Oh look, a squirrel!

Once Upon A Time, writing was incredibly easy for me. I would sit down at a keyboard and whip out stories almost as fast as others could later read them.

Lately (where ‘lately’ is pronounced ‘about the last year or so’), it has not been like that. It’s been more like, I sit down thinking, I am going to write about something.

…and then all hell breaks loose, pretty much everywhere, simultaneously, and instead I’m running around stomping out fires and such until suddenly I’m…well, not necessarily done dealing with all the mess, but done nonetheless.

It’s like I’ve run nose-first into an invisible wall, and I’m just…done now. Chair, meet arse. Arse, chair. You’re going to be the best of friends, for the rest of the evening…

And at this point in the day, opening up the word processor is just a rather cruel joke I play on myself; the cursor will sit there blinking at me, and maybe I’ll get a few words into it.

And then I’ll pause to read them and I’ll think, …where are you even GOING with this…wait…did you start DRINKING at some point, and I didn’t NOTICE…?!

The other problem is, the really major problem, is that there are some squirrels who moved into our yard. Specifically, a momma squirrel with three babies, who appear to have taken up residence under a wood pile just outside my new office.

Just about every time I even halfway glance out my closest window, my eye gets caught by their scampering antics.

And I look out the window a lot. You know how when you hit one of those moments when you’re not entirely sure what to say next, you go, “…um…”? Glancing out the window is how my brain goes, “…um…” because it’s not 100% sure what it wants to say next.

“…why is this code doing that…” => glances out window

“…how can I answer this email without actually calling anybody stupid…?” => glances out window

“…omg, are you seriously doing That Thing where you invite me to the meeting five minutes after it started again? do I even want to know what poop you’ve just stirred up that I’m going to have to live with?!” => stares moodily out window for a rather prolonged “moment”

There is, in point of fact, a momma squirrel attempting to eat a lemon, right immediately now, right outside my window. While one of her babies is being adorable over the the masonry on the greenhouse. Baby has found herself some seedy yum-yums, and they are delicious, and anybody who thinks that weed seeds are not the absolute best is just plain insane.

She thinks momma is insane. Weed seeds are da bomb.

Oh. Wait. Mommy has discovered that lemons suck. Or at least, that lemon does. To the lemon tree, to acquire a DIFFERENT lemon that will PROBABLY be tastier!! AWAYYYYYYYYYYY! {scurry-scurry, scamper-scramper}

I know they’re The Enemy, OK? I know. I know that I will need to get out there and go to war with them. And that I shouldn’t spend any time standing at my window going, “Squeeeeeeeeeeee!” when the little babies are crawling around out there finding seeds or playing on the wood pile or any of those other cute little baby squirrel things they keep doing.

And I definitely shouldn’t be amused by the stupid momma squirrel as she keeps pulling unripe fruit off trees in the vain hope that this one will be tasty-good.

Seriously, though – get a clue, varmint. If the last three were nasty, whyyyyyy do you keep believing that the next one will be delicious? They are lemons, dummy, they are NEVER going to be sweet and delicious treats…

OH. MY. GAHD, now one of the babies is trying the lemon. Hahahahahahahahaha! Yeah, *that’ll* curl your tail up, won’t it, kiddo…

Darn, I wish I could get pictures of this…now she’s sitting there like a tiny fluffy ball of disappointment, back turned to the reviled lemon, the very picture of but it smelled so tasty-good! sadness…but she’s in the shade, and if I try to get around to where I can get a picture of her, they’ll all be gone…WAIT. DAMMIT. I WANT THEM TO BE GONE. ARGH!!!

It’s like the way I got all anxious yesterday when this enormous crow was chasing one of the babies. Intellectually, I know that I should be rooting for him, you know? And the hawks, and the neighborhood cats, and the snakes, and anything else that looks at a squirrel and goes, “Mmmm, tasty!”

But instead I’m more like, “Hey! Quit picking on that cute little furry critter, you big mean old thing!” Even though I’m usually rather fond of crows; I mean, they’re kind of scary birds and I wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley, but at the same time they’re wicked smart, and surprisingly fun to watch too. The things they don’t get up to…like figuring out how to drop walnuts into the road so that cars will crush them open for them. Darned brilliant, as long as they don’t drop them ON your car – at 50 miles an hour, RIGHT into the windshield…

In short, I am completely hopeless. I’m going to end up gardening purely to feed the damned squirrels, because I’ll keep thinking they’re too “cute” to kill or run off. This is why we can’t have nice things, Me.

But I digress. (I think. Do I? Wait, where was I even going with this? Did I spike my soda with whiskey again? Is there another me that does this whenever I’m not looking? because I’m starting to REALLY wonder about that…)

{watches squirrels for another few minutes}

{…argues with self about how amusing it would be to put a ‘squirrel proof’ feeder out there, somewhere “impossible” for them to get to, just to watch them get to it anyway…}

{…I know, right?! it would be endless hours of very low cost entertainment! and since most of the yard is scorched earth right now thanks to the drought, I could set up a kick-ass obstacle course for them out there! it’d be AWESOME!}

…and that is why, instead of writing an actual post, I have spent the entirety of my ‘free’ time this afternoon watching the squirrels and surfing Amazon for ‘squirrel proof’ bird feeders that are clearly not actually squirrel proof.

This is also why we can’t have nice things, Me…

Splinters: Two basics ways to handle

If you are a normal and/or intelligent person:

1. Upon having a broom handle shave off a piece of itself the size of the Eiffel Tower into, say, the inside of the second knuckle on your index finger (let’s just say), let out a robust yell, possibly an expletive or two calmly alert those around you to the fact that you have just injured yourself
2. Retire to the nearest washroom, preferably with entourage in tow ready to assist with Operation Safe Splinter Removal
3. Wash injured area gently with soap and water
4. Carefully have your duly appointed deputy attempt to extract the splinter with your choice of:
   1. Sanitized tweezers, and/or
   2. Sanitized needle, and/or
   3. Sticky tape, if you’re lucky enough not to have a sliver which is pretending to be a submarine on a top secret mission in the deepest ocean trench in the world, and/or  
   4. A ‘drawing’ poultice
      1. Baking soda is popular
      2. Warm water + Epsom salt soak is another that seems to work well for a lot of folks
5. Upon ensuring you have gotten the beast outta there, apply:
   1. Antibacterial ointment
   2. Bandage
6. Keep clean and dry
7. In the unlikely event that an infection, swelling, redness, pus and/or an ungodly pain every time you even think about bending the damned finger kicks up, see your friendly neighborhood medical professional immediately

ALTERNATIVELY, if you are stupid and/or me:

