rephetibel

Yesterday I took the leaf out of the dining table and spread on a clean tablecloth, put two of the chairs back where they normally reside and put the small bookcase back where it belongs in the corner next to Neil's chair.  This morning, I restocked my pantry, did several loads of wash, folded clean, dry things into stacks on the table and ironed tablecloths, napkins & pillowcases.  I was behind on the ironing when my family came, so there is a lot to catch up on.  I made a beginning is all.

It's been a quiet, hummy sort of morning.  Cool and overcast, too, which is nice when I'm ironing.

Neil went home yesterday.  Now it's just me again. 

I spent a lot of time paying bills - some of mine but mostly church bills.  I made a beginning on laundry by washing two loads of towels.  I began the Saturday sudoku from the paper.  Saturday's sudoku is the hardest and so far it's winning.  That was all I did yesterday. 

I have church this morning and then I might sew.  I have four purificators to hem for the church.  It would be good to get those done.  They are just the right degree of fussiness (tiny mitered corners) to be enjoyable.

My son Matthew, his wife MaryAnn, 12 year old Isabella and 8 year old Faith spent the last week visiting me.  Neil was here as well.  It was a wonderful week.  I had house full of talk and laughter, there were kids and dogs underfoot, projects going on, movies on DVD I hadn't seen (most notably Stardust and some Dr. Who episodes) and people all around the supper table in the evening.  We also toasted marshmallows at a campfire out back of the barn a couple of evenings.  I learned how to make a s'more!   

There was one disappointment.  Matthew had located and purchased an entire Dr. Who series that ran in 1971.  We were living in England at the time.  I saw every episode on the telly except the final one that answered all questions, resolved all problems and wrapped everything up with a bow.  I missed it because I was at the maternity hospital giving birth to Matthew.  He could only purchase it on VHS tape and my tape player died months ago.  I couldn't watch it!  Next time he comes, I'll ask him to pretty, pretty please bring the tapes with him again and I will have a VHS player that works so I can see the whole thing. 

Milo.  It was time to teach him to sit to get a treat.  I decided several dogs ago that the way to teach them anything was to wait until they did it all on their own, say the command and give them a treat.  On Wednesday the dogs followed me in the kitchen.  Milo was going nuts because he wanted a treat.  He jumped around and put his paws on my leg and jumped around some more.  I think Meggie decided there wasn't going to be a treat but she was watching Milo because he was the only show in town.  After several minutes, he sat down.  I said "Sit!  Good boy!" and gave him a treat.  Meggie (who had been through this) sat when I looked at her and got a treat as well.  I did the a couple of more times on Wednesday and yesterday as well.  This morning we all went in the kitchen and Milo sat as soon as I looked at him.  Now he's ready for me to take it to the next level and say "Sit!" before instead of after the fact.  

Meggie.  We all got up at 5:30 this morning.  Pretty typical for me because I wake up early.  It was cool and beautiful outside.  I'd been worried about some beets I'd transplanted yesterday.  While my cup of coffee was heating in the microwave, I went through the back gate to check on them.  Meggie immediately spotted a deer and happily chased it across the creek.  Milo ran after the deer and Meggie.  The three of them crashed around in the undergrowth and tall grass over there for a while.  When the dogs came back they had grins from ear to ear and were covered in tiny green burrs.  I sat Milo on top of the dryer and ran the dog comb over him.  It took two minutes.  Maybe three.  Once over with the comb, the burrs rained down on the mat he was standing on and he was done.  Then I called Meggie into the laundry room and lifted her up on top of the dryer.  She didn't like it up there but couldn't easily get down.  I began combing her long sheltie fur.  She didn't like that either.  She grumbled and complained for the whole hour it took me to get all the burrs off her.  When she was all done, I rewarded both of them with some of Neil's cheese (sorry, Neil) and that was that.  Until, I went outside after breakfast to get my kitchen garden work done.  The dogs romped off to play in the north meadow.  When I was finished in the garden, I called them in and they both had burrs again.  Just a few this time but I know they were uncomfortable.  Milo cried and tried to pull them off.  I ran the comb over every inch of  him again and sat him down.  I thought Meggie would hide, but no.  When I finished with Milo she walked into the laundry room and looked up at me.  I lifted her up on top of the dryer.  ("Rephetibel, how do you keep your weight down?  Do you go to a spa?"  "No.  I bench press a sheltie several times a day.")  It only took ten minutes to deburr her this time and she didn't complain or turn in circles even once.  I gave them both Neil's cheese again (sorry again, Neil).  I am hoping that Meggie's busy little brain hasn't thought about all this and come up with the equation; burrs=cheese.       

