Ah, Fall

When the thoughts of someone lucky enough to live in an old house turn to caulk. And expandable foam. This is the third fall I've spent looking for and sealing off drafts, and I am STILL finding places where I can see daylight. To be clear, these are places that are not windows. SOOO shocking to find them, soooo satisfying to seal them off.

River Bound

Based on the ten day forecast and my upcoming schedule, today might be my last chance to take advantage of the faaaabulous swimming hole I discovered last week. This river/creek is COLD y'all, and if it's not 80+ degrees, getting wet is not all that pleasant. So I'm packing up my thermos of ice water, my towel, sunscreen, collapsible chair, crappy book, hat, sunglasses etc. and heading to the water for a chance at summer.

Doing it creek-side

I'm not sure if the Gold Fork is technically a river or a creek, but this time of year it's so low it really doesn't deserve the label of a river. But it is still very very pretty, no? Yesterday I packed up my sewing supplies (this tea cozy is being entirely hand-sewn), a folding chair, and a picnic and headed down to the creek. I forded the stream and set up on a lovely low shelf of rock in the sunshine where I ate lunch and slowly worked on the cozy. It was a really beautiful afternoon, blue skies and temps in the mid-70s. I dipped my toes in the glacial water now and again and watched enormous dragonflies and tiny butterflies buzz the flowers on the banks. I was pretty sure that things would end in misery, that I would slip on a slimy rock and dump everything in the water, or the wind would pick up and I'd have to chase my cozy into the drink. But it wasn't a disaster at all; it was a perfect afternoon.

It's been an odd summer, cooler and damper than usual. It really feels more like late September than mid-August, and we've had several days in the past few weeks where the day's high didn't break 60 degrees. That, to put it succinctly, is fucked. But there are surely more nearly perfect days to be had before winter settles in, and I'm going to try harder to enjoy them.

Inspiration strikes

I finished my totally jacked apron yesterday! Woohoo! Maybe I'll post a photo, maybe not. It's pretty bad. BUT! I broke through the sewing barrier. It's a very simple half apron with ties and a pocket in a contrasting fabric. I did all sorts of things very stupidly because I wasn't following a pattern, but that's how you learn, right? The next one will look much better I'm sure. (Zach has requested that I make him one, and it's going on my to-do list.) Last night I actually went to bed with three quilting books just sort of browsing and seeing what I might want to do. What I really really want to make is a crazy quilt of assorted wools scavenged from hideously out-of-date clothing picked up at thrift stores. Ambitious much? No, first I must finish a few small projects and work up my confidence level a bit. I have a few ideas . . .

The tea cozy I made last winter is (unsurprisingly) all tea stained and gross. It's perfectly usable, but it would be nice to have another one. Today I'm going to start making a crazy quilted tea cozy with scraps from some of my other adventures in craft. It's a very small project, but I'm planning to do most of the sewing by hand, so . . . wish me luck!

Whoa, where did the time go?

So I mentioned that my fabulous Aunt Jean gave me all these great quilting materials right? And before today I'd done basically nothing with them other than pet them and play with them and look on them lovingly because I'm scared as HELL of my sewing machine. I was brutally traumatized by my first sewing machine, which was broken right out of the box. But now I have one that actually works, and this morning I braved it. I wound and set a bobbin and threaded the needle and so far I have successfully sewed two hems on my first project: an apron. Ok, they're wonky as hell, but the fact that I did so without breaking my sewing machine or losing my mind feels like a HUGE accomplishment. Perhaps not the domestic equivalent of passing my first bar exam, but DAMN close.

Greedy Bastards

Salvage

Things that redeemed an otherwise frustrating and kind of ridiculous day:

(1) Iced tea flavored with fresh lime, sweetened with simple syrup, stirred with an actual iced tea spoon and consumed just at the point when I was about to descend into epic levels of low-blood sugar induced grumpiness. (Private note to Mom: remember that day in Switzerland? I was about to be that.)