1. Upon having a broom handle shave off a piece of itself the size of the Eiffel Tower into, say, the inside of the second knuckle on your index finger (let’s just say), let out a slight hiss
   1. If anyone chances to overhear this and ask what you did, snarl, “NOTHING!” at them
   2. If they ask again, glare at them and mutter something unintelligible until they give up 
2. Shift broom to uninjured hand, stealthily inspect injured finger while pretending to actually be inspecting tool 
3. If you spy any part of the splinter above ground (so to speak), use teeth to yank out
   1. This is totally safe
   2. That’s why $DEITY gave us teeth in the first place
      1. Not really
         1. They’re for softening leather hides
         2. And also opening difficult packaging
   3. Plus saliva has antibacterial properties
      1. Also not really
4. Put broom back in injured hand because dammit, this is how GROWNUPS deal with things – you don’t get a free pass just because you got a damned splinter, wuss!
   1. Plus if you don’t, others who happen to be nearby may realize you totally did too just hurt yourself somehow
   2. And if they know you at all, they’re going to be all, “LET ME SEE IT. RIGHT NOW.”
   3. Because just possibly they have been through this particular farce once or twice before and know how you are
5. Finish task at hand
6. Hang around for a few more minutes, just to prove you can
7. Sneak into nearest bathroom, wash blood off hand and peer angrily at injury
   1. Really glare at it
   2. This will possibly terrify the splinter into ejecting itself from your finger
      1. Not really
         1. Not even theoretically possible
         2. Unless you have psychokinetic powers
            1. In which case, why in the world were you using your hands to operate the broom in the first place?
            2. Man, I would be doing that work while loafing in an easy chair just to show off
8. Dig pair of tweezers out of the back of the junk drawer
9. Dig clean-enough looking needle out of sewing kit
1. If you can find the sewing kit
2. Otherwise, check the junk drawer
3. Possibly the storage shed? Gotta be one around here somewhere…
10. Sterilization is for losers. Just frickin’ get it DONE already.
1. The clock is ticking, cowboy
2. Any second now, somebody is going to come looking for you
3. You are surrounded by professional narks
4. They will so totally nark you out
11. Grab exposed part of splinter with tweezers and neatly pluck it out of your skin
1. Ow, OK, nope, that wasn’t the splinter, that was skin, @^*&@…!
2. Repeat until exhausted
3. Realize this isn’t working
12. Pick up needle and start poking around where you think the sliver is until you’re absolutely sure you’ve got enough of it exposed that you can totally grab it with the tweezers now
13. Repeat #11 and #12 a few times
14. Get all of the splinter out
    1. Pretty much all of it, anyway
    2. Well. Most of it
    3. All of it that, you know, matters
    4. Because you’re just sick of gouging at yourself at this point, therefore, clearly, you’re done
15. Spray with most gawd-awful stinging antibacterial spray you can find – the one that says, ‘Antibacterial and “analgesic” (lol) spray’ on it
    1. Stuff seriously stings like a @^*&@
    2. Wonder quietly to self if the “analgesic” property is purely comparative
       1. As in, “Once the burning this stuff causes starts to finally wear off, you’ll feel so much better than you did while it was still cauterizing your wound!”
16. Apply bandage
17. Immediately go and do any or all of the following:
    1. Hand-water plants
       1. Bonus points if you use the dregs of last week’s greywater
    2. Wash the dishes without wearing gloves
    3. Turn compost pile
       1. Ratty gloves with holes large enough to pass a mouse through optional
    4. Take a shower
    5. Move furniture / unpack boxes that have been languishing around in dusty, dirty, appalling conditions for months and months
18. The next morning, note that finger is…more sore and maybe starting to feel a leeeeetle bit…hot
    1. And hurts like a @*^&@ when you bend it
    2. And may be swelling, ever so slightly, right around where that splinter went in
       1. Or possibly developing a rather large…blister.
          1. Yeah. Let’s go with “blister”
          2. Because “boil” is such an ugly term
19. A few hours later, acknowledge that possibly you may have maybe missed a tiny bit of the splinter 
    1. I mean, most of it you surely got, but, I guess there’s probably a teeny tiny bit left in there
    2. Or something
20. Ignore pain, swelling, heat and signs of impending pus
    1. IN FACT, tell yourself that this is “good” – because actually, pus = nature’s lubricant
       1. That’s right! Whatever is left of that sliver is going to come shooting on out of there
       2. You know, probably, like, tomorrow-ish
       3. This is the natural way to handle this. You are a paragon of, uh, natural-ish living
          1. Very…zen or something
          2. You should totally eat a couple stale, bright blue Peeps to celebrate your earth-goddess stature
    2. Plus if that doesn’t work, well, your body will probably just break the thing down over time and problem solved
       1. Not really
       2. That is seriously a myth
       3. Your body is not going to ‘break down’ a slab of pressurized lumber any time soon
21. Continue ignoring increasingly achy finger until it cannot be ignored anymore – probably this will be at roughly the 24-hour mark after initial splinter-acquisition
22. Remove bandage
23. Give inflamed area the stink-eye for at least five minutes
    1. Yup.
    2. That’s infected all right.
24. Consult Google
    1. Have minor anxiety attack because Dr. Google is pretty sure that you’re going to die
       1. Because the splinter is heading straight for your heart, with laser-targeted accuracy
       2. Plus all of these symptoms? => could also be cancer
       3. Or Bavarian swamp-rat muck-tail disease
          1. …wait, what? Go home, Google, you’re drunk…!
    2. Realize that if you go to a doctor, they will do…doctor-stuff to you
       1. …go find reasonably clean looking needle…
25. Putting on best bad-ass face, poke sore spot gingerly with needle 
    1. Pffft, sterilize, what the hell for?! it’s already infected and besides, you’re going to wash it with soap in a second, and then spray it with more of the stingy-antibacterial-lol-analgesic-my-arse stuff in, like, two seconds
    2. What-ever
       1. I’m tough
       2. It’s just a stupid little splinter
       3. I got this
    3. Plus, there’s no time, in about ten seconds somebody is going to get home from work and be all, “WHAT are you doing?! WHAT did you do THIS time? Lemme see that…!”
       1. And then they’re going to want to “help”
       2. Which makes too much sense, particularly seeing as how it is your dominant hand that you’re trying to work on
          1. With your off-hand
          2. The one that has trouble dealing with things like toothpaste tube caps, and therefore clearly is the hand for this job
       3. Anyway, time is of the essence and cannot be wasted on such trivialities as ‘sterilization’ or even ‘thinking this through’
       4. Seize the day, people
26. Say a few bad words as ‘nature’s lubricant’ does its thing and the sliver does indeed come flying out of there
    1. Damn.
    2. That was huge.
    3. How did I miss THAT MUCH wood still in my finger?!
    4. Wow.
    5. I suck.
    6. Totally should have had the husband look at this thing yesterday
    7. …eh, whatever, it’s all good now…
27. Set sliver aside so you can show spouse when they get home
    1. Because now that it’s out, ha ha, it’s too late for all that fussing and carrying on about nothing
       1. That’s right, you can now live another day without having to get over your intense and completely irrational fear of people in white jackets bearing needles and medicines you can’t pronounce and stuff
       2. Now, the thing has awesome gross-out factor and must be shared with the spouse – this is why he married you, after all, because you are FULL of gross examples of your own idiocy
          1. It’s one of my many charms
          2. Along with putting half of all our belongings onto the bed while ‘cleaning,’ and then ‘not getting around to’  finding them all new forever-homes before bedtime
28. Immediately lose sliver when cat jumps onto table and swipes her tail right over the top of it
    1. Waste a few minutes looking for the sliver
       1. Realize it was only “huge” in the context of ‘a foreign object under your skin’ – it is actually almost microscopic
       2. You are never going to find it…particularly not on a splinter-colored fake-wood floor
       3. Seriously
       4. Just, stop already…
29. Now that all danger of being helped is past, complain vigorously to everyone you meet about the whole thing
    1. Possibly you could even write a blog post to share with the whole entire Internet just what lengths you are willing to go to in order to avoid being sensible about minor injuries

(Yeah, I totally did “take care of” a splinter that way this weekend. And I totally did try to save the splinter so that I could be all, “OMG, check this out!” when the husband got home tonight – but Fleur immediately started walking around on my desk and swoosh! gone. Which was probably for the best, because on further reflection I very much doubt the husband has any interest in viewing splinters I was storing in my index finger for any length of time, and probably he’d just give me that look and be all, “blah blah blah you need to not do stupid things blah blah blah” and then I’d be all, “What-ever, some of us are self-reliant, dude!” and then he’d give me that look again and I mean, really, what’s the point of starting all that again? NONE, there is no point. So, you know – it’s probably good that it is now safely in the vacuum cleaner [well, of course I vacuumed in here, because you know what sucks even more than splinters in a finger? splinters in your foot] instead of being gleefully shown off as first planned.)

The Garden Report: April 12, 2015

Well – it’s going to be an interesting year. It has become very, VERY clear that our big drought out here in California is only digging in for the long-haul, not easing up.

So I’ve cut way, way back on my plans for this year; I have a feeling that just about anything I do plant now in these milder months I’ll just have to watch die later this summer, when we no longer have a drop of dew in the mornings, and the sun is mercilessly beating down on everything.

I’m not exactly giving up on the garden entirely – it’s more that I’m having to take a big step back and come back at it with a different perspective on things.

Basically, I have to be able to keep things alive using more greywater than fresh city water; I have to rework the way I plant and protect to be increasingly water-aware. And able to hand-water – I won’t be able to rely on the drip system to take care of it for me, I will need to have time every day to get out there and individually take care of every single one of them. Egads.

I’ll also have to make more and better use of greywater, and figure out just how much I can reasonably do on a lot less water than I’ve used in years past.

For the moment, I’m focusing on keeping the longer-term investment plants alive. The fruit trees, rhubarb and rosemary, the artichoke bushes and the blackberries. If I can at least keep those reasonably well-watered and alive for now, I’ll call that a win; if I have enough water left over, I’ll think about putting a couple of the beds back into use. I have a feeling it is possible, but I’m just not sure right now.

The only real news in the garden right now is both related and kind of sad – this big old tree is officially, and completely, dead.

We stopped watering the lawn last year because of the drought and local watering restrictions – but we’d thought the tree had deep enough roots to be tapping into the ground water. Nope. The water table has dropped so low over the last couple years that even a tree of this size couldn’t find enough water to sustain itself.