I saw a clips from both these sites yesterday on T.V.  They were mighty cute so I'm passing them both along.

www.cutethingslaughing.com

www.cutethingsfallingasleep.org

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" (Or, really, any way you like.) I'll give you five randomly-generated words, and you post them in your LJ and do whatever you feel like with them.

Here are the words Ross gave to me.

springtail
immutable
secede
oracular
solder

Good grief!  I'll give it a shot without looking the word up first.  Why didn't I get words like gingham and fire and catkin?)

Springtail.  I think it's a little insect or bug.  Sort of like an earwig.  (Springtail - Any of various small wingless insects of the order Collembola, having abdominal appendages that act as springs to catapult them through the air.) 

Immutable.  Unchangeable.  (Immutable - not susceptible to change.)

Secede.  To withdraw from.  (Secede - to withdraw formally from membership in an organization, association or alliance.)

Oracular.  The ability to give speeches?  (Oracular - Of or pertaining to an oracle.)  *Headdesk*  Of course!

Solder.   It's a verb or a noun.  The noun is the roll of stuff that is like soft fat wire - I don't know what it's made of - that you hold the end of against two metal things you want to seal together.  The verb is when you melt the end of the solder with the hot tip of a soldering iron and it runs into the join.  (Solder - n. Any of various fusible alloys used to join metallic parts when applied in the melted state to the solid metal.) 

I have no particular emotional response to three of the words.  Springtail and solder are the two that awoke a reaction.  I was a happier person before I knew that there is a family of insects capable of catapulting themselves through the air.  Now I'll jump any time I hear a tiny cry of "bonsai!"  I've never soldered anything but it always kind of looked like fun.  Welding looks like a whole bunch of fun.  (Back when I was a teenager, my parents were friends with a couple who had two teenage boys.  It was the policy of the school they attended that either parent could - once - take a test for their child and their test results would count.  One of the boys asked his mother to take his welding final.  She did and he got an A.)    

Yesterday, I built and installed a new front gate.  I wrapped that up by mid-afternoon, assuming you can call it that with the workshop and my sewing room chaotic.  The new gate was a fair amount of work and I should have called it 'good enough' for the day.  I did call it quits for a while but there was still a mess where the E-Z Flush man had dug down to the septic tank.  He put the dirt back but a section of the front walk was still disasembled and there was a pile of sod next to the filled-in hole.  I meant to replace the sod and water it in, but I didn't and it died. 

I knelt on a foam pad, set an upside down clump of sod on the dirt in front of me and whacked at it with the sharp point of my Japanese hand cultivation.  When all the dirt and gravel was whacked out of the clump, I tossed the wad of grass roots to one side and got another clump.  The pile of sod didn't look that big but it took a fair while to go through them all.  The dirt was half gravel.  I guess grass would have grown on it because grass had been growing on it.  It didn't look like something that would make a seed bed though.  I tried just picking out the bigger stones.  Half a bucket into that and I realized it was too slow.  I brought the garden cart in the yard and a screener Blake made years ago out of a big wood picture frame.  He stapled hardware cloth to it.  I laid that on top of the cart and began screening the dirt.  That worked really well and I ended up taking half a dozen or more buckets of gravel out to the driveway.  I dumped the rockfree dirt back on the bare spot and raked it smooth.  By the time I finished putting the walk back together, it was past supper time.  I quit for the second time.

After a break for supper, I got sucked back into the project.  I thought I'd seen grass seed in the garage.  I looked and discovered it was Weed and Feed instead of grass seed.  Not what I needed.  I had a fair amount of white clover seed left over from a time I was going to grow a cover crop.  I sprinkled that over the nice dirt.  Quite a lot of seed since it was old.  Covered that with a layer of Lawn Starter Soil from Walmart and watered it all down.  The last step was protecting it from Meggie and Milo.  I took the garden cart around back of the barn and discovered a rabbit cage, a live trap and a wire box.  Those three things on top of the new seed bed will keep out the dogs while letting in sunshine.  It was getting too dark to see by the time I finished.