(2) Fresh strawberries and home-made vanilla pudding.

(3) Watching Freckles carry around her favorite toy ever, an old sock filled with catnip and another old sock. We're all making do, but some of us are doing it more graciously than others.

(4) Working through the frustrating bits to finish a project that's been deviling me.

(5) A beautiful frilly daffodil the palest shade of real butter in a small brown jar by my bed.

(6) Sunshine.

(7) Knowing that when this day finally ends, it will be in a fluffy bed, between sheets freshly dried by (6).

City bound

I'm off to Boise for the day. I have a few errands to run, supplies to pick up, possibly a movie to see. I should stay the night, but these hummingbirds are seriously OOC and I'd feel bad if I abandoned them to their own devices. I'm having to fill the feeder twice a day! (I actually have two feeders, but one of them they completely ignore.) This morning when I went out to retrieve the empty, preferred feeder, the greedy whores actually landed on my hands and divebombed my head. I'm being bullied by creatures the size of my thumb. I guess it makes a change from being bullied by the cats. Tomorrow I'll try and take pictures. They sure aren't shy so the the only problem will be my skills as a photographer.

In other news, I actually mowed the entire front lawn on Sunday. It was . . . exhausting. I'm ready to pave the whole damn thing.

GORGEOUS!

It's a beautiful weekend here in the mountains, and today provided two interesting sights in addition to divebombing hummingbirds. First, Freckles killed and then presented me with an ENORMOUS garden snake. I shrieked and generally freaked out even though I knew it was perfectly harmless. Second, while reading on the lawn I looked up from my book to see a young gentleman leading two white goats loaded up with panniers. There were PACK GOATS. In my driveway! He gave a cheery wave and packed right on up to my neighbors' house. PACK GOATS. DRIVEWAY. So so so odd.

Hummingbirds!!

I was just minding my own business, looking out the window, and saw a bright green hummingbird dart right up to where the feeders usually hang, give a "WTF!?!?" look and then take off. I feel so guilty! It's not very warm and heaven knows there aren't a ton of flowers out to keep their energy up. But it really hadn't occurred to me that it was already that time of year. In less than five minutes I had put up a feeder with the last of last season's store-bought nectar. I really hope it comes back. And I hope the damn thing doesn't freeze.

OOC

Ok, these elk are seriously out of control. I looked out my window this morning to see that SOMEONE had taken a big chomp out of my chives. Now, since my chives are planted exactly 12 inches from the wall of my house, I was curious. Surely an elk wouldn't get that close to my house for a little snack? Maybe my neighbors saw that they were getting a little bushy and came down and snipped a few? No. When I investigated I found more hoof prints the size of dessert plates right next to the house. As well as some neatly trimmed grass in front of my living room windows. And more battered and abused tulip bulbs in the flowerbed under my eaves. When did elk become so bold!?!? And how could I possibly have MISSED them being so close??

Drat!

You know when elk aren't so charming and decorative? When they leave a big pile of droppings in the middle of your lawn and tear up half your already struggling tulips with their big fat hooves trampling through your new flowerbed! That's when.

Potable Water

I can't find a post where I mentioned this last spring, but the tap water has turned its annual spring brown and EW. I stopped drinking unboiled well-water the first time this happened, but when it's actively brown I can't make myself drink it boiled either. I'm sure it's not actively dangerous, but it just looks too gross to ingest. Which is very annoying because it means I have to go into town more often to fill my three gallon water jug. The next person who lives here might want to invest in one of those five gallon water jug holder thingies. Just a suggestion. My Belizean parents have this cool little pump thing that fits on the top of a five gallon jug, maybe I'll ask them to bring one back for me? Seems weird to import such a thing from Belize, but I've yet to find one here.

Just as much as fat robins and yellow daffodils, bathwater the color of (very) weak tea is a sure sign of spring.