Farewell, old fellah. We appreciated all the shade you gave us during the long, hot days of summer. You’ll be missed.

(But we won’t miss the bird poop – yes, that’s what the white stuff on Homer is, the birds also love the tree and show their appreciation…copiously. Note the lack of street parking – not shown is the enthusiastic nature [or as some have put it, the black and petty souls] of the suburban answer to the meter maid, who love to start slapping pink and orange notices on your windshield if you park on the main thoroughfare up around that corner for more than, say, eighteen seconds. The birds, they have had us RIGHT where they want us, for LO these many years…)

Amazon: At the corner of ‘shut up and take my money’ and ‘lol, really?’

So, this is a thing: the Amazon Dash button, which you can stick on the wall next to your toilet paper dispenser and, when you find yourself running short, you hit the button and boom – more {specific brand you chose} TP is on the way.

It’s not an early April Fool’s gag.

It’s an actual thing.

And the ‘Amazon Fresh’ version of it is even scarier, because you can talk to it, like, say, “Apples” and the thing will add apples to your Amazon fresh order. Or scan the barcode from that empty box of Oreos that some treacherous blasphemer emptied when you weren’t looking – bang! Done. Fresh box of Oreos is a go, people.

I know, right?! Holy computerized enabling, Batman!

I feel as though I should be outraged. That I should be dragging out my soapbox and climbing up onto it to deliver a scathing sermon about the dangers and costs and blah blah blah…

…but instead, I swear, it’s like I want to just start screaming “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY!!!” while clicking wildly on the ‘invite me!’ button. Invite me, damn you – INVITE ME NOW! NOW! I NEED THIS, I NEEEEEEEEEED IIIIIIIIIIIT…!

Fortunately, the Amazon Fresh service isn’t available in my area. The single-product-button one doesn’t really trip much emotion inside me, but that Fresh one…yikes.

I can totally see myself sitting here at my desk all day long…and alllllllllll those times throughout the day when I’m working and my brain decides that right now, in the middle of all these work-crises, is the perfect time to go, “oh, hey, psssssssst! you needed {crackers, some specific cheese or other, eggs, milk, crème fraiche, etc. etc. etc.} for that thing you were going to do…”, I’d be grabbing that beautiful little enabler and barking, “Water crackers! Weird cheese, the kind with the little holes, not Swiss cheese, that other holey-cheese! Eggs! Crème fraiche…CREM. FRESH. No. Delete. CERRRRR-REM…FRAAAAAAAAA-ESH. DAMMIT. NO, NOT ‘DAIMLER’, DON’T YOU SEND ME A CAR, AMAZON!!…ooooooo…that…is…is that…a convertible?!…”

…and that would be how I ended up with a brand! new! car!!

(Boom. Next day shipping, y’all. They could probably just drop it into the same box they use for paper towels. I think it would actually fit.)

Anyway, for now, seeing as how the version of this dash-thing that I’m very much intrigued by is straight-up not available in my area, well…I have a free pass on having to actually use willpower to resist this siren’s call.

And, thanks to my geographically-challenged location, I probably have plenty of time to fashion tinfoil hats for myself to ward off the mind control that is clearly in play here.

Not that I will.

Because I remain intrigued by the concept, unsure whether it will be the trumpet fanfare ushering in a new era of copious free time and carefree living, or knells of the cracked bell ringing in our inevitable descent into dystopian doom, wherein our too-many belongings silently and wirelessly order the parts they need to assemble their armies and take us out.

Eh, could go either way, I suppose.

In either case, we do live in fascinating, changing, amazing times, don’t we?

Just TALK to this little token, and FOOD will be sent to your house.

What a world, what a terrifying, amazing, messed-up-but-with-potential-fast-tracks-for-improving world we are building for ourselves, with every passing day…

Aaaaaaaand, I'm back, what'd I miss?!

Ohmygosh...it's The Internet! AT LAST!!! I'm saved!!!!!

I've been without my home computer for a couple days now; last week, my poor, abused desktop began acting a little...weird. It was being kind of sluggish. Throwing the occasional minor error at me "for no reason." And otherwise behaving in a way that made me sit back and think, Uh-oh...WHERE did I put all those system restore disks again...? 

Sure. Enough.

After a couple days of increasingly rebellious behavior, it finally threw in the towel on me for good, entered into an endless "booting...lol, just kidding, no I'm not! Want me to try to repair this of course you do because that's the ONLY option I'm going to give you! OK! Repairing...lol, just kidding, I can't fix this! I'm going to restart now, OK?" cycle and eventually forced me to really get my nerd on and communicate with it only through a command prompt.

Good times.

SO! I've spent the last two days trying to repair a really fried system...and then reinstalling a new system over the top of the hopelessly fried old one...and reinstalling all the software and resetting all the hardware settings and oh.my.GAHD., sometimes I kind of wish I wasn't a "computer" person because @^*@, this stuff is aggravating.

What can I save? What can't I save? Whaddya mean that folder wasn't part of my regular backups?! What the hell, what idiot unchecked it?! Oh. that would have been ME...wonder what I was thinking when I did that...

Things appear to be more or less back in business now; most of my files were recovered with relatively little pain, I've got the bulk of my 'critical' software (like, you know, Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online) (pfffft, email, antivirus, who needs that stuff, focus on the important apps first, right?!) reinstalled or even upgraded in a couple cases, and then had the usual cleaning session that tends to follow on whenever this sort of thing happens.

My computer folders can be a lot like the junk drawer in the kitchen; over time, I've squirreled away things in so many places and then forgotten they were there.

You don't wanna know how many copies I had of the install files for SQL Server, versions 2000 through 2012. Because JUST having them on a CD isn't good enough for me, apparently, I need to ALSO have them copied onto my HARD DRIVE. 

Honestly, I cannot explain this. Any more than I can explain having "My Pictures" and "My Pictures(1)", and "My Pictures_Backup" - all of which contained the same 3.4 gig of photogenic moments in which the Denizens are indistinguishable smeary blurs of action. (This is, of course, the biggest time sink - I think it is completely impossible for me to simply and efficiently "clean up" a photo album, because I end up going, "D'awwwwwwww, I remember when Danger Mouse liked to wear dresses!" or "OMG, it's Mr. Bear! Huh, wonder whatever happened to that ratty old thing..." and so forth.)

At the moment, it's a pretty fast-running, solid machine - a lot like it was the day I so proudly and excitedly unboxed it for the very first time. Before I had loaded, and unloaded, and reloaded so many things onto it - trials of various software programs, video games of all kinds, weird little "here, try this INSTEAD of Microsoft Office, it'll be better because it's NOT Microsoft!" programs my fellow nerds were enthusing about, and so forth.

"Not computer people" are hard on computers in a certain way; they're ignorant of the sorts of things that can cause really big problems, and will innocently do things that really mess them up.

Like powering off during a patch installation because they got impatient, or reading half of the instructions on a website somewhere, going into regedit and oops!

I know better than that.

Which is why when I screw up a box, I do it on an epic scale. And usually haven't a prayer of figuring out what, exactly, it was specifically that I did to cause the explosion.

And then I don't even have the good sense to throw it into the trunk of the car, drive to the near Geek Haven, and throw both the computer and a crap-ton of cash at the nearest person in the store while screaming "FIX IT! FIX IT NOW! MAKE MACHINE GO-GO-GO!"

No indeed. I, the person who caused the huge problem, feel completely qualified to fix the problems I caused. I am a computer person! Feel my nerdly strength! Rawr...!!!

Aaaaaaaaaand, then I spend two days swearing, sweating, arguing with an inert machine, screaming about disks that aren't where I thought they were, backups that weren't done the way I thought they were, oh crap I accidentally reformatted the partition I manually backed everything up to {expletive expletive expletive expletive}!!! and so forth.

BUT, hopefully - I've got it worked out now.

For the most part.

Except for about three thousand security patches and other updates, restoring my email archives, and reinstalling the rest of my various financial, knitting, and other assorted programs. And restoring their backed-up files.

And my music folders.

Oh, geez.

It's going to be a looooooooong weekend, isn't it...

Meanwhile in other news…

Man, it was so hard going to work Monday; I spent Saturday dealing with some long-overdue kitchen purging and reorganizing, and Sunday cleaning up this beautiful stretch of back fence.

I stubbornly kept at it until the light was fading, but was still a bit disappointed that this was all the farther I got.

