Box 50638
Eugene, OR 97405
Questions: editor@utteredchaos.org

If you'd like to read snippets from an interview I did for this book, visit my website at http://www.cathymcguire.com/poetry.htm

2011-11-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

A new story for the ArchDruid Report contest:

‘Naut

The heat of July was already seeping in through the chinks of the house, breathing softly in through the open window. The straw tick rustled as Lawry rolled over and groaned. His head felt like it was being stung by nettles and pounded by bricks. The celebration had gone on too long and too intensely – he should have left at midnight, like Marie did. Sun sent glowing shafts under the thick indigo wool drapes. He’d overslept, and she’d let him. Hell to pay later.

Slowly, achingly, he dressed, then carried the chamber pot out with him into the hall. He could hear Matt and Jori shrieking in the kitchen and quickly changed his mind about breakfast. He tiptoed through the front door, emptied the pot into the compost, rinsed and set it on the porch. Today the sun felt good on his shirt as he awkwardly started to hoe weeds. The half-acre kitchen garden had an abundance of lettuce, peas, kale and cabbage; it was the season of fullness. In a minute, she’d glance out and bring him coffee – she was a wonderful wife, and he was grateful. Images swam up of last night’s fete for Jon, the first returning USAnaut in ten years. Jon Jimson, his classmate through eight grades, always the crazy daring one – now suddenly back and the center of attention.

“Coffee?”

Marie had come up behind him, patted him on the shoulder. He gratefully accepted it, looked away from her thin-lipped expression. He probably had made some kind of fool of himself; not the first time. The party was pretty much a blank, but by the end of the day Lawry was sure he’d have heard it all. Very little slipped through the gossip mill’s cracks. The bitter dandelion/chickory brew was almost too much for his shakey gut – Johnson’s homebrew had gone down so smooth, but stayed, like a vicious squatter, far too long.

“Marie, I’m sorry, I –”

She shrugged. Her straw-blonde hair was cut just under her ears for summer; freckles beginning to merge into a tan. She was still lithe and attractive after five years of marriage. He’d seen the eager eyes turned toward her last night. If he wasn’t careful, she could be swept out of his life. He stretched his sore face into a smile.

She said, “I’m taking Matt and Jori to Risa’s, then I’ll order flour down at the mill – can you get it before midmeal?”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll take a cartload of the birch to pay down some of it. Do you know if they want more potatoes?” Last harvest had been good, and there was still more than enough in the cellar.

“Well, I saw it on the list last Friday, so probably.” He almost missed her brief smile as she quickly hugged him, then returned to the house. The sun started to bake off some of his hangover, seeping into his skin, beneficent and soothing. The odor of moist loam rose up like sweet perfume. Alone with his thoughts, Lawry hoed with more vehemence, as if the aching muscles could push away everything else. But his thoughts were relentless.

He had never wanted to be a ‘Naut, but Jon had been brimming with plans since they were seven – how he’d go off on the long, lonely trek through wilderness, charting what was there and what wasn’t anymore; mapping the places that might yield salvage, and the places too dangerous to go near; living on his wits and the small pack of precious tools to give him an edge against the barbarians. Why aren’t we called barbarians? Lawry mused. Somehow, it was always the others. Lawry had studied to be a restorer, had apprenticed at 14, perfectly content to live within the known world. His parents were still alive; five sisters and brothers had 22 children, and the family gatherings were joyous. Martinsville had what was needed – the other villages came over to employ their ironworker, weavers, and medic. The mercantile was the largest in the district. Why give that up to risk death?

He hadn’t even thought about any of this in three years; Jon’s return had shaken something loose inside. Lawry drew his hoe carefully alongside young cabbage. Stories from last night coalesced from the inner fog. There was a big new city two weeks southeast of here, tucked up in the Cascade range, living off trade from various salvage claims, the 2,000 inhabitants surviving on greenhouse plants and goat meat. The elders would be sending an ambassador out soon.

Jon had sworn that there was a secret rendering plant in the city that simply recycled the inhabitants themselves – but of course they wouldn’t admit to that, and he’d only heard it from an old hermit who lived a distance from the city called Crater.

“There certainly wasn’t a big cemetery,” he’d commented, as he’d told the tale to a mix of laughter and chilled silence. Lawry, who had been listening from a far corner, nursing his whiskey, remembered Jon’s wild stories from school.

Another item that silenced the room was the buffalope spotting – Jon had brought home drawings that he swore was an odd long-legged, shaggy beast wandering east of the Great Desert, among the foothills of the Rockies. Nothing in the zoology lists matched it, and Jon’s opinion was that it was a mutation wandered up from the nuked flats of California. Lawry wondered at that, too – although again, it sounded so much like Jon in the classroom.

But as the evening got fuzzier, Lawry found himself paying more attention to the joyous adulation; the excitement as if each person there had taken the trip. What did they get from it? He had hung out in the shadows, watching Marie chatting among the cooks, watching his neighbors slapping each other on the back and cheering each of the stories. What use were stories? The town survived because of farmers and the craftsfolk like the miller Shon, and Al the blacksmith, and Mina the glassblower. This wild adventure was so frivolous – but look at the welcome Jon got. A month’s worth of food in one evening! And he would get a house, a garden plot and free medical for life. Lawry was sure Jon would have gone for nothing.

“So, how go the crops?” Jon’s voice cut into his daydreaming; Lawry dropped the hoe and turned, stumbling slightly.

“Jon? Didn’t you have a Q&A town hall today?” Lawry said. His voice rasped from a dry throat.

“I excused myself for a walk. Hadn’t sat that long in years.”

Jon had aged, that was clear – but still the same grin, gray eyes part-closed in amusement. His blonde hair was halfway down his back in a braid; there was a scar on his right cheek and some of his right earlobe gone – that was the brigands he’d told about last night. He was as scrawny as ever, but more muscled. And some other undescribable difference. Lawry realized he was staring stupidly, and bent to pick up the hoe.

“It’s – good to see you, Jon.” Was it? He wasn’t sure. “Glad you got home safe.” That part was true.

Jon grinned wider. “Definitely times I wasn’t sure I would… but what a country!” He took a breath, as if to begin recounting.

“What do you plan to do now?” Lawry cut in. He didn’t need to hear more tales. Tales didn’t grow cabbage. He slowly hoed out a few weeds while half-watching his friend.

“First, get re-acquainted with all my old friends.” Jon waved his hand blithely, but there was a catch in his voice.

“Was it lonely out there?” That was what Lawry wanted most to know – how did Jon manage three years alone? Three years without women. Probably.

Jon looked around, found a wooden box, carried it over and sat down beside the end row. That nudged Lawry – “I’m sorry. Would you like coffee or tea? We have mint, chamomile…” he trailed off, mind blanking. His head still hurt, and he vaguely blamed his friend.

“Nothing thanks. I was hoping to say hello to Marie – is she here?”

The fear that he had stomped on last night came up like old whiskey. “Uh, no – she’s dropping the two boys off at sprout school and putting in the milling order. Knowing Marie, she’ll be gone for a couple hours, visiting her sister. Didn’t – didn’t you see her last night?” Marie certainly remembered greeting Jon; she repeated the story twice after Lawry got home.

Jon shrugged. “I guess. There was so much going on. A bit overwhelming, to be honest – after all that time alone.” That was it – there was a streak of sadness that he’d never seen in Jon before. “There weren’t as many towns as the map said there’d be… well, they were still there – but the people were gone.” He frowned, kicked the dirt with his heel. “Lots of animals, birds – but if I ran into twenty occupied towns in a year, that was a lot. “

“I’m not sure I wanted to know that.”

“I’m not sure I wanted to know that.” Jon laughed, without humor. “I had a different sense of the world before I left.” He shook himself; stood up. “But tell me what you’ve been up to for eight years? We haven’t really talked since I went into ‘naut school.”

Lawry winced. “What can I say? Hoeing cabbage, making or fixing furniture for those who can afford it. Three children; two alive.” He shrugged – embarrassed, annoyed. “Life doesn’t change much here.”

“Right – old Morgan took you on as apprentice before I went into training – I remember now! Is he still as crazy as he always seemed when he taught shop?”

“Old Morgan died last winter. Flu. I guess I’m master now… not that I have his skills.”

Jon was silent, his face looked almost panicky. “Well, sure – they would have to…” he muttered, looking away. Louder, he asked, “What about Old Man Dyskstra? And Harpy Williams? I – I didn’t see them at the party last night.”

“Dyskstra hasn’t left his bed for about eight months. Widow Williams died two years ago. That’s her cabin you’re getting. ” They stared at each other.

“Oh. I guess I have some catching up to do.”

“Odd that they don’t make that part of the debrief.”

Jon frowned. “These two weeks of quarantine, they mostly wanted to listen to me. Guess they figured the townsfolk would fill me in. Or maybe they didn’t want to hit me with too much.” He jumped up. “Guess I’d better get back. They’re gonna think I ran away.” Jon grinned, walked over and gave him a fast hug, to Lawry’s shock, then hurried away with a wave, calling back, “Say hi to Marie!”

After Jon had vanished around the hedge, Lawry put down the hoe and went inside. He needed more coffee.

There was plenty of time to examine the alternate fallow and cropped fields as Marie walked the boys to the weekly part-lessons, part-playtime that everyone called “sprout school”. Matt was four and Jori three – they walked slow. She checked her stride, feeling antsy, trying to be patient. Jori of course had to have one of every weed and plant he saw – possibly he would follow her as herbalist. He already knew which plants not to touch or eat. Matt preferred to search for birds and animals, looking for spoor and glimpses of wild creatures. It was a fairly solitary walk along a private dirt path that cut across the fields, and sliced a quarter mile off the trip. When the path finally ended on the broad Tan Creek Road, Marie made the boys walk close to her. Too often horsemen careened along here like deer fleeing a cougar.

A half-mile later, the smithy’s dark smoke was visible, and the shacks of Martinsville’s humble folk crowded the road, the easier for their occupants to pop out and beg a little of travellers. Marie hated this part of the walk, even though none of the humble folk had dared ask her for anything in the past few years. They knew better. Still, she picked Jori up and hurried Matt a little as they passed one room stick-and-daub boxes, poorly thatched and leaning, their narrow windows and doors merely curtained. Beyond them, the town proper started: mud-plaster and straw cob on the bones of the former city; a few stone buildings, mostly one story or wood for the second floor. The place looked like a coat that had gone at the cuffs and collar, and was patched on top of its patches. Dust from the road tinged everything, the townsfolk reasoned, so why go to the huge expense of painting? Some of the homes had colored curtains, a rare few had glass in the windows and Sven Frank the cobbler had a tiny blue shoe dangling over the door. That was all. It grated on her. Sometimes when she walked, she imagined the town colored like the meadow flowers – pink, yellow, azure, purple. Streets of color and life! Instead, she had this dingy huddle of houses, supposedly the biggest town in the district? Five streets one way, three the other… ringed with ruins, gardens, farms and the more pungent businesses such as the tanner’s.

Shaking herself out of it, Marie turned left on Second. As Matt recognized Risa’s, he started running. She let a wriggling Jori down to run after his brother and watched as they were let in to the low-fenced yard by Risa’s tween daughter Pat. Marie waved at Pat and the boys, and retraced her steps. The mill was at the base of Fourth, by the river it needed to run. But even the short half-mile to the mill would take an hour, since her sister Janni lived on Fourth and brother Tad worked at the salvage shop on Pitt. There would be no excuse good enough if they found out she’d passed them by!

Janni’s two-story house was wedged between the weaver’s and the medic’s. A pre-Chaos “relic”, it had brick walls, fine wood trim, but of course only oiled paper in the windows. The door was open to give more light and air.

“Hi, sis!” Marie called out as she hurried past the elegant staircase, down the hall to the kitchen where Janni’s voice echoed reply.

“Hi, Mare! Have you come to give me a hand with the washing?”

Their old joke; as children, they’d fought bitterly about who had to pound the clothes on the river rocks. Marie usually lost even though she was the elder.

Janni was mixing up a batch of bread on the kitchen counter, up to her elbows in flour, while five-year old Gert sat at the table, braiding strips of scrap linen. Her tiny fingers swiftly flipped the free ends of cloth, over/under/over, until the strips were nearing the end. Then she groped along the table for more strips. Blind from birth, Gert was learning the rug trade.

“Why weren’t you at the fest last night?” she asked Janni. “The stories were just amazing!”

“Oh… ah. Well, I guess it was hard to think about listening to Jon, with Mick still…”

Marie bit her lip. “Yes. Sorry.” She should have remembered about Janni’s brother-in-law. Jon was the first of the five ‘nauts to return; now the “countdown” would become more acute for those waiting for the others. She tried to speak lightly. “Well, Jon’s known for his wild stories, and last night he had some real ‘rageous ones! Like a mutant buffalo rabbit, and people living in a raft city on a huge lake.”

Janni piled the dough into a bowl and set it aside to rise. “I’m so not surprised. Walk with me to the pump?”

Marie followed her out back, along the alley. Sunny, wide enough for bulky recycling carts, the alley was treacherous with broken asphalt and smelled faintly of sewage. The compost buckets by each door were the obvious reason. Only one of the back doors was open; old Syl was shelling beans in her doorway. She looked up as they passed but didn’t wave. Sour old woman, Marie thought.

“Yes, Jon seemed an odd choice to me. How will we ever know what’s real?” Janni continued.

“I heard they have a drug that will make him tell the truth,” Marie commented. “They only use it on ‘nauts.”

“Oh, come on! That’s an old guys’ tale.”

Elder Marc was filling his two wooden buckets; Janni waited until he was done and around the corner before she continued.

“Are you still fond of him?” she asked. “Are you sorry –“

Marie shook her head to forestall the question. “No. Jon was funny and sometimes he could be really generous – but he was always too wild. That is not a ‘settling man’. I wonder if he’ll even be able to stay long.”

“Even with the free house and garden?? He’d have his pick of the single women.”

“Oh, he might get married. But that wouldn’t keep him, I’m guessing.”

Janni looked shocked. They had reached her door; she glanced back inside, then lowered her voice. “He wouldn’t… just leave?”

“I don’t think he knows his mind. He might have the best intentions, but…” Marie shrugged.

Lawry was washing up the breakfast dishes when Gordon Allen poked his head in at the kitchen door. Catching sight of Lawry at the sink, the old man hobbled in, already starting to describe his order. Not a man of small talk, Lawry thought.

“… and if you can use the old back and insides, that would be good.”

“Hi, Gordie – take a seat. Would you like tea? Is this about the dresser you wanted me to repair?”

“No, it’s not, son – weren’t you listening?” The old man rested his thin butt on the bench. “I bought an old rocker washer from that salvager who came through last month. It’s got a perfect cradle and the gears seem to be free of cracks – but the outside got broke somehow. The curved sides might be hard to rebuild, but you might be able to re-use part of them. I’m hoping to gift it to Sukey for her birthday.”

Ah, his daughter. She took in washing, and a rocker-washer would make much easier work.

“Well, I’ll have to look at it before I can give you a trade-price. Can I come by this afternoon? I have to go to town before mid-meal, but I’m free after that.”

“That would be fine, son.” Gordon was already up and away, hobbling out the door. He was the perfect cemetery custodian, despite his limp. He lived happily alone on the far side of Cooper Hill, unworried by the thought of bandits, bears or bogeymen.

A rocker-washer would be a challenge. Lawry smiled as he considered it. He’d seen a couple of those sketched out in old books, and once in a news sheet brought by a traveller. He heard they were restored to use when the worst of the Chaos had settled and people started to think about how to live better. The pictures he’d seen had been too hard to copy. Maybe he’d have better luck with this one and could make a few more.

Tossing the breakfast scraps to the chickens, he noticed the sundial was showing 10:30. His sense of time had been knocked off by sleeping in. He hurried to the shed, hitched Beast to the cart and led him across the large yard to the woodpiles. It was hot work stacking the flatbed, and he made sure to fill his canteen from the pump before heading into town. Drinking deeply, he had a sudden resurgence of tipsy lightheadedness. Damn his idiotic drinking! He laid the sack of potatoes on the seat, with the top tied to the footrail. The large truck tires, patched with spare rubber, wobbled more than usual. The left front needed inflating; he’d have to stop at the smith’s and use their airpump. The fact that Oak Crest Road was still a washboard from the rough winter didn’t help matters. Lawry was forced to slow Beast to a walk as much to avoid breaking an axle or strut as to keep from throwing up his coffee. Fran’s hayfields passed slowly by, followed by Lou’s corn. He could see Lou and his son at the far side of the field and he waved. This was the kind of morning that he lived for, if only the little nagging worry – and his headache – would subside.

The impromptu houses of the humble folk came into view. Lawry recognized the walnut stained planks he’d help pull out of the old library after it burned. Joseph Crane’s old mantelpiece was now a door header, which always amused Lawry to see. He tossed three potatoes to Lin, Brody and Shirl, and they waved and sang their thanks.

“Save it for the travellers,” he laughed. He didn’t need a performance. He steered Beast carefully down the main street, shooing the dogs, pigs and stray children aside with gentle nudges of his whip. The sunlight gleamed on the soft weathered wood buildings, and the scent of baking mixed with the coal smoke of Al’s smithy.

At the mill, he was happy to trade out the wood and potatoes for the full order; Marie had gotten ten pounds of oats and twenty of wheat. Shon was too rushed to regale Lawry with tales of last night’s drunken spree, for which Lawry was grateful. He hoisted the sacks into the cart bed and sat for a moment, watching the mill wheel and listening to the river. The Willette ran straight and deep here; a little more narrow than at Honeyvale where Marta’s ferry took traders across and down to Springfield. Up here, there was nothing to see on the other side but a lanky maple and alder forest springing up where the Burn had taken most of the cedars. He could hear the town behind him, muffled shouts and laughter… and old man Jesey cursing out his mule again. Lawry grinned, then frowned. If only Jon hadn’t… but it was evil to think that. It sure complicated things, though.

He heard the buzz of a crowd, and realized the Q&A had let out for mid-meal. He’d better move fast, to get this flour home in time! Then he caught sight of Marie walking along Main with Janni and Gert, a gaggle of children like sheep herded before them. He hailed them and stopped to lift his boys into the bed, nestled among the sacks, and to help Marie up onto the seat. Now the ride could be as leisurely as needed. He hugged her one-armed, and was thrilled that her smile was so warm. Maybe all was forgiven.

Just outside of town, he heard running boots behind, and the boys cried out, “Jay! Jay!” In a moment, the cart shook as Jared scrambled aboard. Lawry turned and grinned at his nephew. “What’s your hurry?”

“Could you drop me at Lou’s? I’m supposed to be helping with the weeding.” Jared, 14, was almost as tall as Lawry. There was more scuffling as Jared played roughly with the boys, who were giggling and yelling. “Did you get to hear Jon today? I sat through all morning! That’s why I’m late,” he said. “Jon said there’s a new town down in the Gold Hills –“

“Yes, he mentioned that last night.” Lawry startled at his own harsh voice. He softened. “Did he mention the buffalope?”

“Oh, yeah – he had to tell that one twice! And a mountain of glass bottles just over the mountains that are just over the hills… that’s far away, isn’t it?”

“Yup. That’s far away. Probably too far for salvage.”

“Miguel doesn’t think so. He was talking about getting a wagon train started – Jon thinks they could re-blaze an old logging trail and bring carts through. Think about all those bottles!! Even the broke ones Miz Mina could melt down for slag!” Miguel says he wants real windows in his house,” Jared finished with a laugh.

Lawry dropped his nephew at Lou’s, and told the boy to come by for supper. The rest of the day he spent repairing an ornate glass-front dresser that was missing the glass, but would look otherwise as good as new, once he mixed the right stain to turn the pine to rosewood.

That evening at dinner, Jared was still full of Jon’s ‘nautical adventures. Lou had been one of the debriefers, and let drop a few juicy morsels, apparently.

“Lou said Jon admitted he once went totally crazy and started hacking down an empty house! And dressing up in other people’s clothes!!” Jared was a bit hard to understand with his mouth full of turnip.

“Well, if they didn’t have a serum in him, I wouldn’t take a bet on that,” Marie commented with a laugh.

The house was oppressive with the heat of cooking, so they had moved the table into the back yard. No breeze stirred, but the cedar’s shade was cool. Matt and Jori wriggled on either side of Jared – as bouncy as baby chicks, Lawry thought fondly. Marie passed the big oak bowl of potatoes, and the smaller blue glass bowl of shredded goat cheese. Lawry took big helpings of each – he felt hollowed out after not being able to eat most of the day.

“What’s a se-er rum?”

“Nothing,” Lawry answered quickly, glancing at his wife. Do you want to get into that?
Marie distracted the boy with a chicken leg; the old Orp hen was not tender, but better than squirrel.

Jared veered onto another thought.

“Paul said they’d be starting another ‘naut school in five years… they will be sending out more ‘nauts when I’m 23 – I’d be old enough! Paul’s gonna sign up, too.”

“Jared!” Lawry set down his fork with a bang. “I thought you were apprenticing to the miller!”

“Yeah, well..?”

“Well, you can’t just go off after you’ve learned a trade! Miller Shon will be depending on you then.”

Jared persisted, “Why can’t I become a ‘naut?”

Lawry could see himself ten years from now, waving goodbye to his favorite nephew. No!

“Training is tough, Jay. It’s five years of little trips, going out a little farther each time, learning how to survive. And only five get picked to go, after all that work. In Jon’s class, they only trained twenty; nine dropped out or were expelled, and two… were killed.”

“Killed in school? How?”

Lawry cleared his throat, glancing at the two boys who were luckily distracted by pudding. “They don’t say. ‘Naut school is pretty private. They don’t like the idea of just anyone going out on a Search. So what happens in the school stays there.”

“They have magic tools, huh?”

“Not magic.” Lawry stifled a chuckle. “Things like a geiger counter, a rifle with a little telescope, glasses that let you see in the dark, and lamps that run on the sun – they’re from the old time. We keep losing a few each Search, so that’s another reason they have to be careful who they send.”

“Was Jon the only one they sent?”
“No, don’t you remember the ceremony? You were 11 at the time. Five went out – so far, he is the only return. But it’s early; only three years. It’s possible that Garry, Jud, Mick and Lori will still come back.”

“They’d also get a hero’s welcome, too, huh?”

“Yeah.”

An unreasonable anger was building inside. Why did they enchant young kids with this wanderlust, and send them out into god-knows-what every ten years?? What was so damned important out there?? Lawry cleared the table and washed the dishes, refusing all offers of assistance. He felt too sour to be around others.

There was an almost palatable anticipation in the town, as everyone looked for the next ‘naut to arrive. A week passed with nothing more exciting than Jon escorting Shawna, the mayor’s daughter, to the Friday dance. Then Lori suddenly appeared at the medic’s, very gaunt and with her left arm hanging useless. She was immediately placed in quarantine, but her parents and brother spoke with her daily through the glass-paned isolation room as the town again buzzed with the second ‘naut’s return.

Lawry couldn’t hide a sense of desolation. How long before the town returned to normal? What if it never did? He tried to remember thirteen years back – he had been 11 – when the last ‘nauts had returned. But only two had – that was what he remembered most. Three simply had not come back, and three families, and many friends, had gone into a slow, extended mourning as the chances of return got slimmer and slimmer. The whole town grieved for at least a year, and the two other ‘nauts – Jim and Inger – had retreated into a kind of guilty isolation, as if it had been their fault. Jim had later moved to Grantsville, 35 miles away, and Inger had never married, becoming a kind of hermit. Lawry couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her in town. She certainly hadn’t been at Jon’s party.

That evening after the worst of the heat had eased, Lawry cut and brought a downed maple from the woods to the yard and began to split the rounds. Marie had put the boys to bed, and was raking out the chicken coop, carrying the soiled straw in the wheelbarrow over to the compost. Lawry glanced over and was startled to see her catch the rake on the coop door, then raise it as if she were going to throw it, before she stopped herself and bent over the barrow.

“Are you alright, Marie?”

She jerked upright, then turned with a smile. “Yes, just a long day, I guess.”

Always a long day recently, he thought. For both of us.

“Anything particular?”

She sighed and he braced himself. She doesn’t want to hurt me. This is going to be about Jon.

“You know that Harvest caravan to Springfield?”

“The one the craft and farmers’ trade delegation plans every October?”

“Yeah. Well…” she turned to face him. “Have you ever thought about going with them?”

He blinked. “Me?”

“Not just you – all of us.”

“What – Matt and Jori, too?? Why?”

“I dunno – just to see it.”

“See what?” He’d lost the thread; where did Jon come in?

“Just the big city and another part of this country, and maybe another small town in between…” she trailed off, seeing his puzzlement and biting her lip in frustration. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

He walked over to the coop. Her face was smudged; he pulled his handkerchief out and gently rubbed the dirt off.

“It does matter. But I don’t understand. Why do you want to see another town? This one is just fine.”

“It is not! It looks like a dog with mange! We don’t even have a proper main street – just a row of slightly bigger shacks!”

Marie’s voice ended in a shriek, and even she looked shocked. Lawry was stunned.

“What – what’s wrong with Main Street?” Where had that tirade come from?? Jon! It must have been Jon’s stories that had soured her. He’d never heard Marie complain before, about the town at least.

Marie turned back to the coop. “It’s small and dinky and… and just for once, I want to see a proper town!” Her shoulders curved forward, and he recognized her defeated stance. She would get like this at her folks’ place, after some battle over kids or cooking or… just anything. He hesitated, then placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. What could he say?

“Marie, I know you wouldn’t want me to leave the crops… do you want to go… alone? To Springfield?”

He fought to keep his hand from clenching. He wanted to break Jon into very little bits right now. Springfield was just Martinsville bigger – and probably dirtier and more worn out, with fifteen hundred residents! He’d heard Kerm talk about it last year after the trading delegation got back – didn’t sound like much. But there was no telling Marie, when she got hard and set like this. But what if she went and didn’t come back?

She stepped away from his hand, turned and attempted a smile. “No, of course not. I couldn’t leave the boys, or the canning – if this is another odd summer like last year, even setting the trip into October won’t be far enough past harvest. Only singles are going on this trip – and the widowed.” A spasm of pain crossed her face. “I should have gone before we got married, so I could’ve said I’d done it.” Both of them remembered why that wouldn’t have worked – Lila, now five years buried up at Cooper Hill. Life shat on them in so many ways.

Jori’s thin wail coming from the house ended the argument; Marie hurried in the back door. Lawry stood a moment, feeling like a tree that had been eaten hollow from the inside. Damn Jon Jimpson to the bottom of Hell! A small voice suggested it could have been worse if Jon hadn’t gone to ‘naut school, but Lawry pushed it down vehemently and stormed into his workshop.

He hid out in his workshop all the next day, telling himself it would do no good to reason with Marie in that mood. He planed a curly maple board, admiring the intricate swirls. Why couldn’t she be pleased with the beauty that surrounded them?? She was a good woman and he had never regretted their lovemaking and subsequent marriage, but perhaps he should have gotten to know her better. These moods of hers hit him in the gut like a mule kick.

The rich aroma of cedar and pine mixed with the vinegary tang of wood stains. Dust motes shimmered in sun shafts; the plane whispered. This tiny workshop was almost filled with his worktable, the shelf of tools and the two pieces he was working on. He needed to double the space or move down to Morgan’s old town shop, and he needed to do one of them soon. Being within earshot of Marie and the boys for five years had been worth the cramp, but was he squeezing out opportunities? And would there be fewer fights if he worked in town? But hadn’t the fights had mostly started after Jon got back? Jon was the spider cleverly weaving his spell on her… the plane jinked and gouged a strip from the maple. Lawry cursed. Jon was spoiling his work, too!

The next two weeks continued the hot, sunny weather, and began to put a strain on irrigation. Every last bit of washwater went onto the crops. Farmers began mixing urine straight into buckets of water, to increase the volume, and mule trains were sent up over Cooper Hill to capture kegs of Hadley River water. It was normal, but still tricky. Lawry kept a worried eye on the garden as he finished up several woodworking projects. The town seemed to be settling back into the routine, albeit with one ear cocked for any sign of the other ‘nauts. Lori was due to come out of quarantine and be feted in four days. The delegation to Springfield had been picked and were discussing their preparations, with no further comment from Marie. But Lawry knew better than to think she had forgotten. The knot in his chest was growing as big as the heads of cabbage.

The rocker washer was just about finished – it was a beautiful contraption, gleaming resin-soaked wood and shining brass bolts. The brass would tarnish, but right now it was a work of art, in Lawry’s mind. He could ride it up to old Gordon in two days, once the resin coat was fully cured. Maybe he could ask Marie if she wanted one for herself… he had no clue what she really wanted. Would he ever?

Storm clouds began building on Friday, and on Saturday Lawry decided to get the washer up to the cemetery before the weather broke. At first light, he loaded the washer on the cart and tied it securely. It might be slow moving up the lightly-travelled path so as not to wreck all his hard work. It was close to noon when he finally pulled into the cemetery. The sky was black along the southern horizon and the wooden headboards, and beyond them Gordon’s house of gray fieldstone glowed white as sun glared down on the field, as if furious at being pushed aside. The humidity was intense; Lawry was soaked and Beast was dripping sweat.

Gordon helped Lawry take the washer off the cart and into the shed by the house.

“You did a fine bit of work here, youngster,” Gordon exclaimed as they got it safely under the roof. “Sukey is gonna be just beside herself!” Obviously he was giving himself equal credit, but Lawry didn’t mind. “Come inside for a drink before you go back.”

Lawry accepted gratefully; he lead Beast over to the trough before following Gordon into the house. Inside was blessedly cool and dark; the front room, both kitchen and living area, had three windows but only one of the heavy shutters was opened and the varnished table near it was shimmery with sunlight. Gordon brought a pitcher and two cups over to the table; the ale must have been fresh from the root cellar; it was cold and delicious.

When Lawry had taken his first few gulps, Gordon leaned forward, his expression grim. “I’m not one to spook at shadows,” he said, “but I’m almost sure there’s a band of thieves over the hill.”

“What??” Lawry put down his cup. “Have you seen them?”

Gordon shrugged. “Nope. Just smelled the smoke and heard the echoes of them rustling around in the hollow just past Boyd’s Peak.”

Squinting out the window, Lawry could just about see the little rocky outcrop named for Boyd Hardy, who’d been thrown by a horse from it and died about 40 years ago. Lawry had only been up that road once at fifteen, on a long trip to plead for planting seeds from Spruceton, after most of Martinsville’s spring crop had been washed out. He barely remembered the scrub-tangled dip in the ground just past the peak, but he recalled his uncle’s warning about being alert for thieves at that spot. He remembered being hungry that year, too. Spruceton had been grudging, but it was enough. Barely.

He didn’t want to distrust the man, but Gordon’s house – the cemetery guard house – had been built generations ago as an outpost of the town, and thick as it was, would any such far-away sounds reach? And could it have been noises from Martinsville? Echoes were tricky that way. But he didn’t say that.

“Do you want me to tell the sheriff for you? I’ll be in town today.”

The old man moved his cup around the table. “Aw, I don’t know that I want to call out the volunteers ‘til I know a bit more.” Obviously, he wasn’t all that sure. “Maybe just one or two scouts.”

“We don’t do it like that, you know, Gordie. Safety in numbers.” But the image of Jon creeping through the underbrush came unbidden to him. His renegade heart leapt. Jon would love to scout this! Jon was bored and cranky in his free homestead, chafing at the town niceties. And if Jon was ambushed…?

“Well! I’ll be going back, then.” Lawry jumped up, startled at the statement that came out almost a shout. What the hell was happening to him? He gulped the last bit of ale and shook Gordon’s hand. “I hope Sukey is really happy with your gift.”

The drive home was a pitched inner battle, like a ferocious town council of partisan thoughts. Jon would jump at this chance! Jon had no right, nor Lawry, to go rogue like that. Dangling vine maples slashed at his head; sun flickered and jumped in thickets. Time to re-cut this trail. Jon would thank him for telling him about this. Jon was the only person in town with enough training to handle a scout trip. Lawry was a nasty sonofabitch for even toying with the idea. How could all these statements be true? By the time Lawry got back to his land, he had a throbbing headache.

He felt chilled when he discovered Marie had invited Jon to dinner that night. It was almost like a set-up, but he didn’t know by whose hand. He watched dully as she put a slab of the salt pork on to boil with cabbage and potatoes; it probably was the last hock of the winter. His resentment bubbled like the water on the stove. Luckily the boys were loudly racing around the table; their exhuberance was a welcome distraction.

