Healer, Musician, Bookmaker, Poet

There is nothing more to be done.  My bags are packed.  I’ve gone over stove, mail, plant and bank instructions with Rose.  I gave her the rest of the veggies I had in the fridge, and almost managed to finish the bottle of wine I’d opened over the weekend.  The taxes got mailed, likewise the CD of our budding EP to Dar.  A little warm snow came down after dark, leaving the front path and the driveway sloppy.

I’ll wash my hair in the morning, fill the suet feeder.  Have one last chat with Dar.  He wouldn’t video chat with me tonight; said it would make him too sad.  “I’ll see your little mousie face and it’ll break my little mousie heart.”  The taxi comes to my bandmates’ house at 1:00pm.  I’ll get there by noon.  We’ll pray that the weather on both ends is good enough to give us passage; they’re expecting a storm in Birdsedge.  I’m bringing my boots.

That’s it, then.  I’ll be posting from my phone until the end of March.  See you over the ocean!

I’m thrilled.  Not only did I get internet in the house for the first time, but after a few hours of internet research, and a break to help Karl remove large trash items from my basement, I managed to upgrade my old Palm software and that for the folding keyboard.  I’ll be able to take these to England instead of my computer, and actually type on something.  My fingers, flying over the keyboard in a blur.  What a good feeling after tippy-tapping my thumbs on the iPhone keypad for a few months.

Having said that, I must break again for some errands.  Back later.

…..aaaaand, I’m back.  Scored a sweater and some pants for $1.50 each, and some nice black velvet gig pants for $3.00.  I am fabulous.

A Temporary Replacement is being trained tomorrow at work.  It’ll be nice to have help.

I put myself on Prednisone for five pre-England days starting today, for my hands.  I have stigmata — a patch on the back and on the palm of my right hand, among the other places.  Yesterday at rehearsal I scratched a finger til it cut.  Oops.  It was a tiny abrasion, and I try not to do that, but damn.  Sometimes it’s either scratch or scream.  I wonder if eczema is ever a symptom of menopause!  Guess what, I just discovered this keyboard won’t type a question mark!  Nothing comes out when I do that.  I wonder why!!

,,,\\\\\\=-0+_)==\\¿

Okay, I can make a Spanish one¿  Sheesh.  Time for bed.

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Next day, typing on computer????? with ?? question marks.  But now I have no questions.

I met my new best girlfriend today!  Snow is a woman Rose and Karl met through the Historical Society; she moved here from California the same time I bought my house last year.  We’re almost exactly the same age and have most everything in common, it seems.  She’s going to be my fill-in at work while I’m gone, as she has electronics experience.  She also makes fine linens and has other important and admirable skills.  Rose said she felt an instant kinship with Snow, and I knew why in about ten minutes.

I’m calling her Snow because a) she is enthralled with our snow here, having not seen much of it out West, and b) because she drives a Scion like mine, only it’s white.  We spent the day working hard and laughing a lot and having a lovely time.

Work has gotten lively.

And I have to wash my hair.  I would much rather play with my toys.

I wasn’t expecting today’s snowstorm; we got five or six inches.  It’s pretty.  I’m thinking it’s the last one I may see this winter, being gone for so long.  That makes me happy.

Post-script:  OH, I almost forgot!  We discovered in coversation that SNOW was the other person who bid on the house, thereby costing my family an additional $17,000.  She was mortified over it.  I told her she could work it off, come Spring.  🙂

Number eleven showed up this morning.  I don’t think he’d been in the trap more than a few minutes, because he was still rattling around when I checked them.  He’s now in the woods behind my work building, along with several others.  I wonder if they find each other.

Karl and I (and most of the office) took a snow day yesterday.  We ended up getting only six inches or so of the 12-18 predicted, but we got a lot done anyway.  Karl and Rose jacked up the barn where it was sagging in back.  I had two practice sessions, one for bass and one for guitar, and kept the ell warm.  What a pleasure to be actually warm in there.