Left side, pretty darned nice, if a little SPARSE with the bark here and there! Right side…eh, let’s not talk about the right side…(it’s the horseradish over there, which right now looks like death and scorched earth, but it’s already starting to green up and before we know it, it’ll be like BAM! enormous horseradish bushes going, “Pfffft, what death? We’re fine, and trying to figure out how we can jump the concrete here and take over that side of the fence, too…!” – it’s really a waste of money to put down good bark or other mulches over there, as the horseradish don’t care and will totally cover that whole side once it gets going.)

I did get four new rhubarb plants into the ground, the frames restrung and peas planted around them, so, you know – it’s hardly like “nothing” got done there.

But it still just…felt like it took a lot longer than it “should” have taken; and man, when I got up the next morning, the aching and pain-ing from all over was just plain epic.

In related news, WHEREAS I cannot handle the aging I have already done, BE IT HEREWITH RESOLVED that any further aging is a NON-STARTER and that HENCEFORTH, my physical aging shall match my mental aging, which means that I am now twenty-three going on eleven thank you very much and here I shall stay, FOREVER.

The End.

In unrelated news…I have started pulling into the driveway, stopping slightly more abruptly than technically necessary, and barking, “Get OUT…of my VAN!” at the Denizens.

Because, like you after you play this music video, this song has been perpetually stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. You’re welcome.

…come along and riiiiiiiide…in my burrito vaaaaaaaaan…!

Get those itty-bitty violins ready…

I had to go to the dentist today, to get the crown replaced on my implant and to get a filling.

I know. My life = so hard. We shall now pause so that everyone can play me a very sad song on their miniature, invisible violins.

{…conducts invisible orchestra…}

Anyway…I don’t know when exactly it was that “going to the dentist” turned into this horrifying experience for me. I know it wasn’t always that way, but at some point between my twenties and, well, now, it seems that my teeth have turned into semi-solid little lumps of pissy nerve endings.

They don’t like cold. Or hot particularly, but cold in particular seems to make them all yowl as if I’m ramming live electrical wires into them.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but, pretty much the entire time that dental things are going on in your mouth, there’s either cold air or cold water being jetted across all your teeth – both the numb ones, and the not so numb ones.

This plus a general sensitivity to cold…is not a particularly pleasant experience, and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it. They can warm up the rinsing-water, but the drills that blast cold air are gonna keep blasting cold air.

Feh.

Then while the new crown was baking (I am still somewhat astounded by the way this works now, where you need a new crown and you go in to the dentist’s office and a couple hours later you walk out with the new, permanent crown in your mouth – see, back in my day, kids, you had to go to the dentist, like, three times, a couple weeks apart each time, to get a new crown…because the first one would always be wrong in some way, OR would snap in half when they tried to install it, so, two more weeks at the lab for a new one to be made…but, I digress), they went whistling onward to the filling.

This is yet another example of the way I can simultaneously know how something is…and yet not quite get how it works. I know that my teeth are much more sensitive now than they were in my twenties.

And I know that in recent years (ahem), the amount of numb-stuff they have to shoot into me before my teeth will actually stop screaming over even very minor work being done on them has doubled or even tripled.

AND YET…it catches me by surprise, every time, when they do their thing, and I’m all, “Yesh, mah dips are numbuh, ish gud…” and then they touch that drill to the tooth and I leap out of that chair like they just stabbed me or something. Yoooooowch!!!

I never see it coming. I always think I’m more than numb enough. So it not only hurts, but it startles me into the bargain.

Every. Single. Time. (<= my Argonian name would She Who Never Learns)

My poor dentist was caught between laughter and irritation this morning; he had to more than triple the amount of numb-stuff before it would “take” enough for him to get the job done in there.

It was kind of funny, though: The first time he started and I went, “{JUMP!}”, he was all, “Oh, gosh, OK…” and he jabbed some more stuff in there and we chatted a bit while it ‘took’ and we were both so confident that it was completely numb, like, there is no way that anything could hurt now, hahahahaha!

And then he touched the drill to that tooth and it was like this little fireworks display went off in my jawbone and I went {!JUMP!} again and he jumped too and we just stared at each other wide-eyed and said, at the same time, “You have got to be kidding me!”

…I may have added, “…what the hell?!” to the end of that, but as nobody actually got that on film, it can never be proven.

Nor can the five minute rant I went on with his assistant while he was rummaging around in his storeroom looking for the super-nerve-nuke’em stuff. (I think he eventually found them under some leftover K-rations.)

But eventually, he got things numbed up and was able to go about his business without me leaping and squirming around, and then I handed over a slightly obscene amount of money and left.

And now the numb-stuff is already starting to wear off.

And damn, am I ever glad I had enough self-knowledge to go ahead and put in for the rest of the day off when we made this appointment a couple weeks ago. The throbbing, aching and general u-g-h factor is clearly going to be getting no less unpleasant for a while here.

I doubt I have much in the way of “productivity” ahead for the rest of the day.

Feh. FEH!, I SAY!

{…conducts invisible orchestra again…}

But, oh well. Considering the alternatives, I still feel like a very lucky person. It’s a temporary inconvenience, some transitory pain – followed by a whole lot of relief, and years of being able to have my steak, and eat it too.

Seems like a pretty good deal to me, all things considered.

…even if I am going to be having carrot soup for dinner tonight in deference to an aching jaw…

…maybe with some dinner rolls…hmm…maybe barely-sweet-ish ones, made with rosemary-infused honey as their sugar-source…

…wait…

…why am I suddenly feeling like the rolls are dinner, and the soup is the side…?

…still…yeah…I’m…just going to go trim a little rosemary off the bushes in the front of the Den…mmmmmm, rosemary…!

The garden report: January 18, 2015

I stepped out into my realm last weekend to find, predictably…utter anarchy. The Supreme Ruler had, after all, been completely laid up for a full month, and had then had a verrrrrrrrrrry slow return to ‘being mobile’ after that.

Last month we had almost two full weeks of nearly non-stop rain; this naturally led to an explosion of weeds. Plus the construction crews have…not exactly had ‘keeping the yard tidy’ at the top of their priority list, either.

In short, it is an absolute nightmare out there right now.

A view of construction trash through the scaffolding, with weed riot.

Garden bed, now with bonus broken roofing tiles stacked on the sprinkler manifold.

You know what this strawberry bed needs? MORE ROOFING TILES! And also some PLYWOOD!

More weeds and debris…

Aaaaaaaaand, even MORE weeds and debris…

Perhaps we can just take it as-read that the ENTIRE yard is pretty much an enormous cesspool of weeds, machinery that REALLY should have been overwintered somewhere ELSE, masonry that NOBODY remembers putting “there” and yet “there” it is and so forth??

But, in among all the sedition, there were a few loyal subjects. Like the “dead” artichoke plant which suddenly exploded back to life.

If all goes well, we should have artichokes by Easter!

(Although to be more accurate, “the” artichoke plant actually is still dead – these are its children, about five of them, which grew up out of shoots that were just dormant during the drought and heat wave.)

There were some ‘forgotten’ carrots.

And a fair amount of spinach. Very sweet spinach, courtesy of the “light frost” weather.

And one absolutely gorgeous head of lettuce. (Seriously. Delicious.)

It took almost the entire weekend just to collect together the masonry and random wood planks and such from Everywhere, and stack it neatly in the future greenhouse masonry storage unit.

This is one (1) of the shelves. I filled four (4) of them altogether. We have a LOT of bricks, slabs, tiles, lumber of all sorts etc. Almost ALL of it from Freecycle, which is an AMAZING source of Such Things around here.

I cleaned up around the artichokes, dropped a Tree Gator Jr. around it even though right now there is so much moisture in the air that the soil is damp 24/7…and then ringed it with river rocks from all over the yard to further encourage water to stay put.

It seems happier now.

And then I got busy on that big old pile of fill-dirt and the just general trash all over the back 40 (yards).

This. Took. FOREVER.

In related news, I overdid it a little bit last weekend.

And by “a little bit” I mean “rather a lot.”

And I paid for it for quite a few days last week. Man. It was like I had a fish hook caught in my calf or something; my foot started swelling up again, and trying to sleep was like hahahahahaha, good luck with that!

Meh.

So today when I got back out there to start building the new beds, and I got one lousy bed (mostly) done and then that muscle started going, “Twinge! Twinge! TWINGE!” while my back was going, “Twitch! Twitch-twitch! TWITCH-TWITCH-TWITCH!!” and shooting little electric shocks up and down my other leg, I abandoned my plan to build two beds today and contented myself with just the one.

Dropped some broccoli seed in there, covered it up with plastic to discourage cats and construction crews looking for places to dump their trash, and called it a day.

