Let's try this again

My blogging (& pretty much everything else extra) has gone to complete nothing in the past two months.  Posts here have been of the queued up in advance variety or not at all.  Everything around me has ben exploding, in mostly good ways & no really bad ways, just exploding. The abundant rain has meant abundant roses...weeds & weeding & grass & mowing....  We had one planned big chore this year-a new roof.  & it is marvelous.  We had a handful of unplanned as well.  This is how the worst of them began:

That's a lie, actually.  It began-began with an outside pipe attached to an outside spigot that had corroded so badly that it (the spigot) needed to be replaced.  The hose was uncoupled & then we learned the hard way that nothing was supporting the plumbing pipes except the attachment to the hose on the outside & the toilet on the inside. 

Thus began two solid weeks of inconvenience as the whole apparatus had to be stabilized before it could be hooked back up.  This mean tearing up the wall in the bathroom, putting in a hole to access the plumbing doing the work & then backing back out, fixing the damage to wall, insulation & vapor barrier as we went.

As we were making there anyway, I asked if the replacement wall board could be recessed a bit s we could avoid the condensation on the back of the toilet would not get trapped against the wall as it always had before, resulting in a very scuzzy stain underneath the wallpaper & a not very attractive rippling of the wallpaper itself.  Seriously, this house was built by ass-holes.  Readers of this blog might remember the fun we had in the other bathroom when we discovered that toilet had been installed over a pipe that was jagged & broken, parts of the cracks originating well below the surface of the floor.  This time, we had a pretty shabby plumbing job & a toilet set about 2 inches to close to the wall.  & nothing we can do about the second unless we tear up the floor.  Say what you will about permits & such, this house would have benefitted from a couple once-overs from someone who gave a sh*t, even if it was just because it was his job.


The good news is the repair is in place, we are a two toilet house again (YAY).  Since I was stuck there anyhow, I started tearing off the wall paper & hope to have it all gone....soon.  & then I am going to paint.  The existing woodwork will all be that same color as the kitchen/dining/front-room Behr's  camembert.  As for the rest, I am still deciding.

For those who have been in close proximity to me & my cursing, this happened the week AFTER my husband decided to clean the to-the-outside dryer vent & then dropped it through the hole in the house, behind the washer&dryer, necessitating the removal of both to get back there & recover the vent as well as clean up the years' worth of dryer vent fuzz that spilled underneath the appliances.   This was, however the same bathroom as that momentous event. 

"I better not see this on your blog"

Earlier this week (or late last week - on what day does your week start?), I managed to align my blog with the once a month topic with the once a week Weekend Update on Block Lotto.  This never happens.  I am group topic challenged; I have been all my life.  When all the girls my age were hanging on Rick Springfield, I was horrifying myself with what Henry VIII did to those six wives he had wedded-"One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded" (because being the only white double dutch jumper on the playground did not make me freak enough, this is what I chanted).   Years later, those same girls are hooked on "The Tudors" & I am singing "Jessie's Girl" in the shower.  So, everything lined up.  The topic was Tips, Trick & Lessons Learned & I have already said something on same.  Yahoo.  & then that same day we had a household event that qualifies....kinda.

We have the teeny-tiniest bathroom off our bedroom.  Many people don't know it's there, including people who have stood in the master bedroom.  This is because it is just as deep & just as wide as the closet next to it, which while it meets the definition of walk-in (you can walk in & close the door behind you) as walk-in closets go it is pretty small (after you are in it, you can then only stand there because there is no more room to take any more steps). We call it a stand-in closet because a: that is all you can do in it & b: it is standing in for the walk-in closet of our dreams. 

OKay, now that you can imagine that size space, put a toilet, sink w/small vanity & step-in shower in same.  It's a teeny-tiny bathroom.  In fact, if someone is sitting on the toilet when you are getting into the shower, you will be strangers no more.  Even when someone is NOT sitting there it, is a long stride to get past the toilet & into the shower.