I have relented on the internet issue at home.  I’m signing up for the cheapest high-speed internet service available.  It’ll still be faster than the DSL I used to have.  Once again I can instant-watch on Netflix — a joy I’ve missed! — and no more having to go somewhere else for every little thing.  The phone is great, but it can’t do everything, and one can’t type normally on it.  It’s clear that the rooftop internet is going to take a while longer, and as I thought about this, the months of being only semi-connected stretching ahead, it began to make sense to just get it in.  Dar was thrilled.  (He’s still not over my getting rid of the land line.)

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In other news, last week Pearl was served lawsuits by three bozos who were on a bus that she grazed last year.  No damage to either vehicle and the cop did not ticket her.  But suddenly, all this time later, these three decide to sue her for their terrible injuries.  The insurance company said they’d handle it on their end, and we thought they were going to rise up and fight for right.  But they ended up paying every one of them off.  So much for Camelot.

Meanwhile, since it’s so easy, Dar and I have decided to sue each other for perceived injuries.  I’m suing him for neglect, since he’s always driving away, and he’s suing me for stalking.  When we get our money we’ll give it all to Pearl.

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I have been calling to the birds with an application on my phone.  The chickadees and the titmice call back.  A friend suggested I play the screech owl call, because the little birds will get all chattery wanting to mob it.  Anyway I love having a way to converse with them.  “A standard, though controversial, practice among birders,” he said.

Work is BUSY.  Karl is developing some new four-channel sound cards, and I’ve been helping him build them, programming chips and soldering tiny things to tinier metal pads.  Interspersed with this is logging packages, retesting and stocking returns, shipping other items out, and finishing a build of 27 mic/speaker units that we began a couple of months ago before B’s first surgery.  Somehow it all gets done.  Most days involve a series of interruptions.  Most tasks are fun.

Lunch is over and the work continues.

(Last) Wednesday again already.

Still frigid in Connecticut.  I think last week’s overnight low was around 6.  Karl loaned me his “Kill-a-Watt” device that checks electricity usage, just in time for this cold snap where I’m burning the stove higher than ever.  We’d calculated I didn’t need to get more pellets before England.  At this rate they’ll be hard pressed to stretch what I have til I get back.  The house can stay coldish, but some of the plants would die back if it’s below 60.  The Aralia is already about half gone from the summer; the Blanche Dubois of my collection, she is fragile and does not like the cold.  She will, of course, have to rely on the kindness of strangers for a few weeks.

After relocating mouse #8, I have had no catches for the last two nights.  Everybody on Facebook keeps asking me if I don’t think it’s the same mouse coming back, each inquisitor unaware that everyone else has already asked me that in some other post.  I take most of the meeses to where I work, about 16 miles away.  The other ones are still far enough that I think it’s highly unlikely they’ll travel all the way back.

The new capture and release system is working nicely.  I hope I’m not out of mice by now; I’ve only gotten to use it twice.  I got a little plastic carrier with a vented top and a handle at a local pet store.  There is shredded brown-paper bedding and kibble cubes, and a dish of water.  This is in case I catch them at night and don’t want to go out in the arctic temperatures right away.  They can hunker down overnight and have basic needs met.  Every so often they can emerge from the bedding to see if an escape route has opened up.  Karl was quite amused by all this; “You bought that?” was his response.  Yes, I bought these things for my wild mice so they wouldn’t have to spend eight or ten hours in a Havahart trap.  “I’m going for quality of capture,” I explained.  “Plus, this way I get to see them, and I can tip the whole thing out on release and don’t have to come back later to pick up traps.”  Of this he approved.  Rose said I was running a mouse hotel.  “You give them a bed for the night, and then escort them to the town limits.”