I have to admit, this is something that I struggle with – identifying the point at which ‘reasonable’ becomes ‘unreasonable,’ and where I should be stopping, and what the consequences of not finishing everything on my list exactly when I wanted to actually are.

I always feel as if not finishing “everything” means that epic disaster is going to befall; like the whole thing is now jinxed and I’m going to have to work twice as hard to catch up the next time I’m out there.

But I seldom actually stop and ask myself what happens if I don’t try to double-down on the effort next time – what happens if it simply takes twice as long to finish.

For some things, it is a bit of a disaster; not harvesting things when they’re ready tends to mean you end up with compost rather than food, not paying bills on time results in late fees, stuff like that.

…but still not, you know, end of life as we know it sorts of consequences.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep that in mind as we stroll leisurely toward the next main growing season, and find a lot more enjoyment out of the process than I’ve had the last couple seasons.

Real life is still so very real

So, today was my first day back to work after my unexpected three-day “vacation” in Resort du Hospitale.

Normally when I’m taking even one day off, there’s a certain amount of ‘putting things to bed’ before I log off before I take off. Just kind of proactively dealing with certain things, giving others the background info they might need in case things go awry, that kind of stuff.

Obviously, I didn’t do any of that. It was supposed to just be a quick, after-work-even appointment with the orthopedic guy; I had absolutely no idea, I never would have guessed, that I’d end up in the hospital for gah’s sake.

Even when I was getting the ultrasound because he was all, “{mutter-mutter-clots}”, I still didn’t honestly think that, you know, there actually would be…anything in there.

I expected the usual fuss-n-bother-and-nothing-comes-of-it. Because that’s what always happens. Except when it doesn’t.

So today basically went like this:

1. I made my own coffee this morning
1. Which meant having to go downstairs all by myself like a Big Girl
1. Illusion of being on the road back to self-reliance: Shattered
2. It costs me way more than I like to admit to do something as simple as “get downstairs, and then back up again”
3. Also, I do still need the stupid crutches
1. Argh!
2. NOT THAT I’M COUNTING (<= lies!), but, this would be Day 17 since I tore that @^*&2ing muscle
3. ARGH!
2. Several people are asking me – rather pointedly – how long this or that is going to take, because, per their email from AHEM, LAST WEEK WEDNESDAY…!
1. It would be much simpler if I would just own up and say, “Sorry, heh-heh, funny story, actually, see, I was unexpectedly hospitalized last week so I lost a couple days…?”
2. But I would rather die than have this become common knowledge at work
1. Well. Maybe not die.
2. But I’d definitely rather put up with people growling at me about their timelines
3. AND THEN, I got a call from the nurse advocate at the insurance company
1. Because the hospital stay was declined
1. Because the information they got was basically “we admitted her because of reasons”
1. Attending physician? => blank
2. Diagnosis/Reason for Incarceration Admission? => blank
3. Treatment Plan? => blank
4. Reason for Discharge? => blank
2. Apparently, “because we admitted her” is not considered a ‘medically necessary’ reason to admit someone to the hospital
1. Go figure
2. {bangs head on desk for a while}
4. That One Guy on the team naturally managed to go charging off in all the wrong directions while I was away
1. He always does this
2. ALWAYS
3. Honestly, his capacity for being Just Completely Wrong seems bottomless
1. It’s like a gift, really
2. A dark, dark gift…
4. And, why the end result of this always seems to boomerang back to me is something I ask myself on pretty much a weekly basis…
5. THEN, when I’m up to my eyebrows in All The Above, I got a call from the ‘patient something or other’ person – basically the nurse who makes sure you’re behaving yourself when you’ve been discharged
1. I was asked if I was remembering to do the elebenty-bazillion salutations in the cardinal directions on hourly intervals per release protocol
2. “…yes…?” <= lies, had only done one (1) round of the salutations, while still in bed that morning
1. And in only two of the cardinal directions
2. Bah, humbug!
6. AND TO CAP IT ALL OFF, RIGHT BEFORE LOGGING OFF FOR THE DAY…I find that the reason something “looks a little wrong” in the thing I was working on a while ago was because I had made a mistake in the code
1. …one that somebody else discovered…
2. @^*&@!

So, to sum up:

1. I quit
2. I quit
3. I quit
4. I quit
5. I quit
6. I quit

There. I think that about covers it for tonight.

Tune in next time, when I’ll complain vigorously about the clothes moths (!!!!) that moved in shortly after all the construction began, and which now love to flutter juuuuuuuust out of my reach because I’d swear they know I can’t leap to my feet to squash them…!

What a long, strange trip it was

The orthopedic surgeon we saw Wednesday afternoon confirmed that I had a moderate tear in my gastrocnemius (<= the bigger calf muscle).

Then he sent us for an ultrasound to check for blood clots, because my leg and foot were rather swollen, and had been for a while, and I had not had any particular success with getting that swelling to go away.

And that was how it was that I ended up spending two and a half days in the hospital hooked up to a heparin drip and having blood drawn every 4-6 hours to check for progress (and me with my bordering-on-actual-phobia about needles…you can imagine how well I dealt with this) before My Beloved Physician was able to confirm that I didn’t actually have an actual clot, but rather only alarmingly elevated risk of one.

This is one of the things we love so much about this guy: A lot of doctors would have been more like, “Look, you’re already here and we’re halfway down this path, so, my work here is done. You have another four to seven days in the hospital (!!!) while the warfarin takes over from the heparin, then three months (!!!!!!) of taking the warfarin daily (with daily / every-other-day lab work, I might add), because that’s what we’re doing.”

Instead, I got to just come home with instructions to be very alert about the swelling returning, and with a prescription for a mega-dose of aspirin.

It’s not exactly that I’m furious and want to have stern words with anybody for making me go through all that “for no reason.” There was a reason for it. They saw veins that looked like they were under stress, there were markers in my blood that said, “probably has a clot in there” – I think what they did was the right thing to do.

You don’t fool around with suspected deep vein thrombosis. Having a clot break loose and travel up into your lungs can kill you – I’ve still got an awful lot of Denizen-rearing to do, and I’m kinda curious how it all turns out.

So on the whole, I’d like to, you know, not die of something stupid and miss all that.

Still. It’s a bit…vexing, to spend all that time hooked up to an IV and being stabbed by cheerful, smiling lab folks what felt like every fifteen minutes over and over in the same general area, only to be told a couple days later, “Oh. Never mind. You ‘just’ have a rather elevated risk of clotting from that area. Here. Have a prescription for a mega-aspirin, aaaaaaaand if your foot or leg puffs up like that again and you can’t get the swelling back down quickly? Get your arse to the emergency room, what are you, STUPID or something?!”

The crook of my left arm looks like I have a serious drug problem (or like I was attacked by near-sighted vampires mistaking my elbow for my neck or something); plus, of course, the fact that I was on a blood thinner means that I bruise fairly easily, so I have all kinds of beautifully yellowing marks all over me.

Sigh.

I probably have about six to eight weeks of recovery time ahead for this stupid thing altogether before I’ll be back to more or less normal, and a month or two after that where I’ll still need to be a bit circumspect about how much stress I put on the leg; it’s just one of those injuries that take a looooong time to heal.

Meh.

But, it could be worse. I could have been stuck in the hospital for over a week.

With the convenient, in-house, available 24/7 lab people.

{shudder}

Leisure, or nothing like it

I haven’t done a single chore for six days, y’all. Not so much as rinsing my own dishes.

Nossir.

I have been sitting right here…for the last six straight days…reading…playing video games…watching an endless parade of brain candy flicker past my eyeballs…eating food brought to me by my family…

It’s…it’s…well, it’s miserable. It is exhausting. It is frustrating in the extreme.

SEE…what happened was…a freak laundry accident.

I am being totally serious right now.

A.

Freak.

LAUNDRY.

Accident.

…you absolutely can-NOT make this kind of stuff up, people.

SO THERE I WAS, last week Friday, getting a jump on my weekend chores. I’m standing next to my bed folding the clean sheets like a boss and I went to put the latest example of my rather poor sheet-folding skills on top of the pile and…well.

Over the course of less than a second, I thought to myself, “Huh, my left calf feels kinda tight, is it trying to cramp up…?”

And then, pretty much simultaneously, there was a feeling like somebody had snuck up behind me and whacked me, really hard, in the back of the leg with a rather blunt axe; it was like a punch and a cut, if that makes sense?

And, there was this…sound. Not a very nice sound. It sounded like somebody biting into an apple – not a super crisp one, but one of those mealy ones.