Jon arrived about a half-hour early, just as the storm’s rumbles turned to pattering rain. Lawry tapped a small keg of Marsha’s golden ale and the three adults sat on the kitchen porch, within earshot of the boiling dinner, watching the boys race around in the cooling downpour.

“Rain came not a minute too soon,” Jon said, leaning his chair back and lifting his ale in toast.

“It’s needed, certainly. I suppose this is too quiet for you, after – after your adventure?” Marie asked.

Jon looked down, considering, then shook his head. “No – it’s a nice rest after a long trek. One can’t spend all the time running away from bandits.” They laughed, though Lawry’s laugh was forced.

“Funny you mention that –“ he spoke before thinking. “Old Gordie thought he heard some bandits up past Boyd’s Peak the last few days.” Biting his lip, he felt his chest tightened. He’d done it now.

And Jon looked as eager as a hound dog, “Really? Just up over the ridge? What did the sheriff say?”
just as Marie cried, “Lawry - you didn’t mention that! That’s too close for comfort! You should have said!”

“Gordie’s not sure he’s right; it’s just some noise and maybe a woodfire’s smoke… he didn’t want to get out the volunteers until he was more sure. It’s nothing to worry about, I’m sure.” Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

Marie shook her head. “Well, I’m keeping the boys a lot closer to me, and I don’t want you going too far off, until somebody finds out for sure! There’s only the Davidsons between us and the cemetery.”

Lawry risked a side glance at Jon; he was sipping his ale, looking off into the woods. Finally, Jon commented, “It wouldn’t take much… just wander up there quietly; wouldn’t even have to get too close. I got pretty good at sensing… anything I wanted to avoid.”

There – he’d taken the hint. Lawry felt as miserable as when he baited the mole traps. But – like Jon said, he’d gotten good at surviving, and who else would be able to scout out something that might be a danger to the town? Why did the ale taste sour? Lawry set it aside. Dinner was subdued, and even the boys seemed to recognize something was wrong.

That evening, in bed, Lawry held Marie against his chest, feeling her breaths. Were hers as constricted as his felt?

“Marie – I don’t want him to go alone. I’ll tell the sheriff tomorrow.”

She sighed. “It won’t make any difference. He’s probably already on his way up there tonight.”

“No! In the rain? You think? Would he just –” But of course, he would. “He should know that’s not how we do it. There’s safety in numbers.”

“But he just proved there’s also safety in singles.”

Lawry couldn’t answer that. But his dreams that night were wild and dark.

The next day, as the storm passed to the north, leaving puddles and dripping trees, he did go into town, hunting down Sheriff Hal. But only after he’d broken a chair spindle, gouged two holes out of a nice pine board and slammed a hammer down on his finger. The day was ruined, and maybe he was cursed. Not that he was supertitious. But he needed to get free of this.

Hal was mending a book, in the small room that housed all the books rescued from the old library fire. He agreed to send a group out to Boyd’s Peak, and he accepted Lawry’s volunteering to be one of them. Every time Lawry tried to bring up Jon, it stuck in his throat. In the end, he figured he’d just wait and see.

It was late afternoon before they were riding up Cooper Hill, through dappled shade on the vined-over dirt road to the cemetery. With Lawry was Gerry, Hal, old Ron the tanner, and Margaret, Gene’s daughter who, at twenty, had surpassed all the other militia candidates this year. All of them had long hardwood pikes, and there were a few knives in belts, and Gerry had his short bow, in case they met resistance. They joked as they rode, but when they stopped to get an update from Gordon, they treated his descriptions with serious consideration. A five minute canter up to Boyd’s Peak, then slowing and moving as quietly as a group of five riders could. They paused where the road began to dip down.

“There’s an old fire smell, but nothing fresh – ya think?” Hal asked quietly.

Nods all around. Lawry picked up the tang of washed-down campfire; he relaxed slightly. They road about 25 feet into the valley, the horses picking their way carefully down the pebble-slick path. The smell grew stronger and Hal signaled the others to dismount. Lawry reluctantly held the horses as the others crept into the dripping underbrush, but in a few minutes, he heard them speaking in normal tones – so no one must be there. A rustle and the scuffing of boots, and they came back through the underbrush. Maggie was holding a partly burnt bone; looked like deer.

“There was a crew, but they cleared off,” Hal said, taking his reins again. “Maybe there about a week; didn’t even leave much garbage. But definitely about five campers.”

“Can – can I go look?” Lawry knew he sounded like a boy, but he had to know, and it was too late now to mention Jon. Giving Maggie Beast’s reins, Lawry ducked and scrambled into the campsite.

The firepit was stone-ringed and full of wet ash. A deer had been sectioned and most of it cooked; the legs and head were off to one side, not yet gnawed by animals. Tamped-down brush in a ring around the firepit seemed to suggest at least five sleepers. Lawry quickly inspected each area, looked as far as he could in to the dense thickets, but there was nothing at all that showed Jon had been there. No broken brambles leading to a dead body, no fresh-dug grave or discarded shoe that he could recognize – nothing. He’d been crazy to think it. Guilt, relief and fear washed over him like bursts of storm – Jon had not been here, or if he had, he’d left with no trace. Probably he was back at his house and getting ready for dinner. Lawry rushed back up to the road, feeling a silly grin spread on his face.

“Okay – well, it was worth checking out, right?” he asked. They assured him it was.

“I’ll be sending a group up around here more regular,” Hal said as they road home.

When Jon hadn’t been seen for three days, the speculation that he had snugged up with a woman turned to more serious talk. Lawry, in the process of moving his workshop into town, had ample chance to hear the rumors and speculations. The leaden feeling returned; he reminded himself that there had been no sign of Jon at the campsite. Which meant very little. He teetered on panic the first two days, watching Marie for signs of worry. As the talk turned, she did get more serious, but seemed to have forgotten the conversation about the bandits.

Finally, the pressure inside was worse than over-fermented ale. He caught her alone in the afternoon, and blurted, “Do you remember talking to Jon about the… about Gordie seeing…” It caught in his throat again.

“Yes, I remember,” she said quietly. “I figured if you’d seen anything, we would have heard.”

Lawry nodded emphatically. “Yes. True. I looked hard at the site, and there was no sign at all that he’d been there.” He was sweating now. Did he want to know what she thought?

She smiled, though her eyes were somber. “My guess is he used it as an excuse to get out of town.”

“What??”

She chuckled wryly. “Jon never was the settling type. I’m guessing he realized that he’d have to stay here out of gratitude for all the free stuff, and he was already beginning to feel smothered. He figured he’d look like a hero if he disappeared while going after bandits.”

Lawry blinked. Jon – run off?? Not dead in the bushes somewhere? Was that possible? The new scene imposed itself on his memory of events – a weird twin to his first scenario – all the same bits adding up to something wildly different. Even if it wasn’t true, Marie believed it. He felt like he wanted to scream, like a boiler bursting. Then Marie wrapped her arms around him, and he was aware of her warm hair just under his chin. He hugged her fiercely and closed his eyes. Saved.

Except that the Lawry who had found salvation was not the Lawry he had been. Jon had returned with wilderness, strangeness…and the strangest of all had turned out to be… inside Lawry. And once you’d experienced wilderness, there was no going back.

The Going

2011-09-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

The motivation to post this is the most current post on The Archdruid Report, which issues a challenge for a short story set on post-peak-oil Earth. Enjoy.

The Going
By Catherine McGuire

Cairen moved along the rows, catching tiny weeds with the snaffle hoe, smiling to see the peas putting out tendrils. The perfume of daphne and alfalfa intermingled with woodsmoke. Everywhere, color was coming back to the fields. March had been tough; there was a week of worry when the cabbages were cut smaller and smaller, but now that the peas were up, and potatoes poking their tight whorls above the wet soil, everyone relaxed and the daily portions went back to normal. She spotted a shaggy patch of dandelions in the next field – after weeding, she’d dig them for salad and brew.

It felt good to be out; the house had felt so cramped this winter! Maybe, like Auntie Sarah said, it was because she was sixteen; the usual stories by the fire just didn’t soothe her itching innards. The May Meet was almost here, and she felt a buzz thinking about the eight-town festival. Dad could swap their wintered-over turnips for extra potatoes, and get the animals mated… and the plowing and roping contests would bring all the local boys. Her breath caught a little and she hoed faster, hacking clover that overran kale. She was lucky to have parents who would give her a say in her match; she remembered Arthur’s large dark eyes, and Ellery’s laugh, his broad shoulders. Hopefully, one of them was not already trothed. When it came down to it, she’d have the week of Meet to decide. And after so many years, she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be… now.

“Cairen – come help me with this!” Her father’s voice came from the front; he was working on the septic today. She wrinkled her nose, but stashed the hoe against the garage and walked around the house. The reek of sewage permeated the air; this was her least favorite task, helping to keep the wastewater flowing.

Her father was up to his waist in the hole; she could see the pipe that came out of the concrete box; he was running a snake into it, but had stopped to rest, leaning against the muddy pit. His face was shiny with sweat and pale – too pale. Cairen hurried over. “Here, Dad – let me do that!” she said.

“I’m alright. I just need you to steady the end of the snake.”

“You’ve gotten most of it done; I’ll finish it.”

Not for the first time, she wished Ian hadn’t been prenticed to the smith. They needed his strong back to work the fields and yard; it was no good pretending Dad was up to the task. He was trying not to draw huge breaths, trying to hide his fatigue. What good did that do? But he was stubborn; that was a family trait. Well, so was she.

“Dad, let me try it, at least. How else will I learn?”

That usually got him; he felt guilty, she knew, that she hadn’t been prenticed away a couple years ago. As she hoped, he scrambled out of the pit and let her jump in. The mud oozed around her boots; it stank and she stooped to look at the pipe, to hide the disgust on her face. Why didn’t they just dig an outhouse like the neighbors? He was so old-fashioned!

With snakey treachery, the well-named metal tube jinked and caught, and slipped. Finally, she got it punched through whatever the block was, and wedged herself as far from the pipe as possible, as noxious liquid dribbled. Working fast, she removed the snake, flung it up on the grass and re-attached the drainfield hose.

“Good job,” her father said as she climbed out. He sat on the stone wall by the filbert bush, leaning his elbows on his knees. Out in the sun, she could see how sick he really looked. It might not be long now; a suddenly fear popped up, but she shoved it away – how could she get trothed at the Meet if he was dying? She busied herself with refilling the hole, went to hose off the tools and herself under the pump.

Later that afternoon, Trevor dropped by with his team to plow up the river field. Cairen walked with him and the horses along Mill Road, out to where the old paper mill took over the landscape. It was an odd sculptural remnant; the most useful things had been taken first; what was left curled and jutted and flapped. Rust was winning over moss in most places. The parking lots had been torn up and the fields divided; her family had the one closest to the river, by very good luck. Still, her back hurt, remembering summers of bucket-toting misery when she was too young to do anything else useful. Now those chores went to Denni and Mo; and unless Mom had more children, they’d be stuck with that ‘til they were prenticed. She laughed, thinking of Mo’s non-subtle hints to Mom this winter. The boy was inventive, but not diplomatic. She jerked from the reverie as Trevor handed her the reins.

“Wanna lead for a while?”

“You bet!”

Guiding the horses, she stepped lightly and watched the posts they’d set as guides. Trevor didn’t say much; he was a quiet young man, a year older, second cousin – she knew he was studying medicine with Rosie, but didn’t know much else. For some reason, he mostly kept with the Granger girls when there was a Raising or Dinner. She glanced back, watching how he held the plow with steady arms, despite his slim build. His black hair gleamed in the sun, and shielded his neck; hatless, he was risking a burn with his fair skin. She looked ahead; the team was halfway down the second row; at this rate, they’d get the field done just before lunch.

“You have another field this afternoon?” she asked. Their other two fields wouldn’t be worked until next month; the fourth was fallow this year.

“No – today is clinic.”

He wasn’t much for small talk, that was certain. She turned back and focused on the team – Jerry and Dude, two brown Percherons, strong and patient. He’d be helping Rosie at the Morriston clinic, then, because Springwater’s wasn’t on Fridays. She had a sudden thought.

“Trevor, when you stay to lunch – you are staying to lunch, right? Could you look at Dad? He was awful pale this morning.”

He was silent a moment. “I don’t have my certificate –“

“No – not formally; just look at him, and tell me what you think. I will try to get him to go to the clinic next Tuesday but he’s so stubborn…”

“I thought he was going to Charter—“ he stopped, and was silent.

Charter? Why would Dad go to the city for clinic? No one did that anymore – too expensive, and most of the time useless. No matter what their leaflets said, Rosie was adamant that Charter’s mysterious machines were “nothing but noise and bother”. She glanced back again; Trevor looked uncomfortable – did he know something she didn’t? She scuffed a rock aside, frowning. They said no more about it. Cairen started singing a weather rhyme and Trevor was as silent as his horses.

She suspects, but doesn’t know. The thought was uncomfortable. Trevor looked down into the cabbage soup, pretending to be absorbed in eating. Cairen was so strong in many ways; would she be able to handle this? He glanced up as she pushed the tureen across the table, deliberately moving it past little Denni to offer her guest more. He smiled and shook his head; hungry though he was, he knew he could get a sandwich at Morriston – thick bread and meat, which was more than the Landley family had. He could feel Ann Landley’s eyes on him, so he took a small slice of oat bread, but left the butter. Backlit against the sunny window, Cairen’s father was spooning soup. His pale skin and look of heavy fatigue gave away the seriousness of his diabetes. Trevor knew Rosie had done as much as she could; Jeff had a decade past what might be expected, but the last time he was at the clinic, Trevor had overhead him and Rosie arguing over Charter.

“And what do you think they’d do, Jeff? I’ve told you there’s not even a transplant to help–”

“They’ve got insulin; you know they can give me a supply.”

“For an outrageous price, yes – you’d be handing over Cairen’s dowry – and maybe Mo’s! – for another five years of life. Is that fair?”

His reply had been too low for Trevor to hear, but even that he was considering it had caused Trevor’s heart to sink. Now he looked at the towhaired beauty sitting across from him. Cairen at fourteen had rocked him out of his studious daydreams; a fire seized him and he finally understood his brother’s mooning over that brunette that he’d finally married. At sixteen, Cairen was the most breathtaking of all the Springwater girls; lovelier even than Cheryl, the Strawberry Queen from Josephson. She glanced over and he looked down hurriedly. She didn’t know; she was dreaming of the Meet, and of the ox-strong, field-rich guys she might find there. But what if Jeff spent her dowry? The groom had a dowry, too, but starting off at half-rations meant a bigger chance of failing. And there were few chances to catch up, once you were down. Was Jeff such a throwback that he’d put his life before hers?

“Trevor, are you doing militia this season?” Ann’s voice was husky and low; she sounded a lot like his mother, her first cousin.

“No, Auntie; medical training comes first, the Mayor said, so I’m excused until I’m done. Next year.” He blushed a little at the childish nickname, but using her name sounded – wrong.

“Only our Ian will be starting in April, and I wondered…” she didn’t finish, but he knew – his own mother worried when his brother Doug went, and him being sworn to secrecy didn’t help a mother’s heart at all. She shrugged; nothing we can do. Rising, she reached for the platters and shooed the younger boys into the kitchen. Mo came back through a moment later with a empty bucket, headed for the pump. The Landley’s still used a toilet, so all washwater went to the bathroom cistern, to be used for flushing. Odd, but Jeff was over sixty; real old-fashioned in many ways. Didn’t even have a pee bucket for the garden.

Trevor got up, thanking them all for the meal; Jeff told him it was barely payment for plowing. Cairen jumped up quickly, telling her father she needed to water the peas, “in this sudden heat.” She followed Trevor outside, and he could see the anxiety in her eyes before she spoke.

“Do you think he’ll rally again? He was sick like this two years ago, but the herbs Rosie gave him helped – he’s been fine until now.” The pain in her face turned the cabbage soup to stone in his gut. He hesitated.

“I wish I could say for sure. But diabetes is such a tricky illness. He could go along for a while, just like this, or –“

“Or this could be the end. Or the start of the end.”

Lines from the Going Song flashed in his head, but he tried to smile and act reassuring. Rosie told him endlessly that much of medicking was reassuring scared patients. Apparently not his strong point. He patted her shoulder, wanting to hug her, fearing that his motives weren’t at all clinical.

“I promise to come back and check in with him, and you, over the weekend.” He felt like a traitor at the relief in her eyes. But maybe Rosie had some advice he could pass on. Suddenly, he was aware of the slant of the sun. “I need to go,” he said, “I’ll see you Sunday.”

After Trevor left, Cairen felt oddly lethargic. There were too many things she was waiting for, or trying not to wait for. She wandered over to the south side of the house and checked the solar oven; the bread was baking quickly. She took ten minutes off the timer and went around to the shed. The sun would harden the soil soon; better get those dandelions up. She ignored the lump in her throat.

It was mid afternoon by the time she got a bucketful and had rinsed them at the pump. Nice plump roots would be roasted and ground for coffee; the greens would help the puny cabbage salad at dinner. She took a can of captured worms and beetles over to the chicken coop; the hens squabbled wildly over them. As she approached the back door, she heard their voices – Mom and Dad arguing. Was it Mo’s schooling again? She wished Mom wouldn’t be so hard on Dad, with him being so sick. She would never ride her husband like that – the image refused to gel, just like so many times before. Why couldn’t she see herself married? She didn’t want to be a Marion; she was looking forward to having children – Mom had almost agreed to her prenticing with the school. But teachers wandered where they were needed; after a long discussion, Cairen agreed she didn’t want to be moving far, into uncertain territory. Better a farmer’s partner.

They stopped arguing when the back door slammed; by the time she had set the bucket down and gone into the parlor, they were both knitting – Dad glanced up; by his frown, he could tell she wasn’t fooled. But she only said, “The bread will be done early; this sun is working hard today.”

Dad sighed and put down his needles. “Cairen – we have to talk,” he started.

Mom looked almost fierce; Cairen was suddenly confused. “Is it – about the Meet?” she asked, hating the catch in her voice.

“Sort of. You see –“ Dad looked over at Mom, and her expression hardened. He frowned and continued, “I have decided to try the doctors at… at Charter. They have medicines we don’t have…” his voice faded; he glanced at the wall.

Cairen frowned. “So, how does that affect me – won’t you be back in time for Meet? It’s only once a year…” she could feel tears welling; she clamped her lips together. No crybaby stuff.

“Your father’s medicine” – Mom made the word sound like poison – “ will cost pretty much the whole harvest, and probably some hirework also.”

“But I’ll be well enough to do it, that’s the point!” Dad cut in. “Otherwise, we might as well…” his voice actually trembled.

She edged toward a chair and sat quickly. Dad was saying he wanted her dowry for medicines; he wanted… extraordinary measures. The shock erased the words she’d been starting to say, and she stuttered, “But you said… you said…”

“I know – We’ve told you that extraordinary measures are wrong. I know. But this isn’t really… that… extraordinary. Just medicine. Not surgery, not artificial processes. Just medicine.” From the look on her mother’s face, this argument had been presented and failed. Her mother, at least, didn’t lose the lessons in a crisis. Cairen shook her head, trying to get the bits to make sense. What did he want from her? If he was going to use the money, well – it was his, wasn’t it? But then what? He would be leaving them dangerously unready for lean times. And what would the town say about – going to Charter?? Images of Dinners and harvests and swaps danced around her mind; of neighbors whispering, of gradually being shunted off… No one had tried to keep themselves alive artificially since… the preacher. She was a toddler, but the story was still told sometimes – his craven theft of church funds to pay for an operation. And all that, just for a year of bedridden misery. No one lives forever… it’s only natural. She looked at her father, seeing the creased, leathery skin; the stubble now gray – he was watching her intently, his eyebrows hunched like fuzzy catapillars over his chocolate brown eyes. Her heart went out to him – it was his life he wanted, that’s all. But no one lives forever. Cairen looked at her mother, who spoke softly.

“Cairen, we don’t want to take your dowry; we want you to start your married life with enough.” She glanced at her husband.

“But if you wouldn’t mind my going – just to see, just to get an idea of the costs,” he said. “I would be back by May Meet. We could still go and see if there was someone –”

Somehow his words felt hollow; she knew if he went to Charter, he’d come back penniless. What did she want for him? She couldn’t think.

“Give it the weekend,” Mom urged. “We won’t say anything more about it. Not in front of the boys, certainly.” Mom sounded ashamed. Yet she stroked his hair gently as she passed by on her way to the kitchen. Cairen jumped up and ran outside. She didn’t pause until she was in the back orchard, hidden from the house. Randomly, she walked between the trees, fingering the apple trunks for boring insects.

As the heart of the tree slowly hollows
As the bloom on the thorn slowly fades
I know in my heart I am going
Yet always a part of me stays.

No! She caught herself – she was singing part of the Going Song! Was she hoping he would die? No, not that… finally tears started to flow, and she sat down by her favorite cherry, watching the flouncy blossoms shake in the breeze, crying silently for the unexpected turning point in her life. Was this why she couldn’t imagine herself married? Did she have intuition, like Sharla? Then why wasn’t it telling her what to choose??

There’s a time when the cycle is over
No honor in staying the tide

Unbidden, the Going Song kept running through her mind. All her life, she’d been taught that death was part of the natural cycle. When Dad’s parents died, within two months of each other, the family had gathered and sung and spoke the words of reassurance, to ease their way into the dark. When her two sisters had died suddenly of flu, along with a third of the town, the pain was eased by the Going rituals and the knowledge of the natural cycle. Nothing lives forever. There is a time to live, and a time to die. Being in the mystery, we can not see the whole of it. All of these things she had learned at school, and at church… and suddenly Dad had baulked, showed himself a hypocrite who said the words but didn’t mean them! He was a stranger. And why couldn’t she make up her mind? On the one hand, all of the lessons pointed clearly against extraordinary measures. On the other hand, how could she tell him… no?

Would it be helpful to visit Ian, and ask him for advice? Picturing her brother, broad-shouldered and intense, quick to anger and well suited to hammering hot iron, Cairen shook her head. He was traditional; he would only get angry at Dad and another fight solved nothing. But who? She suddenly thought of Trevor – he’d known! How? Could Dad have asked him? But no – mostly likely he heard Dad and Rosie, somehow. Trevor would help. At least, he would listen; he was very good at that. She felt the panic lift a little; realized she’d been sitting in the sun and would have extra freckles at the very least, and jumped up to check the bread.

The clinic was busy today – there were three new-baby checks, two healed broken limbs to un-cast and certify, a toddler with worms and Old Lady Madison who was forever scalding herself. And there were several that Rosie took aside for private chats, which could be anything from contraception to family feuds to terminal diagnoses. He got the straightforward cases: the injuries and repeat dosages, but most of the patients wanted Rosie to examine and give advice, so he spent a lot of time listening and learning. And wondering how he’d ever get good enough to distinguish the subtle symptoms and give accurate diagnoses. It was past dinner time when they wrapped up with the Tate baby – a chunky boy with a worrisome passivity – and closed the door. Rosie moved quickly to gather up the linens and gowns and bag them for Tony the washman. She was petite, chunky but lively, and seemed younger than her 52 years. Her auburn hair was gray at the temples, kept back in a braid. Trevor admired her calm, practical attitude; he suspected his own quiet demeanor was part of the reason she chose him to prentice. Today he was feeling anything but calm, though. How could he ask about Jeff without admitting he’d overheard? Turned out, when she heard he’d been plowing for the Langleys, she asked about Jeff herself.

“How was his pallor? Did he look better or worse than the last time he was in?”

That was one of the signs of a good medic – being able to remember patients in great detail. Records were brief, almost cryptic; the best doctor could list a patient’s history without looking at them. Trevor closed his eyes to better recall.

“He was more pale. In fact, Cairen was worried enough to ask me – to ask me for your advice,” he said finally. “She said the last time you treated him, he did get much better.”

“Hmm, yes… but it’s a progressive illness. And the winter rations don’t always have enough vitamins.” A rare frown; she was thinking of Charter, he was sure. “It may be his last year, unless –“

“—he goes to Charter Hospital?” Trevor finished, holding his breath. Rosie’s startled expression held no suspicion. “Not a likely option, I know, but – would it help?”

Rosie frowned again. “Last I heard, they still were making insulin, so yes, it would slow the progress of the illness. But they were charging like an oil company, and it isn’t, as you know, a cure.”

Trevor nodded. They had a handful of diabetics in the five clinics, all following strict diets, and one child who had died at a year due to Type 1 diabetes, for which diet did nothing. Malfunctioning organs were not easily treated, since the collapse. That was the way of it. The city hospital was more like a dream – or a threat – than a reality. He’d never been close enough to see their region’s Chartered city on the horizon, let alone enter it. Its charter status kept out most of the surrounding population; cash money had to be shown at the gates to even allow someone in. He’d heard they looked upon barter as primitive; a weird notion compared to believing some etched paper had intrinsic value.

“But if he did want to go…?” Trevor wasn’t even sure of his question; he wanted to know what then? What were they as medics responsible for? What would the town say? What could be done to avoid wasting valuable produce and labor on a pipe dream?

“Jeff’s a stubborn man,” Rosie said grimly. “but I didn’t think he was that pigheaded.” She shrugged. “Let’s clean up and go home.” There were still yard chores to be done after dinner, and then studying the casebooks. Trevor paid for his lessons with a lot of hard physical labor. But he didn’t mind. There were many worse prenticeships.

Sunday came around quickly, filled with a spring drizzle. Cairen felt the tension in her neck as she set the table for the afternoon meal. Trevor hadn’t sent word, but if he dropped in around dinner time, he would be welcome as family. She had to stop herself from “accidently” setting another place. As the aroma of ham and potato soup wafted through the house, she busied herself with cutting apart a few threadbare shirts for rags. There was knitting to do, but she was so fumble-fingered that she avoided it as a waste of good wool. She felt like her nerves were showing through her skin. Luckily, it seemed Mom and Dad were avoiding her too. Neither parent had brought up the dowry issue, but she knew they would be sitting her down later today, maybe after supper. What was keeping Trevor? The ripping of cotton broadcloth had a satisfactory growl that felt good. But soon that was done, and she jumped up to see if she could see him down the road. Maybe she could check the rain barrel – anything to work off the energy she was feeling!

From the porch, she could see a man down by the curve, walking slowly – in a little bit, she could tell it was Trevor. She let out a breath and grabbed a broom to sweep off the porch, then stopped. Where could they talk? Damn the rain, anyway! She watched him come closer, thinking furiously.

Trevor had been thinking long and hard on the walk to the Landleys. What can you say when there’s nothing to say? Rosie had been sympathetic; he even wondered if she’d guessed his feelings for Cairen. But she had no miracle cure, nor any advice except to keep good diet and moderate physical work by watching fatigue levels – standard advice for helping the body heal, if it could. But Cairen needed more. He watched the alders that tilted along Cold Creek shivering in the rain; he could feel his steps slow, and it felt – he shook himself for being so fanciful – like he was walking through heavy mud rather than on gravel. Once or twice in the clinic he had felt this – a strong sense that he knew what he had to do, but was searching for anything else to do instead.

He saw her sweeping, and pushed himself to walk a little faster. She had turned away, looking like a clean porch was her only goal; he admired the strong sweeping motions, and wished he could watch the curve of her back forever. But in a moment, he was climbing the steps and she was greeting him with a wavering smile. He heard footsteps from inside, coming toward the door.

“I’m going to talk with him,” he told her, before she could speak. “After supper. I’ll talk with your Pa. Trust me.”

She looked stunned, like it was the last thing she was expecting. But just then, Jeff opened the door.

“Hey, Trevor – good timing. You’re as good as Ian in catching a meal. Come in,” Jeff joked as he held the door wide. Trevor smiled at Cairen and walked inside. If he got through this afternoon, the medic test would be child’s play.

The meal was leisurely as a Sunday dinner generally was, full of small talk about the town, and local news. The two young boys were oblivious to the other four, whose speech was forced, and halting. Trevor couldn’t understand why Jeff and Ann would be tense, since they didn’t know his “errand”. But he focused on finding enough news to fill the silences.

As Cairen and the boys got up to clear, Trevor asked quickly, “Can I speak with you, Uncle?”

Jeff looked startled. “What about?”

“Um – something personal. If you wouldn’t mind.” Trevor could feel the boys’ stares, and sensed that Ann and Cairen looked away, then herded the boys into the kitchen. Jeff shrugged, then pointed toward the living room.

There were two fat upholstered chairs by the south window, and a pair of cast-off dining chairs sitting near the small spinning wheel by the north window. That and a few end tables were all that this room contained. Jeff sat in the green corderoy armchair, so Trevor took the brown vinyl one opposite him.

“Is this about Cairen?” Jeff asked. Trevor braced himself; how he wished it was about Cairen!

“No, I just wanted to speak to you – partly as medic, partly as family. It’s about your idea to go to Charter.”

Jeff paled; a complex of emotions shifted across his face in a moment – Trevor wondered if Rosie could get in trouble for this intervention. Jeff leaned back in the chair; his frown grew deeper.

“Trevor, I know you don’t understand –“

“No, I don’t,” Trevor interrupted. “Excuse me, Uncle – no, I don’t. And please don’t think Rosie told me – I happened to overhear you two talking. I know you’ve thought about this a while. But – hear me out– I wonder if you have really thought this through. You spend all the money once, quickly, and then – what? Have you pictured coming back home with the insulin, knowing that everyone knows what you’re doing? And they will know. And never mind that the insulin would have to be kept cold through the summer. Never mind that – think about working, every day, alongside your neighbors – and they know. Think about the Dinners and Raisings – because once you find out that you hate living with their eyes watching you, it will be too late. You’ll have already spent that money. I can’t make your decision for you, but I just want you to really picture the next couple years – day in and day out – once you’ve made that choice.”

“They don’t have the right to judge me!” The old man half-lifted himself from the armchair, then sank down. “They don’t have the right.” His right hand clenched and unclenched, spasmodically.

“I know – but they will anyway. It’s human nature, and you can’t change them. They will be looking, and they will be whispering – and your family will have to live through that too. And, like I say, once you’ve spent the money is too late to realize that it won’t be much of a life. Remember Preacher Kane.” Trevor hated to bring that up.

Jeff’s face flushed, whether anger or shame, and he bent to pick something from the floor by the chair. Trevor waited, watching the tremble of the man’s arm, the tight movements. How to keep the thread of the conversation going where it needed to? The gift of knowing when to be silent and when to speak – how does one get that? He held his breath, giving Jeff some time to think, but not enough to evade, trying to pace it as Rosie did, when she was delivering bad news.

“Uncle – think about what we all know. We are part of nature’s cycle; no different than the plants, the animals. We don’t know our span, but it’s limited. There’s always an end.”

“You’re a child!” Jeff blurted, staring at him with reddened eyes. “You think you have your whole life ahead – so you don’t care! Wait ‘til you get to my age… wait – see how scared… how scared –“

Rosie never really spoke about how hard it was to watch someone grapple with death. Trevor wondered if he were cut out to be a medic. No songs or rituals had been made for this moment, that he knew. He hesitated, then gripped Jeff’s hand.

“No, I know that I don’t know. Each of us pauses on our own Gateway, alone. The town can only hold you in our hearts, and help you with the everyday things. It’s your Gate, your journey. There’s a time when the cycle is over, No honor in staying the tide; I’m a drop that is flowing beyond, now; to find out what’s on the other side.”

As he softly sang a bit of the Going song, Trevor noticed Jeff nodding; some of the anger quenched. Trevor sat back. Tears began to roll down the man’s cheek; he didn’t try to hide them now. Tears were the rain that allows acceptance to bloom, Rosie always said, so Trevor let him cry for several minutes, in silence. Then, steeling himself, he asked softly, “What will be different five years from now? What will allow you to let go then? Or will you bankrupt your family before you go?”

“No – not that. I wouldn’t do that,” Jeff said, squirming a bit in the chair. “It’s just… I don’t know. It’s a good question.” He was silent, then, looking down at his knees. He started to speak, then stopped; nodded again. “I will think about it. I will, Trevor. Promise.” He grinned and leaned forward to pat Trevor’s hand. “I appreciate your coming to talk with me. Tell Rosie that.”

“She didn’t send me –“

“I know that. But she should know she’s got a good student.” Jeff got up and moved slowly toward the hall door, wiping his face. He paused at the door, then turned back. “Thanks, again, Trevor.” Then he left. Trevor felt dismissed, and unwilling to wander the house looking for Cairen, so he plodded down the hall and out the front door, hoping he hadn’t made things worse.

Cairen was waiting by the edge of the property, out of view of the house. A giddy kind of courage filled Trevor, like the one time he’d tasted carbonated wine. As long as everything was up in the air –

“Trevor, what did he say? What did you tell him??” Cairen’s oilcloth poncho was dripping; her face was slick with rain. “You didn’t tell him I sent you?”

