Healer, Musician, Bookmaker, Poet

We’re all in a bit of a rut, I feel.  It was so nice to get back together and start singing in September but it’s clear we’re not really going anywhere yet.  We’re all doing our same old stuff, musically and otherwise, and I’m feeling a tad put out again over having no time.  Chris is out of sorts over the disjointed recording process, and I’m finding it hard to care about any of it except the prospect of making extra money now and then.

Ah, well.  We’ll get it sorted out somehow.

I’m also cognizant that I have to save a chunk of money so the mortgage will get paid while I’m in England.  Dar will have to send it in that month, and I don’t want to leave him with the whole thing.  I have no idea how I will save that much money in the next two months.  When we were talking about scheduling rehearsals for January, and Carol was pushing for at least two days a week and I was insisting I need more time for the house (and for myself), she said, “But we’ll be making $xxx at these gigs; will that make you feel like you can take an extra day off of work?”  That answer would be no.

All these holidays are eating away at my hours, too.  No paid holidays for the part-time.

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I was cold when I got up this morning.  Putting the thermostat to 58 is a lot different from putting it at 60.  The pretty alarm on my phone confused me; I could hardly open my eyes, and my arms were half asleep from lying wrong.

In spite of that chilliness, we’re putting in my new, lower-reaching thermostat this weekend.  We talked about putting it just outside the parlor instead of the living room, where it might read a little warmer (“warm” being a relative term here).  But if it reads down to 45 it doesn’t really matter.  I certainly don’t want the living room to be that cold anyway.  Maybe I can get K. to put the two radiators back in place, too, so they won’t be in the way any more.

And it’s supposed to be bitterly cold tonight, in the single digits.  Would love to curl up with a Netflix and be cozy, but I have rehearsal.  (Insert bleat here.)

Later

Lunch time.  It’s inventory season at my job, and I’ve been putting 3×5 cards on things in the warehouse area and counting objects.  I have to suffer the constant blaring of pop radio back there.  It’s used to test certain devices the company makes, plus some employees have these devices on their desks so they can listen in their offices.  I sneak the master volume down sometimes, but it’s annoying.  The constant barrage of ads for weight loss drugs (“Call in the NEXT FIVE MINUTES for your free trial!”) and wrinkle treatments offends me.  We’ve gone so wrong.

Maybe I can contrive to unplug the speaker.

Other than all that, just going through the day finding ways to stay interested in the tasks.  I privately call myself Count Chocula, and do that Ah-ah-ah vampire laugh under my breath.  It helps.

‘Twas the day after Christmas, and my Mouse collection was increased by five.

Dar got me a cute one made of fleecy blanket material, brightly colored.  It has a clip on the top so I can hang it from something.  I clipped it to my sweater collar and wore it all day.

Pearl’s boytoy friend got me a little Victorian mouse made of felt, complete with bonnet and dried flower arrangement.  Pearl herself found salt and pepper shakers in mouse motif.

Finally, I have located an ingress for the resident Wall Mouse.  I went to scatter some birdseed from the remains of a large bag I’d been storing in the back bedroom off the parlor, and found one of the bottom corners had been chewed open.  Success!  Now I can’t find my Havahart trap anywhere… the one that was left after the other one disappeared from the attic.  I might as well procure another one anyway.  There’s about a 3/8” gap under the baseboard molding by the closet which seems the only way the critter could be getting in.  Dar said they can flatten their little bones enough to get through such a small space.  I’d sure like to see that.  Sadly, my family returned the motion-activated camera they had borrowed from a friend to try to get deer pictures in the woods.  I’ll have to have a winter plan in place to relocate Mouse when I finally catch it.  Take it to the next town and deposit in woods with a little bedding and some seeds.  Kind of a retirement package.

Christmas was Fun.  Dar showed up by 9am and we were able to hang out here for a couple of hours, the longest he’s spent in our house.  We had tea, and bananas and almond butter, and he filled the bird feeder for me.  And of course we laughed and laughed…  He just loves the house, loves it.  He walks around exclaiming.  I showed him the phone and I hope I noodged him closer to getting one.

He was only able to stay a little while next door before having to haul ass back to the Cape to get his carless brother and then go to New Hampshire to visit rich sister’s family.  Karl showed him all the new wiring in the basement and he got to pet chickens and drink fresh eggnog.  We made him open all his presents before he left, embarrassing him as much as possible.  I kissed his prickly beard.  He hated leaving.