So, this teeny-tiny bathroom has had a bit of a...shall we say AROMA the past couple weeks.  We have been dealing with it as a drain clog in the shower because when you get in the shower is when the smell is strongest, but it is not a shower clogged drain kind of smell.  Unless we were to use our shower as a toilet, which I promise you we do not.  Before calling in plumbers, etc., A thought it best to deal with those things he could deal with himself.  & as he had replaced the wax ring on the other bathroom's toilet a few years ago, he was confident he could do it again super-quick.  & it is was a one person job, which is the kind of job we both like best.

After lunch, he went to the local home caretaker DIY warehouse, got what he needed, came home & took that toilet up (after draining, etc. which is not a no-time-at-all process) & put it in the big tray for same in our bedroom (because even if the tray would fit through the door, there would be no room for it in the teeny-tiny bathroom; I don't mean no room for the tray & a person to work, I actually mean not enough floor space for the tray).

• TIP #1- start home repair jobs in the morning.

In the tradition of I-have-done-this-before-&-know-what-to-expect type jobs, this one naturally offered up a new twist.  Once that toilet was off, it was clear there was a significant problem with the top of the pipe that connected with the toilet & directed...uhm...flow...to the septic tank.  Specifically, there was not so much pipe as a round tube with jagged edges, not all of which cleared the edge of the floor, never mind the bottom of the seal.  In other words, there were gaps all around the circumference of the pipe permitting whatever to leak out & just sort of be, underneath the toilet itself.  It looks like the person who put in this bathroom had X inches of broken pipe leftover when what he needed was more like X+2".  But he used it anyhow.  In retrospect it was probably more than adequate when he used it, but broke off when the toilet itself was installed & he figured "what the hell, I'm not going to live here".

I said "well that sucks" & then admired what would have been a pun if drainage pipes were supposed to draw down, which they are not.   A's exact word was "Shit" & then I admired that kinda pun as well.   We took pictures on his cell-phone so he could show the DIY warehouse store guys what he was up against, get some sympathy that did not involve juvenile word play & maybe even a suggestion that would not require a plumber.  He left & I cleaned up the mess on the floor & the crud in the grooves of the split pipe & then I went back to the book I had been reading outside the bathroom door to be on hand to get him whatever supplies he needed.  No, I am not a crazy handmaiden type wife, there was just no way he could easily leave that bathroom once that toilet was in the tray, in the doorway.  Until we realized he was going to have to leave & then we had to do some re-arranging in the bedroom so he could push the toilet-in-tray out of the doorway & get out.  & by "we" I mean me.

• TIP #2- always have reading material on hand, ideally something you can pick up & put down without losing the narrative. 

A returned to find me propped against the toilet, reading & eating buttered toast.  He had received adequate commiseration, & even better an actual solution: this kind of putty that was activated by working it with your fingers (for a minute, literally) & then could be pressed into the gaps, smoothed by hand, etc.  It would harden in 20 minutes or so & become sandable or drillable in an hour & a half.  Naturally we were not going to drill new holes in the pipe, but we did want to know when that time was up so we could test it & be sure no water or anything else was likely to get thru.

So, I got the yoga pose timer, set one alarm for 20 minutes, set the other one for an hour & a half & used the count-up timer to keep track of one minute. 

•  TIP #3- a good multi-task alarm clock/countdown timer is a very useful thing & not just for yoga, although it is very useful for yoga, too.

Then we went in the tv-room & had snacks, lounged around & generally did nothing.  He watched a DVRed Bill Maher while I finished my book while we waited for the putty to set (apparently during the setting process it becomes quite warm to the touch; A asked if I wanted to experience that sensation.  As it would require lying more or less with my face on the toilet-floor & sticking my hand down a septic drain, I decided to take his word for it). 

• TIP #4- aggravated, frustrated people never say no to finger foods.

After the time was up, the putty was deemed most excellent, the wax seal was replaced (you know, the original couple hours+ task we started with) & the toilet returned to its appropriate place.   By then we were a little bit fried, so instead of going out for the birthday dinner we were too tired to go out for last Saturday (the actual birthday) & had postponed to this Saturday, we ate pasta out of the box & sauce out of a jar & went to bed at 9:30.  The book I read was James Lasdun's Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked which I thought was pretty good so it must have been fantastic considering what it was up against.  No pun intended.