“No – I told him I was speaking both as a medic and family member. I told him I’d overheard him and Rosie – and that’s true – and we… talked.” He was suddenly aware of the split – medic and family. He really shouldn’t tell her anything. “Honestly, I don’t know if it helped. But I tried… just tried to get him to see… what he already knows.” She frowned; it surely wasn’t what she wanted to hear. He rushed ahead.

“And as long as we’re talking about… futures… I – doubt you noticed, but I’m very interested… in making a future with you –” his words sounded crazy even to himself. “I – know you are going to Meet next month, but – if you would consider – could we at least talk about –” Her jaw had dropped, and that silenced him. Okay, well – he could always become a medic over in the east county. They were always short in that harsh country. No need to stay here and watch her raise someone else’s kids.

“I – okay, to be honest, no – I didn’t notice,” she said. “You’re kind of quiet, you know.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Not that that’s bad,” she hurried on, “Just – I always see you with the Granger girls…”

“Nice girls; always been like sisters. I didn’t have to worry about what I said.”

She nodded; her serious look told him little. “Yes. I can see that. Okay – let me get my bearings. I was so wrapped up in Dad.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Really –“

“No, no – I do. And I want to.” She smiled; why did that choke him up? “It’s not – I guess I’m willing to consider, to get to know you more. I realize… I don’t know that much about you, cousin.”

“And I know they allow dispensations –“

“You’re thorough – you would have checked.” Her smiled broadened; she didn’t look unhappy. Suddenly it all felt more hopeful – and dangerous. He clamped his lips shut to avoid saying something stupid.

“Well – I’ll ask Dad and Mom to give us some time off; I assume Rosie will let you out?”

He nodded. She repeated the motion.

“So – let’s give this the month, anyway… and see where we get. And I might not have a dowry –“

“Doesn’t matter!”

“—but all those details come later. Right?”

“Right.” He breathed out again; realizing he’d been choking back tears since the parlor. He was so grateful, at that moment, for the rain soaking them both. No real chance of a hug; that was for another day. “I – thanks – I… I have to get back and get to my lessons. I’ll – I’ll see about staying in town after the clinic Tuesday, okay?”

“Okay. Now I’ve got to go in – they’re waiting to talk to me about my dowry.” She winced, then smiled. “I’ll see you Tuesday evening.”

Trevor walked back to Rosie’s, wanting to break into a jog at every step.

Cairen paused inside the back door shaking off the rain, before putting her poncho on a mudroom hook. So cousin Trevor was sweet on her? It was still new enough she didn’t know what to think. He was cute; maybe not as boisterous as the farm boys. But medics were valued, and less chance of him becoming injured and unable to work. Love was only a piece of things these days; her married friends told her friendship lasted longer. She leaned against the door to the kitchen; it felt like one of those spring squalls where the yard was swirled and upended. And Dad – what had they talked about? What were the plans now, she wondered? Trying to think ahead to summer, she found a gap, like a missing bridge – no way of knowing how the next two months would play out. But it proved that you couldn’t count on things staying the same. Her mother’s voice called her name faintly. With a suddenly tight chest, and an odd giddy feeling, she walked into the house.

The Going Song

As the heart of the tree slowly hollows
As the bloom on the thorn slowly fades
I know in my heart I am going
Yet always a part of me stays.

Chorus:
Oh, you will have me forever –
I’m in song, and in smiles, and in sighs
It’s just this one branch that’s going
Remember the roots never die.

Though I tremble like aspen in autumn
Though I rest like a snake in the sun
I can feel some new tendril curling
Round a thread that is leading me on.

Plant me where I can take root as
The grass and the herbs and the ‘shrooms
Plant a sapling above – call it my name
I’ll be there giving strength to the bloom.

There’s a time when the cycle is over
No honor in staying the tide
I’m a drop that is flowing beyond, now
To find out what’s on the other side.

2011-06-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

Overlay
there are two towns…

I.
The first welcomes you, a stranger;
saffron side streets like one-act plays unrolling
nothing in the expected place.
The ghost of the town you left
overlays its face, confusing
the issue further.

Every direction in new coordinates:
East by NewEast by Sudden by West;
maps tied to every venture
distance will not settle into one length.
You are not yet here, as they are
who walk so easy on untranslated sidewalks
who navigate by hidden grids.
Cafes, bookstores, groceries —
find touchstones; find the core.

Approach like a lover
and it will let you in.

II.
The second, found under the first
when newness rubs off:
your new home town. As years etch
invisible pathways, you overlay comfort’s GPS,
your autopilot unerring
except at scattered moments, catching
a startled glimpse — scrap of first town —
the stranger-glaze showing
and you wonder how you could ever
have so mistaken it.

copyright 2011, Catherine McGuire

This poem is part of a chapbook tentatively titled, "Reflections, Echoes and Palimpsests" to be released in September by Uttered Chaos

I welcome all the bloggers and visitors from the Blue Print Review blog carnival! (note: this blog has been dormant for too long, but you can see more of me at www.cathymcguire.com)

Really the Last

2009-03-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

It is obvious now that I can't keep this blog going on any kind of regular basis... so I'm throwing in the towel. I appreciate those of you who poked your head in from time to time to read my entries. I am still having adventures in housewrecking - fortunately, only my own.

Oh, and the mourning dove now has a partner ('tis the season) - whoever said two can eat as frugally as one?? Those two are gobbling everything in sight!

Anyway, someday I might try this again. It's been fun, but I need the time to live my real life. Take care,
Cathy

At Long Last...What?

2008-12-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering, I hadn’t succumbed to one of those adventures I’ve often recounted; haven’t fallen out of the apple tree or slipped on the roof moss… No, aside from my typical run-ins with gravity (birdseed should have a warning label), I just seem to be busier and busier with the effort of keeping up house and yard, and working from home, and trying to be creative in whatever hours (minutes) I have left. I travelled for half of November, but since some of my favorite bloggers seem to carry on their daily analysis of national crises while apparently hiking in the Mohave Desert or Arches national wilderness, that’s no excuse, I know. I have added a little wingnut thingie (okay, widget - just as idiotic a name) so that you can get alerted to my increasingly random postings… I don’t want to give up completely, but I accept that I am not a daily blogger… I’m not a daily anything! My lack of consistency is part of my charm (except in most circumstances).

Anyway, to catch up: the house is snug against the fall/winter rains and I love that smug feeling (oh - I mean snug, really I do…). I even decorated the new front porch for the holidays, since I was no longer calling attention to a chipped concrete step with an embedded steel waterpipe handrail. No, this year it looked like the back end of a caboose when tricked out in lights… hadn’t noticed that before… Of course, like all my adventures, this one almost self-destructed. I found last year’ lights - I’d never put them away w/the Xmas stuff, so it was a true Xmas miracle - but they were too few to do the new outlining job. The additional lights I’d picked up at the thrift for a buck only lit halfway along their strand so I bought yet another cheap strand and doubled that segment - almost… I now have a lovely door/porch outline except for one foot of blackout - and I just don’t have time to change that! Since no one comes to my house and it’s not really visible from the road, it’s not a big deal… and if folks want fancy Xmas lights, the guy around the bend has literally a half-acre display of moving scenes, inflatable creatures of Christian and pagan persuasion - it glows for a hundred feet above his house every night this season.

The garden has been abandoned for the year; I would like to say “put to bed” but my energy gave out before all the leaves and weeds - and there are no handymen who use rakes anymore… but it worked out, because the two inches of dead leaves were very insulating against the hard freeze last week… and hopefully the bugs will have eaten the weeds down to nubs by spring…

I’m still living in a town where a bumpsticker “Just Say No to Crack” refers to plumbers, and the new Chinese restaurant in town is called “Double Chen” -- their attempt at wordplay defeated by poor spelling… it’s a restful place. The guy at the gas station wore a Santa hat for Christmas; it was camoflage-colored but I suppose hunters just can’t bring themselves to wear red? The town’s lightposts displayed Cowboy Christmas decorations - boot and hat silhouettes with rakish poinsettas. I wonder what the Chinese who create these things think?

Anyway, I will try to get back to this at least every two weeks… just sign yourself up to be notified, and you won’t miss a thing…

Pre-Senior Moments

2008-10-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

What is the official commencement date for senior moments? Is it when AARP starts sniffing up your Naturalizers? As a 50-something, I call myself middle-aged… so why aren’t they “midlife moments?” Or are those exclusively resolved for the jerks who run off with their buxom secretaries in a newly-bought red sportster?

I suppose this euphemism is reserved for memory glitches, like when I started the bread machine, commended myself on getting the setting right, then glanced over and noticed the bucket of batter was still on the counter. Or like just now, when I couldn’t manage to backspace and correct a typo without really stopping and focusing. Inflation has eaten into everything, and half a mind isn’t at all what it used to be.

In solidarity with the nation, I’ve lost my grip. Only this is literal - today I sent the toner catridge flying across the bathroom as I juggled the hypodermic filled with ink (yes, I’m a printing junkie) and tried to keep the open bottle of black indelible from re-painting my sink counter. Gravity and I have never been all that friendly, but now that it’s making a real boob of me, I’ve been searching through physics articles online for ways to fight back. But I always get distracted. Take this one:

One example of entanglement is the famous ‘EPR pairs’ (after Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) If two electrons with complementary spin (if one is spin up, the other is spin down, and vice versa) are "paired" (both in superposition of both spin up and spin down) are separated by being sent along different wires, miles apart from each other, they each remain in superposition. However when one superpositioned electron is measured by a detector at its destination and reduces/collapses to a particular spin, (say spin up), its entangled twin miles away instantaneously reduces/collapses to the complement (spin down). The nonlocal effect has been verified with electron spin pairs, polarized photons and other quantum systems but remains unexplained.... Entire clouds of millions of atoms have been entangled. Non-local entanglement—referred to as ‘quanglement’ by Penrose—remains a fundamental mystery.

The only mystery to me is how they pick those twinned electrons out of a crowd - I mean, first those buggers are small and second they are fast! (or if you believe quantum, non-existent)... so how do they track this entanglement? How do you “tag” an electron? Does it even have an ear? Or do they dye them blue?

Anyway, sitting at the computer reading about particles so small that they make my retirement fund look big at least keeps me from dropping stuff. And I'm gonna re-read that paragraph a couple more times... I might be able to use it to explain why the ink went splat in the bathroom!

Seeds of the Future

2008-09-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have dropped the thread of this blog, as the realities of a little homestead overtake me (okay - maybe a “stead-ette”). I’m tempted to follow the last post with more of the same - as I watch this harvest season so full of reaping the whirlwind. But I’m gonna stick closer to home; after all, I have more than enough of my own gaffes to work with. And if my retirement savings has now dwindled to the point that they are planning to shoot it around the center of the Large Hadron Collider, at least I have a freezer-full of badly preserved food to live on.

As the garden begins to wind down (which means the tomatoes, peppers, melons and eggplants sudden take notice of the weather and start blossoming, like a ne‘er do well child who at 54 decides to become a doctor, teasing his poor mother, breaking her heart), I am now into the seed saving phase. I am learning to recognize when seeds are ready to be gathered: about a day before I find those brown exploded husks on the ground by the dead plant. So far the only seeds I’ve been able to capture are the ones too big to get away, like beans and peas, and the ones that are so prolific as to be weeds, like calendula, marigold and lettuce. Not to say that I will be able to keep them over the winter (a jar of pea pods has turned black with mold -- if only I could find a mold-processing service who needs my harvesting skills!), but this is all part of my first year farming course: City Rube 101. Last week I celebrated the year anniversary of signing off on the counter offer to this place, and told myself how far I’d come from the days when I was driving down here, on the sly, before the deal was sealed, to mow the waist-high weeds and paint the eroded window sills before the rains started. Now I have waist-high buggy vegetables, and the window sills (and everything else!) on the main house are painted and snug - see the before/after photos (I think you can tell the difference). I did, as planned, treat myself to having contractors do the porch and the painting, and I am very happy with the results! Only 765 more projects to go!

Today I’m gonna keep this short, since I have 3 bags of bug-infested windfall apples to surgically prepare for cider, another quart or so of berries to preserve somehow (I might try berry-stuffed cabbage rolls) and the summer clothes to get up into the attic (finally bought a step ladder, a vast improvement over the knotted rope.) More later.

Morning After in America

2008-08-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

I’m trying as hard as I can to ignore all this political hooha - we country folk have hogs to swill and hay to get in… alright, alright - but, I’ve got all the windows to caulk and the cat shit to get off the lawn… it’s the same idea. It’s a different world out here, and when I see all those swankers in their shiny suits and wide striped ties (when did wide ties come back? I’ve been out of the stores for too long…), I know that they don’t speak my language, nor I theirs.

But even I couldn't avoid some of the headlines recently and since we don’t have long now (it just seems like forever), I’ve got a few suggestions to help the campaigns. Firstly, Obama/Biden should be campaigning under the slogan, “Morning After in America” - riffing on the Bush comment that Wall St. got way drunk. Might as well give us the real story right up front -- we all have hell to pay. And that would leave the McCain group with “Hair of the Dog”. What we don’t know won’t hurt as it’s killing us.

Secondly, each winning campaign must vow not only to remove every last campaign sign, bulletin board and poster by one week after the election, but also to spend at least as much on social programs (aid to the poor, food kitchens, etc.) as they spent campaigning. And all the losing candidates are stuck rebuilding the bridges. It’s clear that they can afford it, and if that becomes the “loser’s task” each election, perhaps we’ll get fewer major millionaires in the race. Or maybe we just cycle them through: you pledge to give all your money to the general fund if you lose, and then you drop down to the level of the majority of the people you supposedly serve, and start again. If you’re a really good businesman, you might be able to afford to run twice in your life.

Okay, I can see there’s a fuzziness to my logic (it’s all the moss around here)… I’m happier at figuring out how long to boil the boysenberries to kill the mold than I am pondering the big questions like what slick theme song to follow X’s speech with, in order to ram home the message to the audience hindbrain, or whether to ban all the fat news correspondents from the campaign plane in order to save fuel. I don’t even want to know how much they are spending on the two conventions. It’s enough to know that I could live very comfortably on it for the rest of my life; heck, my whole town of 9,000 (no, it’s not Palin’s town, but just as rural) would be comfortable at least until the next election… why is it that recessions end up laying off all the steelworkers but hanging on to the marketing flacks? Because the Emperor’s New Clothes are made of the most expensive material there is - illusions ain’t cheap. But I’m sure that since both parties swear they’re the green party, they’re carefully packing up all those tall tales, sob stories and fun facts to recycle for 2012.

Blogging to the Buzzsaw

2008-08-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

My blogging has fallen to drought levels, and I apologize. I’ve had a contractor around the house for the several weeks, dealing with some repairs that I was smart enough to admit were beyond me. I’m very happy with the work so far, and I’m trying really hard to be patient with the building chaos right outside my office window. Amazing how my own peripatetic contruction process doesn’t bother me, but the random sounds of a circular saw 5 feet away throw my concentration right out the window (almost literally). Jokes are no bolder than a woodland creature and shy away at the least noise, unfortunately. I’ve started and stopped several blog pieces, and finally decided to post a note explaining the situation. Even though it is obvious that the builder wants to stretch this out into many repair jobs (and I admit the house needs them), the coming Oregon rainy season should put a decisive end to it sometime in September, so hopefully I’ll be able to mine my gold-encrusted depths for more riches soon. Meanwhile, I try to write at dawn or dusk, after he’s finished… with mixed results. More soon, I hope.

Weather or Not...

2008-08-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

We’re having a bout of “newcomer’s weather” in our little town… that’s the unexpected, sometimes disastrous weather shifts that all the natives will solemnly tell me “ain’t the usual weather, no way”. On the one hand, it’s a relief to know that three days of 100 degree-plus baking followed by lightning, hail and rain that brings 57 degree days is not run of the mill. As one of my neighbors says, “Thankew, Jesus!” On the other hand, I am getting worn out creating an emergency greenhouse around the veggies -- this must be the sixth time this growing season! There is a part of me that is so sick of salad that I’m happy to see lettuce bolting, but it’s not only a waste but added work to turn it all under. These don’t just qualify as gourmet veggies -- I’m calling them “hand ripened”.

It’s not just the veggies, of course. I’m halfway through my summer fix-it projects (pump house roof is done, though I haven’t had the courage to look inside and see how it faired through yesterday’s rain), and the rain has dappled the wooden chairs left outside, the clothes on the line and the tools I carelessly lost in the waist-high weeds (which I won’t be able to weed-wack now until the rain stops). And the contractor I’ve hired to build me a new front porch has called in once for heat and now is telling me he’s not water-proof. (The good news on that is he is so much faster than I am, that even the two days he’s worked is more than the two weeks I’d put into the project).

Everyone swears this strange weather shouldn’t persist. So in the meantime, I’m investing in a lightening-rod hardhat, an insulated bathsuit and wellies, and going into high gear on the house painting job! More soon…

Running Wild

2008-08-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

Today was errand day - with gas the same price as a good steak, I don’t go out until I have a pile of errands and then I just plow through them… by the end, I’m generally twitching, but that’s the price ya pay…

Errands usually means I have to drive to the next town over - the only things I can do in my little town is Post office, bank and library… and a trip of 15 miles means I’d better have a bunch to do there! So I gathered up books that hadn’t won the unpacking contest - if they’ve been in the garage for 8 months, I don’t need ’em - and added them to the truck, along with a Hefty bag full of packing peanuts (I saw a pawnshop advertising they had a need - great chance to get rid of them!) and then decided Today Was the Day: I’d get the scrap metal to the recycler. It was the water tank that put me over the top -- not only was it butt-ugly in a way that shrieked “Hick!!” but my neighbor had been ogling it, so it must be worth money. It also was a few pounds more than I’m used to lifting… and that truck bed seemed to have risen a couple inches. Even backing the truck as close as possible and trying to just lean it in and push, I was sweating and trembling when I got that sucker in - I punched the air: Yes! Then the metal cabinet that looked like it had been rejected by an auto repair shop, and the twist of steel pipe that the old guy had used as a front handrail, and an old coal scuttle (I think) and some scraps of pipe that I’d inherited-- and the old lawn mower. I had to rest up a bit after that…

Eventually, I was dressed for public and ready to go. I am at the age where I have to list my errands chronologically or I will forget one… and even so, I occasionally shoot past an item, grind more enamel from my teeth and have to go back… today wasn’t too bad -- though I ended up with errands that took me 2 towns over, and went through the gauntlet of fast food smells just at lunchtime. Another rough spot was when I dropped the donated books off at the Friends of the Library, and I found that paper covers were 25 cents, magazines a dime, and hardcovers 50 cents… and ended up with just about as many books as I’d dropped off. But better ones. That’s the important thing - right??

The scrap metal place was like landing on the moon. Not being a guy, I had never been to an auto scrapper, and I hesitated at the entrance. A girl who looked about high school age told me she’d weigh me in - just drive onto the scale. Like I ever, ever get anywhere near a scale?? Well, sacrifices must be made… She said my stuff was “shredder” stuff -- I tried to picture something like my paper shredder that could handle the water tank. Sitting on the scale-bridge, I could see beyond to the scrap heap -where crushed-car sculpture twisted around unidentified steel filigree two stories high, and a backhoe-type vehicle, waving a magnet the size of a manhole cover, was lifting tangles of metal bits -- like that desktop toy that was all the rage a few years ago. The girl was telling me I had to drive into that -- “All the way to the end; you’ll see some appliances” … my little truck could too easily be mistaken for scrap (so could I, for that matter)! Full of foreboding, I drove forward, skirted the monster magnet as fast as I could without taking out the front axle (this wasn’t a road; it was a slag heap only slightly flattened by the haulers). Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spark, looked over - and it seemed like ancient gnomes hunched over alchemical fires! Still trying to steer, I risked another glance - guys with hoodies were bent over large metal hunks, either soldering on or cutting off bits. Never did find out…

I got back to the appliances (including -- I wanted to cry -- an antique 1920’s washer) and parked near the Tower of Toyota. To think that people stacked car pancakes as carelessly as I stack books! In the shadow of that unstable avalanche-in-waiting, I unloaded my scrap, trying hard not to twist my back. An ambulance would flatly refuse to pick me up here, I was sure. Luckily I didn’t have to worry about damaging anything else, so I could just let the junk fall out of the truck. I noted a very flattened egg beater was part of the “pavement”, as well as a car’s rear view mirror (the metal, anyway) and a hubcap, and some large bed springs -- all as flat as Swedish pancakes. I cringed for my tires, and eased my truck back out of the hellhole. Back on the scale, I learned I was 180 lbs lighter! I was floored -- I’d hoisted one hundred eighty pounds in and out of my truck?? No wonder my muscles were trembling like a 90-year-old’s! I felt very proud of myself in that moment. The thrill faded somewhat when I got my check for $13.45... I risked a multi-thousand-dollar injury for enough money to treat myself to a KFC banquet?? Okay, lesson learned. But at least the crap was gone from the yard.

I wasn’t finished with the rural aerobic session tho -- at Home Despot, I had to get fence-fixin’s… four concrete deck-blocks that had a carved space so that a 4x4 would sit upright in it… dang expensive, but it had a much better chance of becoming a fence that my planning to dig a hole and pour my own concrete! I sucked it up and got the 4x4’s and 2x4’s in order to get my side fence finished (I hope)…and one packet of roofing shingles to get the pump house roof redone (man, I‘d forgotten how heavy roofing shingles were!)…The truck sagged even more on the way home, so I’m guessing another 180 lbs. at least…? I certainly couldn’t blame it on the front seat full of books.

Anyway, it’s taken me most of the afternoon to unload the truck, and that’s a good day’s hauling… with luck, I’ll actually use all the stuff I bought before the rains come back…but even if I don’t, it’s still cheaper than a day at the gym.

Birdland

2008-08-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

I’m one step away from having bats in my belfrey… something twittery has taken up residence in my chimney. At first I thought it was bats, but the 2nd time I pulled out the dinner plate and looked, there were tiny feathers, and one pea-sized egg sitting among the cinders. The twittering is pretty constant these days, and I was beginning to fear a colony had taken up residence. Not sure what fires up the avian monologue - sometimes it seems to be my heavy steps on the wood floor, but other times I’m quietly typing up a blog post - maybe I have phantom editors? At other times it might be my cooking - tho I haven’t had poultry for dinner in weeks. It sounds like a particularly squeaky stationary bike is being ridden in my chimney! Or a demented hamster on a wheel…

Today I pulled off the dinner plate --okay, what else should I call it? That metal thing that looks like a fluted paper plate with some flower or landscape collaged on it, that covers the round hole that every old brick chimney seems to have? The thing with the twin wire “legs” that supposedly grip the sides of the hole but in reality spring off as soon as you pull it out, and at that point not even duct tape will keep the dang thing together?? Anyhoo, that’s the thing I removed and looked to see if perhaps the nest was blocking the chimney. I used a compact mirror (I always seem to get some sort of makeup with mirrors from a relative; I save them for looking under the house or up chimneys. The makeup just gets stale). There was some definitely irate twittering at that point, but no matter which way I angled it, I couldn’t see much… either they are tunneling in from another dimension (my chimney is channeling?), or the dark splodges of stuff I thought was creosote are actually disguised nests. I kind of feel like a monster scaring the phantom twitterer like that, but I just wanted to remind it whose house it is… these last days have had a distinct hint of Fall, and I want to be sure this squatter isn’t feeling too comfortable. I don’t mind it launching the fledglings and then heading South, provided they’re not stopping over through Thanksgiving. And now it seems like an even better idea to have a chimney sweep in before I start the first fire. Last thing I want is fireworks coming out the chimney.

I’m glad to be back on the blog, though Vista is still giving me about a dozen Line Errors every time I arrive on my own page, and I still can’t leave comments for almost every blog I enjoy reading (so guys, if you’re reading this, I’m not ignoring you!). According to Crooks and Liars, there was some glitch with sitetracking (but why now? why suddenly? And why did it only seem to be the left-leaning sites??), and gradually I’m finding I can load sites that crashed two days ago… it’s that kind of thing that’s really encouraging my hair to fall out. When I wonder why I just don’t have any time, I need to remember how many hours I spent trying to figure out why it was one site but not another, and then as a last ditch effort, working through eight pages of onlineVista tech support instructions of “what to do when a webpage won’t load” -- they don’t get that problem often, do they? (snark) And then, after it all, nothing I did had any effect…it was some pixels getting stuck in the internet tubes.

Might be Offline for a While

2008-08-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

VISTA strikes again... If this post gets through, it'll be the only thing I've been able to do online since this afternoon... Internet Explorer has decided to block all my favorite sites and not allow me to post ANY comments on any other blog -- I just can't come up with a funny way to deal with this... ask me again after I finish this gallon of ice cream....

Deconstruction Chronicles

2008-07-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

With the brief rain overnight, I became more acutely aware that I was losing the dry season time to make exterior changes to the house. So I decided it was a good day for tearing out more things. In this instance, the two rickety wood-frame awnings over the twin back doors (this house has five entrances, which is a bit much for 945 sq ft!). They had been built from scraps such as a steel strut, a slice of metal gutter, several L-brackets and old wood lattice - and covered with plastic tarp that had disintegrated in the sun. I have plans to re-install them with some nice blue duckcloth awnings, and maybe even proper supports. But for now I wanted them off so the back of the place doesn’t look like it’s on welfare.

They were just a bit too high for me to reach, and a bit too low for the extension ladder (which had no place to lean except against the awnings, anyway). So I brought out what I had: the 3-step wooden stepladder and my electric screwdriver. Of course, there was no flat ground for the stepladder, so I did the usual dance: plunk it down, step up gingerly, leap back as one leg sinks - repeat. Mole holes, chunks of concrete and large pulpy weeds made the ground as flat as a compost heap. Finally I was able to step up without being jettisoned by the stepladder, and I started to unscrew the fastenings, very aware that -- as someone whose feet were not on the ground -- I might have some difficulty if the awning suddenly fell on top of me. I had cleverly positioned myself under the large rip in the plastic, so if the awning fell straight down (a 10 million to 1 chance) it would drop around me to the ground. Other than that, I hadn’t much planned. We don’t need no stinking precautions… But I did remove the secondary screws first, and left the corner ones for last, thinking I could swing it down on one corner and then let it drop. What I hadn’t seen -- until I had all the other screws out; the frame was sagging and partly leaning on the open screen door and partly on my hand -- was the very small paperwasp nest in the left corner, right by the last screw. I suddenly realized I’d be fighting four wasps for the privilege of undoing that last screw.

Gingerly I set the awning on the screen door top (listening to the door creak as the hinges stretched), slowly eased down the step ladder and went inside for the Raid. I’m not a vicious person, but I knew my chances against a quartet of wasps. But of course, the Raid was nowhere to be found…. I spent an annoying ten minutes looking everywhere. First the logical places, and then under the bathroom sink, even in the food cupboards and in the coat closet (when I’m not paying attention, all bets are off!) I know I’d used it just recently, but it had vanished. Murphy‘s law strikes again. I looked at all the other spray bottles, but fertilizer and blackspot spray would probably just make them mad. And of course there was no way I could leave the awning as it was! The groans from the screen door were getting urgent.

I decided to put on some protective gear and see if I could move fast enough…. the photo shows the long jeans shirt, nylon gardening gloves and glitter vinyl baseball cap -- okay, I didn’t have a bee helmet, and this was the best second choice - made from the vinyl used in 50’s kitchen chairs -- nothing could sting me through that! I was glad none of the neighbors had cameras though. .. I looked like I’d been sniffing Raid and wandering through a Goodwill.

I was a bit more awkward, also, in this get-up, but I carefully eased under the cockeyed awning, moved the stepladder under the corner with the wasp nest, grabbed the power screwdriver firmly in my non-dominant hand (needing my more clever hand to keep the awning from collapsing on me) and slowly climbed up. Almost face to wing with the fiercesome foursome, I waved them aside with the metal tool, knocked the paper nest down and quickly slotted into the rusty (of course) screw. To my great relief, it turned - mostly. But the wasps weren’t happy with their eviction - they came back and circled where the nest had been. Luckily they were laughing too hard at the glitter hat to make any serious forays. Okay then - time to get down! I dropped the powertool, jumped back off the stepladder and grabbed the far end of the awning in both hands -- and wrenched. For a moment, it hung on by the rust and cobwebs, but then crashed down, taking two sunflowers with it, but scattering the wasps. Before they had a chance to regroup, I grabbed the powertool and scooted inside. Mission Accomplished!

The second awning was not nearly as interesting a job, and I could hang up my glitter hat within the half hour. And after I’d put all the tools away, and shifted a nearby tarp to recover some shingles.. there was the Raid, not a foot away from where I needed it. I grabbed it and started stalking every wasp I could find.

Nothing Doing...

2008-07-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Another wonderfully boring day here in the country… it’s quiet except for the shrill of the woodpulper in the distance; the sky is dappled blue; the weeds are glowing in the sunlight. All the sunflowers planted by the birds are blooming like little suns around the yard. I have decided they are deliberate - they’ve figured out the connection and are anticipating a fall bumpercrop of seed. The yard is developing a typical country junkyard look -- the tarps, buckets, piles of treebranch, old strips of tire, etc. that I’ve left around after my various attempts to garden have taken on the mossy look of abandonment. The neighbor offered to “relieve me” of the heavy steel water tank -- somehow he didn’t mention that he’d get a good sum selling it as scrap. I declined - I need the money myself.

We had our first rain last night after about 40 days of misleadingly dry weather -- it soaked all the porous objects me and the neighbors finally had been lulled into leaving out overnight. I thought about the house I’d passed last weekend that basically had re-created the living room outdoors… hopefully they at least brought in the tv and stereo.There’s a tang of Fall in the air, and the bit of rain did at least wash the pollen and the dense smoke from grassfield burning out of the air so I can breathe without coughing. Am I missing something, or is it ironic that the state which has banned tobacco smoke in every public area, including some parks, still allows acres of grass fields to be burned off after harvest, creating miles of orange acrid smoke that hangs in the air and in some places actually creates traffic hazards?

Anyway, I’m sitting here in the deck chair, eagerly anticipating absolutely nothing happening. Boredom is the cure for that urban plague, Novelty. I ran out of adrenalin years ago, after living in NYC and then in So. Cal (which is supposed to be mellow, but compared to Oregon is on fast-forward), so I’m just as happy to have a day -- or even a week! -- when no water pump breaks, nor stove smells like burnt wires nor truck sounds like metal fatigue. A week when I can manage the same schedule 5 out of 7 days, and not have to drop everything to wait for some emergency repair guy. I did have a painter in to estimate the exterior house painting job - a bit steep, but I know I’m leaving a lot of prep work for him… the stuck point is that the repair guy who has to do the job first has not called back… everyone’s on “country time” around here, or they haven’t paid their phone bills….

I’m sure there’ll be new crises to write about soon, but for today I’ll just sign off: Happily Bored.

I Know my Thoughts Are In There Somewhere….

2008-07-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Along with the new desktop (that continues to be a joy - NOT!), I also had bought a digital recorder, with the logical thought that audio tape was becoming as scarce as blog sites without advertising… and now instead of just a record-stop-play process, I have fallen into Beginner’s Binary Bewilderment, as I push beeping buttons with increasing frustration, looking for the notes that I am sure I taped during my last car trip -- I know I saw a red light at the top of the little machine, dagnabit!! It’s not that I’m computer illiterate, it’s just that I don’t have several hours to learn the many, varied (and I’m sure, delightful) new features of this sophisticated tool that is the size of a pack of cigarettes, (and at $29, costs about the same amount). And there’s also the fact that my own organic “processor” seems to have flaked off enough cells that erasing old procedures and recording new ones takes as many tries as getting this old body out of bed in 20 degree weather. Basically, I forget the damn instructions as fast as it takes to tuck the recorder into my purse, and so when I‘m driving, eyes (mostly) on the road, I‘m squeezing buttons, hearing beeps and feeling like I wandered into Candid Camera.

Back at home, my summer garden grows weeds like the castle in Sleeping Beauty as I waste precious hours trying to get my new digital “toys” to behave. The digital recorder has four virtual “folders” in which you can “tuck” the individual “recordings”. No longer can you just back up the tape and find what you’d said just before screaming and slamming on your brakes… now you have to find the right folder and the right snippet to play back. Supposedly, I can download any/all of it onto my new computer now, and sort it all out with the mouse and keyboard… if only I knew how. Honestly - what I said wasn’t worth all this!! But it’s all part of the Revolution that will Make Our Lives Easier (yes, and there is no global warming…. and the Brooklyn Bridge is still for sale). There comes a time when even the most enthusiastic technie begins to wonder if the digital devices have deliberately created a world where it take 15 minutes to input/read/print a paragraph that could be handwritten in one. Oh, yes, you say - but after it’s input, you can do so much more with it! Yes, but do I need to? Or was that “need” created to fill the existing capacity, just like appliances were made to go obsolete in order to fill the need to sell us more stuff each year? Ah, dang it - I’m starting to sound like a Luddite.