I hit the ground like I’d been clubbed, both hands wrapped in a death-grip around my calf, almost before the pain even hit me.

You know those moments when you totally know the reality of a situation almost the instant it arises, but you also just can’t quite believe it has happened so you keep second-guessing yourself?

Yeah. That was my whole entire weekend. Within about five seconds of hitting the floor, I knew exactly what I’d done. There was really no question that what I had here was a classic example of Ye Olde Torn Calf Muscle. The only question left to answer was how bad a tear I’d gotten.

But…it just…didn’t seem possible. This is a pretty strong muscle group (I said to myself). C’mon. How could I POSSIBLY have done REAL DAMAGE to it, JUST by leaning forward to drop a sheet onto a pile?

I had to be mistaken.

But, looks like I wasn’t. When My Beloved Physician started poking at it, he pretty quickly discovered that I’ve got some “weird” deformation in the muscles, and at least one ligament is kind of “floppy” when it should be “springy.”

So now I’m on crutches until further notice, and going for an MRI next week so we can figure out exactly how bad it really is, and I’m in for anywhere from “just” about a month of this “keep off it” nonsense to three months if I really did a number on it.

Well, damn.

Then, because insult loves injury so much…guess what? After four days of zero swelling, and zero bruising, and only very mild pain as long as I kept my carcass parked in my chair?

Yeah. That honeymoon was over. My calf feels like an overfull water balloon, my foot is all puffy, and the pain is starting to become quite annoying.

Feh.

Laundry.

Feh.

We walk among you

Sooooooooooooooo…I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) a lot lately. (The five-second review? I like it. It has its problems, it has its rough edges and things that make me go, “Pah, this again?!” – but by and large, it’s a fun way for me to spend my evenings.)

So. In just about every game I play which has such things, I am…ahem…a somewhat avid farmer. Meaning that I collect raw materials – plants for potions, ores for smithing, wood for bows and so forth – whenever I see them.

It almost pains me to pass up an ore-node, or leave a pile of lumber on the ground…not pick the lock on a chest, or open the barrel to see what’s inside.

I also have a somewhat embarrassing tendency to be so focused on my farming that I don’t notice things like, say, the level ha-ha-MUCH-higher-than-YOU super-elite troll now with Super Special Player Killing One-Shot Powers that is standing right on top of the ore-node.

“…oh…well, hello there, big fellah…aaaaaaaaand, I’m dead again…sigh…”

Now, I told you all of that so I could tell you about this.

One of my guilds in ESO is called ‘Get Rich or Die Farming.’ I think I’d actually call it my “main” guild – it’s definitely the one I enjoy most in terms of interactions with others, and it’s extremely active and full of fun, helpful people who help each other over the rough bits and such.

One afternoon our guild master came up with these.

And of course I bought one, because it made me laugh. 

In due course it went through the laundry and percolated to the top of the stack in my drawer and I put it on and wore it. Because it was a) clean and b) the next one on the stack in my drawer.

Look, I’ll be blunt: I’m getting dressed at about 4:45 in the morning, OK? And I probably didn’t get to bed before 11:00 or 11:30 the night before. Because that’s just what always happens, no matter how ardently I vow that tonight, I am TOTALLY going to be IN BED by no later than 9:30.

“Let’s see, which of my fine frocks shall I wear today, and what cunning accessories shall I wear with it?” are just not questions I’m willing to entertain at that hour. Next shirt in the drawer, pants aaaaaand, DONE.

But I digress.

So I’m wearing this shirt, and I’m not thinking anything of it really. I wear a lot of shirts that have things Muggles might not understand on them. Anime characters, slogans from the 70s, the occasional “if you work in any of the major coding languages, you will totally get this” or “decode these math symbols for a joke!” thing – so I’m not too surprised if someone is kind of looking at my chest with an expression that clearly says something like, “Math…hurts…” (The one thing we can rule out pretty much immediately is that they’re looking at my breasts. Unless they have a magnifying glass in their hand. Or binoculars. Ahem. Moving on.)

SO THERE I AM. Sporting my guild t-shirt and heading back across the street to Homer the Odyssey after having deposited Captain Adventure at the gates of the Hallowed Halls of Learning.

AND THERE’S THIS OTHER MOM, standing at the crosswalk with me, staring at my chest and making the math-hurts face.

I had to glance down at my shirt to remember which one I was wearing. And then I was a bit confused because really…uh…this isn’t one of those puzzle-shirts, it’s just, you know, a slogan, right?

And then she suddenly goes, “Is that, like, a statement about how conventional farming is totally about corporate greed these days, and that’s why our food chain is so broken that it is killing us?” 

First I went

Then I went oooooookayyyyyy, that was an…INTERESTING…leap, but I GUESS I can KINDA see it…

“Er, no. Hahaha. No. This is actually from a game – it’s the name of one of my guilds in Elder Scrolls.”

She’s still making math hurts face at me, which really should have been my cue to just say, “…it’s a video game” and shut up, but oh no, that would have been something a normal person would do.

Instead, I went full on 

And that was why, $DEITY forgive me, I tried to explain MMOs, guilds, ‘farming’ in video games and in-game economies.

You know, the talking-too-fast Cliff’s Notes version. Because we’re standing on the street waiting for the crossing guard to force the reluctant drivers to obey her.

And now then she’s looking at me like I just went, “Meepa-beepa! MeepMeep! Boop-boop-meep-waaaaaaahka-whaka-wahKA! Woot-woot! Beep!”

So she did what any suburban mother would do when confronted by an alien making beeping noises and said, “Oh, that sounds like fun…”

“Uh, yeah. It…yeah, it is. Hahaha. Ahem. Have a good one!”

“You too, hahaha!”

I couldn’t help but think, though, as I settled in front of my massive monitors, ergonomic keyboard and Mouse of Many Buttons that she was actually pretty darned lucky.

I might have been wearing my “Not Normalized” shirt.

No, well, hahaha, OK, see, in database development? ‘normalization’ refers to…uh, noooo, actually, not ‘OH GOD, MAKE IT STOP!!!’ but rather…

Meanwhile, in knitting…

According to my Ravelry notebook, I started working on the Fia Pullover in March 2013; as I recall, I got the sleeves done in no time flat, and then shot through about the first three inches of the main body…and then…well…I suddenly went, “…eh…” and set it aside.

Just as suddenly, I regained my enthusiasm for it not terribly long ago, pulled it out and started working on it again. It’s actually a rather pleasant knit – the “main” pattern requires having the ability to count and pay attention and thus I can readily see why I decided it made lousy BART knitting…but the side patterns are very easily memorized and require almost zero thought to speak of.

Which means that I can totally work on this while I’m watching foreign films with subtitles. Woot.

I realized last night that I was a mere ten rounds from the Beginning of the End – the shoulder shaping. 

At the moment, I am choosing to ignore the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done on this after the shoulders are cast off, and am allowing myself to enjoy the feeling of being “almost done” with it at last.

That I then have the blocking to do, and sewing and cutting the steeks on the main body and the sleeves, attaching the sleeves, and then the picking up and knitting of the collar…are problems for later.

For right now, I’m almost done.

Yay me!

Colds and Ceilings

I have a cold. A really nasty one, the kind where symptoms just kind of keep piling up on you. Fever, chills, cement-in-sinuses, coughing so hard you’re a little afraid you’re going to throw up, can’t breathe, wait, how can my nose be RUNNING this much when I’m so STUFFED UP?!, and no-medicine-on-earth-seems-to-do-anything-for-me sort of cold.

This has got to be some kind of record: The Denizens have only been in school for about two weeks, and bam. They brought home the bubonic plague for me to catch. Awesome.

Meanwhile, of course, both work and the construction on the Den continue without the slightest pause. Which is also desperately unfair. I mean, really, there ought to be some kind of law which says that when someone is clearly dying, everything around them should just, you know, stop. As a sign of some respect for their increasingly-delicate condition.

Especially things that involve loud banging noises or asking the dying person whether or not something is on-track for deploy on a specific date.

And man, it should be straight-up illegal to ask The Afflicted about items they’re allegedly supposed to be finishing up by a specific – and all-too-quickly approaching – date while there are loud banging noises going on in the background.

But, alas, the world does not work as it should. So work has this completely irrational idea that I’m going to be, you know, working during my shift (feh!), and that I’m going to be getting things done on time (whatever!) and that I will be maintaining “professional behavior” (pfffft!) and stuff like that.

While there has been much hammering, sawing, banging, thumping, and the occasional whoop of “whoa!” going on in the background.