What part of this was I not supposed to blog about you ask?  Well on-going throughout the day, we talked about a new toilet seat, specifically one of those cushy ones & one of us mentioned that he wished they had memory foam & the other pointed out we have a dead memory foam pillow (one of the little dogs started to tunnel throw the center, right where a head would go or maybe the opening of a donut-type pillow) & wouldn't that make a nifty little craft project for a blog.  & then the other one said "I better not see this on your blog".

As for the stinky smell?  So far so good.

Getting it all done

Last week Tallgrass Prairie Studio posted a spring to finish challenge.  Alas I could not get organized enough to even make a list of what I want to do & by when.  This is in large part because of my complete inability to close the door on any project without opening several more doors & even a few windows.  I tried, I honestly tried to at least take a moment to see where I stand.  It turns out, I am standing in a hole.

It begins & ends with my workroom.  Oh no, don't look at it.  Just trust me when I say I could easily star in an entire season of hoarders.  Every few ...... years I DO get everything organized & sorted (it is always so delightful to find that new, old stuff!) but I just cannot work that way.  I really need to stare at things while I think about them.  I cannot say to myself, there is that object, folded away in that box that just needs a binding; I need to see the object all mashed up in a basket & the binding, sewn but not pressed, hanging from the lamp.

This is not limited to my current workroom (which is mine, all mine & no one else's d*mn business, so there!).  I had this problem professionally as well.  In the days when I had an office, it was a very bare office (because I cannot hang a picture to save my own life), with a great big formal desk, deliberately big enough for several people to use as a work table & credenza with all kinds of filing drawers & a snazzy upholstered chair for me & two more for whomever might need to work with me & floor-to-ceiling shelves along one entire wall & all the things that are supposed to be prized above rubies in the office real estate stakes.

What can I say.  The shelves I used, but this business of putting books right side up, with all the spines going in one direction never really caught on with me.  It was hard to get to the chairs because they usually had half unpacked boxes of paper files, old floppy discs, newer-but-not-new hard disks, disk drives that had been ripped out of confiscated machines & then wired to whichever monitor/tower combo was closest & left sort of hanging there.   The desk drawers were mostly empty except for a few pens, pencils & packages of steno pads (I have a teeny-tiney OKay, great big but manageable spiral notebook addiction); I preferred to keep everything in piles on the desk top. & the end tables.  I did not mention the little tables that had been artfully placed around the room for lamps & coffee cups.  They had to be removed to clear floor space because it turns out I would much rather have stacks & stacks of CAFRs (think phone books-old style everybody listed at least once + yellow pages in the same cover phone books).  They make pretty good plant stands, side tables, etc. & it does not matter if they get coffee rings or anything as they will all be recycled in the end.  Also, they can be an interesting way to wile away a dull afternoon.

SIDEBAR:   CAFR stands for Comprehensive Annual Financial Report & is a kind of state of all things money for government units like cities, counties, states, etc.  I used to request them from the 50 largest cities in the country, all the state capitals, any potential client, every current client, etc. every year as a matter of course.  These were the old days when they were unlikely to be on-line & I was not joking when I said they were fun.  The year The Firm was released, the City of Memphis had color photos of all the major players having meet&greets with local politicians in the center of their CAFR.  It was while cruising Las Vegas' CAFR that I learned they amortized the city-owned cemetery plots.  If you do not think this is fascinating, next time you are having cocktails with a real estate attorney, work it into the conversation, trust me, it will cause a stir.

The short version is on my best day, my office looked like a tornado had gone through & then made a few return visits to specific points.  It made my boss insane (when people came to the office, he would either close the door or move a very large potted plant smack in the middle of the doorway).  But there was no denying I was productive.  At the end of any given project when I did clean everything up & pack it away, the room was so shiny it hurt my head & I could not work.

Now I suffer (enjoy!) the same state in my workroom.  This means I do get things done the way I want to.  It also means I cannot make a list of what I want to complete & have any faith that it is complete accurate, feasible.  I admire people who can, but I wouldn't want to be them.