But I know I moved here to live more simply and to spend more time in the garden, or working to make my little bungalow a cozy nest… so I’m gonna give up on whatever witticism is parsed in the tiny bowels of this contraption, and go out and hoe weeds. And I’m gonna bring a notepad and pen. It fits in my pocket just as easily as the digi-taper, and if I turn my back on the sprinkler, it’s not as big a disaster.

Country Sayings

2008-07-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

After having heard a young kid puzzle over the saying “alike as two P’s in IPOD” -- for obvious reasons it didn’t make sense to her -- I decided that as a public service I would help the younger generation with some of the simple, old country phrases that have no physical equivalent in their world.

The first example doesn’t concern digitial typography at all, and is in fact “two peas in a pod”, a reference to the similarities of the little round green things of salad bar and potpie fame, when they are harvested from the little green cocoons that they grow in. It looks like a green banana, but smaller, and is attached to a vine that looks like a tangled ball of yarn. Around here, they are planted “when the ground becomes dry enough to work”, which is supposed to be February but often is June. Each individual pea grows into its own vine full of new podded peas, which have to be plucked, opened, and the peas removed for cooking -- this half hour or more of work is balanced by the fact that the bag didn’t cost $1.59 to buy. (Although, if you factor in the time spent protecting those suckers from snow, wind and birds, not to mention fertilizer and chiropractic visits, the savings doesn’t appear to be that great). For those of you young’uns who doubt me, you probably can take one of the frozen peas from the bag and plant it amongst your mother‘s houseplants (if it hasn’t been treated w/radiation - excuse me, “cold pasturization“) and discover the truth for yourself. It will take longer than downloading your favorite album, so be prepared to check back with the clay pot from time to time.

“to separate the wheat from the chaff” - this is not about finicky breakfast eaters separating “the wheat from decaf”, but refers to the process of taking the very tiny wheat seeds off the long stalks it grows on and then sorting it out from all the inedible stuff… and by extension, to separate out the important stuff from the b*llsh*t. Frankly, if I had to go through that much work for my Wonder Bread, I would have stuck to meat and potatoes. I believe that the related verb “to chaff” has to do with the rubbing/scratching process that frees the grain - though how they transferred it to itchy skin is not an image to be contemplated for long. After the wheat seeds, or berries as they are called (in yet another humorous country technique to utterly confuse the rube), are removed from the plant, they must be dried, then ground up via a big stone wheel (or, nowadays, some gigantic metal factory machine) to become the flour that some people use to make the bread that magically appears on your grocery shelf in colored plastic bags. (The process of harvesting the plastic berries and pounding them into flat sheets is another story entirely).

“who let the cat out of the bag?” - this may have referred to the ancient custom of killing extra cats by dumping bags of them into the main river… any cat that escaped that fate would be a very mad cat indeed, and something to be reckoned with. The secret nowadays revealed in these situations end up with the proverbial sh*t hitting the fan -- another country saying that has to do with the foolishness of combining modern cooling equipment with old farming chores… mucking out the barn is sweaty work and no trying to get around it.

“One bad apple spoils the whole bunch” - this was pre-wax, and even pre-pesticides, when farmers noticed a basket of apples with a brown one spoiled faster. Now we have nothing to worry about - at the price we’re paying, those apples are irradiated, pesticided, individually wrapped and labelled -- I have had a couple of those keep in my fridge for months, thus proving there was nothing alive in them to deteriorate. That crunch isn’t natural - it’s injected plastics.

“making bacon” - I’m not gonna touch this one, though I expect with the passion of the media for off-color phrases, this one has been kept in the vernacular even unto the present generation.

“what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” - An old “fair is fair” line, which loses its meaning if one doesn’t know that goose is female, gander is male (as in “take a gander at that pair of legs!”) - I have yet to find out what natural circumstance was actually slanted toward the women, since generally the guys had all the plusses back then.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees” - I have seen the totally incredulity on young faces when some grandmother makes this remark in public. You’d have thought they were ready to call for the van with the straight jackets! Well, duh!! they are thinking. But listen up, youngster - once upon a time, most of the things we had in our lives grew on trees, shrubs or vines… it was a symbol of the abundance of Life that you had enough fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and then the whole panoply of vegetable plants that sprouted the food you ate. Children grew up with the ease of picking their breakfast and lunches (and if they were handy at milking, could even grab a quick drink!) with little or no effort on their part, and therefore when they started being too free with money, their parents began to lecture them about how much harder it was to get money than just about anything else… now, I suppose, the new saying is “Money just doesn’t pour out of a machine”… although to see the way the parental units are frantically pulling handles at the casinos, I’m not sure if anyone believes that anymore. And soon it will all be on a chip, or embedded under our skin, and you youngsters will be explaining to future generations (if any) that “money” was a concept of pretending bits of paper and metal were actually worth something, so that people could transfer enough of their credit to get into the museums to see the dioramas of ancient things like trees, cats, geese and apples… sigh… this is most likely why ancient civilazations left their elderly on mountaintops to die… when granny started cackling “In my days, youngster…“ one too many times… just just tie me in a bag and throw me in a river…

Three Days Away, Three Days of Retribution

2008-07-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday:
My house greeted me when I got back in the same way a cat would -- with savage vengeance for my abandonment. Cats do it by vomiting on the carpet or shredding a couch; the house managed, in my absence, to burn up or break the water pump even though I’d turned off all the faucets before I left. I had a good hot shower when I got home, and then found that was the last of the water! So I’m back to flushing toilets with buckets of water from the neighbor’s hose and stacking dishes in the sink… and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna incur double-overtime by calling the pump guy today. I already have gallons of drinking water stored, so the only thing I worry about is the garden, which has gone three days w/o watering already, and which I’d planned to water last night on my return… since I still have chest congestion that makes me feel like I’m breathing underwater, I haven’t the strength of the old washerwomen to haul 15 buckets or so for the veggies… I may try one or two later…I’m doing it in shifts: carry water, collapse on couch; repeat.

Possibly the house bribed some of the appliances as well: the bread machine failed for the first time in perhaps a year, so when I dumped out what looked like crisp brown bread on to the rack, I got a bread shell and a pound of batter all over the counter (and no water to wash it off, of course). I’ve been stroking the fridge and saying soothing things to it, in the desperate hope that it won’t turn against me as well.

And I don’t know what it is about lacking proper plumbing facilities that gives me the runs… it happened last time, when the toilet exploded - instant cure for constipation. And I’ve been “irregular” as the ads say, for two weeks.. and now is when the internal plumbing decides to unclog?? I’ve read books that say we have another brain in our gut, but mine has a very low IQ… I’m going to bed, hoping the sheets don’t explode.

Monday:
The guy got here an hour late, and switched the pump on in about 30 seconds. He fiddled around with it a bit to cover that up, but really it was a $120/minute service call. I made him show me how to use my complicated voltage meter just to get some additional benefit. But that didn’t matter, since apparently the batteries are drained and it doesn’t work. Bought it a year ago; haven’t used it yet. He says he doesn’t know what’s wrong with the pump, but my tank needs replacing soon - at least $500 worth of work… and my first thought was that I’d carefully stacked/hidden all those old shingles in their black plastic up against the pumphouse wall, figuring there was no way that I’d need to get near that wall this year - how does the house know to do this?? Those bags are 50 pounds each, if they’re an ounce! I didn’t want to move them again until I haul them to the special dump. Now I might have to shift them another two or three times? Because - as I described in another water-pump posting - the weird “door” (hatch might be a better word) to the shed is way too small to get the pump in or out! They must have built the shed around the dang tank! At least the water is on and the garden is getting soaked… now to wash all the dishes and clothes, and flush the toilet properly…

Tuesday:
Ah - I don’t know where to start. With the water pump, out again, the day after the $65 visit?? With the carpenter ants nesting in the shingles that I’ve just struggled to get into their black plastic bags and away from the shed wall?? With the wood covers for the crawlspaces that won’t come out for me to paint them?? With the twitter of birds… or bats.. that I am now hearing hourly through the woodstove pipe?? There was an old movie in the 70’s called “Burnt Offerings” about a house that was demonic, and would basically destroy any family that moved in… I’m beginning to wonder…… maybe taking the shingles off is revealing its true demonic character…. but no - this is such a cute house… that twitter isn’t the laughter of ancient ghosts… the water pump isn’t possessed… [theme from Twilight Zone kicks in] Nooooooo!!!

Sigh… the manager of the pump company says he’ll be out here by dinner time, and promises he’ll get the water running again… it’ll probably take 30 seconds… and then what? I’ve never been psychic, but I’m seeing shades of a depleted bank account in the near future… maybe I can ask how much it costs to put in a bucket and pulley…. I’m getting good at flushing toilets with a bucket…

On location

2008-07-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

I am halfway through my trip to the Big City -- Portland. I do this about once per month and it increasingly feels like I’m driving into a whirlpool or hurricane… starting the wind-up far outside the city proper, but getting faster and more chaotic as I get closer. I used to live in Portland, but I have taken to the country like moss takes to a shady roof, and I now go in under duress only. There are noticeable differences between the country and city, such as:

- the country truck stops advertise “free side of bacon“; the city stops lure with “free internet”
- in the city, the truck stops/rest stops are spaced much closer to the approximate capacity of a middle-age woman’s bladder; in the country, they are set up for truckers who have access to lots of empty bottles
- one truck stop is still advertising a free cup of coffee with fill up -- for $100, you should get a free meal… or motel room!
- as I get closer to the city, the sky changes color. Right now it looks apricot, laced with lead gray
- the corrugated concrete walls that line the city highways remind me of community college campuses, where they were too poor to afford architects and/or they gave the architecture students the job, and ended up with poured concrete bunkers.. perhaps the students were visualizing the full weight of the loans they were incurring…
- all the cars and trucks are hospital-clean and sparkling in the city, despite the drought. Most of the time, I don’t notice that I haven’t washed my truck in a year, but now I feel like a Beverly Hillbillies advertisement. In fact, the gas station attendant (yes, we still have them in OR) was trying really hard not to lean against my truck as he washed the windows…. a hint? And hey - how much are we paying taxes to wash and re-wash all these state, city and federal cars that I see on the road?? Is this a good investment of our tax dollars? I think not…

and speaking of ads -- in the city they’ve migrated from the billboards onto any moving vehicle (the little Zap electric trucks can only handle a website address, the SUVs have four-color photographs wrapped around them) and at least half of the multi-storied brick buildings! Five-story Pabst ads a block wide leave me nauseated and bloated - much like the beer itself

- and ads have gotten more stupid since I left the city. Shell is now pleading, “Avoid gunking up your engine” with a big arrow pointing to some greasy part and the words “Engine gunk” -- that’s the level of comprehension they believe drivers are capable of??
- I notice they’re now advertising motel rooms as “economy studios” - as if they haven’t always been one room with multiple uses…

…and of course, the ever-present beggers on every highway and major arterial ramp in the city: men and women from teen to tottering, with cardboard signs and sometimes a dog, presenting their hopeless condition to the drivers forced to stop within shouting distance at the ramp lights (which we also don’t have/need in the countryside). I don’t know why these hobos -- excuse me, "rural nomads" (city-speak)-- don’t show up in rural areas, but it might be that their offers to work might be taken quite seriously by the farmers and other businesses. The pristine track shoes that many of these guys wear suggest they haven’t even walked that far, let alone worked in the dirt much. I feel ganged up on when I have to run the gauntlet of these beggers, who do tug at my heartstrings, despite the fact that I know they are dropped off from a van every morning and picked up again that evening (I have friends in social services). City folk have long since become cynical and immune, but I guess my immunity has worn off.

During the two hour drive I didn’t notice more than two very large RV “buses” of the type that used to cram the highways in summer… like the dinosaurs, they seem to have gone extinct… although I passed several car lots selling them - and advertising free lottery tickets with each RV bought - probably so you can afford gas. I wonder if all the Gramma and Gramps who got stuck in some “scenic” single-grocery hamlet, a day’s drive from any coffee shop, are now busily writing postcards home: “Dear Junior and Sue - weather fine, Oregon is very big. Please send money. Love, your parents.”

Passing by all the fields where harvest is in full swirl, I wondered at the strange, convoluted machines that they’ve got to pick and cull and sort. How did farmers figure out how to mechanize all of these hand-picking processes? And how many fields did they destroy while they were testing?? I can just see the vineyard: “Grab,grab, grab - oops!… Next row…” One gizmo looks like a little house on wheeled stilts,with a peaked roof above the driver, and just enough room for a stack of empty berry flats behind his seat. I wasn’t close enough to see if they were like a Dixie-cup dispenser - drop the empty flats down one by one, fill the bottom one, drop it on the ground for the “flat-picker-upper machine”… the gophers and rats must think they’re hallucinating sometimes… “Wow, dude - look at that monster with the seventeen spiked tentacles” “Man, you’ve got to stop nibbling that Jimson weed!”

I notice our native species adapt pretty quickly: since we’re chopping down the tall firs, eagles have colonized the cell towers with huge stick nests in the metal crown of antennae. Animals are in many ways more clever than we are at using whatever is at hand. And since they’re endangered, they probably get to flip a feathered finger to the Sprint and Verizon engineers.

I passed a sign for the Jefferson Museum of Power - this is the country, so they are referring to trucks and machines of all types, not political bigwigs. Country museums are so much more fun than city museums. The city museums only display pieces that are worth at least as much as the fancy display cases they use; the country places have gotten their cases from bankrupt Sears and Woolworths’ and cram them full of anything and everything. The city has stenciled plaques on each piece listing the “provenance” or pedigree - the country might have a handwritten note of who donated it and when; I guess you’re supposed to find that fellow if you want mre info. The city now has audiotaped tours to create an autistic experience as we roam in herds through the huge, 80 percent empty rooms; the country has some old guy watching the front door who’s so bored that he follows you around and tells you stories about the stuff as he keeps you from tripping over the worst of the clutter.

I think it was funny that I actually had a harder time staying on the road using my new digital recorder than I used to when handwriting on my lap. But I have to keep looking at the recorder to see if it is recording and where (what file folder, was it overwriting, etc.)… with a pad of paper, I know I’m recording unless the pencil point breaks or the pen runs out of ink. But OTOH, it has been difficult to listen to my smug voice as I relate some joke I think is brilliant, which on second listen is actually quite lame.

Anyway, that’s it for now… more city life later…

Opening up New Vistas

2008-07-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

My rural bliss was shattered today with the arrival of the new computer. It had been two years since I’d gotten one, so of course everything was different. Well - not everything: it was still impossible to open the box and wrench the pieces out without using both hands and feet. But opening that box, taking out the new flatscreen monitor and glancing through the instructions made me feel older than watching Goldie Hawn talk about her grandkids! Fogey-hood, here I come! For one thing they have reduced the Quick-Start instructions to four paragraphs, but have written them in five extra languages for a total of six pages, most of which can be cut away with scissors. I also noticed that the machine had 134 gigabytes of memory -- that’s more memory than I have now! (me, I mean - not my old computer). Now, if only I can fit it with a camera so it can watch where I leave the keys…

Second, I was amazed by the incredible ease of the new “plug and play anything” -- color-coded plugs and holes so that even if you can’t read the cartoon directions, you can hook the system together and be up and running in five minutes. Balancing that off, though are the incredibly complex-bordering-on-deceitful cascade of legal notices that you have to agree to in order to get to the desktop for the first time!! By the end of the first ten minutes I was as paranoid as if I’d read an hour’s worth of conspiracy blogs. My brain was buzzing with legal-ese and disclaimers. I wonder if grocery stores would sell any food if the side of the milk carton, for instance, said, “THIS IN NO WAY REPRESENTS THAT THE CONTENTS OF THIS CARTON IS BOVINE OR EVEN LIQUID AND THE MANUFACTURER ASSUMES NO LIABILITIES FOR THE RESULTS OF DRINKING THIS, USING IT IN COMESTIBLES OR FOR ANY USES THAT COULD CONCEIVABLY BE MADE OF THIS SUBSTANCE, WHATEVER IT IS. READING THIS LABEL CONSTITUTES YOUR AGREEMENT TO ALL OUR POLICIES, WHICH MIGHT CHANGE AT ANY MINUTE.”

I was really amused by the fact that the start-up process assumed that the computer was cabled and ready to go online for numerous “immediate updates” (before I‘d gotten to the desktop) -- I was not, and after the first 20 minutes of start-up, I was glad. I haven’t been so patronized since my philosophy professor assumed that a 17 year old girl couldn’t possibly understand logic. I know that teams of really bright people spend years writing these programs and are understandably irritated that we might want to know how they work, but Windows has now made their “details” of their updates as vague as a politician‘s promise. Nothing that might give you any idea of what was being downloaded. I mean, they practically said, “Just trust us, you need this”…

I was less amused to find out the system didn’t come with speakers -- I know I got a low-end deal, but those used to be as standard as a keyboard and mouse… luckily this was a Friday, so my town was full of garage sales. I hit pay dirt on the third one and brought home a pair of speakers for $2. And a half gallon of ice cream, to steel my resolve for the rest of the set-up. I had to convince the delicate modem/ router provided by the phone company that it wanted to talk to the new computer - actually, I played bait and switch - I hooked it into the internet via my laptop and then just moved the ethernet cable to the new box… it worked, and I don’t know why. But just as I could see success looming, I found I was down to exactly one electric plug in the whole room, and two items left to be plugged in! This being an old house, there is exactly one outlet in the office and I had once blown the fuse by trying to vacuum while the old computer was on… so even with the power-surge strip, I was anxious… but a piggyback plug seemed to work.

I finally was able to see my new “desktop” (home screen) and it seemed the system was set up, but anyone who’s started up a new computer knows that half the crap that’s put on there needs to be junked and then there’s at least three hours of transferring data from the old system. This spiffy new one proudly informed me of a fast-transfer option: just bring over your whole old computer, desktop, files, programs -- I actually shuddered when I read that… Not sure how many innocents were burned, but that seems the equivalent of pouring the half-moldy contents of last week’s coffee into the new pot! First of all, it was an entirely different operating system. And why would I want all the fragmentation and random crud from my old computer? Now, I suppose they might have given me some choices about how to port it over, but I wasn’t able to find out -- because it required a special fast-port cable which “you can order online” - and pay $32 to overnight or wait another two weeks to get your system working… gee -- what convenience! So I just used the 1 gig flash stick to bring over what I need for now… My eyes were more glazed over than a Bundt cake, and I had to drag out the emergency crochetting to keep me from clicking too fast with the mouse and double-installing everything. I knew I couldn’t take much more of this. I glanced longingly out the window, where the plants were frying in the heat. Ah, for the simplicity of hoeing weeds, or picking berries!

What finally stopped me was finding the ice cream in the fridge. The topping had made it into the freezer. A clear case of brain-melt. So I gave up the quest and sat down to eat ice cream soup while I played a game of spider solitaire on the new computer.

Has One Plus One Gone Quantum?

2008-07-10T16:25:00.000-07:00

I pulled out my carpenter’s tools again recently, to finally make some crawl-space covers. I have two openings in the foundation (due to someone having put a solid concrete wall down the middle of the house) and the covers had been so rotted when I got here that they seemed like the Hot L Baltimore for termites. I’d pulled them immediately, but since it was November, I just piled some cinderblocks and bricks in one, and for the other I’d tried an old window and some bricks, followed by a very large piece of cardboard and some bricks (obviously I didn’t have enough bricks for the opening… should tried shifting some from my head… or is that rocks?). I’d promised myself that “as soon as the dry weather came” I’d get a decent pair of wooden covers made. But various other crises intervened, and I’ve only just now gotten to them.

I have a tshirt with the Measure Twice Cut Once reminder, and -- just in case of inflation -- I measured three times before I began to cut the 2x4s. The first problem was that the rectangular hole had developed a parallelogram shape -- either the deceptively upright concrete was leaning, or the house was sagging… or I couldn’t measure (always a likely culprit!). I did what I usually do in these cases -- I averaged. If one side is 15.5 inches and the other is 14.5, then the best measurement for both will be 15, right? It generally works for fabric (as long as I keep moving so no one notices one sleeve is longer than the other). Apparently this is not as helpful with rigid things like wood. I cut all four uprights and one set of horizontal studs, then wisely decided to test them out in the actual opening. I immediately discovered that I had neglected to allow for the fact that, nailed together, one measurement would be lengthened by the thickness of the attached 2x4 (which is not, as you might think, two inches, but is in fact one and a half inches - all part of the conspiracy of the Milluminati to control the world by shrinking all numbers).

Suddenly the project had taken on the characteristics of those math word problems that I so loathed in middle and high school: “If two boards are each 1.5 inches too long, and the matching uprights are 1.5 inches too short, how do you cut the boards to get them to fit the damn opening???” Alright, the book didn’t swear - but the book never had to figure out the answer. I was running out of 2x4s but I realized that the larger of the two uprights (cut too short) would do for the smaller opening, so I only had to re-cut one pair. Quantum physics was obviously attacking my simple rural cosmos again, so I switched to my guaranteed way of measuring -- putting it against the item you want to match and drawing a cutting line. Who cares if it’s 15.5 inches or the square root of pi? It fits the place it’s gonna be in! So back and forth I went, around to the openings, back into the garage -- where I had graduated from cutting on stacks of cardboard boxes to cutting on a side chair and an end table -- and back to the opening, etc. When I had the rectangle cut, I tentatively hammered the studs together -- in my studio, starting with one board propped on a spare suitcase. I had a handful of really big nails, and a couple dozen that were too small for the framing, but would work for the plywood. So I rationed the big nails, one to a corner; I figured this cover wasn’t gonna get a whole lot of use, unless skunks had learned how to work in teams.

I checked the frame out before attaching the plywood sheeting -- and found that while the measurements were pretty darn close, that meant that it was almost impossible to wedge the damn frame into the opening! There is a concept known as “leeway”, and rigid objects need more of it than stretchy things like fabric and some people’s patience (not mine!). In order to get it to slide/shift into the opening, it had to be slightly smaller than the opening. Back to the drawing… well, the big sheets of paper and the black crayon. I examined the issue from as many sides as I could (including inside the house with a cold drink), and concluded that the easiest thing was to dig out just a bit of the dirt and then push it back into place later. With that inspiration, I felt free to place the 2x4 frame on the plywood, trace a rectangle (parallelogram) and cut it out… it mostly fit, and the extra nails I used to attach it to the frame made up for the dearth of joist nails. I can always tell when I’ve exceeded my patience, because I begin to pick up steam like a locomotive, or a snowball on the top of a hill.. and obstacles begin to fly sideways as I crash into them or sweep them from the area. I was developing this kind of reckless speed, and so, with the covers wedged in place and only enough room for mice, rats, squirrels or a determined skunk to squeeze past them, I considered my job done for the day. I’d get to the sanding and painting another day… and if this is anything like the living room curtains (that hang so lovely and so un-hemmed), probably another year.

Everything Is Beautiful….

2008-07-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

I have found a new obsession, a new toy. In fact, I think it’s a crime for people to sell these things during the busy season, but that’s one of the dangers of going into the city…toys waiting in every shop for hapless bumpkins. This one is called Kaleidoscope Kreator, and it hit me in an Achille’s heel - I love playing with patterns, and I love to avoid all the work (and skill!) of cutting and pasting. I used to make similar designs by color-copying random bits of images and then repeating them… but this is so much easier that I feel like a rat pressing a bar to get a hit of speed -- press, press, press… :-}

The moment I got home, I loaded it, and starting bringing up all my photos to see how they would slice and dice -- and before I knew it, I had missed dinner (folks - that’s amazing), it was dark, and I had two dozen “to die for” designs that I just had to print immediately!! Of course, the first thing I discovered was that Windows does not understand circles or squares… Picture Manager assumes that anything worth looking at will be in the center of the photo, and crops accordingly. This felt like having bought a candy bar and not being able to get the wrapping off, or hitting a large rock with your speedboat. I could almost feel the whiplash. Grinding my teeth, I searched the computer for software that understood “shrink to fit” and finally found one that had come with my printer. Then figured out how to load the photo paper so that it didn’t go through 7 sheets at a time, and was in fact printing on the right side… and voila! I had four sheets of -- tiny -- mandalas to use for cards, magnets, coasters, frisbee inserts… the possibilities were endless, but my supply of ink and paper wasn’t.

It occurred to me, painfully, that I was gonna have to choose some files to print and leave others… and fairly quickly realized I actually had to choose which to save, unless I wanted to choke my computer! Since my motto since childhood has been “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” I was sore grieved by this… but I’m getting some sense of balance now… it’s been a whole halfhour since I made a kaleidoscope image… I can last until the timer goes off … I know I can…

-- Actually, I couldn’t. Just writing about it brought an overwhelming urge… I tried a couple of new photos, and moved from template to template… backed off a bit after a fairly frightening kaleidoscope of my face popped on the screen… back to Nature images… I started humming that old song “everything is beautiful, in its own way…” It’s almost true… and to prove it, the three images I posted with this blog entry are: an iris, a peony… and one of the mega-slugs in my garden.

Waiting for Good’o…

2008-07-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Water Wars, Part Two
If only I’d stayed burrowed in the envelope! But my do-it-yourselfer genes hijacked me, and the Evil Genie of “this looks simple enough” sang its siren song in my ear… I would have waited, honestly, but at 4pm (just before the holiday) I called the repairman, who hemmed and hawed, and allowed as how he could come by after his prayer meeting at 9pm that night, “to take a look”, figure out what parts he’d need, and “get to it in a day or two” -- the alarm bells started clanging, and I decided I needed Plan B (or was that C? I‘d lost track). I raced out, bought the pieces it looked like he’d need so maybe he could do it that night… and it looked so straightforward, and the wrench was just sitting there… I couldn’t help it - I dove in (almost literally) and started trying to get the bad pipe off. At first it was much too much for my clerical strength, but after running over to a neighbors and getting a much bigger pipe wrench, I must have scared it -- it started to wriggled free - and I discovered the middle piece wasn’t a filter but a “compression connector” put on there to bridge a 3 inch gap in the PVC pipe (why they needed to cut 3 inches out of the plumbing will the be subject of a few nightmares, I’m sure)… so I tried to tighten it -- and when I turned the water back on, it looked like some kids’ water fight! Hurriedly I turned it back off and adjusted again; turned it on - and the motor hummed a moment and clicked off. Dead.

I went through my seven languages worth of curse words, and then reluctantly called the pump company…. by this time it was after hours on a holiday, but I knew I didn’t want to go three days w/o water, so I sucked it up and had them send a guy. The kid that came out could have been my grandson, but I’m guessing anyone with seniority was already enjoying a beer and the fireworks somewhere. The first thing he said after he’d checked the motor was that it wasn’t broken - it had properly shut off because no water was required, therefore no need for motor. The fact that everything was sitting there quietly meant -- have you guessed it? -- that I’d fixed the leak and nothing was wrong now. I think I staggered at that point - he was looking at me like I was his senile granny, anyway. I swore to him on a stack of plumber’s cracks that the stupid pipe had been spraying water not 30 minutes ago! He fiddled with it some more, and allowed as how the shut off value wasn’t real good; it probably needed to be replaced. Since I was paying for him to come out, I agreed. Mistake number one.

He got his tools and glue pots, and found a new valve in the truck, brought it all back, along with a mini searchlight headpiece that did a much better job than the antique worklight I’d found in the garage. He removed the compression connector and began to replace it with the new pipe I’d bought, all the while telling me about the long hours he’d put in that week. A sudden silence, then… “Damn!” under his breath. Only thing worse to hear is an “Aaarrrgh!” of pain because that might be a lawsuit.

Sure enough, he’d forgotten to add a whole auxiliary L-joint of pipes that he’d removed when started to replace the leaky one. No problem, he just cut the new PVC pipe and said he’d add another connector. Got the jigsaw puzzle re-assembled approximately as I remembered it, and then we tried the water. Turned out that the wonderful new seal on one joint made another one leak! Cut the new pipe again, remove pipe, fix another joint. Try the water again. Inside it was great -- the water in the sink was flowing; outside it was a trickle. I didn’t want to ask if he’d glued up the wrong end of the pipe, but perhaps he was thinking that as he cut the pipe yet one more time (it now would have more patch joints than it started with) and he looked at the valve, then played with the pipe for a while, put it back. Then told me to go try the water outside again. Still trickling… Okay - what next, Sherlock?

He did something weird by “flushing the water back through” - connected the hoses in some sort of circle, took the head off one outside faucet and washed his hands a couple times. I was watching the dollars fly away on the summer breeze, and biting my tongue to keep from asking if his hands were clean enough, because it was obvious that he didn’t have a clue what was wrong, and he needed the silence to think in. He did something else inside and said, “Try it again” - and this time it was full pressure! I was very relieved; he said he thought some big bit of rust broke off in the pipe when he was repairing it - apparently I have waterial sclerosis… but it was back to normal, that was the key point, even though there are now four - count em! -- joints along that 1 ft. pipe. And today, when I tried to water the garden... it was back to half pressure. I’m definitely at full pressure though - just about to bursting, actually. Plan Z, anyone?

A Patriotic Red, Black and Blue

2008-07-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

Coming up on the long holiday weekend -- that mainstay of all emergency repair guys -- the pump to my well sprung a leak. I had been antsy about it because I’d been warned when I bought the place that using the sprinkler would turn the pump motor “on and off”, shortening its life, and of course with the heat wave, I’d been using the sprinkler a lot. So when I could hear it turn on/off even when the water was all shut off, I started wincing even before I finished clearing away the lumber, boxes of photos and other doodads from in front of the pump house door. As dark as it was in there, I had no problem interpreting the sound of rapidly dripping water on a subterrean lake. Looked like it was rising almost to the level of the motor - talk about life-shortening! I panicked very efficiently, and tried to simultaneously turn off both water shutdown valves while tearing away at the heavily duct-taped bubblewrap with which I’d insulated the pipes shortly after I moved in. Only partly succeeded at either. Time for Plan B.

I need to describe this “pumphouse” so that you can get the full effect:
A lean-to or bump-out off the garage, about four feet by 8 feet, with the doorway about 3 feet off the ground on the garage side… and about 4 ft above ground on the pump side! Someone had installed a bathtub handle on the left wall, testifying to years of insanity trying to get in/out of this damn crypt to fix problems! There is an open (!) juncture box on one wall, and the pump is propped on plywood about 6 inches off the dirt floor (more on that later). The walls had been insulated, but due to the Night of the Living Carpenter Ants last winter, that had all been torn out (rather quickly and inefficiently, I might say), but otherwise, it’s studs and exterior siding. No light, of course, and the choice to work within is either to lean over on your stomach on the doorsill, or step awkwardly into the 1x2ft space on either side of the large pump and primary pipe. If, in that position, you try to bend down, you will bump your head on the pump tank and simultaneously rip your jeans on the rusty stud nails. Has this become clearer? All you need to add is a few thousand dead ant bodies, enough spiderwebbing to decorate Castle Dracula, and you’ve got the photogenic situation facing me.

As far as I could tell, the water wasn’t draining nearly as fast as it was dripping, which puzzled me since it was plain dirt under there… but I raced to the main fuse panel and flipped off the pump switch, then called Bob, an 80-something repairman who had helped me when the toilet had shattered, and when the bathtub was discovered to be draining directly out onto the subflooring. He asked how big and long the piping was, and what kind - I had to confess I hadn’t gotten all the duct tape off yet. He says he could come out and fix it sometime that day or the next, but knowing pipe specs would help. So I went back to the flood and this time attacked it with scissors - finally pulling off enough insulation to see that it was another pipe entirely that was leaking… about 12 inches of “klassic kludge” - there were three (count em!) joints along that one stretch, none of which were needed, that I could see… of course, that triples the chance of leakage… but on the other hand, a short straight length of PVC pipe would easily fix the issue. Hurray!