Meanwhile, I opened my home office door (a.k.a., my bedroom door) Tuesday afternoon at the end of my work day and my house looked absolutely surreal.

The whole house seemed to be swathed in this plastic. Floor to ceiling. Taped down, so, um…question…? How do I get into my KITCHEN…?

It was kind of creepy, actually. Like something out of a slasher film. Brrrr.

But, there has been a lot of progress in four short days. On the outside of the house, we have a new office downstairs, and a bedroom upstairs.

My office has a door out to the garden (squee!), and windows on the other walls looking out into it (double squee!). (It also has a door inside the house – I won’t have to, you know, go outside to get into my office or anything.)

It’s a little hard to envision what it will be like when it’s a house instead of…a garage? or a storage shed? which is kind of how it feels right now.

To get access to the upstairs bedroom, well, we needed a new walkway. This was trickier than we expected, naturally, because it couldn’t go where we had sort of thought it should due to code-stuff and clearance-stuff and load-bearing stuff.

So instead, you come up to the top of the stairs and make a u-turn onto the new walkway. But not right now. It’s missing the railings and such. Really kind of asking for trouble, trying to walk across that right now. (This does not, of course, stop the cats. In fact, they were also undaunted when it was just the support beams. What? I’m just out for a little STROLL, clumsy human…)

That walkway leads to a big new loft area, formerly the vaulted ceiling over the dining room…

…and the new upstairs bedroom is on the other side of that lit-up area. Which is a window. Which is going to be torn out of there pretty soon.

Much as we’d like to think we’re “nearly there” given that we have, you know, walls and floors and stuff, the sad truth is: We’re barely getting started. This is actually the “easy” part – the hard parts are still to come.

Like, it’s a little hard to get the perspective from that picture, but the total clearance where the door to the new bedroom will be is, I think, less than four feet.

Clearly not going to work.

So, the whole roof on that side of the house has to be “lifted” up by several feet.

That’s where I’m pretty sure things are going to suddenly start slowing way down; and of course the “finishing” work is extremely frustrating on that front. It’s like, done, buuuuuuuut, now you’re waiting for somebody to show up with paint, and then there’s all this “OK, so, we did our hour of work and now we have to wait X-long for things to dry or set, so, see ya tomorrow, lady!” stuff…

So I’m trying to enjoy this period of easily-measurable progress while it lasts.

Even if it does involve a rather insane amount of hammering, and sawing, and banging, and crashing, and…

Progress is not for the faint of heart

Today was…noisy.

Because they were doing this to my poor Den.

You know those moments when you look at something that is in-progress and you think to yourself, OMG, wait, this can-NOT be right, time out, let’s think about this…!

I had that moment late this morning, when I was on a call and there was this tremendous whump from the construction area and then I heard something crash in the kitchen.

It took pretty much every last ounce of willpower I had to remain calm, stay with the meeting I was in, and not tear off my headset and go flying downstairs to see what on earth had made that ungodly clatter. (<= this is always a mistake – if I set foot out there, it will take a good half hour before I can get back inside, and, well, I really don’t have an endless supply of extra-long-coffee-break periods in an average day that I can burn on Such Things)

Later, I discovered that it was the kitchen knives, falling off their magnetic holders; apparently, having the other side of the wall they are on, you know, ripped off the house was a little too much vibration for them to maintain a good grip on the knives.

I looked at the knives, and I said to myself, “Right…now, where did I put that old knife block…?”

And then I had one of those little walks down memory lane, remembering that phase Captain Adventure went through some years ago as a toddler, where we could not keep his chubby little mitts off the blasted kitchen knives. He was fascinated by them. I tried putting them into a child-“proof” drawer => he’d have them out in under five seconds flat. I tried “hiding” them in a child-“proof” cupboard => hahahahaha, yeah, how’d THAT work out?!

I tried the top of fridge. I tried keeping them in the den. Eventually, I got that magnetic strip, hung it over the stovetop, which is a terrible place to put your good kitchen knives but as much as he looooooooved to play with my knives (!!!), he was afraid of that stovetop. He wouldn’t go within a foot of it.

Voila. He never went after the knives again. Although he did pitch a few huge temper tantrums about their new location; he’d sit on the floor, tilt his head back and just howl about it, occasionally looking at them out of the corner of his eye with undisguised longing and despair.

And would go absolutely pink and purple with fury if I tried to offer him something like, you know, a spatula, or a toy knife instead. You insult my intelligence, woman! Begone, and take your lousy imitation-of-life with you!

But I digress.

According to theory, all of this stuff – and there’s rather a lot of it, let me tell you – is going to magically become walls…and the first story of our two-story addition will be framed.

You guys have no idea, NO IDEA!, how hard it was not to be a smart-arse about this today. They kept going, “Blah blah blah and then this will be framed…” and I so wanted to say something like, “Gasp! Should I start looking for a good lawyer to get it off with maybe just some community service or something? or is this going to be so thorough a frame-job that it’s just hopeless and the best we can hope for is 30 years in Sing-Sing?!” But I did resist. Because I figured either a) they wouldn’t get it or b) they would get it and be all like “HAHAHAHA…like we haven’t heard that one a few hundred times…today…”

Another thing that took an awful lot of effort from me…well, they needed to make room for what-all they’re doing and their supplies and such-like. So they did this.

I KNOW, RIGHT?! I TOO CAN HARDLY STAND THE HORROR OF THIS…oh…you…don’t see it?

Not at all? Nothing jumping out at you? Like maybe a slight difference in, you know, texture, front v. back parts of this pile…?

AW, C’MON. The back of this pile is just dirt. It’s (some of) the just dirt they dug out so they could pour the concrete slab that is currently mocking my ripped-out outer walls with its pristine newness.

But the front pile, the one they so cavalierly hurled atop the just dirt one they made last week…that…is my garden bed soil.

It is not dirt.

It is a magical blend of just dirt and compost and peat moss and you do not want to know how much time and sweat and tears (OK, fine, in the interest of full disclosure, any actual tears in there were probably caused by my sunscreen dripping [or being wiped] into my eyeballs) went into making it into that frothy confection suitable for growing ruler-straight carrots or big, round-globes onions or, you know, whatever.

Of course, it is also garden soil that isn’t going to have a bed to go into for quite some time; even after they get this first story frame up off the ground, the second story is just going to be rush-delivered right into the same spots.

Still. I keep looking at it, every time I go out there. That is some awfully nice soil, right there, I think to myself.

And then I just kind of look around the yard…surely there must be somewhere out of harms way where I could get, you know, a small-ish new bed built, right?

Good dirt is a terrible thing to waste, after all…

You ask a simple question…

Danger Mouse had a dentist appointment today, to get some fillings.

The husband made the mistake of sending me an email asking me how it had gone.

So, I told him how it had gone, as follows…and the moral of this story is, don’t ever ask me a simple question, as I am incapable of providing a simple – or short - answer…

OMG. Well. Therein lies a tale. And it goes like this. I got to the school at 10:35 and I was walking over to the administration office like a boss, looking around at all the other adults milling around there like, "I understand.  I'm responsible now too.  Just look at my groceries. Plus also I am totally on top of these things, because I am very mature and responsible that way." (Sadly, I’m not entirely exaggerating…I was so darned proud of myself for not still being at home at 10:50 going, “Oh…@*^&@…is that the time?!” like I usually am…)

So I get her all signed out and the secretary calls her third period PE class and goes, “Yessss, so, I’m calling for…uh…Buhhhhhh…” and I hear this perky voice on the speakerphone go, “Oh, let me guess, Danger Mouse? Yes, she said she’d be leaving during this period, she’s sitting with her things over on the benches, I’ll go let her know.”

And now I’m looking around like, “Yeah, my kid? => totally on top of it. That’s right. She even told her teacher she would be leaving right about now. This is teamwork, people. This is what we should all aspire to as parents. I am the best parent in the history of parenting.” (<= conveniently ignores the fact that laundry is still piled up all over the house, nobody has had a home-cooked dinner in approximately two years and that I have now officially lost more forms than I have successfully turned in over the course of their school careers.) 

Ten minutes later, I’m still standing there, clutching her pink excuse slip. The bell for the next period rings. Kids are milling around in vast numbers. No Danger Mouse. Where the heck IS she? I go back to the window and go, “Uh…?” and they say, rather pointedly, “She’s on her way.” Oooookayyyyyyy…I go back to waiting.