April Showers

Does the old rhyme about April showers bringing May flowers hold true if the showers come in the form of two inches of snow? I told myself not to do it, I knew better, but I'd really gotten attached to looking out my window and seeing green grass. The poor fat robins huddled in the leafless trees look so pathetic!

Kids

It's pretty clear to me that I will never have children. I never really thought I would but there was a point somewhere in my late 20s where I might of sort of kind of thought that maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. That era is over. I feel a little bad that my mom won't have grandkids (my dad has grandkids through my step-brother, so he's fine), she'd be a great grandmother, but other than a little guilt over being the end to this branch of the family tree, I'm pretty "whatev" about it all. All of this is really just a prelude to telling the internet that I had to give Freckles a time-out today. She was being a complete butt-head to Sugar, chasing and harassing, and basically bothering the poor creaky old dear who just wants to sleep all day and occasionally cuddle if the mood is right. So I locked Freckles in the bathroom for five minutes. It worked and she was a reasonably decent cat for the rest of the day. Score.

Odd

Today started with a three hour IM conversation with Zach about our astrological charts and the ways in which we've been totally fucked by the stars. This afternoon, without really thinking about it, I poured myself a glass of scotch while I was pulling together the ingredients for bread. I should do the latter more often and the former NEVER AGAIN.

Hike

I went on a three hour hike today. My first real hike of the season. I would have liked to have stayed out longer but I'd under-estimated how much the snow had retreated and therefore how much ground I'd be able to cover and came out without enough water for a longer day tramping through the woods. Of course, I wasn't hiking the whole three hours. I spent plenty of time sitting on rocks catching my breath. I'm pretty heinously out of shape after my winter of near-hibernation. It felt really good.

Status Updates

Yesterday evening about this time there were 9 elk grazing in my pasture. I just heard some sand hill cranes flying by.

I spent two hours weeding and re-edging a flower bed this afternoon. I wore my hoodie wrapped around my waist and flip flops on my feet.

My computer might be dying. The power cord only actually delivers power when propped at an odd angle against my knee. I wonder how long it will be before it gives up the ghost completely. And what the hell I'll do when that happens.

Today while changing the bedding I took off one of the down comforters. I didn't store it too far away, but it's off for the time being.

I have an ugly looking burn on my clavicle the exact size of a match head. Stupid weak-ass matches. I think it will leave a scar.

I just finished an insane mystery set at a boy's boarding school by that guy who wrote Lost Horizon. It fed all my worst 1920's English fantasies.

I'm wearing summer lounging clothes. There are no socks, sleeves, layers, or wool garments of any kind on my body.

Except for being ruinously poor and having no idea what to do about it, I'm feeling pretty good about life right at this particular minute.

Dreams

I've had trouble waking up in the mornings lately. It's not depression, it's not the cats walking across my head all night long and interrupting my sleep - it's these insanely vivid dreams I've been having. (And maybe the cats, a little.) I forget them pretty shortly once I'm fully alert, but for maybe an hour after I first start staggering into wakefulness I've been able to keep them going and it's just a temptation impossible to resist. They're so pretty. I know no one likes hearing about other people's dreams. But from this morning I remember wolves, a moated castle and, oddly, brightly coloured balloon animals. Could YOU tear yourself away from that?

More of the Same

I'm trying to think of things to write about, but this blog is supposed to be about my life and my life is really pretty small right now. This weekend was crappy. To fight a sudden assault of overwhelming sadness I went for a rather miserable hike in the mud and the rain. Oddly enough, it worked and I felt significantly better. Monday was gorgeous and I walked down to the river and took tea on a really comfy rock while I watched the cars coming and going from the hot springs and the occasional hawk riding the thermals. In spite of diligent sunscreen application my nose got a little red. I've made a couple of necklaces and a bunch of earrings and they're all packaged up to ship to my mom for (hopefully) sale at the gallery she manages. It's snowing right this minute. I'm wearing flip flops in the house in spite of the resulting purple toes because I'm just THAT READY for warm weather. But I'm willing to settle for cold weather with sunshine. I just need to be outside and it's so much nicer when it's not spitting sleet/snow/rain in your face and the road isn't all greasy mud and patches of ice. Even one day a week where I can risk a little sunburn is enough to keep me from wanting to take a long walk on a short pier into an icy lake.