Then I tried to figure out why the soil wasn’t draining… and dear readers, you will never guess -- that four inches below the soil was the most amazing hard surface, which after a bit of nasty, filthy digging revealed itself to be the concrete pump house floor! At this point, I stopped, too flummoxed to continue. What plumbing textbook would recommend dumping four inches of dirt over an entire concrete floor?? Was this some sort of crude insulation? Was this - perish the thought - a leftover from some flood of decades past? Could the carpenter ants have banded together with the mice to create a mini Club Med? I couldn’t wait to ask Bob. But meanwhile, since I couldn’t see the sense of it, I began to dredge Lake McGuire with a dustpan -- a trowel was about as effective as a teaspoon, and I wasn’t really enjoying hanging over the doorsill reaching into a dark, wet, smelly unknown. I actually cleared down to floor on the side that I could reach, and found the place where the main pipe came through the floor - and water started to gurgle away. I left it to gurgle and tottered back inside. Overheated and bruised from having to balance on sensitive bodily areas, I was approaching the requisite coloration for the holiday.

Meanwhile, I’d started to copy some files to disk, and had obviously totally forgotten about that! I took a break and checked on it… and watched with growing fear as it sat there with “5 seconds remaining” on the screen for a good 5 minutes! When the system wouldn’t even shut down, and had to be cold rebooted, I started thinking in terms of voodoo curses. But more likely it was just the “long holiday sensor” that has been designed into every piece of power equipment since the first Model T. I got the CD glitch to repeat - and since it was a 25 minute save-to-disk operation, that was one hour gone - so now I can’t save anything. There are days when you push the envelope, and days that you sensibly hide as deeply in the envelope as you can burrow. Today you will have to do quite a bit of digging to find me.. I’m burrowed in and waiting for the experts.

Jammin’

2008-07-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of year - the berries are ripening fast, and good homesteaders are assembling the jars and canning pots to preserve the harvest. I was excited last January, when I saw the bushes growing out of the lawn, and envisioned mega-crops of raspberries, boysenberries and strawberries. I had conveniently forgotten both that I tend not to eat fresh fruit (I prefer coffee and potato chips) and that my last several “brushes” with canning and making jam had ending in the kind of sticky chaos usually reserved for pre-school lunchtimes. I suppose it’s like childbirth pains (not that I’d know) - we forget the worst of it and put a golden glow around the rest.

I started as I usually do (as befits my Attention Deficit makeup): I grabbed some berries, threw them into the Cuisinart and then into a pot and started to cook. While they were heating, I rummaged around for the Joy Of Cooking book in order to find out what was next. (note to experienced canners: stop here unless you want to give yourself a headache.) It reminded me that I needed almost equal parts sugar, depending on how sweet the berries were. Apparently one doesn’t usually blend strawberries and raspberries, but I didn’t have enough of each, so what the heck… I hadn’t measured them, either, so I did a visual approximation, and poured white sugar into the hot pulp. As the mess - uh, mix - started to simmer then boil, I realized I needed those canning jars that were in the garage, and probably the canning pot as well… with a quick glance at the stove, I raced out to get them - of course they were buried under my last project and it took me a moment to unearth them. The canning pot lid was nowhere to be found, so I hauled the rest of it back into the house, where the jam was boiling like red soapsuds. It smelled great (except for the faint hint of burnt sugar) and I gave it a vigorous stir and checked the recipe book again.

The quantities called for seemed much larger than what I had - in fact, putting a couple gallons of water on to boil up two half-pint jars seemed hardly worth the trouble. But I did put the canning jars in the water, turned on the burner (it was about half the diameter of the pot, which made me a bit worried about how long it would take to boil), and raced out to the garden to see if any more berries had ripened overnight. Fortunately quite a lot had, and I fumbled with the bird net, trying to reach the ripe ones (the bird net does not seem to have stopped the birds, but it sure has me flummoxed). With another pint in the container, I raced inside. The smell of burnt sugar was stronger now, but when I’d washed and tossed the new berries in, crushing them in the pot to save time, the bubbling mixture subsided a bit. The canning water was still tepid around the empty jars - in order to raise the level of the water without pouring in another gallon, I had added about five quart jars that I knew I wouldn’t need - finally, my high school geometry class paid off!

I remembered that I wanted to do mini-jars for gifts, so again I raced to the garage- I’d bought new ones of these, so they didn’t need washing (I hope). By then, the mix had thickened - Joy of Cooking has this test: if the mix falls off the spoon in one drop rather than two split drops, it’s gonna gel. That hadn’t worked in the past, but hope sproings enternal, as they say. So I spooned the mix into the baby jars- damn, that stuff was goopy! Probably as much fell to the counter, and I was really tempted to re-capture it using a piece of bread (that was months of watering, growing, and a fair amount of fertilizer - wasted on the counter!) but I restrained myself - only a couple finger-fuls hastily lapped up. I screwed the lids on the jars, remembered that they stick when they’re goopy, unscrewed them, wiped off the threads (isn’t that what they call the long lumps of glass around the rim?) and re-sealed them. I dumped them into the large canner pot, where the water was finally a bit too hot to touch (and how was I gonna get them out of those many gallons of boiling water?? I’d burn that bridge when I came to it). Then I hemmed and hawed -- the larger glass jar had not had its pre-requisite boiling before filling. Reasoning that this jar was for myself alone, I decided to take the risk - the jam mixture was already congealing on the sides of the cooking pot. So I spooned the rest of the muck into the larger jar - of course there wasn’t enough to fill it (how do cooks get these dang things to work out evenly?? I suppose that’s what the specific quanitities mentioned in the recipe are for?)

Once again, it seemed very sad to have boiled all this water, and dragged out all the jars, strainers, etc. for such a small batch… so I grabbed the oranges sitting in the bowl and decided to follow it with marmalade. The recipe said the oranges had to sit for 15 hours after they first boiled, but I decided I could skip that part. They were scrubbed, quartered, thrown into the food processor, and the lumpy orange goop poured into another pot. Here we go again… What with all the taste-testing and spoon licking (not to mention the counter), I now had enough sugar in me to spin out a whole classroom of kindergarteners. While the jam was getting up to sterilizing temps, I stirred the marmalade down, then filled a mini jar and an actual quart jar (but I live alone - when will I need a quart of marmalade??) then sealed and plunked them into the canning pot. While waiting, I re-read the recipe… and realized there was no mention of canning/boiling after sealing the jars! Apparently, that’s just for vegetables… all that water, boiled for nothing. Sheesh… With much difficulty and a couple of burns, I fished the jam and marmalade out of the pot and let them cool on the counter for a bit, then tossed a couple in the freezer and some in the fridge.

I really hope my family is happy with their gifts of homemade jam. It’s not that I mind all the chopping, stirring and boiling -- but having to wash three sinkfuls of jammy pots, pans, ladles, bowls and spoons is what I call a major pain in the canning jar!

The Lazy, Hazy, Crazed Days...

2008-06-29T10:50:00.001-07:00

Well,we’ve reached what is called summer in the Pacific Northwest: the moss is healthy and green, the slugs have reached their full 5-inch length and are making squadrons of replacements, the East Coasters have overrun the place… by which I mean the quack grass, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, buttercup and other European-by-way-of-Ellis-Island transplants. Because they have no competition out here, they have basically taken over - and being from NJ myself, I know that Oregonians have few ways of dealing with our, shall we say, slightly more assertive stance on everything. I learned the Oregonian way to address these invasions, now that the New Jersey favorite, DDT, has been banned. I tilled the areas where the plants appear, killed off all the seedlings (a pitched battle) and planted natives. However they are as laid back as most Oregonians, and the weeds keep appearing daily. Their battlecry: “You want that bit? No? Okay, I’ll take it!”

But today -- for three days only! (sounds like an applicance sale) -- we have NJ temps (though thankfully not the humidity), so I’ve started off early to water those delicate Oregon-optimized peas, cabbage, tomatoes and other veggies which are bred to endure 60-degree summers. They are handling the 100 degree temps about as you might expect: keeling over like a grandmother in a NYC subway (okay, not from being clubbed and robbed). I have risked burning out my well pump in order to provide them this deep moisture -- I was told by the inspector, a young woman barely 20, that using a sprinkler or soaker hoses will cause the motor to turn on an off and shorten its life… she did not tell me what the other alternative is, so I listen as the motor goes on and off, and wonder when I’ll be needing to call the pump guys (probably not until visitors arrive on a Sunday). I am also enjoying the coolness before it shrivels in the sun, batting various spiders away from my laptop (everyone’s a critic, I tell you…) and watching the mosquitoes circle. Despite the new deadly illness du jour, I’m not wearing bug spray. First, I fear the chemicals they’ve invented more than the bugs (Remember: “__Insert Chemical Name Here__ is Your Friend”), and second, I have the kind of blood, or personality, that apparently makes me an absolutely last resort. Rarely get a nibble. Personally, I think it’s the coffee, but most people have suggested the acerbic wit that infuses my veins and my emails. In fact, I just watched a moquito attack my coffee cup (rather than me) so my friends must be right.

As idyllic as this is, it just can’t compare to the summers of my youth (do they still play “Roll out those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer…“ anywhere on the radio?) I’ve been musing about why that might be. One possibility is that I’ve truly entered my dotage, and am blithering. One obvious one is that I now have charge of the checkbook, which is attached to the pile of bills, which is like holding on to a gently hissing stick of dynamite. A certain tension results. Even though as a girl, I was expected to cook meals, I wasn’t expected to figure out where they came from. And of course there is the ever-true, “the world was /safer/quieter/simpler/saner/ when I was a child.” And it was… most drug addicts and alcoholics stayed at home (I know - our family visits got mighty interesting), the stores actually closed on Sundays so there was one day at least that you couldn’t shop until your brains fell out, and there weren’t closed circuit cameras and computer keycapture software ready to play your life back at you and the general public on a whim. And once you need a refresher course on the basic skills needed to get through the week, you are “past it”. At a certain point in one’s maturity, one realizes the world is going to Hell, handbasket optional. “Hill? What hill?” my friends and I joke, but when you wake up and can barely unfold yourself from the bed without needing ibuprofen, and when the price of a pizza is the same as what you spent on your entire back-to-school supply list, you know you’ve passed the torch (or the gently hissing stick of dynamite) onto the next generation. Heck - when they advertise car loans now, they are talking about the $100 gas tank loans! ...Oh dear, I seem to have lost my train of thought... back in the summers of my youth, we didn't have to worry about trains of thought, I can tell you -- we walked everywhere!

-- and now a tiny spider has crawled under my F4 function key, so I’ll have to stop and do excavation.

The Seeders of Lebanon

2008-06-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

I am now four months into my planting season (how would I know in February that I was planting two months too early?? We had warmer temps back then than we do now!), and it has become obvious that my attempts to plant from seed have been, well -- a debacle. I think it was an tremendous amusement for the local birds, who have rubbed salt in my wounds by planting sunflower seeds that are doing better than anything I put in the ground. Anyway, this past weekend, I finally caved in and bought “cheaters”: three really fat and happy tomatoes, a 2-ft. pepper, an eggplant with 5-inch leaves, and a couple of struggling basil (apparently, it‘s a bad year everywhere for basil). I know it’s probably heartless to stick that 3-foot tomato next to the 4-inch jobbie that’s still struggling to get launched after our Ultimate Rollercoaster of Weather this spring. Likely create a huge inferiority complex -- do tomatoes get Short Guy Synrome? I’ll watch for attempts to jab me in the eye while I’m eating.The eggplant seedlings never made it out of the greenhouse/shed, so they won’t notice the Green Hulk who’s moved in.

What I want to know is how do these other gardeners - from Lebanon, the next town over - manage to get their plants so fat and happy? Some were commercial plants, and I guess those are treated like Olympic team members: all the food they can eat, the perfect conditions for working up big muscular physiques, and no extraneous duties. Oh, and probably steroids. But some were from the farmer’s market, where supposedly some of my townmen were supplementing their more exotic plant business (conducted nocturnally, on less populated streets) with some prosaic herbs (a way to justify the lights setup to the IRS, I suppose…or not. I hardly dare ask, because I am afraid to find out that an entire room of their house is given over to halogen lighting and hourly feedings…) As a typical suburban gardener, I used to follow the Memorial Day orgy of four-foot plant sales and instant vegetable gardens. But coming to my new place, I had dreams of becoming “more real” - actually being able to plant from seed and save seed for the next year. (At this point, the only way I’ll be able to save seed is to dig it back up and put it back in the envelope.) Not to mention, learn to identify the plant from the weed at seedling stage… I have figured out that if fifteen million of them come up, it’s a weed. A Storm Trooper Invasion of Weeds, to be exact. And all those bits of good advice about how to hoe up the weed seedlings so they don’t get a headstart on your plants -- do you know how many times I’ve replanted the damn radishes?? Granted, my non-standard (read: weird) layout means I can’t just roll a mini-tiller down my ruler-straight rows. I did attempt to follow the advice about mulching to save watering (although when you’re getting six inches of rain per week, it’s not that big a deal). Now I find the neighbor cats really like straw for kittylitter! I thought it would be too scratchy… live and learn…

Pay Attention to This One!

2008-06-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

They keep saying that business is becoming a science, but they’ve got it backwards. Science is becoming a business. If by business one means a method of making money for both the managers and investors; a way which involves continued self-justification and enhancement. When I worked for an ad agency (back in the Dark Ages), one job was to continue to find new uses for the products we advertised - new ways to make them irresistable. It’s taken science a while, but I think it’s gotten there. I read a NY Times article today quoting someone who apparently is “a leader in the new field of interruption science.” And of course, that person has written a book which they hope will make a lot of money. Interruption Science? Excuse me?? Well, any culture that accepts “shopping therapy” and “massage technicians” is unlikely to notice the corruption of the scientific method by slicing it into ever-thinner specialities, each of which seem licensed to a particular company which of course has perfected some product to make life more complete… you sense cynicism? Okay, read on.

From the NYT article: “The first step is to learn to speak a language of attention.” Oh, yes, that is exactly what we need - a new cacaphony of jargon by which to impress the consumers - ah, public. Ohmygawd… This humble wordsmith strongly suspects this is the science equivalent of the advertising slogan or jingle -- once we have you talking our language, you’re putty in our hands.

“The exciting news is that the enigma of attention has just begun to be mapped, tracked and decoded by neuroscientists who now consider attention to be a trio of skills: focus, awareness and so-called executive attention.” Divide and conquer (government had that one figured out years ago)… take apart the process and attach labels, much like the information technology field has sliced and diced clerical processes so that the poor secretary (oh, sorry - administrative infomatics specialist!) is afraid to move from “input validation” to “data reiteration and consolidation” without checking and rechecking the flowchart. And everyone knows executives never pay attention - that’s what they have slaves - er, secretaries - er, administrative specialists - for.

Another NYT piece on ADD mentions it feeling “like having a bank of tvs in my mind and I don’t have the remote” - which could be why I don’t have an actual tv in the house - it would be superfluous. The gist of the piece is that we are all in danger of losing our minds to distraction. As someone who has had Attention Deficient Disorder all her life, I say, “Welcome to my world.” I’ve always strongly suspected that the Musak slyly introduced, first in elevators and then throughout every public building and store (sometimes a different damn song in each department!) was a ploy to soften our brains with distraction, such that we didn’t actual notice how much we were buying.

Except now with cloned stores full of cloned products, I'm having a hard time tracking which store I'm in. And we've gone from being occasionally interrupted to be brought a Special Media Bulletin to having the pixelated equivalent of a gaggle of teen girls chattering at us on every web page, every text page, and sometimes even in public bathrooms! (The teen girls are there all the time -- the advertising posters and flat-screen tvs are the newcomers.)Move over, Ring Around the Collar, Housitosis, and Feminine Itch. Now that they've given us Distraction, they're gonna make us pay to get rid of it.

Withy Dell

2008-06-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I just found out my house lied about its age… many of us middle-aged do that, so I can’t hold it against her (homes, being the realm of Vesta, are female). I ran into someone who had come back to take photos of the neighboring house and told me he’d lived there (in the neighboring house) in ‘51, and my house was there, a good four years prior to the supposed build-time of the place… It was fun to hear about the neighborhood and how it looked then. I have always been a home historian -- if I can find out about how the place was built, or changed or who lived there, I have a great time. I can’t find any permits on record for the building, so I’m guessing it was all gerry-rigged. The last owner was a retired Boeing engineer, and we all know what that means! I’m finding “engineering kludges” all over the place, such as the old truck topper used as a shed, and what looks like a miniature railroad segment used to hang tools in the garage… oh, yes - and the iron pipe that sticks out of the wall on the outside of the kitchen which (I found out four months after I got here) actually drains all of the water from the kitchen sink… and since the water barrel that he must have had there was sold in the estate sale, has been pouring water down under the foundation all winter! I’ve duck-taped an old gutter pipe to the outlet “for now” - truly ugly, but a classic kludge, so I’m kinda proud.

Anyway, the place has the feel of a cabin, mainly because of the knotty pine walls and the old iron woodstove with the cabin scene embossed in relief on the side. It’s cozy because the former owners did insulate; I’m grateful for that, especially since the two bedrooms are unheated… but there’s another classic “kludge”: an old motor rigged to an old box fan has been “inset” (okay, jammed) into a hole in the wall near the woodstove that opens onto the back hallway. Now anytime I want to enjoy the sound of a busy airport, all I have to do is flip a switch and the fan will send the warm air from around the stove through the hole and into the hall at speeds that turn it into air conditioning…

Also, unlike me, the house got a facelift sometime in its past. Recently, one of the 50’s style concrete shingles came off, and I discovered solid pine beadboard siding underneath. So now I am in a careful but exuberant process of taking off the retrofit to reveal the cottage underneath. All things become fashionable again… but you won’t find me wearing hip-huggers or mini-skirts, even if they are all the rage!

So far, the excavations haven’t revealed too many nasty surprises. Still, I feel like those scientists who are checking out the near-miss comets: will “Comet Repair” impact my wallet, or will I be able to adjust the flight path to a near-miss?

Oh, and in case you’re curious - I’ve named the place Withy Dell, using the centuries-old tradition (still widely used in real estate) of giving a sow’s ear the name of a silk purse. I have enough saplings in the yard to create a small woodlot by the time I croak, and although I am cutting them down as fast as I can, I am trying to re-use my “withies” for various staking tasks. And it’s low enough to count as a dell -- nothing to do with the computer company, you nerds. Although… with all the kludges… who knows??

If You’re Happy and You Know It… Shut Your Trap!

2008-06-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

I read a blog the other day that attempted to frame some concepts of good country living with those contrary examples that pervade children’s literature (although this was supposedly for adults): Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Hopeless. As a child, I read about “David Do-good” and “Donny Dumb-ass”, and “The Goops’ Misadventures”, etc… all to “give life to” the author’s opinions about the right and wrong ways to do things. This particular blog/lecture concerned (I kid you not!) “Mr. Happy” and “Mr. Grumpy” -- or “Mr. Half-assed” which I’m sure was his real point of view. Mr. Happy had all his jobs done so well that he sang through the day, while Mr. Grumpy ran into one snarl after another -- all, (you guessed it) because he had not taken the time to “do it right”.

I gotta speak up for the Grumpies of the world here. Firstly, if The Great Farmer had meant us to sing through the day, he’d have invented karoake machines much earlier. Second, sometimes compost just happens. If you‘ve read any of my other entries, you know I empathize with (or epitomize!) Mr. Grumpy, and his piles of wickedly clever obstacles -- as someone who tries to saw boards on top of half-collapsed cardboard boxes (because proper sawhorses need a) money, b) time to build and c) room to store and use), I understand that what seems to be incompetence is in fact a calculated gamble that the falling House of Cards will pile up right where you need a card pile, at least for a moment. Alright… not so much “calculated” as “gamble”.

I noted that the Happy author never mentions where Mr. Happy had found the time to do all these things “right”… because one of his points was that it does take extra time “at first” but it “pays off later”. Just like those poor folks who can’t invest in a top-of-the-line appliance that “saves money over the long run”, maybe poor Mr. Grumpy just didn’t have the time to spend perfecting every task! Maybe he didn’t have slave labor in the form of a wife and four terrorized - er, “well-behaved” - kids to assist exactly when he needed them. And Happies probably also start with at least a Journeyman’s level of construction competence, rather than a stack of Handyman magazines and some half-rusting tools from Goodwill.

I wish the Happies -- or, lets face it, the Smugs -- of the world would find a better use for all that free time they save by “doing it right” . Stop wasting it chortling about the rest of us!

The Happies never have a day that starts with putting bread in the machine to bake, then having the pest man come and inform you he has to fog and you have to leave - now - and no, the bread probably shouldn’t be baking while he’s fogging…. [Note: Hauled the batter out to the overheated greenhouse, hoping that a couple hours there would be similar to the “rising” part of the cycle - rather than part of the “compost” cycle. It worked, sort of… as in, I ate it and didn’t die. Tasted like sourdough.] The Happies don’t have psychotic bluejays that persistently peck at their sideview mirrors and then their studio windows, causing the tension rod holding up all the handmade necklaces to slip, cascading the whole lot to the ground and taking half the birdhouses-in-progress with them! (But Happies never start anything they don’t finish… I forgot). Happies never get everything out to mow the lawn only to find their grass-cutting clothes (so designated because the non-shielded weedwacker creates permanently grass-encrusted jeans) have just come out of the washer and are on the line to dry for two days in the damp summer chill.

But you know, I’m guessing that Happy is not a family trait. In fact, I can just hear Mrs. Happy now: “David - have you stopped to fix that gate? I need you to fix my clothesline!”
“You’ll have to do that yourself, dear. I need to Do this Right.”
“How long will it take? It was your turn today to pick up Hulda at ballet.” (okay, 4-H)
“It takes as long as it takes, dear. Doing it Right is worth the time.” (He’s one of those who can Talk in Capitals.)
“Easy for you to say - I‘ve got the wash, then lunch… and now kid-chauffeur?!”
“But think of all the time you saved, dear, because I got your butter churn to seal perfectly and your spinning wheel to turn without friction.”
“I’ve already spent that time - drinking your homemade vodka. To drown you out.”

Intention Attention

2008-06-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

The optimism sites keep insisting that writing down your intentions gives great power to them and helps the Universe to grant them… does it make a difference to the Universe if your handwriting is illegible?? I have been writing over and over that I wish to make a good living with my writing, however, it might be read “with my wiring”… and I worry that someone might suddenly show up and ask me to donate my nerves for scientific research.

Unfortunately, this written repetition of intentions brings me back with excessive clarity to my first grade classroom where I had to write 100 times, “I will not talk in class”… and on that double-lined paper that allowed six sentences to the page, I went through my whole notepad on the second day! The humiliation and the writer’s cramp never seemed to cramp my mouth, but it’s probably what cramped my penmanship for these last 45 years.

And, because it’s impossible for a writer to resist, I keep editing the damn intention so that when I get down to the middle of the page it’s gone from, “I intend to support myself by my writing” to “I intend that my writing will be received with acclaim and great financial reward”… and by the time I get to the bottom, it’s shrunk to, “they’ll pay me for writing” -- and I have to go soak my hand to get rid of the writer’s cramp.

Making a Dint in the System

2008-06-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

(Note: I swear to you everything in this post is true and unexagerated, unlike some posts of mine.)

While I was trying to get my old phone disconnected, (a company un-named but sounding like a Beery Arising) I found that the carrier’s oh-so-educated voice machine apparently doesn’t understand the word “no” -- something which I had long suspected. It must be easy to drop a word or two from a computer’s vocabulary, but it was still amusing -- in a nail-biting way -- to hear the pleasant female voice respond, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your last statement” after I’d answered, “No” to one of her questions. And of course, the five humans that they have left in place to handle the 756 calls-per-hour from the customer service line were all busy helping other customers -- and probably calling 911 for those customers, because if they had actually held on long enough to reach a real human being, they were either dead, unconscious or totally insane.

And that is not even as hairy as my encounters with my cell phone company -- again, unnamed but with a dint of a hint, you might catch a glint of the company I’m thinking of -- this one had been mailing my bills to an address two back, over a year old, and no amount of writing on the bill (when it eventually got to me) helped. In a Kafka-esque evening a month ago, I began to find out why. Several weeks before that I had, in fear that my credit might suffer because I wasn’t getting the bills in time to pay them, attempted to mail a check to the company with an old bill stub. I had called and asked the customer service rep for an address and she gave me one in Kansas City (after about 22 minutes wait-time… I sorted old bills, first alphabetically and then by amount, while I waited). So I was stunned when it came back in 10 days with a “Post Office Box Closed” note… so the company had moved without telling the service reps? Of course, mail to India is slow…

So then I decided to try to pay online, as they encourage us to do. I tried to create a new account, gave them all my information, created a user name and a password (stupid1, if you want to know) and then they wanted a PIN number, too, with its own password (If someone catches me wandering down the street, mumbling, “susie345, 9845, catbill89” you will know that I have reached the limit of internal memory and am chasing through alternate realities after my PIN numbers). I tried to create a PIN, but my address didn’t match the one they had for me (imagine that!) and so they asked me a series of questions to be sure I was me… the problem was, they were multiple choice questions: you could select only one of four, and their question was “which of these addresses didn’t you live at?” -- and of course, they had listed 3 of those and only one that I had lived at! So I couldn’t answer correctly, and therefore they said they’d have to do more research and get back to me.

But I could still sign on, using the new user name and password (we are now at another 30 minutes, if you’re timing it). There was one glitch -- because I didn’t do a PIN, they needed to text message the validation code to my phone. I was to type it in and proceed. Anyone want to guess the punchline? No text message -- not then, not anytime during the weekend when I tried again and again… But just at that point, I gave up and searched the bill for a phone number to call, to pay up… and when I dialed the 800 number, the message told me the paying procedure had changed and I had to call another (non-toll free) number or use the *3 function on my cell phone. I didn’t want to use up all my monthly minutes on hold for a bloody representative, so I gave up completely. I wanted nothing more than to pitch the phone through the window, but I know that anyone who stole it would also be so good at hacking that they’d get through where I failed, and that would be humiliating.

Then, out of the blue, a company salesman called me -- all unsuspecting -- to tell me that I wasn’t using enough of my cell phone minutes (and he called me during prime time, to make sure I wasted some on him) and that I qualified for a brand new phone -- he got no further, swept away in a tsunami of invective from my last nerve being stepped on. I really should have saved my breath; English was his second (possibly third) language and he likely understood only a quarter of what I was yelling. When I paused for breath, he jumped in and assured me that he could take care of changing my address for me. I huffily agreed, and spent the next ten minutes trying to get him to repeat a correct address back to me. When that was done, and he said he’d submit it and it would change “sometime in the next week”, he insisted on setting up my PIN number (remember that failed attempt?). At that point, I baulked, saying because he’d called me, I didn’t really know who he was… eventually, I gave in and gave him a number -- then he said he had to ask a challenge question: “What is your favorite hobby?” “Yelling at phone salesmen,” I answered before I could stop myself. It took him a moment, but then he chuckled weakly. Anyway, to shorten this (and it was a long phone call), he took the info, wisely did not try to give away that “free phone”, and hung up. Three minutes later, he called back -- to tell me that the address change was in, but I had to call *2 on my cell “before tomorrow, in order to verify it”… so who had I been talking to?? My last nerve was throbbing, so I waited until after the “unlimited night minutes” had kicked in before calling.

I finally got through to a person, a young thing called Jasmine who spoke so fast and mumbled so badly that I had to get her to repeat just about every sentence. I tried to explain why I was calling, but it sounded lame and a bit delusional even to me. She resorted to the time-honored rep response, “May I please have your account number?” Perhaps she was expecting to find a red flag and the cause of my insanity in the files. Eventually, we got to my address -- and sure enough, it was the same old, two-back address! So much for whoever I’d been speaking with! Grimly, I held on the phone, trying to wash dishes with one hand as Jasmine pecked and poked the keyboard -- it literally took her 11 minutes to type in my two-line address! And then another five minutes after it occurred to her that I might want a current bill… and then, just as she was about to hang up, I heard her gasp, “Oh no!” -- the address had reverted to the old address in front of her eyes!!

So I guess I had to take back all the curses I’d landed on the hapless clerks -- that was one sick computer system! She first wanted to put me on hold for tech support, but I pointed out that it was her computer, not mine, that was sick; then she put me on hold while she sat on hold for tech support -- and sometime after five minutes, the line went dead… oh, well…

This had finally gotten to the YouTube stage. Since I couldn’t videotape some idiot serviceperson, I wrote a letter to the CEO of this cell phone company, highlighting my recent experience. And since I’m experienced at CEO letters, I also send a copy to the head of technical research at Consumer Reports -- I thought he’d be amused. I was gratified to receive a phone call just five days after I’d mailed the letter -- from the CEO’s “assistant”, a polite young woman who assured me they wanted my business and asked me if my problem had been resolved. Of course not, I said, but I found it amusing to give her the excrutiating details of her sick computer system.

She found my record, verified that the old address was still firmly entrenched, and proceeded to change it -- she thought. Back it sprung, as I surmised from hearing her gasp. Try again -- at least she could type well -- it only took her seconds. Nope - she gasped again, and groaned. Then she said she would definitely report this to tech services - then a whoop! as she got it to take hold. She was so proud, and I shook my head -- it had only taken about a hour and a half so far to change my address -- no, make that three or four hours, if you count all the extra work I’d done when I wasn’t on the phone or online with them.

Then she just wouldn’t rest on her laurels -- she wanted to prove to me that the PIN number had also been set up… so I got online. No PIN number… it still wanted that d*mn validation code that it wasn’t text messaging to me. She gave me a number to enter. I did -- the screen rejected it. She gave me another number. The screen rejected it and insisted I exit my browser and start again from scratch! I did that, and she gave me a third number - the system bounced me back to the home page. She told me to enter my username and password a fourth time -- and finally the system recognized me!

Now… was that so hard?? Isn’t that an improvement over the old days, when we mailed a check or paid the phone bill at the counter of the local pharmacy?? No? I don’t think so either… but I’m glad at least that CEOs still know how to read… and delegate.

If we ever wonder why time is going so fast these days, we might want to add up the number of minutes (hours, weeks...) that we spend trying to get our high-speed connection devices to connect to anything useful! Oh, and by the way… I have now forgotten that online password, and still am paying my bills by mail.

Veggie Garden Update

2008-06-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

I realize that the last post on my veggie garden was in the midst of a mid-April snowstorm, so I figured I'd quickly let you all know that it survived. Despite the snow and then, exactly a month later, four days of almost 100-deg. weather, then a precipitous drop to the low 60's where it's pretty much been since May - most of the plants grew, and I've been eating lettuce, broccoli, radishes and even my first peas! But of course the progess hasn't been easy. More on that later.

Ye Olde Almaniac

2008-06-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

I picked up a copy of the 2008 Old Farmer’s Almanac -- proudly aware that now I could legitimately say I needed to consult it. “Consult” might not be the best word… dig into it, plow through the ads and promotions, looking for the actual almanac… as far as I could tell, the first almaniacal information (on the year’s weather) started on page 80, the masthead was on page 84, and “How to Use this Almanac“ was on page 110! Obviously, this is one publications that knows about “compost”! That’s a heap o’ turning to get to the good stuff… and then, to add to the fun, the tables themselves -- the part with the information -- is printed in 5 to 8 point type! Given the average farmer’s age, you’d think they’d package this with a magnifying glass…I suppose if they made a Large Type edition, it would be the size of an encyclopedia (you remember -- those were the big books that held up various piece of furniture because they were so uniform in size?) And then they compound the problem by playing with typeface -- I didn’t even know they had Olde English typeface in 5 point type! I have to enlarge the page on my copier/scanner just to read it.

And then there’s the instruction page, with its bold arrows and arithmetic equations for deciphering the numbers for your individual town and state. I paged back and forth several times, squinting at the examples and finding the key letter for my town… okay - my town is not listed, (of course not! it’s a small rural town! Where the farms are!) but I found the two closest cities and then all I had to do after I figured out the proper key was to position the number of minutes to add or subtract somewhere between the two numbers given. (Huh?) I was glad I wasn’t doing sunrise or sunset rituals or fasting for any daylight ceremonies, because I don’t have to be exact to the minute. In fact, I generally forget the time the moment I close the book. But it’s comforting to know that I can check the table if any day I think the sun has gotten lazy… And reading the monthly Table of Events is a trip - not too many books have lists of the saint’s days alongside the start of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame… but I’ll bet the old Almanacs didn’t have ads for Viagra (it wasn’t a veterinarian version, either).