Sigh.

Rose’s boss, Josh, joined us for dinner; also V&S who, as Hindus, don’t formally celebrate Christmas but had fun exchanging gifts with us.  S gave me a gift certificate for 40 hours of labor on the house!  We told him, come Spring, I’d cash it in for painting the outside.  There will be lots of woods-clearing on both properties as well.  Yee-ha.

There was iPhone talk galore; S has one, and he, Rose and I shared application suggestions.  I got a geocaching app that I can’t wait to try.  The weather has to be a little better than today, but there is a cache very nearby I want to investigate.  If you’ve never heard of this activity, go to www.geocaching.com to read about it.  It’s a kind of treasure hunting hobby, where people all over the world hide little things in little containers and post the latitude/longitude on a website for anyone to find with a gps device.  You find a cache, you take what’s inside, and you leave something in return.  There are also “Travel Bugs,” little objects that request to be moved around from place to place, so if you’re able to do that, you help them on their way.  Each cache has a logbook that lists what was in it and when it was found.  There are tens of thousands of these things out there!  How have I never heard of this before?

I’m going to have to come up with a signature Sculpey mouse or something.  Hee.

I’m just alarmingly modern right now, in my vintage house with the pellet heat and the old, old pipes and the wavy window panes and the Starbucks Via.

Dinner was outstanding, and I must have eaten as much dessert as I did dinner.  Back on track now.  Sort of.

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Rain today; lots of it predicted.  I am so grateful it isn’t snow.  We did have significant melting from the last dump, though it’s still pretty outside.  Laundry is the first order of the day.  After that, groceries, a bank deposit, and I owe Plow Guy for the last snowfall.  Then, go over and watch Monsters, Inc., with Rose, and pet cats.

How come, when I put my blog name into WordPress and search for it, nothing comes up? How do I make myself visible?

Now I can get this document to my iPhone, but had a hard time pasting it into the right boxes on WordPress.  Learning curve continues.

Meanwhile, the stove is in!  The stove is in!  It took all weekend, owing to wrong sized pipes and falling darkness and weather.  Well, not weather.  Karl went up on the snowy roof in the rain anyway.  But he didn’t fall off, and that was excellent.  I made him wear my Job-Lot brand Yak Trax on his boots for extra traction.  He must have stuffed that flexy aluminum chimney liner up the chimney half a dozen times before it was done, adding or subtracting lengths of stove pipe until it poked out the top.  But everything’s snug, the stove has been running since early yesterday evening, and the furnace did not come on last night even though I have not gotten plastic on the windows yet, nor have we blocked off the upstairs.  The LR was 60 this morning, but kept at around 64 when the stove was cranking, even though it’s two rooms away.  The parlor eventually got up to the requested 70 degrees, which is warmer than this house has been since summer!

The stove is a miracle, albeit a loud one.

I decided that when we block the upstairs off for winter and get the circulating door fans in place, I’m going to set up my sleeping arrangement in the living room rather than the little sitting room.  It’s farther from the big fat hum and roar of the stove.  I like a little white noise when I sleep, but damn!  I’d get deaf if I sat here all day.

Still, I’m thrilled.  I got up this morning and my bedroom wasn’t even cold.  I never heard the radiator pipes bang, which wakes me up in the night at least twice.  It was below freezing outside by a bit, too.  Once the open part of the flue is blocked off, and the windows are plasticked (it’s a word), it’ll be tighter in here.

The stove is automatic; it lights electrically, and monitors its output, goes on standby when I turn the temp down, and comes back up when the room cools off.

I don’t want to go to work.

Tonight:  Return wrong stove pipes to Home Depot; grocery shop; finish the Christmas shopping.  Wrap presents.

Like it or not, I guess I have to get ready to leave.  A hint of blue light is emerging in the sky.

After just a week of iPhone, my laptop feels really expansive.

It’s still harder to blog on the phone, though I’m getting better at the little keyboard.  But I type probably close to 90 wpm, and verbose as I am, I’ll never be able to express everything in miniature.  Perhaps I could reserve the iPhone for haiku entries.