Spring. Ew.

Yesterday was the first day of spring and it was completely gorge. The sun, the little birdies, the temp, it was perfect. I worked. Today? The day I don't work? The sky is grey, the wind is howling, the temp is back in the 30s, and there are even MORE bugs outside. (Speaking of: I am alone in this invasion. Pauletta doesn't have these bugs. No one has these bugs. I don't want to talk about it.)

I've gotten back into making jewelry this past week. I'm really enjoying it even as it destroys my fingernails and aggravates my old wrist injury. But it's a little creative outlet I really enjoy and might bring in a few dollars here and there so I'm hoping the inspiration lasts for awhile. So today, with spring doing it's worst to irritate me and make me miserable, I'm going to enjoy the fire, try not to kill the cats as they literally climb the curtains with excess energy, and work on another necklace. It is a small life, but it is my own. And summer will show up eventually. Yesterday was a promise.

The Horror!

My neighbor Pauletta dropped by to see if I wanted to walk down to our other neighbor's currently empty house with her to check on a flooding situation. I didn't have anything better to do, so I went. And when we got back . . . it's like I'm living in a horror movie. We couldn't help but notice that the snow around the porch, that had been white when we left 20 minutes ago, was now grey. Looking closer . . . the snow was covered in millions of tiny black insects. And they are completely surrounding my house! They seem to be coming from the foundation maybe? Pauletta, who's lived around here for years, has never seen anything like it. I'm completely and totally freaked out. She said she'd call when she got home if there weren't any around her house. She hasn't called, so I guess that's good?? That I'm not alone in this mysterious and nauseatingly horrifying infestation? I'm afraid to go back outside in case I accidentally bring the invasion inside with me. EW!

A little morning whining

You know what I've really gotten sick of? I mean, yes, I'm really damn tired of winter in general and all its accouterments, but the thing that REALLY makes me want to throw a tantrum is starting fires. The last week or so has been clear and gorgeous. Nothing to complain about there, right? Wrong.

The beautiful sunny days mean the house gets very warm during the day thanks to the glories of passive solar. Warm enough that I can just let the fire go out. But also thanks to this lack of clouds it gets positively frigid at night, zero or a little below, so if I don't want to wake up to home temps in the low forties (or worse) I have to start a fire again before I go to bed. And I'm sick of it. Sick of getting my hands covered in newspaper schmutz. Sick of using the bellows and coddling the little flames and breathing in the fine ash the bellows stir up and staying up late enough to make sure the fire is really going before I close the damper. I'm tired (literally) of setting my alarm for 2:45 am so I can get up and add another couple of logs. This wood stove nonsense has altogether lost its novelty and charm. So last night I just didn't do it. And while I was perfectly comfortable all night thanks to the mountains of down that compose my bed, this morning was very cold. I woke up at my usual time and started the damn fire and then went back to bed until it was warm enough to move around. (I don't think the cats appreciated my laziness. Sugar would crawl under the covers once an hour or so to warm up and then disappear again to wherever it is she normally sleeps. This is why I need 10 hours of sleep, Sugar wakes me up many many times every night. I'm chronically sleep deprived.)

Thanks to almost two years of experience and obsessive monitoring of my home's interior temperature, I now know the numbers that mean relative comfort. At the lower end of the spectrum, 48 is the magic number. Any colder than that and I need to stay in bed, but as long as the thermometer reads 48 or above I can wear enough layers to be comfortable anywhere in the cabin. At the upper end, my number is 84. During the day I don't mind at all if the cabin gets warmer than that; I love the heat, but 84 is the upper temperature at which I can fall asleep and not wake up 30 minutes later a sodden mess. In the summer there's just no point in going to bed until the temperature in the loft drops to 84 or below and some nights that doesn't happen until quite late.