But not all of the pages before page 80 are pure ads… there are some “entertaining articles” (which are created purely to tease readers into opening the pages full of ads). Page six has a list of predictions for the new smart houses of the future, which, they say, will be called ‘responsive houses”… these houses will be able to shrink in the winter to conserve heat, shake snow off the roof, and have windows and doors that change size and type, and open/close to regulate heat/temperatures… that sounds like living inside a dog! What, exactly, do they think will happen to the good china when this house shakes itself to get the fleas -- sorry, snow -- off? And will it heel like a loyal lab, or will it be a bumptious mongrel that flares the windows and doors for fun, while you stand there howling for it to behave? I can just imagine the fun of living in a place that changes size when it decides it’s needed. Some morning I wake up in a bedroom the size of a breadbox! But perhaps they’re expecting that by then the furniture will have “contraction sensors” and will downsize accordingly… and I’ll be like Alice in Wonderland, sitting in -- or wearing -- a room and wondering where the bottle marked “Drink Me” is! It makes me wonder what these farmers are growing…

Thoreau and I

2008-06-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

In order to make myself feel even more inept, I decided to re-read Thoreau’s Walden, that story of a man who built his own cabin and lived in it two years, so far from his fellow man that a child wandering in the woods would have to walk an entire mile to find him… unless he was walking on the Walden Road, of course… but that’s as may be… I had read Thoreau in high school, and as I remember, my classmates and I made much of him. We were impressed by his statement, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation”. Now, thanks to the Internet, that is no longer the case -- now they are desperate loudly in your face! But Thoreau wrote many other sentences. A couple paragraphs down from that very famous one, he writes (and I quote): “Old people did not know enough, once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled around the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is.” Now, unless I am going senile at a very young age, Thoreau seems to have neglected his mycology before trying to eat off the land. I hadn’t realized they had those kind of mushrooms in Connecticut, but live and learn…

I, of course, am hoping to glean my own sapling wisdom from my land, though I am perhaps a bit more connected to “civilization” (which is quite obviously not the same thing as civilized nation) than he was. Still, in the past six months, I have racked up an impressive number of solitary hours, and even weeding out those hours spent contemplating the very practical questions of how to plug leaky shed roofs and how to clear out the ex-mouse nest behind the oven (it was a very ex-mouse), I have devoted quite a bit of time to contemplating the Universe, civilization and The Big Questions. Mostly I do this with an ice pack on my back, or while rubbing arnica on the new bruises, but -- and this is the important point -- I am doggedly pursuing those questions and writing down my results. I’m also deeply pondering what kind of bug is devouring my strawberries (unless it’s one of those tiny stray black holes that quantum science has been looking for).

And sometimes I think my friends aren’t quite as grateful that I have dedicated myself to this pursuit in their behalf (I’m guessing Thoreau’s little group had the same response - “gee, thanks, David - you’re sitting there contemplating the Universe while I’m just slaving at the bank; can’t tell you how grateful I am”, etc. ) When I do manage to get hold of friends by phone or email, they seem, well -- pre-occupied. “Yes, true, the fallacy of the linearity of Time could be important, but I’ve got to get back to these overdue taxes,” they say, or “Right, right - did I tell you I’ve got two sick dogs and we’re meeting at work tomorrow to see if they’re gonna lay us off?” Which leads me to believe, with David T., that it requires a period of de-coupling from civilization before we are properly able to stand outside of it. I say “outside”, but I acknowledge my freezer of beef, the baseboard heaters and internet connection, not to mention visits to the chiropractor… but then again David was much younger than I am, and his friends dropped over more often [hint].

Here are some of the deeper questions that have occurred to me in this rich silence (broken only by the sounds of the leaf blower neighbor, the metal recycler across the river and local hot rods):”Is this increasingly visual culture losing its ability to form linear thought?“ “Is this perhaps a move toward holistic thinking that might break through the illusion of linear Time?“ “Did I eat all the cookies?” and “Are those damn scientists gonna black-hole us to oblivion with that damn particle accelerator?” I’m not the only one worried about the last one - it’s all over the internet. So I was intrigued and -- what’s the opposite of reassured? -- to find out that there are at least five more REALLY BIG science projects that aren’t as “sexy” (the author’s words) as the particle accelerator, aiming to really get into the Big Questions - like “What’s inside this planet?” (the Big Drill - and right on a major oceanic fault line, mind you!), and “Have any nearby stars blown up?“ (the Big Nova Alarm Box for detecting supernovas in our galaxy - at least a half hour before we all “detect” it by being wiped out)… the others have been mercifully wiped from my memory. I can assure you I am doing much less harm as I work the Big Questions… but then, I didn’t get the billion dollar grants, either. But it’s peaceful today in my garden - no noticeable supernovas or stray black holes, but I’m keeping an eye on the strawberries, just in case.

On Country Time

2008-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

One of the things everyone loves so much about country life is that you can move at the pace of the seasons, waking at dawn, moving slowly and mindfully to your garden and hand-weeding it, watering it gently, greeting the trees and the birds as the morning brightens, moving through your day with slow, gentle actions -- and get four days behind in six hours!!! I don’t know where this Slow Life is located (though many are looking -- there are even websites devoted to it), but it’s not in my county. I have tried to move at a sane pace; I have even cut out many events and tasks from my schedule so that my life is simpler (or at least, complex in different ways)… but time is definitely speeding up.

It’s not just the extended daylight savings time that makes the hours melt and shift in decidedly unchronological ways. There is a rubberband effect that is disconcerting: when I read news on the internet (since I’ve dropped the paper and most magazines, in an effort to be frugal and avoid tons of recycling), an hour can vanish in two sips of coffee, but when hauling away yard debris, or other heavy lifting, time stretches and slows so that I can see the barcodes on the seconds! (You didn’t know they are barcoding Time now? It’s a new DARPA project, in order to track who’s using what time; costs about $45 per nanosecond - apparently the cause of a large chunk of their billion-dollar budget, but since that’s all secret, we can’t know for sure).

As I learn to adjust to “country time” (loosely translated: you never stop working), I ponder the relationship between time and money. The old saying, “Time is Money” seemed a muddled comparison, since one is printed and the other -- as yet -- is not controlled by any government agency. Except that both vanish, melt, mutate the moment my back is turned. You’ve all had the experience of breaking a $20 and having it turn into three singles in your wallet, right? And as I get older, it is harder to hang on to either Time or Money. In fact, I’m suspicious that the terms “hour” and “minute” have been devalued as part of this recession -- an hour definitely isn’t going as far as it used to!!

So there seems to be a quantum connection between the two - one of those “non-local causalities” that tie time/money together over long distances. Is it a coincidence that as time shrinks like a mohair sweater in a dryer, there are now whole websites on frugality advising us how to live more simply? And is it evidence of this see-saw connection that the one thing they don’t grapple well with is Time? Most of their frugal steps need much more time and often result in generally re-shaping our lives to move to a different rhythm (which used to be called “hand to mouth“ but they have fancier names for it now). I discovered that is exactly the point for many people, and they seem to think you get more time - or at least a better quality -- like Haggen Das or Mercedes Time.

But to me it exemplifies that “conservation of energy” principle in physics -- if I save money, I spend time. Some kind of energy gets spent in either case. For example, after having purchased one gutterspout deflector drainboard of non-descript brown plastic and been staggered at the $9.00 price tag (yes -- almost $10 for basically a narrowed dish drainer), I employed Creative Frugality for the rest: meat trays from the large family packs (a year’s worth of pork, but what the hell); the toilet tank lid from the recently deceased toilet; two halves of a cracked bucket, sawn into shape. This gives me the illusion of saving money, even though it almost certainly ends up costing more when I factor in my time and trips to the emergency room. (Me + sharp objects = ouch)

Other “money-saving” examples: looking for $5 worth of ‘shrooms in the National Forest and needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment; going rock hunting for “free” garden walls and needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment; gathering and chopping wood that eats into my work time… and ends up with me needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment. Actually pretty much anything I’ve been doing for the house seems to end up with my dialing the new chiropractor. I wonder if new houses should come with a coupon book for a local chiropractic and massage services…

But I digress… and I only have about an “hour” to spend this morning on this blog (and I think at the going rate, that‘s about 20 minutes). Time, which had slowed to the pace of a passive aggressive teenager when I was waiting to close on this house, has now snapped back to its usual pace, slightly under the record speed set by Lance Bicycler in France… in fact, don’t you sometimes wonder if the increasing number of races they keep organizing are having a quantum effect on everyone‘s time? When the Olympics were the only annual race held in Greece, life was much, much slower -- coincidence? Perhaps not. I think we need to carefully consider the possible “pollution” of time by all these race fanatics, and maybe regulate their frequency and location - keep them away from busy workers, perhaps locate them near senior centers, which have lots of unused Time (although the logistics of keeping runners from plowing into senior shufflers might turn the whole race into an obstacle course). That way, people like me and Thoreau who are trying to live simply (ie: waste hours pondering the Universe and then annoying others with our “findings”) can get on with watching the minutes unfold like a new seedling, holding its cotyledons to the raw energy of the sun -- and finding a weed has outpaced it to the soil’s nutrients and it’s SOL for another season. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi and everyone else who pauses for a second to catch their breath.

Oh, Cold-Hearted Season

2008-04-29T08:26:00.001-07:00

Nature is having a prolonged “April Fool” on us - the last weeks have seen snow, hail and frost, as well as bright sun that warms up into the 80’s before plummeting again. Temperatures are doing Robin William imitations, changing with quicksilver swiftness and me racing around like a new mother after an un-diapered toddler, trying to get hot caps on/off/on my veggies. I’m using every plastic and glass container in the house, all the tarps, a leftover For Sale lawn sign bent double over a new rose, all the bubble wrap from Xmas and Easter gifts, and even old tablecloths. And this is where my ambitious garden design comes back to bite me: the circular beds do not easily lend themselves to draping, so the garden looks even more like a war zone, with body-sized mounds of tarps everywhere.

This is no job for the unfocused -- as I discovered, all it takes is one forgetful moment, one instance of leaving the cold-frame open, the hose un-drained, the faucet uncapped -- and something new is on the casualty list. Small comfort that the frost made pretty patterns on everything -- rocks, windows, and my tender plants. I took photos that I sent to my friends, with the note, “Morgue photos - plants in cold storage now”… one of the saddest to me seemed to be the dandelion crushed beneath my bootprint.

After watching a hail-and-snow storm mid-April and knowing that nothing I’d done was gonna help the inch-high seedlings survive being packed in ice pellets like fish fillets, I understood a bit more the true miracle of being able to heedlessly run to the store and pick up a bit of fresh lettuce. At this rate, I will have paid about $20 for each head of lettuce I harvest, not counting the slave labor wages and overtime I’m (not) paying myself. I think the perfect cure for America’s obesity problem is that you can only eat what you grow. I’d love to watch the nation’s teens out back frantically trying to grow the components of a Snickers bar.

Amazingly, nothing actually looks dead, now that the snow has finally (knock wood) gone. And the seedlings are growing rapidly - unless I’m looking at the weeds. Unfortunately, Oregon has exceptionally hardy slugs; I saw them inching along the snow with their Columbia Sportswear parkas and tiny Lands End galoshes, determined to dig out the broccoli sprouts with their Kinsman shovels. Really resourceful, they are. And now that it’s green again, they have come to feast like third cousins at Thanksgiving. Every couple of days I put out new sunflower seedlings that are devoured whole by the following morning. This has gone on for so long because my middle-aged memory hadn’t caught up - I’d look at the bare ground and think, “I swear I planted something there; I guess not.” and plant more, while the slug chuckled from behind their rocks. I’ve finally caught on, and the sunflowers are under mayo jars until they get too big to be the appetizer. I don’t feel quite so angry, since the seedlings were given to me by the birds -- they had buried their stashes of sunflower seeds in the garden - sprouts everywhere, to be transplanted. So I guess I’m like the trucker who’s delivering the fresh greens to the slugs’ front doors.

Even the crushed dandelion has sprung up again; those golden-haired blossoms have developed an immunity to being stomped on that reminds me of Hilary Clinton. Would that I could spring back after such relentless abasement. Yes, everything seems to be recovering from the artic blast, their growth simply delayed a few weeks due to chill. The problem is, they are now going to be impinging on those tropical veggies and annuals that are due to show up in May; we’re gonna have a crowd like at the Pope’s Yankee stadium mass, everyone elbowing for more room to show off their special outfit. And the Master Gardner - me - still needing a vacation from the frantic snow-zercise, now looking at double-time response to all things greening.

Hold on. Just read the weather report - another Polar Express is heading our way. Better tell the slugs to get their galoshes out of storage.

The Cold Frame is Finished

2008-04-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

This is the second part of the blog posted 2/29/08... how does Life sprint past soooo fast??

When I had recuperated from fetching the window out of the attic, I went looking for the other parts of the cold frame, which (according to the instructions) everyone surely has lying around the house. Luckily I had bought some boards for shelving, and since the shelving was still in the planning stage, I used good old ReAllocation Implementation Process - Owing From Future (RIPoFF) to steal the raw materials for the frame. Having read that a slanted frame does the best to catch the sunlight (and keep the rain from pooling on the window until it shatters the glass), I started to measure the various boards viz a viz the window. I think I’ve mentioned before how measurement-handicapped I am: not only am I a 1950’s victim of New Math (we didn’t learn arithmetic, we learned Venn Diagrams and Base 2 - computer language), but “relative size of things” is not a concept that I have mastered. I can’t pack a trunk. I can’t measure a cupful by eye. And I rarely leave enough room when parking to squeeze my body out of the truck!

Anyway, I had a 2x4, a 1x8, 1x12 and some assorted poles and planks… I measured the window, measured it again -- got a different number -- measured it a third time -- got a different different number… and gave up on numbers. I resorted to my old habit -- the visual measurement. I took the 1x8 plank and lined it up along the window and drew a line. I have no idea how long that was, but it came to the end of the window, which was the important point. I did the same for the wide board, and I also measured that board against the 1x8 to get the top of the angle that I needed to cut at a slant.

Now I know you’ll tell me, “It’s 8 inches, Cath!” but it never is -- that’s the point! Somehow the marks on the bloody ruler move around and it never does work out to the supposed measurement. My best guess is that my ruler is marked off with irrational numbers. The only thing that doesn’t seem to shift around for me is the physical object… so I drew a line on the 1x12 at the place where the 1x8 stopped and then measured the bottom angle against the 2x4. The only difficulty as I was doing this was trying to hold these various eight-foot boards against each other in a studio which is only 15 ft wide and is full of shelves holding ceramic artwork! So -- I’m trying to balance one board on my chair, while the other is leaning gingerly against the shelf of art supplies, and using my knee as the drawing surface, which tends to make the line a little wobbly… No matter, since there’s very little chance I can follow a straight line with the huge, double-handed circular saw (described in a previous entry) that I have to use. I figured if I cut it without also cutting through the cardboard box used as sawhorse, I’d be very grateful. (The 2x4 was actually scheduled to become a sawhorse, but RIPoFF got there first).

They always recommend that you measure all the pieces before cutting, in case something doesn’t add up. Since I wasn’t gonna do any adding, and because I was running out of places to put eight-foot boards, I shifted to cutting the primary planks. The sound of that circular saw always reminds me of an airplane engine, and the similarity doesn’t stop there… once I manage to chew through the board and release the power switch, I have to hold it at arm’s length (all 35 lbs of it) while the engine (ie: saw blade) comes to a complete stop. Since there were several small cuts, I ended up holding the snarling saw at arm’s length for at least a half hour total… while watching the sawdust swirling into every sculptural cranny and open box in the room. I made a vow to get enough boxes unpacked in the garage to be able to do this dirty work there next time… but meanwhile, I finally had the four pieces and it was ready to take outside. Oh, but no -- there had to be some kind of stake/support that the window sat on… I checked the picture again and saw the vertical pieces. I found a 2x2 and painstakingly measure them against the edges of the board, and cut two -- and somehow lost the marking of the other two. No matter - I decided the 2x4 was thick enough to serve. And I was getting tired of cutting -- I wanted to bang some boards! (I tend to approach construction projects with the attitude of a 5-year-old). So out I went, and lugged the boards, window, hammer and nails to the flat ground where I was gonna place the cold frame. This was the location of that ugly old shed with the truck-topper roof… I will document its demise in another entry.

While kneeling to hammer the boards into a box, I discovered the local cats had gotten there first and were very appreciative of a new litter box. I raked the place clear and started again. I know there are clever braces and traditional methods for getting boards to line up square to each other -- but this is a 5-year-old working, so I held one board between my knees and tried to nail the other one to it… my knees don‘t grab that good. Next, I used a left-over log as a brace, but it was being braced in turn by the grass, which although strong enough to resist any attempts to dig it up, was not actually good for leaning things on. Eventually I stood one board up, resting the other on it and hammering downward… it was close enough for Republican economics. In similar makeshift fashion, I got a rough rectangle that -- mostly -- fit the window, and proudly placed my tender seedlings in their new cold frame.

And two days later, the weather had plummeted like the stock market, leaving swirls of frost on the cold frame window… but that’s another story…

April's Fools

2008-03-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

Why it takes so long to do taxes:

making coffee for tax time: 10 minutes (grinding, clearing old filter, etc.)

finding space on the dining table: a half hour (finding overdue bills, tapes that need to be returned, old socks for laundry)

watering plants: 5 min

gathering paperwork :15 min. - interrupted by:

making fire: 25 min (gathering old newspaper, laying fire, going outside for dry kindling/tinder, chopping more wood, babying fire as it starts)

gathering paperwork :15 min - interrupted by:

phone call to insurance agent to check on new policy - leave message 5 min.

opening all curtains because the sun started shining: 5 min.

getting finished coffee, preparing light snack: 10 min

gathering paperwork: half hour - interrupted by:

going online to get proper forms and intstructions; downloading same - 1 hour

taking a break to check Odd News of the Day - 1 hour

gathering paperwork - 15 minutes, interrupted by:

looking for pen: 5 min

looking for calculator: 5 min

losing interest…

I Hoe, I Hoe…. if only it would Grow

2008-03-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been away from blogging because this is the pre-garden season, the time when I insist on putting seeds in the cold, wet ground and fertilizing their corpses. We’ve had just enough sun down here to sprout my garden hopes, and the cold frame has been busy nurturing seedlings, or at least giving them odd salmon-colored soil mold. I’ve been outside at any flash of sun -- digging, turning the sod into vegetable beds, and planning where everything will eventually go. With an artist’s whimsy, I of course refused anything as easy and efficient as linear rows of the same crop -- I have my “talls” and my “shorts” placed around the circular garden to best show off the artistic (or at least strange) trellises that I’ve put together from the dead fir tree… the place is looking more and more like the set from The Ancient Mariner, or The Chalk Circle. I have hung colorful plastic spiral trinkets on the poles to scare off marauding birds… and watching one tiny hummingbird sitting on the top of the pole for 15 minutes showed me that even the baby birds aren’t scared! (I can see the workers in China, twisting taffy-strips of plastic and putting them in individual plastic wrappings, thinking, “What kind of mental deficient would pay money for melted, twisted plastic??”)

I have moved my compost heap and various logs, rocks and planks multiple times as I find yet another perennial poking through the soil. I love that, but I have deep frustration at not being able to figure out the borders of the old man’s garden beds! The house was vacant for two years, with no one caring for the yard, so the sod reminds me of Kansas prairie, and the perennials have “naturalized” (ie: taken over) parts of the yard far beyond their original turf. And I, with my greenhorn tendency to want to keep any plant alive (“No Seedling Left Behind”), am anguished at the number of baby weeds I have to cut down in the prime of their colonization, and then when I realize it was actually some kind of perennial bulb! -- I’m guilt-ridden and have to go inside and dig into the chocolate seeds, ah, chips. If only I had an old photo or someone around here to point out where to just leave the ground as-is, so that I don’t dig/kill something I might want! I’m amazed at the number of neighbors who say they knew him well for 10-15 years, but can’t tell me where his flowers came up! Sort of like friends of mine saying, “Cathy? a poet? I never knew…”

Anyway, this morning there is another frost, and I haven’t dared go out yet to see how the babies fared… I covered the cold frame with bubblewrap last night, anticipating the lower temps. The night before, I’d forgotten the bubblewrap, but the layer of ice protected them. I think. I realize this is why most folks just buy their garden plants about a foot tall and spade them into the garden on Memorial Day. Saves a lot of anguish. But that way, you’ve paid approximately $150 for about a dozen plants from which you will get two batches of salsa (tomatoes, peppers, onions) and a big bowl of nibbled salad greens.

Whereas I, who raise my plants from seed, pay that same $150 for hundreds of individual seeds with the potential for two acres of plants, which I sow in successive bi-monthly plantings because they keep rotting in the ground or being eaten by birds, and end up with enough for three batches of salsa and possibly enough salad to last one decent party. But during that time, I get all the joys of watching tiny seedlings poke up through the damp soil, unfurl their two cotyledon leaves like twin flags, turn these tiny, tender leaves toward the thin March sun, contract damp-off, and keel over…. at least once a week. They say Nature is a Mother, and they’re not wrong. Meanwhile the weed seeds are sprouting even in places that don’t have apparent soil. They have turned the backyard into Weed Central, rather like a hoard of New Yorkers descending on Paris, (or the reverse, in these Euro-centric times) and anywhere I have turned the soil, there is a sprinkling of cotyledons strewn like a star field on the dark earth. No damp-off there, no sir! I read (in one of the many gardening bibles I’ve bought) that weeds developed tough survival strategies like a million seeds and becoming bitter so animals and birds won’t eat them -- somehow also reminds me of New Yorkers (of which I was one, once) at Coney Island . I barely turn the soil, then my back, and they have raced for a prime spot on the “beach” and are spreading their root “blankets” to make sure their extended family has room to picnic. I don’t have time to hoe them all down (and they know it!) while still trying to get all the beds turned in time for the real garden season, which starts about the date of the last average frost (which here is mid-May, apparently).

As I said, I try to catch any moments of sun… because the usual weather is rain that would worry Noah. There was a teaser week of beautiful blue skies, and then a month of downpour followed by sprinkles followed by downpour. I am deeply grateful to be 40 feet above the river that runs along the other side of my neighbor’s yard. As it is, the clay hardpan under the loam has finally backed up, and large puddles have appeared in my driveway and along the road. Raised beds might be the only option in Spring around here… that, and moss. When the sun peeks out, I race outside and try to weed or plant (ie: drown) a few more seeds. Like a dog thinking it’s going for walkies, I race around eagerly, only to be startled by the rain coming down to look over my shoulder.

And so I am pressed to blog before dawn, so that I can catch any clear day -- like today -- and pretend to impose my will and design on a garden so used to raising itself that I can almost feel the adolescent resentment when I show up with my hoe. “You’re not my gardener!” I can hear it think… but I will forge ahead. Excuse me - there’s the sun!

All in A Day’s….

2008-02-29T09:18:00.000-08:00

Spring is lurking in the woodpile, and so it behooves me to get a cold frame knocked together, to protect the tender seedlings as they grow. I have a shed that I “converted” to a greenhouse -- meaning I cut out a 4 foot square of the opaque plastic wall and “installed” (duct taped) a clear plastic square in the opening -- but the shed gets too chilly at night, and from my reading of the various master gardeners, a cold frame is what will snug up those tender seedlings, so that the slugs and grubs have some fresh greens.

I assume there are places where this kind of thing is straightforward; where one has a spare glass window leaning against the garage wall, along with some 10” wide shelving board and a bunch of nails, and just bangs the thing together on the spacious workbench. But I live in that other place -- the Oz of Projects, where unexpected houses (or at least large objects off the top shelf) keep falling on my half-done projects, and where the Powers That Be tell me to “Go Away” (usually in a puff of noxious smoke as another power tool dies)… so I wasn’t exactly expecting this to be simple. But I wouldn’t have settled in the country if I wasn’t a hearty homesteading type, right?

For some reason, the guy before me decided to store all the old windows up in the attic (perhaps dreaming of a dormer greenhouse??). The main attic hatch is in the ceiling of the narrow back hallway, and a ladder the only way up. The wooden cover was at least hinged on one side, which made lifting it somewhat easier, but since I couldn’t reach it until I was on the ladder, and it had to be lifted up in order to rest the ladder… I had the first conundrum. I can only speculate that the guy had a stepladder -- and I only have the 24’ aluminum extension kind… It was like maneuvering a giraffe into a closet. I had been up in the attic once, to attempt to store my Xmas stuff and to see what condition it was in… and almost didn’t get out, because the ladder slid away along the hall when I tried to get back down. This time I decided I’d position it cross-wise to the hall, such that there was no place to slide.

This worked, in a way… but with a 2 ft. wide hallway, the first couple steps up were taken on tiptoe (an interesting feeling on a ladder rung!) because that’s the only way I’d fit between ladder and wall. Once I got halfway up, I had a bit more room to maneuver, and was able to push the solid wood hatch (the man was preparing for a bomb attack, I swear!!) up to a resting position. If I were getting some lightweight Xmas balls down, life would have been easy. But single-pane (non safety-glass) windows with solid wood trim have properties of being both heavy and fragile… But pioneers had encountered much worse, I told myself! I could manage this! I eased the window as close to the opening as I dared, and eased myself over the edge, finding the top rung with one foot. I descended one-handed down an almost-vertical ladder, 4ft.-square heavy glass window in the other, congratulating myself on not breaking any glass. Suddenly, my butt encountered the glass of the framed print I had forgotten to take off the wall… with just enough pressure that I could picture an entirely different pane of glass slicing up my butt!

Writer that I am, the words “Pain of Glass” wedged itself in my mind as I tried to ease the window down to the floor without bending too much at the waist, or extending my butt backwards or sideways so that the ladder didn’t shift (believe me, this is ballast that could scuttle a ship!)… there was No Place to Go But Down, I told myself… the wood frame touched the floor, then I aimed the top edge toward the wall -- it touched lightly enough, but then slid down so that it lay across the floor -- where I had to step off. I came down the last couple rungs on tiptoe, praying my ankles wouldn’t give out, stepped sideways over the window, pulling some upper ligament as I tried to maintain a balance of weight on the ladder, and managed to get to flat ground with no glass broken… and that was the first piece of the cold frame! I went and sat down for a half hour, nursing the pulled ligament and my trembling legs (I hadn’t realized that climbing a ladder several times in slow motion is the Nautilus equivalent of that machine with the cushioned ankle pads -- and my full 170 pounds of little black iron bars attached!)

more tomorrow….

The Last Straw… Will Still Not Burn

2008-02-24T16:35:00.000-08:00

What is the tipping point, I wonder, after which we start to make a concerted effort on some annoying minor thing? I have had trouble getting the fire to light in the morning, even using kindling-sized versions of the wood that was delivered by local woodsmen. Apparently their idea of “seasoned” is: it’s not still bleeding (or whatever trees do). If pressed, they might say, “Yeah, it’s a seasoned tree. I’ve seen it around the yard for a couple years… maybe it was upright and growing at the time, I don’t know… all these trees look alike.” Anyway, when I chop the logs into thinner strips, they sizzle, give off less steam, but they still don’t burn. What I have is an investment in my future, if I don’t freeze to death first.

Anyway, concerted effort: for weeks now, after the “fatwood” (imported from somewhere in Tennessee) gave out, I have scrounged every morning for a new combo of really dry scrap wood -- from my art supplies or left-over woodshop projects (or not so left over! when you’re desperate, the last few inches of that shelving board look really good) and chips that have been lying on the chopping area long enough to dry… and each day after several tries, I got it going. And then forgot about it… three days ago the tipping point was reached and I had to either buy some firestarters (yuk) or do some more concentrated chopping of wood that I know is dry… it’s like the moment when you realize there are more flies than picnickers at a picnic or something -- a more strenuous, over-arching plan of action is needed!

Rummaging back in the memory to my Girl Scout days, I recalled that one starts a fire with dry paper, maybe some wax paper, and the tiniest dry twigs you can find -- the tinder. Like building a little house of cards, those twigs are stacked either teepee style or log-cabin style (never thrown in big handfuls onto burning paper -- okay, sometimes...) so that enough air and flame can get between the twigs. Once they have “caught”, then the next size -- kindling -- goes on, carefully. Throwing them into the fire with enough force that they collapse your burning house of twigs and smother your fire is self-sabotage -- good Girl Scouts are patient. Good Girl Scouts are usually dressed when they’re trying this, so the cold damp winter air isn’t icing up their moving parts. Only after the kindling has caught can one confidently place the wrist-thick logs onto the fire (they have a name too, but heck -- it was 40 years ago!!) Anyway, the logical conclusion is that I need a stack of each size wood, nicely dried and ready to select from at 7am when my brain is still transmuting the coffee into thought.

Which is why yesterday’s sunshine found me going around the yard about a foot from the crabgrass, gathering every twig I could find and bending it to see how dry it was (the neighbor saw me scouring on hands and knees and again offered me his metal detector). Next step was to find suitable containers for about a million semi-dry twigs. Cardboard tends to soak up any wind-driven rain and would just get the twigs wet all over again. Plastic buckets are great, as long as no water at all gets into them, otherwise we have the swimming twigs syndrome, and get to wait another year to use them. I found a partial wood box (partial because I’d already used one side as kindling one desperate cold day) and piled the short bits in that. The canning pot is not going to be used until the fruit survives the birds and becomes jam, so I used that for the kindling. It looked kinda rustic, kinda Martha-Stewart-meets-old-Sears-catalog… I felt like I had addressed the problem.

Until the next morning. Dawn was peering in the window over my shoulder as I crumbled the paper, delicately placed some tinder on it -- the damn paper wouldn’t stay squished, so the “house” flew apart whether I tried teepee or log cabin. Finally just stuck them in the crevasses of the paper. Got the paper to light and blew on it a little to increase the heat - loved to hear that whoosh of fierce flames! Unfortunately, the tinder was just sitting there, like a showcase of non-flammable safety wood. Great for children’s furniture, but not a player in the woodfire competitions. The paper was almost burned up; had to get even a couple pieces to burn! Blew on it some more; the sound of fierce flame was heartening, but it ate up the last of the paper and then it was just tiny blinking embers and a pile of very thin twigs. What gives? Did I mistakenly pick up some of the petrified wood that this town was built on?? Do I need to get “hotter paper” in order to get these suckers to light? Reluctantly, I started again -- some newspaper, some old business letters, a bit of cardboard to really give the flames something to sink their teeth into… this time, the flames crackled immediately, and finally a twig or two caught. Carefully, I fed some kindling in, blew a little, then as the paper and cardboard disappeared, I desperately threw a few more pieces on -- they rolled to the other side of the stove, leaving the one twig that had deigned to catch burning forlornly, far from anything that it might influence. More tinder! I grabbed a handful of the twigs, reeds, bark, moss -- even straw from my broom! -- and piled it near the only burning twig… and put it out. At that point, I turned up the baseboard heater and went to make myself another pot of coffee. I know when the gods of fire have taken the morning off. Tomorrow, I will try dipping the damn pieces in cooking oil.

Master Gardeners -- Don't Look!

2008-02-23T20:14:00.000-08:00

Part three:
Came out today to find that birds had picked up my garden’s moss pathway and tossed it hither and yon… apparently they thought my plan was to provide them with a soft green 7-11 for their fast breakfast. With the new digging, the garden looked a little battle-weary, but now it really looks like chaos! Or maybe just a preview of the tossed salads I’ll be getting out of it….

The veggie garden does look fairly unusual (the same way that New York City is “a little crowded”) but I have my pile of excuses ready: to my gardening friends, I can say I’m using materials at hand; to my new age friends, I’m working with nature energies; to other poets, I’m getting a poem from the experience; to my spiritual friends, I’m making a meditation path; to my artist friends I invoke the name of Andrew Goldsworthy; and to any kids who come by (if they even need to ask - most don’t), I just say I’m having fun. And I am -- as long as the bottle of ibuprofen holds out.

In deference to my back, I have been doing the spading/digging in small batches ( a few clods at a time), alternating with activities that let me stand up (or fall over, depending how late in the day it is…). And in deference to my artist sensibility (now that is an oxymoron -- never met a sensible artist, don’t believe I ever will…), I have arranged the veggies around the circles so that there’s a variety of heights, colors, etc. Oh, I can’t wait until Summer -- I’m sure once everything is blooming, I’ll be telling my friends, "I didn’t do this -- the birds must have dropped seeds at random!” But meanwhile, I’m digging what seems like arbitrary areas of the garden to plant the early veggies… my neighbor seems to think I’m digging for treasure… he offered to lend me his metal detector.