Where does the time go

If it has looked like my more recent posts are anchored to a day rather than than a task, that is correct.  Aside from all the stuff everyone deals with this time of year:  taxes, school; faux-farmers: lots & lots of yard work; Floridians: gotta clean that pool, clear those gutters, sweep the roof etc., we have also been dealing with a great big extra, so let me catch you up:

Becca the appie was ultimately diagnosed with EPM.  This is not great but so far it looks like it can be treated & managed.  Unfortunately for anything else that might have been on the horizon, the treatment is hands-on & the management is frequent.  This has meant canceling all trips away from the farm for more than a few hours for the next six months.  Not that there were so many in the offing, but now it is official - no vacay-away for us this summer, no weekends visiting friends, nada.

This also means I have shorter-than-before stretches of time for projects.  I am not biotching, I know I have disposable time the way Paris Hilton has disposable income.  Just that once allocated, no matter how frivolously, that time is gone for me just like it is for anyone else.  & I do not think time spent caring for an animal that has taken good care of me is all that frivolous, even if the best case scenario is she will live out her abbreviated days doing nothing but eating, pooping & dozing in the sun.

Horse people have the reputation of passing the buck when it comes to equine-retirement & from what I have seen, they mostly deserve it.  To be fair, for many a horse is a tool, a vehicle that can travel across terrain otherwise impassable, gathering in livestock, repairing fences & other outlying equipment. To keep a truck around once the block is cracked would just be silly.  The funny thing I have seen though is it is NOT these people who are likely to neglect a sick horse.  They might euthanize rather then treat, but they do not generally leave an injured animal in pasture, circling or limping or coughing to let "nature take its course".

Serious recreational horse people are also, in my experience, unlikely to neglect.  Not to say they are the norm- serious recreational horse people generally have the income to maintain an animal that is not working.  besides, even if the animal never works again, often they are worth the feed if only to maintain the family environment for the others that are performing.  I have never met an avid hunter-jumper who was harder on his horses than he was on himself.

For the record, I do not consider thoroughbred racing stables in the "serious recreational" category; they are akin to the coaches of GDR women's olympic teams & are more than prepared to sacrifice the future health of the competitors for a short-term, sport-specific gain.

The real slackers I have met are the ones who talk the biggest game about how they would never sell so&so a horse because she would only mistreat it.   There is a gaggle of them nearby who are trying to convince each other to call animal control on another of their number, but no one wants to do it.  I think in their hearts they know they could not withstand the same scrutiny themselves.

& so is it really such a surprise I would rather spend my time & money with an old mare who had rather a raw deal, then came here & trail road for a while.  Now she needs a little extra help to get through a little less time on the planet.

How much wood would a botanist log if a botanist would log wood?

I am no botanist. But I am a logger, a data logger. For a few years I have spent a few days/weeks in the Herbarium doing general herbaria chores. Initially I went so I could learn the proper way to collect & record botanical specimens. In return for this training, I was also taught how to mount these specimens & then I was let loose on a decades-old pile of specimens improperly documented that now makes up a good portion of the local synoptic collection.

As I was working my way through the pile, I learned that there was no one, No One in a position to enter this information into a database, thereby making the synoptic collection more available. My new career was born.

More recently I have undertaken the digital recording of the existing wood collections (yes, plural) that have been merged and carefully cross-referenced....on index cards.

Last semester I finished the Acanthaceae. They made up about an inch & a half of index cards. I have now been working on the Anacardiaceae for what seems like a lifetime. I have recently arrived at poison ivy. Guess what still has toxic oils even after 60+ years in a cabinet? At five to nine months or so a drawer, I am looking at job security for the next several years. If only they were paying me, but you cannot have everything.

I have talked with a few friends who used to have paid work & now have no work but eschew volunteer work & I admit it leaves me stumped. How can it possible be better (for your resume, for your psyche, I would say for your self esteem except I do not actually believe in self esteem as defined by our culture), how can it possible be better to just wait; maybe you could reconsider? Why not do something while you are waiting? & you never know, you might meet your future employer while volunteering.- your volunteer job might become paid. This happened to one of the herbarium volunteers & could have happened to me but I would rather...set my own schedule. Yeah, that's it.