This morning I thought I would finish thinning the kitchen garden before concentrating on housework.  I made it through the leeks, scallions, celery and parsnips before I gave up.  I was whacked.  Nothing got done the rest of today. 

The new gate is built and installed.  It looks wonderful.  *happy sigh*

Well, not quite.  This morning I went to Cascade Home Center and bought the boards to make a new one.  Hopefully by the end of the day there will be a new front gate.  I have directions.  I have the wood.  I'm pretty sure I have wood screws. 

How hard could it be?  How long could it take?  (And - big question - will it stay square or will it sag?)

The contractor doing the remodeling on the parish house finished.  Now it's up to us to clear it out, prime and paint, clean the carpeting, etc.

I've worked over there three mornings this week.  Chris and I were there Monday.  Don (elderly and not strong) came for a while and helped.  We moved stuff.  Chris and I were there Tuesday and primed.  Chris said she was leaving for a trip and wouldn't be back for several days.  I took yesterday off and caught up on mowing.  This morning I was there by myself and painted what I'd primed on Tuesday. 

It's fun to be part of a work party for a day.  It's okay if it stretches for two days.  Two people do not constitute a work party.  Being there by myself sucks.

The guy from E-Z Flush came about 3 o'clock and left about ten minutes ago.  He spent a solid five hours on the septic tank, all of it hard work.  Most of that time was spent digging down to the tank.  He said it wouldn't take long to drain it and it wouldn't have if rocks hadn't clogged his suction hose.  It was an awful job.  I offered him coffee.  I offered him a sandwich when it got to be supper time.  He thanked me both times and just asked me to refill his water bottle for him.  Care to guess how much he charged me for the entire job? 

$130.00. 

Several surprises actually.

A short while back I decided I'd better get the converter box on the analog TV in the sewing room.  The TV in the front room is digital so I figured (hoped) it would be okay.  I hooked up the box, turned on the TV and got fuzz..  The remote included with the converter did nothing.  Pushing buttons on the TV did nothing.  I don't use a remote on either TV but I rummaged around and found the one for the fuzzy TV.  It had batteries and the light on it lit up but nothing happened when I pointed it at the TV and pushed its buttons.  After several days, I became irritated by not having a working TV in the sewing room and took the converter off.  Viola!  I was back to NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, PBS and KEVU.  Ever since the VCR died a year or more ago, the TV in the front room has only gotten Fox, PBS and KEVU.  When I turned on the TVs this morning to see what happened to them, I was hoping the TV in the front room would be okay and maybe even have more channels.  It was just the same.  The TV in the sewing room was (against all logic) the same as it had been as well, except it no longer gets CBS.  ???

On Wednesday I heard water running under the house.  There is no benign reason why that should be, so I called a plumber.  He came yesterday and discovered that a cleanout under the house did not have a cap on it.  He put a cap on but admitted that it wouldn't have been overflowing if the lines were clear.  He thought it likely that my septic tank needs to be pumped.  I hoped it didn't (or it could at least be put off until mid-July when my second wave of company had left).  This morning, Meggie and Milo came in the house up to, respectively, their ankles and stomach in black mud and both wearing big dog grins.  Where in the world would they have found mud, I wondered.  I walked around the yard looking and discovered the access hole under the house had not been secured by the plumber before he left.  They had a lovely time under there.  I called them in the laundry room with me and shut the door.  Meggie is too big to put in the sink so I got a rag and got her feet washed off.  It took a while and the sink wasn't draining.  Milo was half mud.  I wouldn't have liked to bathe him but the stupid sink wouldn't drain.  I wiped him clean as well.  The other sinks drained okay so I figured the trap was clogged.  All kinds of things get washed in the laundry room sink so that wouldn't be surprising.  I turned off the water underneath, put a bucket under the trap and got one ring off.  The other ring wouldn't budge.  Not even using a wrench.  I had to give up.   

I started a load of wash.  When the washing machine drained, sewage came up in the bath tub and then the toilet overflowed with bleachy wash water from the washing machine.  (Now what strange configuration of pipes would allow that to happen?)  I guess the plumber was right.  I got that all mopped up and called EZ-Flush Septic Service.  They will be here Sunday afternoon. 