And, I'm rambling. But I want to remember these little details, and I will forget if I don't write them down. Weather.com predicts the sun will not make an appearance for a few days so chances are I won't have to start a fire again for awhile because I won't be able to let the one I started this morning go out. We might get up to 10 inches of new snow this weekend. Winter is NEVER GOING TO END.

Hello Again

Today I finally started feeling healthy after whining for days about what turned out to be a pretty minor cold. To celebrate my new health I broke out the snow shoes I haven't used all winter and went for a little winter hike. Um. You guys? Snow shoeing is HARD. My mom has been trying to convince me to make arrangements to retrieve my cross country skis all winter, and I kept saying "Oh no! I don't need to no stinking skis! I have my snow shoes!" But dude. Snow shoes are not skis. Skiing is relatively easy. Pretty much as soon as I got out of the car and clambered over the bank and into the powder I was ready to turn around. But I persevered. I sweated and and I pushed myself forward and managed to make it as far as my favorite summer perch above the river where I divested myself of a LOT of clothing and sat on a warm dry rock and had some tea. And it was glorious! Today is just stunningly beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, fluffy white snow everywhere, high of about 24 degrees. And it makes me feel like a complete IDIOT for not spending every sunny day this winter doing exactly this. Somehow I had forgotten that in the sun, with the proper clothing, after a little exertion, one can sit outside with a cup of tea poured from a thermos in perfect comfort. What is WRONG with me that I forget these things? I think I need to re-commit to my blog if only to remind myself that actually doing things is good.

What is also good is answering my phone when it rings. Winter is depressing. I've been depressed. There, I said it. And when I'm depressed I don't have the energy to deal with people. Or do anything really but bake and make tea. But this weekend my friend L and her husband came into town to empty out the townhouse they own at the local bankrupt resort before it goes into foreclosure and they change the locks. And so on Saturday night a group of spa people got together for dinner to catch up with her and it was so much fun! It was fabulous! And as I was getting ready to go out my phone rang and on a whim I actually answered it and it was a friend I hadn't talked to since October, and while we didn't have a lot of time, it was fun to catch up. And I decided that I would answer the phone whenever it rang for a whole week and just see what happened. And you know what happened? I've talked to two other good friends I haven't talked to in ages. And I talked to my grandmother without feeling guilty for dodging her calls for three days before finally calling her back. Good things all!

There are a lot of exclamation points in this post, and I apologize, but I'm feeling downright peppy. Blame it on a really wonderful combination of sunshine, renewed good health, and the early arrival of DST. Hope the four of you who still check this sadly neglected blog are equally cheery.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggety Jig

A week ago I left home on a last-minute road trip. My maternal grandmother isn't doing very well and my mom was planning to visit her, so I dropped the cats off at my other grandmother's, asked my much put-upon neighbors to watch the cabin and try not to let the pipes freeze, and hit the road to join them. It was a good trip. I stopped on my way through Portland to see a friend, had an out of control four hour lunch with Zach, re-bonded with my parents' dogs, spent some quality time with my mom, aunt, uncle, cousin and grandmother, loaded up on lefsa at the Norwegian bakery and spent way more hours behind the wheel than can possibly be good for me.

I'm really glad I went (and not just because my aunt loaded me up with quilting supplies!). I count it as one of the great and unexpected benefits of coming back home that I've reconnected with my mom's side of the family. I'm closer to all of them now than I have been at any point since my very early childhood. I love hearing the stories about their childhoods, and the stories they heard and can tell about relatives I'll never know. I love the stories about my roguish great-grandfather and much put-upon and not terribly nice great-grandmother. I love having this multi-generational connection to the soggy and sea-faring Pacific Northwest, so different from the multi-generational connection my father's family has to the arid grazing land of Southern Idaho. It feels good to know more about these roots.