Sooooo if you have been not getting in touch with your local volunteer center because: you need to be available (if only cell phones had been invented), you do not want to make a commitment you cannot keep (no one ever heard of a temporary volunteer job), you want to use this time to catch up on things around the house (it can take weeks to dust behind the fridge; it takes me years), please take some of your busy, full day & think about doing something that does not remind you of what you are not doing.

Getting painted

We have had an hour or so of pounding, pounding rain every day for the past couple weeks so today we start painting the house. Seriously.

George (our contractor & not to be confused with family-member-of-the-same-name) has been MIA for a while, but he called last night. His girlfriend got back from a visit home (Japan) late last week & then they got married so now he is ready to work. Actually, what he said on the phone last night was "now that I am whole again I can start getting things done".

Many moons ago, I started shopping for a contractor to finish the back room (now that light filled space at the back of the house, but in those days a rank, concrete hole that a previous homeowner had sort of just stuck on). I could not believe what came out of the yellow pages. I think my favorite was the guy who brought his mother; she took notes & drove him around because he had problems with his drivers license. Between them they had three teeth that I could see. There were several other candidates, all variations on this theme.

George was different. First of all, he had no trouble with the ocean of dog that surges around our house. & they had no trouble with him. This is a huge plus. There were also a thousand small things that I couldn't put my finger on, that I gradually came to understand. He was from Manchester, CT so he sounded like a normal person & not some DukesofHazzard wannabe. He measured things while he talked about completely different things (I took this to mean he had a brain that could multi-task, also my step-father does this so it was another reflection of home). & not once ever, did he bring up Terry Schiavo (remember poor Terry Schiavo? This all happened in those weeks, if you want you can look it up); this was a bigger relief than it should have been because we had just had some work done to fix our water pump & put in a new septic system & all the workmen that entails so I had really had enough of this particular topic. I had (have!) a strong & specific view on this issue & was sick to my eyeballs of hearing what their pastors had to say about activist judges.

Anyway, we found George & he has been our contractor ever since. He squeezes our small jobs in around his other work (other contractor jobs but also yoga classes-he's the instructor). & today, he will start replacing the bad boards outside the house & we will get painted!

What color are we painting, you ask? Why precisely the same color everything is right now. Well, not precisely. I think we managed to match the color the old paint has faded to.

Mowing

Yesterday, my next door neighbor materialized at the back door & asked (asked!) if I would mind (mind!) if she mowed our back pasture. The reason: last year when she did it at the end of summer, parts were hard going & she thinks if she "gets started early" it won't be so bad this year.

I don't pay her to do this. I never have. I would never ask her to do it. I know that it helps her keep her weeds down if our common border is mowed but that is all that is in it for her. I would take back what I said earlier about southern hospitality being a myth except she is transplant, like us. Her husband is southern. Floridian, even. & he has been away for most of the past two years building a house in the Smokey Mountains. Or running guns. Or whatever. When she says he is expected back on such&such a date, I make clear to her that we know she killed him ages ago & is just waiting to have him declared dead. Again to her credit, she thinks this is funny. When he is around, he is so reclusive he could pass for a person from Connecticut.

As a thank you, I dug up all the mature gladiolas (I like them, right up until they need to be staked. Then I cannot be bothered), some coral vine & the remaining oxalis (the chickens are quite fond of oxalis & by this time of year between the heat & the pecking, it gets thin, but it will rebound in October).

When I walked them over, I saw the hedge of what had been my amaryllis (again, I like it until it gets just too big) had grown nice & tall against her old tobacco barn, now used to store equipment in the loft & shade a water trough below. Last year's soap aloe lines her long driveway (they get so abundant, they creep across our walkway & A likes clean edges, I don't know why).

In short my former plants look like show-pieces at her house. She takes better care of my things than I do!

The only good thing I can say about my garden (& it isn't a small good thing), is that it is thriving. Despite the overflow I forget I hand around every year, there are no blank spots. If anything it is too dense. I think this is what comes of not caring too much what it looks like, just about whether or not it is healthy.