Meggie and Milo and I went for a walkabout after lunch.  Milo pooped in the south meadow and there was a tape worm in it.  Purrl and Meggie have just been treated for tape worms because they catch mice.  It looks as if one of them shared a mouse with Milo.  I went by the vets and got a tape worm pill for Milo. 

So I am feeling overwhelmed by surprises even though the TV surprise was okay.   I think I will fix myself a sandwich and reread Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett.

The cat actually taught Meggie how to catch mice.  Meggie is a beautiful sheltie but the image is somewhat spoiled when there is a mouse tail hanging out one side of her mouth.  I suppose it's only a matter of time before Purrl begins training Milo.

I sure need Neil in my life.  When he's not here - he's not here right now - I get locked into "getting things done."  The last two days, for example, I've had the following list on the kitchen blackboard: quilt, curtains, inside, outside, paperwork, guest rooms.

"Quilt" is cutting 5 1/2" squares out of odds and ends of fabric.  (I have a lot of odds and ends.)  "Curtains" are the curtains in my bedroom upstairs.  They need lining.  That will involve a big clear space so I've been sorting through stuff on my sewing and cutting tables.  "Inside" means whatever bugs me most inside the house.  "Outside" means the thing that needs doing most outside (watering or weeding or mowing or weed whacking).  "Paperwork" is paying bills (my own and the churches), recording the collection, making appointments, etc.  "Guest rooms" are the two bedrooms upstairs that company will be staying in.  One of those is the one Neil uses when he's here.  It just needs to be dusted and swept and the bed made.  The other bedroom was being used as storage so has required some sorting. 

After breakfast I set the timer for 15 minutes and work on the first item on the list.  When the timer dings, I set it for 15 minutes and go to the next item.  Once through the list takes 1 1/2 hours.  I set the timer for 10 minutes and take a break.  Then I begin at the beginning again.  I go around and around like that until mid-afternoon when I peter out.  I get a lot accomplished that way but I wear myself out and I don't have much fun.  Neil brings balance and fun to my life. 

I've decided against Grrif.  It doesn't call well.  Today, I'm going to try out 'Milo.'

Where I live, we seldom have thunderstorms.  Well, we had one last night.  It came complete with lightening that lit up the sky and loud cracks of thunder that made me and the dogs jump.  Meggie's attitude in general seems to be, "I'm cool with it"  (whatever the 'it' might be).  Probably because she's the end result of generations of breeding to deal with sheep.  She twitched, of course, when there was a sudden crack of thunder but otherwise remained calm.  Grrif took his attitude from me and Meggie.  If we weren't hiding under a chair, then he wouldn't either. 

This morning the world is damp and green and smells heavenly.  

For the past week, I've concentrated on the kitchen garden to pretty much the exclusion of everything else.  Not only is the garden all in now, but it rained last night.  I can't even mow today. 

I guess I'd better locate my house.  I'm pretty sure it's somewhere here - buried under dog toys and my own clutter.

I set out plants of mammoth sweet basil, tarragon and parsley in the herb garden.  I laid out the soaker hoses which turned out to be less of a job than I expected.  Then I planted all my seeds: rutabaga, lettuce, celery, leeks, scallions, beets (two varieties), daikon radishes, carrots, spinach, broccoli raab, Swiss chard, parsnips, kale, onions, collards, zucchini, acorn squash, pole beans (two kinds), runner beans, cucumbers, hollyhocks, nasturtiums and California poppies.  Boy, am I glad to get that done!  

Our interim priest, Father Lawrence Crumb has a book just out.  The Oxford Movement and its Leaders, A Bibliography of Secondary and Lesser Primary Sources.  (936 pages, $185.00 from Amazon)  We're proud of him but it sounds like the kind of book only a library would buy. 

Neil went back to Monmouth yesterday but finished digging up the last raised bed for me before he left.  He's still driving his pickup even though he sometimes has a lot of trouble getting it in gear.  Before he gives up on it and buys a new vehicle, he wants to take it to a mechanic and see if it is something fixable like the clutch.  I'll be glad when he gets the problem resolved one way or another.  I'm afraid the pickup is going to leave him stranded some place.   

Neil is now a Bachelor of Square Dancing and has a badge saying he is a Rowdy Rookie.  It was a fun evening in spite of a few moments panic when it was time to go and Neil couldn't find his glasses.  (They were with the lawn tractor under the wood canopy.)  At the dance there was a cake and we all had to dance with a balloon held between our legs and other such nonsense.