But I’ve got a master plan: a scale drawing with plantings drawn in different colors for the months. And I’ve got a sketch of how I think it will look mid-summer… and I’ve got images downloaded from nursery catalogs that I can Photoshop into my photos for family, just in case…

This past week, I’ve even moved into actual planting, which -- considering it’s still February -- shows a lot of hope on my part, I think you’ll agree… and the garden gives me ample opportunity to recycle that fir tree: I’ve been using the straightest tree limbs as long poles to allow the early peas to climb, with cotton trellis net that I found under the old shed, a bit torn, but still good for draping. Which is why the garden now looks like a shipwreck mysteriously transported an hour from the coast. Even the straightest limbs have an organic “curl” to them, making the pea tripods like upended ships' prows sticking out of my new beds… in a moment of whimsy (maybe sniffing too much Miracle Gro), I’ve even hung a couple of tiny bells on the tops of the poles on that lightweight crochet ribbon that creates garments that look like they started out at GoodWill… from the look of the moss paths, I don’t think I’m scaring off any birds, but they sound nice when I stumble and lurch into the poles…

And speaking of birds, I already know that they seem to adore digging up peas just as they are sprouting -- the damn nearsighted robins think they’re worms! So when I ran out of the cotton net, I drove to the fabric store for something else - preferably cheap. What I found in the back was the ballerina tulle, used to raise those adorable little skirts with the stiff netting underskirts. It was only 99 cents/yard -- cheaper than the floating row cover that the garden stores love to sell… And it came in wild and crazy colors! I had a sudden vision of my garden covered in lovely circles and squares of aqua, lemon, rose, plum -- how could I resist? I got the aqua and bright yellow to start… as the saleslady was cutting, I mentioned it was for my garden. She didn’t even blink; she nodded and said, “Yup. We sell a lot of this stuff for the garden. In fact, once the raspberries and blueberries and cherries are started, we run out.” Wow - have I ever moved to the right town! Creative people everywhere, draping their trees in red, blue, orange -- I am now really looking forward to fruit season!

Next Winter’s Cord

2008-02-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

A small aside: the tree-wound goop turned out to be a kind of tar slurry; it came in a can with its own screwcap applicator, like a large can of paper cement, and about as tricky but much blacker. The directions said to avoid contact with clothes or the skin, and to wash with soap and water to remove. I have washed at least ten times with soap and water, and it is about as washable as any tar is. I should have suspected when I read the bottom line on the can: “Not responsible for any results, even if used according to directions.” Remember when items actually were guaranteed to do what you paid them to do, and when the instructions actually were meant to be helpful as opposed to avoiding a lawsuit? But I digress…

I’m still “processing” my supply of next year’s wood (via the felled tree) -- most of the log slices are under tarps, about two thirds of the limbs are piled in the corner of the yard -- providing a nice impromptu fence to keep out neighbor dogs and their “contributions” -- and the sawdust and mossy twigs provide an impressive barrier to any rototilling, as I try to create the new vegetable garden. Three fourths of the yard had to be “cleared” of tree in order to put this garden in, but it’s almost done now. The clearing, not the garden.

I have never been one to start projects at the basic level. Even as a child, I would turn to the back of the book and start with the “advanced” projects, figuring I’d pick up the basics along the way… my success rate was probably over 50%, depending on your definition of “success”. I rarely ended up with projects that looked like the picture, but that was true even when I did start with the basics. Anyway, this is also true of the garden -- not content to have a large vegetable garden, I have upped the ante by making it a circular garden, or -- to be technical -- a four-circuit labyrinth. I have always wanted a labyrinth in my yard, since I started walking them. And since I hadn’t had a yard of my own since I’d started walking them, this was my first chance. And I didn’t hesitate. I found one small enough for the yard, yet big enough to garden in -- 36 feet across, giving me narrow walkways but decent-sized beds. But no rototiller-straight lines… luckily I’d bought a farm-grade spade. Now if only I’d developed farm-grade glutes!

Over the past week, I have been “sketching” the pattern on the ground, using a center pole, a long string and the sawdust that was so handily lying around. As I am a little old to be able to walk around in circles, bent double, for hours, I have to take breaks, doing other tasks that allow me to stand upright (such as dragging the limbs to the “barricades”, as I have taken to calling them). And then I have been taking breaks from the breaks, as my back has informed that it will break if I do not. After enough of the circular pattern was sketched, I have been laying out the walkways using the moss that was also lying around in great quantities, from the felled tree. The moss felt like I was removing pelts from very narrow sheep or something - soft, wet and kind of held together like snake-skin or pelts. As I bent over the logs gathered this green fluff, I wondered if I were being frugal, or crazy. Then I priced little “plugs” of groundcover moss from the nursery, and decided it was frugal even if it was crazy!

My neighbor has walked by several times and tried to be helpful by telling me what an idiot I was not to just burn all the “scrap”. That was the advice of the woodchopper, too. I told them both that I intend to burn them -- but where it will do some good, in my woodstove next year! I suppose if you live in the country with trees all around, you might get spoiled and consider a large backyard “campfire” to be easier than sawing up small limbs… but then, we city folk use and toss plastic bags like they grow on trees -- at least tree limbs really do! I don’t think my neighbor has seen the circular garden yet -- I await his comments… or guffaws.

Log Blogging

2008-02-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Before:
A new adventure: one of the tall firs must come down. I noticed it first a few days ago, in the wind… it was lashing around like a shoelace, and I saw how very tilted it was from the base. It had the same shape as the scoliosed spine in my chiropractor’s office. It was about fifty feet tall, and well beyond my capabilities, so I called the tree guy in the local classified ads. If he’d been advertising around this small town for years and no one was so irate at his performance as to take out a complaining ad next to his, I figured he’d do fine. I knew it was much better do this before I dug the garden than after, since the only path to fell it was directly across the yard. The guy came over yesterday, paced out the ground and studied the tree, averred how he could take it down easily across the yard, tho it might knock down the little shed -- I told him that would be a bonus. This is the “shed” made of 2x4s and plastic with a truck topper roof. To call it ugly is to insult the word “ugly”. And it’s not even very useful, since the door hangs catty-whompus and the rain gets in.

Anyway, he named a price -- very low, from what I’d heard in other areas (cash, of course!) and said he’d be over the next day. Today. About forty minutes ago, if I’d heard what he’d said correctly, but I have to remember this is country time… they don’t run by the minute hand… nevertheless, if he’s not here by 10am, I’ll call. I had to make a special trip to the bank to get all this cash, and I’ve put aside everything else I’d planned to do today, so at least within an hour of the arrangement? I got extra batteries for the camera, and have taken the “before” shots already -- I’m hoping he doesn’t think I’m checking on him; I just want to record the event… with the memory I have been exhibiting lately, I’ll be saying, “How did that stump get here?” by next month.

I have not witnessed a tree removal from start to finish, though I often see the results lying on the ground… I have asked him to cut it up for firewood as part of the process, and that will give me some of next year’s wood - another bonus. This is not a huge tree, tho it’s tall… don’t know if he’ll try to cut limbs off first, or just take it down and then work on it… an oak that I’m already fond of is partly in the way, and that concerns me, and depending on how tall the thing is, the apple tree could get hit, too. As I said, if the shed comes down, it’s a bonus, since I’d decided that it had to be replaced by some cold frames anyway…

The After:
When an hour had passed, I did all the things you do to “call” a handyman: put on a pot of soup, start a really good mystery, pick up the phone to call long distance. Finally, taking down curtains and turning on the iron did it… and I made sure to forget to turn it off, so that the guy didn’t need to “go back for tools” for a couple hours… the risk of fire was worth it…

Now that the process is done, I can recollect the events and put them in order -- they seemed to be happening all at once on different dimensions, either very quantum or my middle-age mind can’t follow as fast as it used to. First, he came in, apologizing for being later because he’d not gotten much sleep the night before. That should have given me pause. But I assured him it was fine, and I surreptitiously turned on the camera as he gassed up the chain saw and started yanking its chain. Sounding like a recalcitrant lawn mower, it almost ended the day before we began it. But he got it started, took a wedge out of the tree, set the saw down and walked back to double-check something, then went back to the tree, and in about three minutes, the fir comes roaring down into the backyard! Whomping full across the yard, it narrowly missed the fence and the shed -- but I quickly noticed that part of the oak is also down, and there are a couple apple limbs missing… at least most of the trees are still standing. The guy didn’t miss a beat - he walked over, started trimming the branches away the same way a fisherman filets a fish - huge curved green boughs lined like ribs on both sides of the long trunk. Then he sliced into the trunk like it was a carrot, cutting sections about 12 inches, and within 30 minutes of walking on to the property, he shut off the saw, and that was that! I had photo’d some of the proceedings, just for the album of events. I thanked him, gave him the wad of cash, and stared at the giant “carrot” that covered my yard.

Now, I had told him I’d take care of the tree if he’d just chop it -- I plan to use all the pieces I can… but this idea of Nature’s abundance didn’t really hit home until now. I had a vast abundance of moss-covered, wrist-thick limbs to dry for kindling, and over a dozen slices of log about a foot or so in diameter to split and stack for next year’s winter fires. It was at this point that my back decided to tell me it was 52, even if I wasn’t…

Not quite sure where to begin, I decided to get the logs under a tarp near the other firewood, and started rolling the slices to that spot… only the first third were roll-able; after that, I discovered that most of them had “hidden limbs” that were now six inches or more into the soil. Wrestling with one of them, I wondered if splitting them where they were might save me a hernia. Or, heck, even hiring some high school kid who’d split firewood all his life to do it… tho with the cost of Ipods these days, I’d bet his price wouldn’t be low. In the end, I grabbed the handsaw and lopped off the bits that put the brakes on, and got a few more to the tarp area. Of course, when I went for the tarp, it wasn’t in the garage, and that was when I remembered it was on the roof of the shed, keeping off the rain. Right. Another trip to the hardware store… but I had to go anyway, because I didn’t have the goop they use to dress the tree wounds sustained by the oak and apple. More later.

Frozen Assets

2008-01-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry I was away for a while -- a short trip, and sudden winter shifted my focus from this blog.

Last week was the first hard freeze… that’s when you really find out what you’re up against in the country. I was up against the pump house door at 10pm one night, frantically trying to check on whether the pipe insulation would be sufficient! This is when Jack Frost stops painting little ferns on your window and throws pipe bombs into your plumbing bill.

The “pump house” is actually an extension on the garage. It had been snugged in with six inches of fiberglass when I got here, but the exterminator discovered that this was the Marriott of carpenter ants, and that all got torn out in a hurry. As he commented wryly, “It’s not a good idea to insulate where there‘s lots of moisture.” No, really? A pump house? Who’d’a thunk it? So I had gone back and insulated around the pipes, as soon as I could breathe after he’d sprayed with industrial Raid. But lack of expertise and a need to breathe more deeply kept me from finishing the job -- until the thermometer dropped to 17 degrees.

With a “doorway” that is two feet off the ground on both sides, and “ground” that differs by several inches on either side, the pump house is Terra BananaPeela, meaning that unless I want to break a leg, I have to step very carefully as I’m going in and out. There are about four inches of “pipe-free” ground inside the pump house to stand on, and -- due to the movers helpfully stacking boxes five deep in front of the pump house -- no inches on the outside. I had removed a few layers and was standing on one of the boxes to get in, until it collapsed and threw me sideways into a Jenga-stack of other boxes… I managed to keep from being crushed, but there’s another Trophy bruise on my leg -- something akin to those little German plane-stamps that the Allied pilots stenciled on their nose caps. No matter. With the little flashlight firmly in my mouth, I examined the few inches of pipe that I had failed to cover up (because -- of course -- it was the trickiest part), and tried to see how I could quickly (ie: before my fingertips froze) seal them up enough. The foam pipe insulation had run out, and the bubblewrap had tip-toed off to visit the shipping boxes or somesuch… I was left with wads of newspaper and tape. Even with my “third hand” holding the flashlight, I found myself fumbling and thrashing with the tape and paper -- you can‘t tear the tape with your teeth when you‘re swallowing a flashlight. I couldn’t get paper wads close enough to that little elbow pipe to keep its damn toesies warm all night without getting paper jammed against the motor, which -- I feared -- could catch fire. About halfway through, I recalled what the exterminator had said about the wolf spiders (“Always wear gloves in there”), but I was hoping they were sensibly hibernating in their mini wolf-dens. There was no way I could add gloves to this equation and succeed before my insulation failed and my pipes froze. I cobbled something together, propped the pump house door open, propped the garage door open, and left the studio oil heater on all night… hoping that those warm, lively molecules of heated air would wander out to see what was jumping in the pump house. Had I been twenty years younger, I might have camped out and spent the evening wafting the air through the doorways, but the concept of Adventure transformed somewhat as I hit fifty.

Next step was to do the usual precautions inside the house, since I had no idea how the pipes in the crawlspace were covered. I was stunned to discover that I couldn’t get my kitchen sink faucet to drip! In an old house, that was not a problem I had anticipated. But somehow it’s torqued such that trying to open it just a bit causes it to spring back and stop dripping. Normally I’d be ecstatic about that… but now, as I tried to keep the pipes from freezing, I had to actually leave it running rather than dripping… and that kicks the pump motor on and off, which I’m told can burn out the motor. At that point I gambled that it was too cold in there to burn kerosene, let alone a small motor.

Now the temperatures have warmed up to freezing, and my pipes have survived, and I’ve added three or four to the army of post-it notes on my fridge (the Honey-Do list without any Honey to do them). I still don’t know if all that was truly necessary (how does one find out except the hard way?) but I have my fingers crossed that we have passed the Winter portion of the year (hey - if Summer is only four days, then Winter should be, too!) and we are well into the next phase, which involves the grass growing in the rain, faster and thicker than we have any hope of mowing. That’s Spring in these parts. Or will be, once the snow has melted.

I have not lost my mind... I know exactly where I left it...

2008-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

It’s possible I evolved into a writer simply because I had to write everything down in order to remember it… I don’t remember, since that was sometime before 4th grade, when I remember getting in big trouble with the nun because I was writing funny limericks to amuse my classmates. During catechism. I also remember getting into trouble in my first job in high school because I hadn’t punched my timecard for the day before and couldn’t remember if I’d actually been at work (had to ask workmates if they‘d seen me).

More recently, I’ve been trying to keep a list of things that needs to be fixed or improved around this house and yard… it’s like an amateur trying to keep up at a hotdog eating contest! They just keep coming!! One of my friends, who’d also bought a fixer-upper, suggested a series of post-it notes on a wall, in order to keep track of everything and also have flexibility in prioritizing. In theory, it’s a wonderful system: I’ve got 30 or so little squares on the side of the fridge, in four columns (contractor work, my construction, painting, sewing & misc) that stretches down to three-year-old level… and I haven’t looked at it in over two weeks. Instead, I look at something askew on the wall, decide it has to be done this minute, and proceed to create a three-week project in the middle of the living room. But wait -- what has this to do with memory? I’d forgotten my topic.

This morning was a great example of memory-in-inaction: as the sun came up, the freezing temps caused the river mist to rise, so that there was a pinkish swirl of fog around the yard, thin enough that the sun was also casting a glow on nearby trees. It seemed just too lovely to resist, so I decided to go for a walk. Simple enough in theory. I gathered my keys, my walking shoes, a heavy sweater, remembered to use the bathroom, remembered to wait in the bathroom for the toilet to stop filling so I could lift the toilet ball and stop it from running indefinitely while I was away thus burning out the well pump, remembered to turn off the lights, remembered to turn off the coffeemaker, got into the coat, hat, scarf and white gloves (white gloves! In the country! but that’s another topic), locked the first of three doors, got through the second door, remembered I’d forgotten the camera, unlocked the first door, retrieved the camera (remembered to look for batteries), back through and locked the three doors (oh, remembered to take the piece of mail that had been mis-delivered), made it all the way up the gravel road to the street, turned toward the hills -- and realized I’d forgotten my glasses!

These are distance glasses, obviously, and without them the hills were a smear that had nothing to do with the mist. As the cold leached into my legs (I’d forgotten long-johns, too) I decided the hell with it, I could take pictures and look at them more clearly later. So I continued the walk, squinting at the frost-covered vines, noting the brown blurs that were some kind of thrush, seeing the white blurs that hopefully were sheep on the hillside and not evidence of cataracts…. not seeing the black ice underfoot until my gait suddenly widened like Paul Bunyan’s! I slowed as quickly as I could, and tested the ground. It had a greasy, slimy feel underneath my track shoes, suggesting a thin coating of ice rather than solid sheets of it. I slowed down and decide that I could walk to the foothills, take my dramatic photos and then come home.

The not-so-brisk walk continued, until I approached the curve, and there was a huge telephone line truck barreling down from the other direction. Did it know about the black ice? Was there enough room in the ditch for me to dive and it to fly over me? I stopped, stepped onto the gravel shoulder so that at least I’d have traction to dive, and waiting to see what might transpire (or expire). The truck eased a bit over to the left as it saw me, and the road beneath held tight as it whipped around at half again the speed limit (on these country roads, the speed limit is considered a sort of competitive minimum). I breathed out, and continued down to the fork in the road, treading carefully since I didn’t have studded tires. When I got to a clear (relatively) view of the foothills, saw that the snow of two days ago had vanished and that the only breathtaking views were hidden by a bank of clouds, I gave it up and turned around. I’d just remembered a pressing engagement with a hot breakfast.

Some friends suggest that I’d do better if I slowed down, and gave memory a chance. Somehow this doesn’t work for me… all I get is slow and fuzzy rather than fast and fuzzy. I just forgot about the fire as I was writing this; the silence tells me that I let it get too forgotten. That is a handicap for an absent-minded writer: I get involved in the writing, then suddenly it’s two hours later and the house is cold, the coffee is cold, and -- mid-brilliance -- I have to jump up and get some warmth into the place. The fire takes hold, and the memory takes flight. It seems an impossible juggling act. Of course, if I’d remembered to chop enough wood so I’d only have to feed the fire (but I do the “gourmet fire”: each piece lovingly hand-cut -- see earlier postings) it’s possible that the thoughts wouldn’t get so far away that they’d be impossible to corral. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I chopped wood for at least 30 minutes yesterday… but fires seem to be like five-year-olds: they know exactly how much you have to feed them, and demand one more than that! Anyway, it’s time to get my wood-chopping clothes on again. Excuse me.

I’ve Got the Power…?

2008-01-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve used power tools before, but mostly with “live advice” nearby (invited or not). The situation of being alone (as in “miles from anyone”) with a two-page manual that was mostly legal backside-covering and a brand new -- sharp -- circular saw was a bit intimidating. That, and the fact that this saw was so heavy that I was bracing my knees against a chair in order to lift it, made me wonder if there isn’t a market niche for “tools for women and small home owners”. If they can make computers fit in your pocket, they can come up with a lightweight circular saw that can be lifted by someone whose hands can’t palm a gallon of milk! But I digress.

The manual first required that I insert the saw blade. The manual was very precise about which washer went on which side of the blade, facing which direction. However, it kept talking about the “enclosed wrench” -- and I shook out the box, checked the manual for tape or a plastic bag, looked on all sides of the styrofoam padding in case it had gotten embedded, even pried apart some of the corrugated cardboard… no wrench. Out in the country, it is not such a simple thing to drive back to the store and say, “there is a part missing”… and in any case, I really wanted those shelves immediately! Fuming, I found some of my jewelry tools and managed to use a needle-nose pliers to unscrew the bolts, insert the blade (which, because you have to hold back the scimitar-shaped, spring-hinged metal safety cover, is a little like trying to stuff a 25-lb turkey with a dessert fork, or get a 4 year old hyperactive kid to sit down in a dentist‘s chair) and then re-tighten the bolts.

Then I proceeded to the page on how to actually turn it on and use it. That, too, has been redesigned with your safety and convenience in mind -- and if you believe that, I have a legal contract for you to sign. Now you can’t just squeeze the button on the handle -- you must really want to turn the saw on, as evidenced by the fact that you are willing to squeeze one button with one hand, and another button on the other side of the machine with your other hand -- all while lifting and steering a 35-pound, angrily buzzing metal saw! That is much safer… much -- and if you believe that…! In fact, as long as they’re putting safety warnings on boxes, I think they should be required to print on the outside of the box, easily readable -- before you buy it! -- that you will need to lift 35 pounds with your arms akimbo while gently pressing and holding two half-hidden buttons that cause the machine to vibrate like an insane washing machine, and then steer it across solid wood! That’s truth in advertising.

Anyway, as I looked at the operating diagram on page 8, I saw the first mention of where they’d hidden the damned wrench! It is literally tucked into the saw just below the “protrusion adjustment” (no, this wasn’t a sex manual), in the same way that staples are tucked into a stapler -- in other words, impossible to extract. Some smug male engineer had discovered a use for the two linear inches of the saw chassis that weren’t covered with screws, levers or sharp edges. Doubtless he believed -- like all engineers -- that the customers would immediately look on the only non-functional surface of the machine, knowing that it would be used for something. Either that or some manager came in one day, pointed to this blank space and said, “We’re paying two cents per inch to manufacture these -- find something to do here!”

After a few nail-bending moments, I managed to winkle out the flat, wrench-shaped scrap of metal and double-check that the saw was anchored securely. Then I dragged the saw over to the 12” shelving board, safely laid over a couple of unpacked boxes about knee-high. Of course the cord couldn’t reach to the wall, so I spent another few moment unearthing, then untangling, a 20ft. extension cord to about a 6ft length (the rest was dredlocked in a permanent snarl). I gripped the saw, tried to line it up with the pencil mark barely visible under the plate-armor carapace of the saw, felt around for the safety button -- couldn’t find it. Another few minutes with the manual, trying to match their arrow with parts of the machine that seemed to push in. Finally, tentatively, I found both buttons and squeezed. The saw leapt to life, ate a ragged line across the board, and an inch from the end, I realized the board was gonna collapse on my foot in another second. I lifted the saw so that it chomped the final inch and kept going, barely missing the paper file. The boards flew upward rather than down, but that was all to the good. One solid cut made and all my fingers and toes still attached. It was a bit of an anticlimax, really, when I discovered I’d cut the board three inches too short.

It’s in “a better place”

2008-01-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

When I was a child and some person or pet died, I was told “They’ve gone to a better place.” I am getting superstitious about all the items that I had -- when I first moved in -- set in “any old place” and then moved “to a better place” once I got a sense of the cupboards, etc. They have vanished as surely as those passed-over pets. And the most frustrating part is that I can recall in detail my decision to move them, and from where -- but before I get to the image of where I moved them to, it “fades to black” as the directors say. The first location is where I look again and again, as if some part of me is expecting that the item -- the jar of garlic salt, for example -- left footprints to the next spot, or I could catch it returning to visit the cumin. I know that if you go to the kitchen for water or something, then forget what you went for, you return to the spot where you first thought of getting it, in order to jog your memory (or if jogging doesn‘t work, beat it around the head and neck).

I have almost gotten to the desperation point -- sticking a Post-it on the place where I move it from, listing the “forwarding address”! Except that I’ve gotten superstitious about forwarding addresses, too: the credit card companies are now telling me my new address is that of my ex-husband… either he’s still claiming me as a dependent (as if it wasn’t the other way around!) or the fundamentalists have infiltrated and divorce is no longer an option on credit reports. Aside: I wish we could organize those damn companies like the “headline news” companies -- have them feeling embarrassed about having outdated information, rather than proud of it.

But back to the missing items. The problem is compounded because I am struggling to get an entire house in shape at once, and therefore I am pulled in a dozen directions, which makes it simpler to stop looking for something and move on to a more do-able task. But then I forget… and I’ll attempt the task again tomorrow, and go through the entire routine again! I’ve posted a list on my fridge, “AWOL: these items are missing and believed to be organizing in secret: bracket for magnifying lamp; other set of tulip curtains… REWARD for capture!” Possibly the gremlins who inhabit the house after I’m asleep will be motivated to nudge them into view.

And perhaps the most frustrating part is that there seemed to be a cosmic mechanism whereby one of a pair could ask, “Have you seen…?” and the object magically appeared, if only to humiliate the asker. Now living alone, I have no one to ask, and before I spend $400 on a pet, I want to be sure the same cosmic mechanism works with dumb animals… but come to think of it, if it worked on my ex… but I don’t want to get back into cleaning up after something, just as a trade-off for a shortcut to locating things. Perhaps there could be a phone number to call? A kind of 911 for missing objects -- you take the cell phone, start wandering the house and call 611... and as soon as you connect to a person, you’d ask and the object would show up. Might help unemployment by giving jobs to those who have a hard time handling actual questions. Heck, it might make a nice after-school solution for grade-schoolers! Even five-year-olds know how to pick up a phone and say “hello”… and that’s all that would be needed.

Meanwhile, I continue to wander around the new house, staring into cupboards and wondering, “Was the wood polish there, or did I dream it?” and, in my eagerness to find the lost items, moving and misplacing a whole new generation of items! At this rate, I will be lost soon myself. (Hint: check under the pile of boxes in the office alcove -- I probably crawled in to hide).

Wood'n Ya Know It...

2008-01-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

The most difficult part about owning a house in the country are the distractions. These are not the same distractions that popped up in suburbia, where I might get distracted by a random car crash down the road, or the News 8 copters ranging overhead, making me wonder if there’s a standoff in the neighborhood. Or even the usual distractions that occur to anyone living within four walls: you use the bathroom, realize the damn toilet hasn’t been cleaned in several weeks, take a few moments on that, then realize that shining bowl makes the rest of the bathroom look dingy, and before you know it, you’ve completely forgotten that oatmeal cooking on the stove, now so burned that it can be chipped out and used to shim the uneven bookcase wobbling in the office.

No, this is where I go out to the garage for some firewood, then remember I split the axe handle yesterday chopping, so I have to take a few minutes to tape the handle with duct tape so that it can at least be used as a wedge, otherwise I will be trying to burn chunks of wood the size of the US budget, since I have gotten into a habit of making gourmet firewood: individually hand-chopping each piece as it is delivered to the stove. No shoddy bulk delivery for me! In fact, I tried chopping enough for at least a whole day, yesterday, and see where it left me -- a fractured axe and tingling in my wrists. I assume I will have to work up to this. By next winter, I should be able to manage a half cord of chopping. By next winter, I will have finally chopped the cord I’d had delivered this year. If the splinters haven’t worked their way into my bloodstream.

Woodpiles and stoves are one of the many ways that country folk are allowed to witness the great cycles of Nature: a tree falls on your truck, you pay someone to slice it up, you roll it to the woodpile and begin to pound it into fragments, you take those fragments into the woodstove and set fire to them, within hours they are ashes and you take the ashes out (waiting until they cool unless you are practicing to be a pyromaniac juggler), you put the ashes on the compost heap, and in spring you put the compost onto the garden, where you have a new seedling tree. In another hundred years, the cycle starts all over again. I realize that city dwellers aren’t as patient as “we” (after a month here, I can say that): they will likely be asking, “Why didn’t you get right to the point and just burn the tree when it broke your bloody truck?” True, it would have saved hours of labor and a hefty check to the woodsman… but on the other hand, it would have meant that instead of hauling the chunks of wood through the rain and snow to the insatiable stove, I would have had to turn up the thermostat on the baseboard heater and… now, wait. Let me think this out… oh, right -- I wouldn’t have witnessed a grand cycle of nature! And I’m looking forward to that second round, somewhere about 2108... if I’m still here….

But this brings me to a related topic, which was introduced by the exterminator as he went around drilling holes in my siding: the difference between men and woodstoves. I hadn’t actually looked at it as a comparison, but here’s what we came up with:

-- you have to feed them both
-- man usually easier to “light” than woodstove, but the stove keeps hot longer
-- both take up a lot of space in the living room and create mess that needs to be cleaned up after
-- both have to be careful their pipes don’t get clogged
-- can’t control the heat on either of them
-- eventually you have to do something with their ashes
-- you can count on the woodstove

Now - you try to get that quality of joke while sitting around your high-tech living room, watching the News 8 copters searching your neighborhood! You can‘t… though I guess there’s “men and computers”, or “men and washing machines” (think: spin cycle) or “men and cars”… okay -- I guess there’s potential enough for city and country. Now pardon me while I distract myself by dancing through the snowflakes - er -- going out for more firewood.

Last Blog of 2007: The “Situation”

2007-12-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

Warning: A Semi-Graphic description - those with good visual imaginations, continue at your own risk.

My only toilet just cracked; the whole bottom split across -- and it leaked…um… okay, I think I need to think about how best to describe this… If I was a talking-head news program, I would simply create a phraseology to convey the information without in any way naming names or making clear statements. So, if you will let me re-phrase my situation: if, as many of you agree, the past and current state of intelligence concerning Iraq is simply sh*t, we can use that as a likely euphemism. And, if you can picture our leading poster boy of Blockage, both in the heart-valve area and in general terms of cooperation and transparency -- Mr. “I’m right and you’re wrong” Cheney -- that can be our second needed euphemism. Most of the other re-phrasing should be self-evident. So, as I was saying, once the containment system cracked, the entire Iraqi intelligence spilled out and an emergency mop-up plan was needed.

The most salient fact in this case is that once the traditional confinement system fails, it’s amazing how difficult it is to deal with Iraq intelligence! There’s simply too much of it and it causes great mess, not to mention leaving an olfactory memento. But the immediate response was good - Iraq intelligence was Cheney’d from doing any serious damage, and then the next phase began.

The containment system had to be totally revamped -- the leakages were permanent… but of course, old systems don’t accept removal easily -- this one had rusted in place, and the nuts holding it together had become rigid… as nuts generally do, sooner or later. As quickly as I could, I sub-contracted out the new Iraq intelligence containment system project, and then there was nothing much to do but wait.

But meanwhile, I was without a containment structure, and since I didn’t want Iraq intelligence to flow just anywhere, I had to find temporary containment. And wouldn’t you know that Iraq intelligence would simply push to be exposed just when one wants it to subside?? A temporary “circular file” system was set up, far enough away from everyday matters that it would not contaminate ongoing activities with the stink of waste and corruption. But after most of a day, I was desperate not to create any more Iraqi intelligence, as the circular file system was getting full and would be trouble to handle later!

Okay, I won’t prolong this. In emergency session that evening, a new containment system was jury-rigged in place. I say that because the structure on which it sits was unstable, and there is 90% chance that I will once again have to re-do the Iraqi intelligence containment system in the near future. Containment systems just ain’t what they used to be, folks.

Afterwards, in order to put the situation behind me, I also needed to deal with the built-up Iraqi intelligence. My dilemma was: too much Iraq intelligence all at once, combining with the mop-up “paperwork“, could create a Cheney down the drain, and perhaps begin another crisis. I handled the situation with kid gloves -- well, at least -- with gloves. Frustratingly, the last of the Iraq intelligence refused to be flushed, despite being very much watered down -- where are the hazmat crews when you really need them? But it’s done, and life is back to “normal”. Eventually everything involved will have to be totally sanitized, don’t you agree? A sanitized end to a messy situation.

Happy New Year.

Who's Siding are They On?

2007-12-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

Update on the ants: I discovered that the exterminator -- either in an excess of enthusiasm, or because the problem seemed so extreme, or because he noticed other large holes in my siding -- started drilling random holes in the siding! Instead of being under the lip where it would not be visible and probably not attract water, these holes were smack in the middle of a board, and veered all over the place! My house looks like it has woodpeckers! And of course, in the rainy season, those holes are gonna let rain in… I doubt if they make corks that small, so I went around with woodglue and tried to at least waterproof the siding. And of course, realized that probably was silly as long as the other, larger holes, cracks and gaps are there, so then I went back with the foam insulation.

I don’t know if you’ve worked with foam insulation -- it’s like toxic silly string, and doesn’t come off of anything. The side of the can says that “uncured” foam can be removed from non-porous surfaces with acetone, but that’s it. Forget it if you dribble on clothes, hands shoes, grass… they state that it has to wear off your skin! And just like Super glue, as soon as you start to squirt it out, it just keeps oozing -- forget trying to patch a small gap or hole - you’d better have an 18” cavity to fill! I had tried this stuff several times, luckily never video’d or I’d have made YouTube. This is pure Lucille Ball material. This time, I decided that 1) it was gonna be a one-time, disposable situation ($5 for a can that can’t be used more than once, due to the foam hardening in the applicator straw) 2) I would sacrifice a pair of gloves and my worst work jacket and 3) I could always cut the grass after it hardened. That helped some, but I still ended up squirting too much into the gap, thereby having bright yellow “snot” hanging off the house. I also tried to catch the strings of goop that kept oozing from the applicator, by holding the can’s cap under them - I ended up with about 5 inches of foam piled in the cap -- more than ended up on the house! But I did manage to keep from getting on my skin, tho the gloves were caked. And getting the can and the pile ‘o foam into a garbage bag without touching anything, while still wearing the gloves now stiff with the dried foam -- that is Advanced Foam Insulation, and maybe I’ll get that right next time.

cAnt Escape 'Em

2007-12-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

The saga started slowly:

"I just spent 40 minutes watching an ant. No, this does not represent the entertainment limits of country living. I have large ants parading across the room like they’d heard the siren call of “Happy Hour” somewhere under the couch… and after Googling them, I discover that 1) carpenter ants are the kind of guests that rank up there with impecunious college professors (they burrow in, make themselves at home, and never leave if they can help it), and 2) in order to get rid of them effectively, one must find the main nest. This is where the satiated ants wobble back to, probably at 2am which is why I can’t locate the central point. When I start to track them, standing over one like Goliath while he was considering stomping David, they wander around like me in a large mall without a shopping list. Veering this way and that, pulled by unknown sales or tidbits, they tease me by veering close to a wall (is this the Exit?) but then re-covering their old path, like they’d left a glove somewhere. After 40 minutes, I generally reach the end of my patience and stomp it… any ant that is that lost probably would have died of exhaustion before reaching the nest anyway. And then I start all over again with the next ant, which is usually already weaving and dodging across another room’s floor."