At 10:55 (!!) I called the dentist’s office and said “OMG WUT IDK WHERE MY CHILD IS BUT WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE !!!WAILING FACE!!!” And they said, “Well, just get here as fast as you can.” Then I went back over and banged my fist on the counter until the secretary decided I was annoying and checked on her current location. And she goes, “Oh. She went on to fourth period. I’m not sure why she would do that, since they did make a general announcement in PE…”

After I got done screaming and clawing at my face, I asked what that meant, ‘general announcement.’

And yeah, this meant exactly what I thought it meant: The person on the phone who told us about how she was sitting on the benches with all her things waiting to go and that she’d go let her know I was there to get her did not then, you know, walk over to her and say, “OK, kid, grab your stuff and split.”

No. She walked over to the PA system and went, “Murfle-purfle blissabloss? Pssssst tegere wah-wah sssstic...” over the craptastic speakers in the locker room, where a herd of chatting teenage girls were making themselves ready to rejoin society.

IMPORTANT NOTE: none of these chatting girls were Danger Mouse, because she, AS THIS SAME LADY HAD SAID WHEN WE CALLED, was sitting on the benches, waiting (im)patiently for her mother to arrive. Outside. Where the PA system isn’t. Not that anyone can ever understand anything said over the PA system anyway. But it is even less understandable when the announcement is being made, you know, where you AREN’T.

OTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Banging your head repeatedly against the brick facing of the school is not advised. It causes not only a pounding headache, but the roughness of the brick tends to break the skin more than, say, a keyboard or a desk does. #ProTip.

So the secretary called into the fourth period classroom and about two minutes later here came Danger Mouse jogging across the quad – but by this time it was a good ten minutes after her appointment was supposed to start. I was already thinking, “Ehhhh, they’re totally going to tell us we have to reschedule, but, maybe, just maybe if they have a slow morning…!”

As we’re driving over, Danger Mouse informs me that she was more than a bit puzzled that I hadn’t shown up and almost went to the office between 3rd and 4th period just on general principle, but then reasoned that she should just keep doing what she was supposed to be doing and wait for instructions, which was of course the right thing to do, so I went, “Oh. Well. That was the right thing to do. Wish you had just gone to the office, though.” Which is sending her mixed messages which is the opposite of good parenting. But I figure at this point my cover is blown anyway so I might as well send mixed messages, belch loudly and blame it on the cat, maybe teach her how to light one cigarette with the end of another to save both time and matches, oh, and, how to identify the scaredy-cat kids so you can trick them into betting their lunch money on a game of mumblety-peg because they will pretty much ALWAYS chicken out before the first cast, thus giving you extra pocket change without any real danger to life or limb from the pocketknife-tossing thing. Brilliant.

We skidded into that office at 11:15 (<= which was pretty darned amazing time, actually, the Stoplight God was definitely with us) and of course they were all, “Yeahhhhhhh, we’re gonna have to reschedule, there isn’t enough time left.”

…siiiiiiiiiigh…soooo, September 5 it is…

While I was busy pretending I am not insane

Two days ago, late in the afternoon, there was a knock on my door. I opened it up to find a pleasant man standing on my porch with a shirt that said “Windmill Septic” on it.

Over his shoulder loomed a very large truck.

With a very large porta-potty on it.

This was, briefly, a terrific shock to me. Why in the WORLD are they renting a porta-potty?! I thought to myself.

“They” being the crew who are going to be providing a wide variety of noise, dust, destruction, bills and construction that will ultimately lead to the addition of one new bedroom and a loft area upstairs, and one new home office downstairs.

It will be fantastic.

I keep telling myself this. Because otherwise, I will go completely mental, long before we get through this.

Then I realized that I was being rather stupid. Contrary to how it feels to me most of the time, I am not, in point of fact, “always” home. Asking some poor guy to just hold that thought for who knows how long while I’m in actually in the office, or running errands, or who knows what for who knows how long is a bit much.

“You having some construction done?” he asked.

You know how sometimes, you have these moments where you desperately want to say something that you know is probably not the nicest thing you could say right then…but oooooooooh, you’re just DYING to SAY it?

I was dying.

Dying.

I wanted to say, “Nope. We’re just looking to save on water, what with the drought and all. Family of six does a lot of flushing, ya know…here’s your sign…”

“Yes, yes we are,” I said instead.

Let the games begin!

“So, where do you want this?” he asked, gesturing at Tiny.

I turned and pointed to the construction site – in the backyard.

“That would probably be the most convenient for the guys, and least likely to become…ahem…a neighborhood ‘attraction’” I suggested.

“Yeahhhhhhhh, well, see, here’s the thing,” he countered, holding up his hands about three inches apart. “The hose on the service truck? Yeahhhhhh, it’s not really all that long…”

“Oh, that’s OK!” I replied, brightly. Because like HELL do I want this thing parked in FRONT of my house for THREE. MONTHS. “He can drive right on up on the lawn there, it’s dead anyway, you can see the construction crew is already driving on it…”

“Yeahhhhhhhh, well, see, here’s the other problem: He’s doing his route real early…I mean, real early…”

There was a bit more back and forth, but ultimately…

Bam. RIGHT in front. Helllloooooo, World.

{head-desk}

This is going to be…a really fun project.

I can just tell.

Fifteen hours to find…

The last two days have gifted me with the happy knowledge that I made a really good call about, oh, eighteen years ago, when I briefly considered going into regular help desk support before going, “…nah…” and sticking with database-stuff.

Good move, Me.

Yeah, I spent the last two days (re)loading one or another program, rebooting my laptop, and watching it still not work. I have twiddled my thumbs while updates (re)ran. I have checked and unchecked boxes, then tried the same thing again, which amazingly…still didn’t work.

Not the fourth, fifth or sixth times. Well, darn.

It has been ever so much fun. Really.

Apparently, what happened was this: Windows was running an update. Meanwhile, the corporate antivirus was happily running its normal scans using a brand new set of definitions. These happened to contain the suggestion that certain Windows-based files were very bad indeed, and needed to be immediately quarantined for my protection.

Automatically, for my convenience.

What I actually saw was an antivirus screen whooshing past me saying “Cool I caught something don’t worry I got this k-thx-bye!”

I had just enough time to go, “…wut…?” before all hell broke loose. My laptop started telling me I couldn’t look at the email I was already looking at because the file was missing or I wasn’t authorized.

“…WUT…?”

Then it rather curtly told me it had to restart itself to finish an update and three minutes later – with no option for me to say “hang on just one darned minute…!” – it did so.

Thus sealing its own fate. Windows was thoroughly confused. It couldn’t find anything. It viewed the bank’s own internal domains as “untrusted sites.”

It was a hot mess.

I spent, kid you not, almost nine hours altogether between the two days on the phone with the help desk (and we don’t want to discuss how many hours tinkering with it on my own); I had a few moments where I wanted to just start banging the receiver on the desk while shrieking incoherently.

I mean, I know how it is: You have a checklist of fast and easy things that fix a good 85-90% of the problems people call in to the help desk. They’re fast and easy so you want to get them out of the way first – nobody wants to spend an hour on the phone with someone, only to have it end up being that their keyboard cord had wriggled itself out of the USB port.

The old “ha ha, I guess it wasn’t actually plugged in, ha ha” gag loses its shine pretty fast.

But at the same time, when you’ve been on the phone with five different people over two days time, when the fourth and fifth ones want to start alllllllllllll the way back at Step One, well, you’re kind of wanting to scream, “WILL you please look at the notes from the last {three, four} calls?! We already TRIED that. Like, EIGHT TIMES today alone!”

“I understand your frustration, ma’am, but if you would please just bear with me and try rebooting real quick…”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!” {throws laptop out nearest window}

Eventually, it occurred to me that in addition to “corrupt user profile,” the symptoms also sounded a bit like a file – or, folder? – being locked.

About three minutes later, I was logging into all the systems just fine: Somewhere in All That, something had flipped a bunch of internal folders to read only.

I know. I’m still a bit bemused by this. I cannot fathom why anything – even a Windows update which might conceivably want to put a lock or two on specific files – would end up making an entire folder read-only.

It defies all logic.

But that’s what it was.

Welcome to Tech, y’all. This is our glamorous life. Hour upon hour of frustrating, hair-rending, teeth-gnashing misery, followed by inexplicable solutions that magically work, a few high-fives amongst ourselves and being able to feel mighty clever for a few minutes…until the next insane, improbable, should not even BE a thing thing ambles out of the woodwork and stands there grinning at you. Go ahead. Figure out what I AM, and how to make me into a pretty little butterfly instead…

Fifteen hours to find…fifteen minutes to fix. Woooooo, who DOESN’T love computers, am I right?!?!