It’s been a very busy week; overloaded, really.  I had a rehearsal and a recording session at the band’s house, one on the weekend and one after work; I sanded and re-coated the dining room floor for the last time (still not a professional job, but it will simply have to do at this point), ran to the gas station multiple times for a few gallons of diesel to hold me until the oil tank could be filled (yes, ran out of heat last week), and still went to work as usual.

I also had our dear neighbor come over and look at my skipping furnace a couple of days ago.  It was skipping off and on every few seconds by that morning and I thought it couldn’t wait any longer.  He really didn’t do anything other than take the covers off of a couple of parts to look at what was going on inside, and drained some more water out of the little floaty tank thing.  Then we stood there for over half an hour waiting for it to skip so he could diagnose, and it wouldn’t.  And it hasn’t skipped since.

We’re meeting tomorrow to walk the bottom of the property where it abuts his, and to talk about my selling him a bit more space to augment their tiny lot.  Meanwhile, today I’m putting the final touches on the stove platform, and when K. gets back from a firearms show, we’ll put the stovepipe in the chimney.  It’s possible we’ll get the actual stove installed today, too.  If not, it’ll go in tomorrow, so in any case I’ll have pellet heat this weekend.  I’m thrilled.

We’ve devised a plan to block off the upstairs, by affixing something thick and insulating (a blanket plus plastic, maybe) in the middle of the downstairs hallway and blocking off the frontmost living room doorway.  Then I’d move my sleeping quarters into the little sitting room where I am now (a nook!  A sleeping nook) and live downstairs for the winter.  The stove will easily heat this amount of area, and gradually I can make the back utility room into a dining room, and have the old dining room (the first room one comes into, the one with the stove) as a parlor.  I’d still have access to the living room where much of my stuff is, and be able to watch my Netflix on the tv.  A perfect, wintry little life, all needs met, no struggle to make the heat stretch.  The bathroom upstairs has no water in it anyway, so there’s no danger of frozen pipes up there.  I can pretty much turn the furnace off, and maybe this tank of oil will last the winter.

I just need to come up with a twin mattress, I think, or a double.  The queen is a bit large for this room, not to mention difficult to wrestle down the stairs.

I must go bathe the sparkly stuff off me (from last night’s office Christmas party – more on that later; it was such fun) and get next door to touch up the platform so it will dry by the time we need to move it.  Later I will have time again to sit and breathe.

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So much for that.  The chimney liner wasn’t long enough, and therein ensued a search for stove pipe.  The proper size was not to be found.  It got dark.  We came up with a plan B for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the party: great fun.  These folks have been having the office Christmas party for 12 years or more, and Karl said this one was the best.  Not because of the food; sometimes it’s been better.  But I brought my red boa scarf, and it was the perfect prop for even the most shy and retiring among us.  Everyone danced, and everyone passed the scarf around to dance with.  My sister was indefatigable.  Having lost 35 lbs., she felt beautiful in her spaghetti-strap dress, with her shoulder and back tattoos of hummingbirds and morning glories and butterflies.  Her hair was big and curly.  We laughed and laughed.  I lost a pretty hair comb, and someone found it later.

I hardly EVER find myself in dancing situations, and used to be quite self-conscious about it.  Not so much any more, but it was still very novel.  I liked that there was a room full of people sharing in sacred movement.  Because that’s what it is, I thought; communities need to dance together.  It gets stuff out, it brings stuff in.  I was told I had to bring the “lucky scarf” every year.

That’s the short version, I guess; I was going to write more about it but it’s late now, and I’m tired and my fingers are swollen and itchy.  The eczema’s bad these days.  Time to go home, brush my teeth, and go to bed.  Tomorrow first thing I have to  call around for stove pipe.

Silkie eggs.  Three; they’re about half the size of a commercial chicken egg.  Turkey sausage.  Eh; tastes like turkey, not spicy enough, but a fraction of the fat of regular sausage.  A slice of reduced fat swiss and some dill thrown into the eggs, a cup of Cold Stop tea, and you’ve got yourself a breakfast just like mine.

Not bad, really.  I’ll be hungry by break time.

I will not be having:  the donuts and muffins that appear every Friday morning at work.