However, it got really hairy when I was sitting at the desk, answering email; I’d glance down, and in the middle of the floor, where there were no ants a moment ago, I’d find two! Now, either they had a antian Transporter hooked up, or they used a “Ricochet Rabbit” speed and a “for show” speed, or they were dropping from the sky. And the scary part was: they were dropping from the sky! Not sure what made me look up, but dang if those ants weren’t hobbling between the grooves of the beadboard, and then -- in a moment of distraction, plummeting to the floor! This suggests penthouse accomodations, ie: my attic. So I wasted no time in getting the exterminators out. Finesse be damned -- we need the Marines!

The guy showed up on time and nodded thoughtfully as I described the various places I had seen them. He pointed out some of the rotted trim boards that would attract them; I told him they were on my list to replace (I didn’t mention how long my list was, but I think he suspected -- he gave me the card of a carpenter friend of his). Then he described the procedure -- drill into the siding just under the lip of the clapboard and puff a borax-like substance into the open spaces, to cover all the entrances and exits. His description of the ants going out for a bit to eat in the evening coincided with what I’d read, so I let him get about it. Didn’t take him long and he said that I’d see more of them for a while, but then much less of them.

He was right - that evening I witnessed “Kraatoa East of Anthill” or “The Last Days of Pompeiiant” -- there were ants of all sizes, winged and not winged, racing or wobbling across the floor. Many were obviously on their last breaths -- I felt like a monster. Some “B” movie producer was missing a great opporuunity for special effects filming (“The Ants that Ate Mudville“). But this ant motel had just gone out of business, taken down its shingle and closed the door. I closed my heart to the unfortunate critters and swept the floors several times a day for the first week. They have now gotten the message (and/or I will open up a wall someday and be inundated with dead ant bodies)… life is now quiet again. I haven’t had the courage to peek into the attics, though.

To Fix or Not to Fix

2007-12-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

More disconnected snippets from an overworked brain:

My genius lies with destruction, unfortunately. It is a forgone conclusion that if I investigate why something is slightly askew, it will soon be completely askew, if it is even still recognizable. The backsplash on the kitchen sink is a good example… tear it off, decide I want tiles, realize I don’t have tiles, or even a plan for which I want! And suddenly a longterm decision becomes an emergency one. Fortunately, I managed to get to a tile outlet on my monthly trip back to the city… unfortunately, I can’t measure and am woefully short of tiles. Now I have several jars sitting hard against the backsplash, trying to wedge it in place rather than glue it and then tear it off a week later (which of course is homeowner slang for “next decade”).

Having my own home allows me to have more greenery -- but, sucker that I am, on my first attempt, I adopted two forlorn houseplants from Thriftway. How cruel of them to post a sign: “Help! We want to Live! Take us home!” and offer them at half price… I can never callously allow a plant to die… I am now auntie to an ornamental pepper and some tropical with corrugated leaves -- and my houseplant books are buried at least four boxes deep…

My hands look like I’ve been trying to grate them… but only one wound was the grater - the others were the broken toilet, the large hunks of wood I wrestle into the woodstove, the staples I’m trying to pull from the wood floors… I need tiny knuckle-pads like they have knee pads… I’ve tried using gloves but I’m enough of a klutz without them, and besides, the spears that emerge from these behemoth chunks of wood just laugh at my garden gloves. “Splinters” doesn’t even begin to cover it. These are toothpicks for Godzilla.

Despite my best efforts to slow down and plan rationally, my “I Love Lucy” imitations occur daily, especially in the cleaning department. Can’t tell if I used to be a vaudeville comic in a previous life, or if there’s a short-circuit between brain and limbs. Or possibly the Dual Processor gives out after age fifty. Anyway, a week before the move, after having torn up all the rugs (I’d made an honest effort to vacuum, but when you fill a bag on one 8x10 rug and it’s still dusty… time to rip up!!), I found oak floors that had obviously been lived on pre-rug -- by someone who believed that paint-can circles make a stylish statement on oak. Okay, I decided, I have three days to do something about that before the heavy furniture comes in… I remember about Murphy’s Oil soap, though I’m not sure it’s meant for semi-polished floors (if by “polished“ you mean covered by congealed resinous goop). I decide to try it… first one corner of the office floor, just so I can see what the difference is when dry -- none, though I know I’m removing dirt because the water instantaneously turns the color of slate. I then proceed to a portion of living room floor where the couch will be. I’m preparing the sections of floor in each room that will be covered by furniture, because I haven’t the strength or back-flex to do all of them in three days. I figure the rest of the flooring will be a winter project.

Within two shakes of the mop, I’ve knocked the whole bucket of water across the floor! I barely have time for the signature “Waaah!!”… it’s heading toward the Sunday papers I just bought (quick! Are they water-soppers or news?), and (of course) heading straight for the unfinished wood bathroom cabinet that I’m also trying to assemble on the living room floor -- like a mini tsunami, the water gushes toward disaster -- I shriek, grab up the papers (save the comics!!) and run for the bathroom towels! I only have one of each, bath and hand, and they are dropped down and swabbed around on a floor that resembles a NYC subway station floor! Now, any sensible person would have immediately reclassified them as “rags”, but I - quickly thinking, “I have my work clothes in the wash”, run and drop them in too… (fortunately the work clothes look like rags in any case). Anyway, I’m grabbing stuff out of the way, cursing and mopping… and grateful that the very hot woodstove may quickly dry up the mistake… and if it leaves a stain the size of Lake Erie, it will be one of a dozen on the floor… we’ll find out if Murphy’s oil soap is a preservative…

I finally got the bathroom cabinet up and into the bathroom -- by ignoring two screws that refused to go in, even when I drilled a small hole, and the slight gap between parts caused by a single person’s inability to hold together two large planks of wood. Due to the fact that the room itself is crooked, and especially the toilet is cockeyed from the wall, the little cabinet looks skewed… and it is leaning away from the wall dangerously… but if I bolt it to the wall, can I unbolt it when I want to paint the wall?? For about a day, I had it wedged upright by pieces of cardboard and by the Kleenex box… finally had to decide to bolt it in or risk being crushed as I sat on the toilet -- not the epitaph I want for the headstone!

Short Takes from a Short-Circuited Brain

2007-12-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

Because my brain is short-circuiting, due to all the calories going to long-overused muscles, this entry is in the nature of snippets…

I have stepped back in time, in a wonderful way -- the local library is still using the card-punching process; I haven’t seen that since I was a page at the Westfield NJ library in the 70’s! My job was to pre-datestamp the cards to slip into the books: the cards had large numbers 1-4, which if I remember meant the number of weeks they were checked out for… no receipts, no online tallies… I’m going from a system where they send automatic email warning me when the books and DVDs will be due, to a place that I have to look at each individual book! And they don’t even trust me with the card! Apparently they just keep my number, and I give them my name every time I walk up… that’s a small clientele!

I have so far been unable to unscrew the tub drain that has a chip in it, so I finally got desperate and used some of my modelling clay to fill the gap… should hold until I get the contractor in (he came the first week, but since he has other pending clients, it‘s scheduled for after Christmas)… I went ahead and got the exterminators to spray -- if the repair work continues to slip as it has, the toxins will be pretty much soaked in by the time he gets under the house…

I can barely move to type, having just ripped up three wall to wall carpets and their underlayment in the space of about 5 hours… this from a woman who would often have to fold her laundry in shifts because she couldn’t keep her arms up long enough! Not only torn them up, but got two of them into the bed of my truck and over to the dump -- if I wake up tomorrow and find I can’t push myself to a sitting position, I’ll know why. That, and my hands feel like they are so dry they are sucking moisture out of the air…I could probably dry dishes with my bare hands at this point.

I also shovelled out the gutters; apparently the last time was about 1960... if I was counting the tree rings correctly. I’m not sure if it was fertile soil, but there were actually a couple worms up there -- the vermiculture version of Penthouse dining… and that’s got to be gourmet stuff if they devoted a decade or so to climb the gutterpipes… they got impatient with trickle-down theory, too, I guess…I took the toilet brush up onto the roof to brush off the moss -- I’m not saying the moss balls were oversize, but they put up such a defense that it felt like the Attack of the Green Tribbles.

I toasted my first night here with wine -- boxed wine, of course; it’s only fitting.
Now I have to go blow up my bed again so I can keep far enough away from the dust to be able to breathe through the night. A bien tot!

A Moving Saga

2007-12-12T10:01:00.000-08:00

(Still neck-deep in boxes: here's the move-day story:)
I know I’d hired professional movers when they called me at 7:25 the day of the move… to ask if they could be, oh, an hour and a half late. Definitely pros. They’d probably had me double-booked for weeks, but knowing I can’t say no when I’ve just packed my last roll of toilet paper and my last spoon, disconnected my phone and internet… I was as much a hostage as the people sitting in row 17 of Northwest Air-Lies… so I sat there, gnawing on cold Mexican leftovers (okay, I saved out one fork-- I‘ve moved before too, you know) and re-reading old computer files… no sense moving them if I can toss them in the trash ahead of time, right? I kept seeing more and more items that I was too afraid for them to move, and putting them into the pile for my truck -- soon I’d be moving everything except the furniture… which is probably a good thing because they also asked if they could bring a smaller truck.

When they did arrive, they worked very hard to cram the smaller truck full of my stuff. No tossing boxes, at least, but there were a few things that were definitely a size smaller when I finally unpacked them… to their credit, I have never seen a truck packed that full -- safety line be damned -- that space had boxes to the roof, and probably a mouse couldn’t have fit between them. And they managed to get the steelcase flatfile into the truck without taking out more than half the drawers, which was more than my friends and I could do. However, despite their best efforts, and despite also piling my truck as high as was safe, they managed to only get 99.5% into the truck… as the got to the back of the garage, the guy’s patter went from, “Oh, sure - no problem! That’s why we’re professionals” to “Oh, I think we can do it” to “Well, we’ll get close, for sure.” The problem is: close doesn’t get all my stuff down to the new house! I pursued the theoretically possibility: and if you can’t get it all? What then? Unfortunately, I’d let slip that I was coming back the next day to clean up the apt. His cheerful solution was that there wasn’t more remaining than could fit in my truck. However, he didn’t offer a .5% discount for only doing a partial job… which is why I didn’t feel much guilt as I led them along ever more rural roads, as the sun dipped closer to the horizon (hey, they said they’d be there at 9am!), and when they got out of the truck at the new place with glazed, exhausted looks on their faces, I was minimally sympathetic… after all, they had to drive back after they’d unloaded it all!

And they did -- stuff poured out of that truck like it had legs. And since I’m sure the boxes weren’t groaning, I assume the guys were throwing their voices. They put the furniture where it needed to be with only minor gouges in the plaster (left unremarked by them) and piled the boxes 5 high in the new garage -- in front of the pump house door, I later realized. By the time they were done, they looked like it would take a gallon of coffee to get them back up the highway, so I tipped them despite the residual packing still facing me. I was grateful it all got there, presumably in one piece, and that I had an off-the-floor bed and towels for that hot bath I’d be taking!

Hot water is one of the first necessities … and it’s amazing how we just assume it’ll be there… as dusk was closing in,I first unloaded my truck (I'd been too busy directing before that) and made sure I knew where all the light switches were, and then decided to try the hot water. Cognizant of the fact that you must get the trapped air from the line before you try the hot water, or you will burn out the heater motor (learned that at the cabin), I first ran the cold til it was smooth, and started on the hot… at first it was the usual spluttering (like Rush contemplating Hilary), but then it sounded more like hissing. Uncertain, I actually consulted the manual -- a good thing: apparently hydrogen gas (very explosive) can form when the heater hasn’t been used in a while (like, say… 2 years??) and it is very important (duh!) to release it safely while not using machinery that can spark… I rushed to shut down the baseboard heaters, turned the faucet on full and backed away… contemplating the fact that I had not yet physically signed the insurance papers. After what seemed like forever, the hissing stopped and the water sounded like… well, water. And smelled like rotten eggs! Back to the manual. Apparently the anodes (Anode? wasn‘t that Luke Skywalker‘s father?) can react with certain kinds of water (Ah, Murphy‘s Law….!) to create this lovely sulfurous odor… and the only solution is to chlorinate and hope for the best. Okay; I’m supposed to add chlorine to sulphur? Isn’t that a Chemistry 101 taboo? Or am I thinking vinegar? And it states that it may still persist and in that case your have to get a chlorine filter… or walk around stinking of rotten eggs. I’ve just gotten to that age when everyone would immediately assume my gut was betraying me… what a great way to meet the new neighbors! Not.

I also have a 1940 era stove -- quite a feat, since this house was supposedly built in the 50’s… I can’t see how the burners are detachable, which means the saucers under them look like the floor of a theater after a Star Trek weekend marathon… and it has a combination clock and timer… which is unfortunately 6 hours off, and there is no way to reset the clock! Proof positive that this stove was built before Daylight savings time! It also ticks like the logo noise from 60 Minutes, which has put me on edge a bit… I am guess that one of these days soon, I will be disassembling that piece, and hoping that it’s not an essential part of the damn stove!

On Your Marks, Get Ready….

2007-12-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

(still nuts unpacking; posting this one, written mid November):

On hearing that the septic tank was in the ground and that one small inspection stood between me and putting down tens of thousands on my new house, I understandably, developed a few butterflies. These might have been a new species - each specimen felt like it was a foot wide, fluttering in my gut. Yes, I have been pushing and working very hard to get this to happen, and yet -- do I know what I’m doing?? I am making a huge commitment… it feels a lot like the nerves I got just before my wedding (and considering how that turned out, it should have told me something!) -- can I trust that this will end better?? Me and the house, til bankruptcy or nursing home do us part. I think it’s an excellent sign that the former owner is in a nursing home -- this is a faithful house that does not chase people away… but am I too young for commitment? I barely have gray hair!

Yet here it is, the week before the “I do’s”, and I am starting to label boxes and bags, “First Truckload”, “Second Truckload”, etc. I am trying to conserve the tiny sliver of bath soap so that I don’t have to open a new one before the move, and yet I am buying large extra pounds of stuff that I imagine I won’t be able to get outside the metro area (at least as cheaply), like gluten-free flours (I just bought $63 worth). And of course, not wanting to open any of them because they will be that much harder to move. Conserving and/or stocking up -- I feel like a PushmePullyou! I broke down and bought a few more tools yesterday -- not wanting extra things to move (and lose), but fearing that once I move to the house, or even before, I will need them to fix things and then will have to detour a half hour or more out of my way to buy what I need. This new place is just close enough to drive back and forth a few times, but not nearly close enough to run back if I forget a tool. So I’m watching the gas prices, planning the first immediate tasks and gathering the boxes that match. And there are precious things that I am torn between moving first to be sure they don’t break, and moving last to be sure they are safe (the new place will still be empty for a week or two).

And I think it’s probably much simpler than I’m making it, but I also realize that keeping busy is very effective in distracting from the terror. I believe that’s why weddings are such big deals. If all you and your fiance had to do for the months leading up to the date was stare at each other and say, “Do we really want to do this?” most marriages wouldn’t happen. It’s only because the woman is so distracted by the party favors and gown colors that she doesn’t see how pitifully ineffective and even reticent the male has become. And why is it that my taste in houses runs the same as my taste in men? I keep getting fixer-uppers! But I digress.

I can’t blame the house for the septic issue, and it has withstood the rain that came in with October and shows every intention of staying… so the next step is to tie the knot and then… oh, the list is so long that those butterflies begin to gallop up and down my spine, fluttering in my braincase until I can’t even read the list! Tear out the rugs, clean every surface, cover shelves with shelf paper, take up the plywood that covers the gravel in the garage…come to think of it - a house will stand for all this change a lot better than a husband. I’d hire a service for all of it, but suddenly I have two weeks and one of them is Thanksgiving week! I’m lucky to get the movers… so Plan B has become, “Do whatever the minimum needed so that the strong guys can move the heavy furniture where you want it for the next six months, and then do everything else later.” And I’ll be so exhausted that I suspect that “later” might be after Christmas.

Just Packing It In

2007-12-06T20:33:00.000-08:00

(Up to my neck in boxes on the other end -- so I'm posting something written back when I had nothing to do but wait and write)

I’m now up to my neck in boxes, waiting for that final frantic push of packing, when I give up doing anything else in my life until I move. Technically, I’m about two weeks from that, I think, so I have to keep enough items out to live on, and somehow I keep changing focus as to what that consists of. Do I keep the food processor out, or can I live on more simple foods for two weeks? (yes, but since I packed it a month ago, it came out of its box again last night). Do I pack all my reading material and live out of the library? (Yes, except for one unsealed box of “essentials” - my guide books to this current life, a motley crew of spiritual, renovation, and comedy books). Do I pack up the art and look at naked walls for two weeks? What if it stretches out again? So far, the oil paintings are still on the wall, but if the tank gets into the ground Friday, there will be a packing spree this weekend for sure!

Meanwhile, I veer around brown square stacks, stare again at those pieces that utterly defy packing (someday I’ll watch a professional -- just to see how the huge, crook-neck magnifying light contraption could find a wrapped degree of safety), and give up again for the moment. That’s one of the blessings of panic -- all the finer nuances of possibility drop away, and there is only the crisis. In those moments, it is irrelevant if I put great aunt Sarah’s ceramic jug in with the cupcake tins -- eventually it’ll all get there, and I’ll unpack it again… eventually. An irrational segment of brain takes charge during crises; logic, sense and even frugality are tossed with the receipts that you will eventually be wanting desperately, and you plunge ahead any which way to the end. “A certain amount of breakage is to be expected” and other such platitudes act as Teflon coating to the brain as the clock ticks like an unexploded bomb and you grab anything not yet boxed, stuff it into one of several large boxes labelled, “Last Minute Misc. - Open Immediately” that inevitably end up four layers down in the new place and emerge next Spring as either compost or treasure. I have actually, in these situations, been able to reassure myself that any priceless pottery piece that is broken can become some wonderful mosaic collage, in fact even better than the original. I am actually a mover’s joy because I am just so grateful to get it all there without me having to end up in ER, that I don’t particularly care what state it’s in when it arrives. The days of having robust friends move me are long over; in our 50’s, we are connoisseurs of back, neck and joint pain, and a household full of furniture must be left to the next generation. And my ecologically-conscious friends have refrained from having more than one child each (if that), so that generation is in short supply to help their parents’ friends move… unless you contact them at their local moving company and hire them at the going rates.

-- Listening to an old Irish air, ‘Farewell but Whenever”, I am again reminded that my ancestral melancholy is an irresistible, blood-deep attribute. This song has lines such as “let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy that come in the nighttime of sorrow and care, and bring back the features that joy used to wear” …“you may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still.” Good old Irish - we know what it’s like to be crushed underfoot, and our stubborn refusal to concede that we are miserable is only matched by our stubborn refusal to concede that we are happy. It makes for wonderful conversation, and many a confused outsider… but I digress.

Eversprouting: Optimism, Mushrooms, and Spam

2007-12-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

Mushrooms: I think it’s a sign of my country madness that I am even excited about the possibility of gleaning mushrooms from the countryside. I’m not particularly fond of mushrooms, but part of that has always been the insane prices in the markets for fungus. Free is always a good price to me, and so I dream about recognizing the tastier varieties, and even try to look up the ones that appear audaciously in my own backyard. (Once, I had one that really looked like a morel grow up through a crack in the basement floor -- but of course, I was too cowardly to eat it!) And the prolific rain combines with the fertile spongy soil, apparently, to create Oregon fungi that in some places stretch out for 144 acres! (That one, a Honey Mushroom, is too big to start with, definitely; I will try something smaller). But most likely I will start my gleaning with items that I easily recognize: fruits and nuts. It will be interesting to see if they are left on the roadsides like in suburbia or if the country folk share the same value I do. And who can get there faster.

Optimism: One thing that comes out in great quantities, like oil slicks -- or mushrooms -- after a heavy rain, is your friends’ optimism. Of course there’s always one who has a ready list of imminent dangers, but in general, my complaints about the intricacies of the real estate process, and the confusions of home ownership in general, is met with a wave of sunny optimism, behind which I sense a backwash of “better you than me!” The original closing date is already a month in the past? “These things happen -- nothing to worry about!”. The new closing date is just before a holiday that shuts down the country - except for shopping -- for four days? “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I am amazed - flabbergasted (love that word - how does one flabber a gast? or is it gasting a flabber?) by their steely confidence in the face of my concerns. But I guess that’s what friends are for: to sit at their tables, firmly ensconced on their settled kitchen floors, and encourage me with great gusto to set out for parts unknown. Where would I be without them? Probably more to the point, where will I end up with them? At this point, somewhere left of “Hic Sunt Dracones” [Here be dragons]…

Spam: The other thing that comes out in vast numbers before, during and after a move, are the advertisers who target you as someone desperately in need of their services. It’s uncanny -- scary, really -- how they know you have just moved in to town, or are looking to renovate something. Of course, if you’ve used a US Post Office “moving notification form” recently, you might begin to suspect the prime culprit. It literally took me five minutes to find the actual moving form in the incredible welter of offers and “helpful” forms for services now crammed into the “moving packet”… the only kind of packet that thing qualifies as is a Spam Packet. Speaking of which, my spam filter used to be full of Rolex watch offers and Viagra deals (apparently assuming women like to be pro-active?) -- now I’ve got message after message offering me free hardware store shopping sprees or consultations with interior decorators. I’d go to an interior decorator about as fast as I’d take a pet to therapy. These “room whisperers” might have some use in the big cities where you desperately need to know whether you are in your own apartment or the identical box next door, but the house of a writer usually has one décor anyway - piles of papers and books (and books are -- after all -- just a more compact pile of paper). Even with the advent of computers, we produce enough paper printouts to create shredded bedding for an elephant. So interior design consists of stacking those papers in slightly different configurations, mostly to find a chair(or make a chair!)for a guest. And since the majority of guests to a writer’s house are other writers, what they most look at are the bookshelves and the fridge -- generally areas not a focus of your typical interior design wizard. Writers can sometimes proliferate like mushrooms...but I digress.

The Sweet Sounds of Country life

2007-11-27T12:20:00.000-08:00

As if I needed reminders that I have joined a rural community based on the lumber industry, the nearby wood processing plant started up some antiquated bit of machinery today, with a drive that screamed like a banshee and gears that rattled like a tank going over a mountain of scrap metal. This, I hope, will not be a machine that is operable after dark, tho with the kleig lights that most places have, there is no such thing as “after dark” anymore, not really. At least it doesn’t sound like it is close by, so the volume isn’t at ear-damaging levels. But it’s a reminder that in rural settings, you are either in the million-plus bracket and create a McMansion in a homeowner’s association-ruled area where ecru is a daring color and noise is only allowed from the migrant yardworkers’ leaf blowers (I suppose they consider it soothing?), or -- like me -- you’ve chosen a place for its “good value” (code word for no yuppie would touch it) and you put up with the local neighborhood, hoping that all the real nasty surprises will reveal themselves before you close on the house.

Quiet middle class neighborhoods are being squeezed in very much the same way as the middle class itself; girdled into smaller and smaller plots… either through in-fill -- building another house in your backyard -- or by new developments designed to reduce any worry about escaping a burning building: you just put a plank out your window and crawl into your neighbor’s. I am all for conservation and not over-consuming the earth, but why does that always start with the lower and middle class and then run out of steam before it ever moves higher??

Anyway, I finally cut down the waist-high weeds and grass in the back yard. I was thinking how the place must have been a garden recently, because there was such soft soil underneath… it wasn’t until the “haying” was over that I realized I’d been stepping on mole-mounds. I have always had such clay soil that moles were discouraged, and so I’ve never worked with them, but I do know that they are a scourge of the garden. This is gonna take some thinking.

The Septical Inquirer

2007-11-23T13:43:00.000-08:00

[written just previous to closing]
The Septic Tank; the topic of many a rural essay and the morbid fascination of many rural homeowners. Mine is starting out as a hassle; like a colicky baby, I hope it settles down and becomes a darling member of the new household. It is leaking, very much like a baby diaper, but I’m lucky that it’s happening before I buy the place. I’ve been watching from the sidelines as the seller works to get a new tank in. I’m getting an intense education in the county building code and permitting system as well. But mostly I’m getting a very frustrating game of “Telephone”: I ask my realtor for news and within the day she emails or calls the seller’s realtor, who, within a day or two, calls the contractor, who - within a day, etc. - calls the seller’s realtor… eventually, in a week, I get some variation on my question answered, which of course brings up another question and the next week is spent answering that.

Today something just snapped and I demanded the phone number of the contractor, and spoke directly to him (or his assistant, hopefully the next best thing.) He informed that the permit finally arrived in the mail Saturday (do people still do things by mail?? Apparently so…) and he immediately put in an order for the tank. Since I’d heard two weeks ago that the permit had been gotten and the work was to be done last week, I was -- to be honest -- disappointed, but managed to be polite, appreciative and asked 5 more questions that would have taken a month to have answered the old way. Turns out the tank should be delivered by Friday latest (don’t they always say that, so when it’s late, you can’t call and complain?), and would be put in “immediately“. His logistics sounded somewhat 6-dimensional, but he promises all the tank work would be done by Friday afternoon, ready to inspect -- which legally must be done in 5 business days. That sets us out to exactly the closing date, and the title company won’t give me the amount of money I need to wire over -- and if I don’t do it by Friday, I start to run out of time to move from my apartment on time! So naturally, I feel like Luke Skywalker when the garbage compactor started to move inexorably inward. “Just keep moving upward” doesn’t begin to cover it…

Next Door

2007-11-21T19:05:00.000-08:00

I have met the neighbors, briefly. They seem to be taking a lively interest: one neighbor mentioned they were taking bets on whether I could fix up this dump or be buried by the costs of repair. I suppose after they banned cock-fighting, the locals have to have some sort of fun. I’ll know whose side they are on as soon as I ask to borrow a ladder… They seem to be typical in their rural archiving habit (“I’ve got an acre, I’ll just leave this sink here in case I need it in five years”) so I know I won’t have to worry about keeping the grass trimmed to a Marine buzz cut. After living for five years in a place where no matter what I did it offended someone, I’m looking forward to that! Not that I’m a slob, but I do have an appreciation for the beauties of wildlife (my house, for instance, is a wild dust bunny sanctuary).

And I love recycling, whether it’s composting or re-using containers… so when I saw the white and yellow 30wt oil jugs dangling from the neighbor’s metal fence poles (apparently as “reflectors” for after-dark steering), I knew I could feel easy about my collections, whatever they turned out to be (yes, I have a real soft spot for junk yards, second (okay fourth) hand stores and thrift shops). My yard art-in-progress will at least be more creative than those bottles… I’m planning a giant Fairy scarecrow; it was in my mental hopper for years, but the community living group had a hard enough time of my using a kid’s yellow rainslicker for a scarecrow, and it never got past the lawn committee. I have a vision for the outside yard that I know is unlikely to be realized, but if even a few pieces make it (like the scrap fence compiled of neat recycled windows, fence parts and wooden art), I will be as happy as a pig in compost, or a FOX talk show host in Republican rumors.

I’m currently neighbored by three uninhabited houses: one is for sale, and the other two apparently not… one is uninhabitable (tiny, floors ripped up -- a do-it-yourselfer’s failed project?), and the neighbors say the owner gave up on repairs about a year ago and hasn’t been seen since. The other is a full size house, completely painted in metallic silver, which luckily has been dulled by the years because the neighbors say on a sunny day you could see it from airplanes passing overhead. It’s owned by the lady who has a herd of goats one house over from it; someone says it’s her studio… my point of view is that since I basically have all the land that I can see from my yard completely to myself, all‘s right with the world. I am apparently the youngest member of the housing group on these two gravel roads, so I can reasonably hope to avoid loud modern head-banging music that is the Song of the City… my new place is about as countrified as it can be and still be within a mile of the town proper. On a nice day (presumably sometime next July) I will be able to walk to town and get all the groceries I can carry home (and that, my friend, is the Country Home Diet…)

In-sewer-ants

2007-11-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

(with thanks & apologies to T. Pratchett for the title)

I don’t remember Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor (of Green Acres) running into this maze of insurance requirements! (They jumped right into the lack of phone service or good repairmen…) I have heard that my house is “uninsurable” because of moss on the roof and dirt - they say ‘possible mold’ - on the siding. In a state that has chosen Rain as its state mascot, this is getting a little picky, I think (esp. considering the verdant, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” jungles I see on some houses -- are they all uninsured?), but now I must balance the need to be insured when I move in with the inability to fix anything until I move in. (How fast can I work while the moving van is on the road…?). I have had several variations of this conundrum, from “ineligible but we can sell you an interim policy at $200 more”, to “it’ll cost you two arms and a leg, but once you fix this, we can look at other cheaper policies” to “it’s cheap but contingent on a full 3rd party inspection once you’ve bought the policy”… and I foolishly thought I needed to live in the city to have high blood pressure! On the other hand, I just read that the Big Three insurance companies are canceling policies with abandon (as in “abandonment”) up the whole Eastern seaboard, and they haven’t taken a new policy in over a year in NJ, NY… what are they thinking?? But wait --I read that somehow those folks get insured, at another company, at a much higher rate… has anyone looked into the holding companies of all these willing “local” companies? Can you spell “scam”?? So I suppose I can be grateful (?) that they are simply gouging me out here, rather than actually holding a family member for ransom…

I did end up finding a policy that has a semi-reasonable rate (not the “door-buster special” offered as a tease by one of the Big Three, but perhaps that was never a real rate -- I’ll never know) and it’s a local company, so less feeling of some blind-except-to-the-color-green fatcat in Palm Springs dictating my rates… but I do have to join the Farm Guild… where do I buy my overalls?

Please Don't Eat the Green Acres...

2007-11-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

It is the pipe dream of my generation: go back to the land, eschew commercialism in all forms and get down with the earth… and the Earthlink, of course (how else will the world at large know about the wonderful rural, non-technical life you’ve created??)

I fell for it in my 52nd year… signed the counter offer on the house on my birthday, on a house that was created in 1955, just like I was (such signs are portents, or else really silly reasons to buy an old house)… in a town with such a cute name that I cringed when I told my savvy city friends (and was astounded at how many were immediately envious), a town with one main street… a town without a coffee shop! (alright - one drive-through espresso place… but for us metro Oregonians, that’s like the only rib joint in town being a Tony Roma’s!) And I grew up in New Jersey, so I know what you guys are thinking about now -- stop laughing! Espresso is a necessity. So immediately, I made a list of all the things I’m giving up (and how far a drive they actually are… just in case). I listed all the things I’m gaining (the opportunity to personally weedwack the waist-high weeds on this neglected place being near the top ten -- yes, country air has already addled my brain), and compare the two, ostensibly to be sure it’s balanced, but really just to smirk at my foolish friends who feel chained to their lifestyles (this will come back to haunt me, I predict).

But the road is never smooth -- first things I run into are the well and septic issues. I was looking for a place that was as independent as possible (with an eye to being mostly off the grid), and this place is great for that… but the well has bacteria and the septic tank is cracked… I know the leak wasn’t too bad, because the inspector confessed to me that he’d eaten all the remaining raspberries before he realized they were growing over the tank and we have not received a lawsuit. We are now in negotiations to get all that dealt with before I take ownership, but just to be sure, I’m getting a water filter and reading up on septic systems -- I suppose all of this appeals to the engineering part of me, the part that does like to tinker with (simple) machines. Before they went nano, I used to switch out my own computer hardware, tho I never built a system from scratch, and I understand the basics of a car (minus the computerized crap), a house electrical system and plumbing. I just know that I’ll be learning a lot more soon…

Anyway, welcome to my new blog about the joys and insanities of living a self-sufficient life!