Work is nice and busy, though dealing with my hands (and, I confess, getting distracted by the ready usefulness of my phone) reduces productivity somewhat.  I’m finishing a build of speakers that Belinda started a few months ago.  There are mistakes in the build – wrong connectors, wrong wiring, a multiplicity of different volume knobs when they all should be uniform – and much time has been spent correcting things.  Some builds are straightforward; this one wasn’t.  I should finish today, though, and then I might be able to move on to another large, half-finished build that got interrupted by a few crises.  After that one, my agenda will be fairly clear.  There is another build coming up shortly, too, mics with metal boxes, a whole lot of them.  There is a through-hole board to be built – my favorite part.  Belinda was going to come back this week, but called Monday and said she has to go in for yet another surgery on her shoulder.  I guess things aren’t going as well as she hoped.  That is such a painful healing process, the shoulder.  Rose went through it last year and it was just about the hardest physical thing she’d ever endured.

Last summer Karl and Rose met a woman who recently moved here from California.  She owns one of the historic houses in town, and has experience with all sorts of things including restoration, wiring, and electronics.  He’s got the go-ahead to hire her temporarily while I’m gone.  She’ll come in in a couple of weeks and I’ll train her – as best I can, as I don’t know everything by any means – and I’m hoping she knows her stuff.  Poor Belinda.  She’s been there 10 years, and I know she fears doing things wrong and is very careful, but we’ve found a lot of kind of sloppy work she left behind, and many things out of place.  Stuff we haven’t been able to find for a long time is hoarded in her desk.  She had five pairs of scissors.  Karl and I have been sharing a coveted pair of long tweezers for microscope work for the last eight months, and it turns out B. had the other two pairs in her desk.  It’s a little aggravating.

Well, enough of that; it’s time to get ready to go to that very place.  I am so grateful for my job.

The Following Saturday

Busy weekend as usual. I’ve been on a mission to find a couple of sweaters that can be washed and dried by machine.  That’s how I’ll have to do laundry overseas.  No time to “lay flat to dry.”  More exciting sweater news as it breaks.
I am determined to finish my tax preparations in record time, and to take some actual time OFF tomorrow from running around.

The day will begin with breakfast at the new little eatery that just opened up down the street.  We support local businesses!

Melancholy continues.

Sunday Night

I relocated Mouse #10 this morning.  Feisty critter – ricocheted all over the cage.  I took him to a local (not too local) woods where I’ve released two others, and noted many sets of tiny tracks in the snow.

Breakfast was quite serviceable, and the new place is so nicely appointed.  It used to be a dive, maybe 15 years ago, and the old lady who ran it eventually died.  It remained empty until some local folks bought it up and renovated it.  They’ve only been open two weeks.  It was packed!!

Karl told me Pearl has been served with a lawsuit pertaining to a car accident she had last year.  It wasn’t a big accident, and there wasn’t even any damage.  She sidled into a bus or something on a turn.  Everyone was fine, and the police came and looked at it and let everybody go home.  Now, a year later, somebody wants to claim whiplash.  Something like that happened to me once about 20 years ago.  I felt naïve and unable to stand up for myself.  It took me a long time to get kickass about anything.  Pearl has massive anxiety issues, and will throw up at the first sign of trouble, but she does also have a lot of guts.  Only Rose was there when the papers were served, so as of this morning P. didn’t know about it yet.  Karl wanted to hire someone who breaks people’s legs for a living, but said he no longer knew any of them.

I know you’re waiting for the sweater news, so I can tell you I scored SEVEN machine-washable-and-dryable sweaters for $34 at a place called Savers.  It’s like an upscale Goodwill.  Rose has been touting this place for months and I finally went.  What finds!  I’m so excited about my sweaters.  They’re in various colors and styles, and they’re all fab.  They will comfort me when I am far from home.

I did some tax work, cleaned four mouse traps and a vaporizer, made lentil soup and did some vacuuming, and now must practice in a flash so I can wash my hair in a flash and get to bed.  It is horribly cold.  There is no end in sight yet to the cold snap.  I hate it.  I can’t wait to see Spring at my house.