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The tax assessor came through yesterday and was so agog at the house that it was hard to put a negative slant on things.  He just loved the place, as everyone does.  It was interesting to look at the appraisal, which the original mortgage holder emailed to me.  They mentioned a few things that were inaccurate or downright wrong, but some of that could have been in order to get financing.  He did say he’ll be able to get the assessment down.  The cement slab that we’re planning to remove (that was under the plywood porch) is actually taxable at a worth of some $900 (ha!), but he said to call him when we take it away so he can check it off the report.  The new assessment doesn’t go into effect until next July, so we’ll have it off by then.  Of course, I wanted to put up a screen porch there, which will mean more tax again.  Maybe I’ll put it up after July and get a few months’ grace.  He’ll see it again next Fall and adjust again.

Sigh.  The taxes are pretty high already.

State Farm lady still hasn’t called back, since I sent her the letter from the roofing contractor saying that the cedar clapboards are fine.  I’ll leave her one more message today and ask if I should just be dealing with someone else.

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After the assessor left, I was just putting on my shoes to go over and help Karl run conduit in their basement, when the phone rang.  I picked it up and heard a voice and the echo of a voice, like the living room extension phone was also broadcasting.  This confused me enough to say “hello?” two or three times, whereupon the voice said, “It’s me, Chris!” as though I should know.  I said, “Why am I hearing –??” and there was a knock at the window.  It was Chris himself, calling from ten feet away, and I laughed.

He’d been visiting a friend in this town and decided to stop by and look at the progress on the floors.  We talked a little bit about the weekend, too, and how we could maximize our time.  We could have something like a class schedule, where we know we’ll be spending x amount of time on one thing, then moving to another.  There is much to do.

He asked if I had any spare moving blankets to help set up sound-separation areas for recording, and I borrowed two from Karl.  They’re clean and neatly folded in the barn – he’s quite specific about how they’re stored.  The rest of the barn looks like there was an earthquake, but the moving blankets for some reason are pristine.

Finally we said our goodbyes and I drove next door to help with pushing electrical cable through metal rings for a bit.  Linus was in evidence, popping into the crawl space to keep K. company.  By the time I was heading back to my car, Rose got home from work and we went out to the dark chicken coop to gather eggs.  Seven last night!  And six the night before!  The most ever.  Hence the three Silkie eggs this morning; I came home with a sixpack.  The other three are from the larger hens.

Life is good; and now I am a bit late to get into the tub and wash my hair.  Only a half day today, and then I have Christmas shopping to do and an iPhone to order.  That will be the fun part of my week.

It’s pouring.  Pouring, and so windy it sounds, at times, like a gale.

The spot-repair on the floor didn’t go so well.  At K’s suggestion I hand-sanded some drip spots and places where either the brush had left a ridge or a piece of grit had stuck into the urethane.  After cleaning up the residual dust I brushed a new, thin coat on those spots.

As they dried I could tell the edges would be visible – hadn’t K. said it doesn’t match up with itself, and that’s why we had to do the whole floor at once? – and they were duller than the rest of the floor, still.  Some of the places I thought I’d sanded enough were still ridgy.  Overall the floor looked pretty splotchy where light hit it.  I was discouraged, after so many hours of working on it and so many more days into cold weather without the stove in.

I called Karl, who was still in the midst of running electrical conduit next door, and in spite of his own state of overwhelm, managed to aver that it wasn’t such a big deal; we’d just take the half-sheet sander and sand the whole dining room evenly and put one more coat on it.  Oh, goody.  A fourth coat, after sanding on my knees for an hour or two.  Can I do it drunk with a fork in my eye?

I’d only attempted the dining room a.k.a. parlor, not the front hall, at least.  I think I’ll leave the front hall JUST as it is.  It may have a few ridges, but it’s shiny.

Well, what can I say?  I do many things well; urethaning floors isn’t one of them yet.

I got in a small, apathetic practice, with painful fingers.  I thought they were getting better yesterday, but even as I worked last night, a new split spontaneously opened up on my middle finger.  Possibly bandages today.  (sigh)

So I went to bed around ten, gearing up for at least 6-1/2 hours of sleep – my tired standard this week, apparently – and about two a.m. woke up a) having to pee, and b) with my left ear and sinuses completely blocked.  The cold is better, but there are these phases of congestion.  It was raining then, and I thought I could hear a couple of birds singing in what looked like bright moonlight in spite of the overcast.  But my ear wasn’t open so it may have been blood flowing (wow, I almost typed “flood blowing”) through my brain.  I went downstairs to do my business, walking around the perimeter of the dining room so as not to step on any blotches, and when I went back to bed it was a long time before I could fall asleep again.  Once when I began to drift off there was a long, shattering crash.  I thought it was thunder but hadn’t seen any lightning against my eyelids.  Then I wondered if another big section of plaster had come down in the front bedroom.  When I arose at 5:00 I checked, but there was no evidence.  Nothing else looks out of place down here.  Maybe something blew over outside, or maybe indeed it was thunder.