But it feels REALLY good to be back home, with my cats, drinking tea by the fire in my quiet little cabin as the snow melts and drips from the tin roof.

Confession is Good for the Soul, Right?

I've become completely addicted to young adult fiction about teenage vampires. Not only did I read all four books of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, each book in less than 24 hours, but I got online and read the unfinished, unpublished manuscript for the fifth book. And the fifth book isn't even a new story, it's just the first book from a different character's perspective. Oh, but that's not the worst part. When I'd finished that (which I read on a slow day at work), I poked around on the author's website and read the OUTTAKES from the books. These are scenes that didn't make the final editing cut, and yet still I read them. And then I started going into serious withdrawals. Like, I didn't want to get out of bed. I started reading the books AGAIN. And that's just sick and wrong, because they really aren't THAT good.

But instead of just going cold turkey, turning to a mystery or even something that might be considered literature, I followed the advice of an old college friend who recently re-entered my life through the true magic of Facebook (to which I'm also addicted, but I'll save that story for another time) and started reading a new young adult series about teenage vampires. Only this time I didn't even bother getting one book at a time. I ordered all four available books from Amazon at once. And then I waited, brooding in my house, quite literally swearing OUT LOUD each time I went to the post office and they weren't there waiting for me. And then finally when they showed up and I started reading the first book I was really disappointed. The narrator made too many pop culture references, she sounded like a teenager, she wasn't Bella! But I still read it in one sitting. And then I woke up the next morning and read all three of the remaining books in one sick and twisted orgy of teenage vampire goodness. And then it was over. I had no more books left. And . . . I won't lie. I got a little depressed. (I'm waiting for my next shipment of vampire books from Amazon right now.)

And I know why I've gotten on this obsessed train. I do. It's the romance that I'm addicted to, not the vampires. In college I came up with this theory that the human brain had a certain amount of bandwidth that was specifically and solely allotted for thinking about interpersonal relationships. Not necessarily romantic relationships, but . . . that's usually what it's used for. That's why we spend so much time thinking about crushes, or dreaming about our new loves, or pondering what he really meant when he said, and wistfully wondering about our exes. It's a biological imperative. And that's true for a spinster too. All my non-romantic relationships are great. No drama. Nothing I need to obsess over. My last bit of romance was with someone I've known for donkeys years and I'd already thought all the thoughts I could possibly think about him ages ago. I don't have a crush on anyone. And so this is what it's come down to, this bandwidth, which hadn't been used at all in months, has been completely taken over by fictional interpersonal relationships and now I'm stuck in that new love stage where all you can think about is the beloved and the beloved is a frakking set of teenage vampires. It's RIDICULOUS.

Winter Stinks

So . . . long time no blog!

This winter has been CRUMMY. The snow was late in coming, and now every time we get a nice snowfall, it's quickly followed by a couple of days of rain and above freezing temps. So the snow turns into ice, and the roads and parking lots are horrid, and I haven't broken my neck yet, but it's only a matter of time.

For all the complaining I've done about my driveway, I've never actually not been able to get up it, or even come close to sliding off. (As opposed to straight up DRIVING off which I did early last winter.) Until this morning. The entire driveway is a solid sheet of ice, a couple of inches thick, and this morning, with the rain, the ice was covered with a nice skim of water. And as I was turning the corner at the cemetery, headed down the steep section, my car lost all traction and began a slow slide toward the edge of the road and the trees. It was completely terrifying. There was nothing I could do. I kept hold of the wheel and just hoped that the trees would stop the car from rolling to the bottom of the hill as I slowly slid toward the edge. And then the car sort of gently bounced off what remained of the snowbank and somehow it was pointing the right direction and I went on my completely freaked out way. I'm anticipating a return to my normal heart rate sometime in February. Because now, I'm going to spend all day wondering what's going to happen when I try to get home tonight . . . and try to get back to work tomorrow.

So, if you love me, pray for nice sticky, tractiony snow.