Anyway it is December third and we are having a load of rain.  Despite the sloppiness outside and the inevitable water in the basement, I am glad it is liquid water and not snow.

Once back asleep I dreamt in several scenarios of people trying to kill me.  This seemed to go on forever.  In another scene, the violinist from the subway in New York with whom I had a brief affair (circa 1986) had somehow become crippled and outfitted a bus he could drive.  I didn’t see him, only was looking into the front of the bus, at his folded wheelchair, at the driver’s seat.  Writing this, I wonder if this is how I feel about my musician self.  I am largely unprepared for this big recording weekend coming up, and even semi-cancelled Monday in favor of working the day job.  I’m still trying to make up hours lost from the holidays and touring.  My paychecks have been just over half of what they usually are.  It’s got me worried.  The 0b@ma bucks are here, some of them still left after paying off things, but they’re not supposed to be part of my regular income.  I’ll play it by ear, as they say.  There is a lot of work to do right now and I’m enjoying being there.

In another dream I found a large stash of clothes I forgot I had.  This was delightful, but I pulled out a couple of pairs of great corduroys which, to my dismay, no longer fit.  Also my room seemed to be very unprivate.

This one is obvious.  The Christmas party is in 8 days and have I lost pound one to fit nicely into my new, red corduroy pants?  No.  I have been lame about that.  It’s not much, it’s four pounds, maybe five.  Anyone can lose five pounds.  But I’ve been full of excuses.  So I decided to dial back the carbs somewhat.  Last year when I was being advised to avoid gluten among other things, I inadvertently lost a bunch of weight.  I’ve never been an advocate of the extreme low-carb regimen, certainly not as a longterm fix, but in the short term maybe there’s something to it.  I know folks for whom it’s worked.  Maybe I can relax my tedious opinions for a bit.  I like relaxing my tedious opinions.  It’s nice for me and those around me.

Good god (Pan; I think I’ll choose Pan this time) – I must leave in half an hour and haven’t bathed, done dishes, or made lunch.  I’d much rather sit here and write the morning long.  More later, including about tonight’s impending visit by the tax assessor.  Funny how I can take the exact same house and say, “Oh, insurance inspector lady, look what a wonderful and sound house!  Insure me!” and then say, “Oh, tax assessor guy, look what a rundown and sad place!  Lower my taxes!”

My mantra for the day.  After a few nights at the family’s house, I am missing the quiet emptiness of my own.  Can vast space be cozy?  It is, and I’ll return to it tonight.  To think that, when I first moved in there, it was hard to sleep because it felt so strange.

I have not been able to get to bed at my usual time because of various activities and noise in the house.  One night, Pearl and her boyfriend laughing and giggling and movie-watching just under my room; last night, Karl banging in the cellar, putting up wiring conduits until nearly 11:00.  And I’ve slept fitfully, waking often to look at the clock with a flashlight, not wanting that loud alarm to go off an hour and a half before anyone else gets up.

I almost ordered the iPh0ne last night, online.  It was a long process, and Rose and I spent much of it trying to find an additional case with clip that would suit her.  After all that, when I discovered how much personal info they’d need to switch my same phone number over, I decided to go to the AT and T store and do it in person rather than type in everything about my identity and send it into the ether.  All of that seemed like wasted time.  This cold is still gripping me, too, so it was not the most comfortable evening.  Yet — it all reminds me of how much I love my health, my home, having control over my environment and schedule.  And loving that I will return to these things shortly.  One of these days I’ll catch up on sleep, too.

In my scattered sleep I kept dreaming about the iPh0ne.  I guess there are worse things to dream about, but for Pete’s sake.  What’s this new obsession replacing?  🙂

When C@sio watches first came out, I used to dream I had a watch that would play video games and do magical things.  Little did I know…

Okay, to work then.  I have fun things to build.