It Comes From Old Indian Mummies

Toward the end of his life, my pop spent as much time as he could away from the home, and specifically time away from my mom. He owned a firewood business, and the trips away were firewood gathering jaunts, out to the farmland where he could chat up farmers and get dibs on rows of their old apple and almond trees destined to be felled and replaced. Apple and almond are nice, hot-burning hardwoods.

Yeah. Maybe he did that. But the top level goal was more the *away* of it than the *firewood* of it. True: if he kept the firewood coming in, he could keep the business going, the business that consisted of a run-down RV next to a wood pile on a dead spur of the Southern Pacific. That's where he spent his days during the weeks when he wasn't in his car talking to farmers. All of this made him happy. 

Pop liked to tell stories, a trait that he passed down to most of us, unfortunately for him, since he's now the butt of a "story". I remember him telling me about Valley Fever which he told me, in a conspiratorial tone, came from "old Indian Mummies". Even then, in the 1980s, I would have been telling him "It's Native American", and rolling my eyes into the back of my head because it was so preposterous.

Fast forwarding into the twilight days, the old man would go on his firewood adventures, often staying at a particular motel in Mo-town. Healthwise, he was in no shape for these trips. He was on a lot of blood thinners and stumbled around in the night (probably due to a mix of peripheral neuropathy and adult beverages) and he often returned to us with a story about some accident that had happened in his room and how many hand towels it had taken to sop up the blood and how embarrassed he was and how he might have to find a different motel next time. Not that he'd be more careful or that he'd take my mom with him or do anything different -- he'd just hide out in a different motel.

Which brings me to near the very end. Pop went to the valley on one of his trips. He was not expected to be back for days but came home, instead, by late afternoon. This is a man with peripheral neuropathy, congestive heart failure, abdominal hernias, major deafness, major stubbornness, has had a couple of heart attacks. He goes to the valley and gets out of the car. It's over 100 degrees. The heat washes over him. He leans against the car to brace himself (he tells me later) and a guy comes over to him and says "Hey Mister. Are you o.k.?" Pop realizes he's in bad shape so he gets back in the car and drives home. He tells me this story and says:

"I think I have Valley Fever."

Thought of him today as I read that Valley Fever is on the rise due to global warming. Is it like where the permafrost is thawing and suddenly you have a lot more wooly mammoths and ice persons floating to the surface?

Didn't think so. Here's the article.

Release the Kraken

If by Kraken you mean ladybugs. 

I have a spider mite, scale and aphid infestation in the aku room. Trying to see what ladybugs can do to help. Mine were born in Brooklyn. So far they aren't even interested in the aphids. 

Mrguy says they need to "settle in".

Updates as they occur...

Banana Bread

Last Friday someone at work posted a meme about brown bananas.

Like many other people in the world who saw the meme over the last year, I felt impugned and made banana bread immediately. Did I mention that my chest freezer REEKS of frozen bananas? 

The resulting banana bread was one of the most beautiful of my life. I told mrguy to please let it cool and let me take a photo before diving in.

He did, but then forgot to cover the pan, which should not be a problem in a right and just world. However worst-cat-in-the-world-boy-kitten quickly located the bread and ate the best part of it (the top). It did not agree with him. He got violently ill and pooped everywhere at 4am. I thought I'd cleaned it up. Got back in bed, rolled over and put my hand in a puddle of cat glop on the duvet. So gross. I had to wash the rug, all of the linen, myself and the cat. 

But the banana bread was gorgeous, right?

Cat Grass Farming

Boy kitten really likes his grass. I used to think that having grass would help substitute his obsession for eating my pillow cases. Turns out he has room (and passion!) for both in his diet.

Cat grass is a racket. You can buy a pot for $3.99 from the nice pet store people down the street. Or you can make it yourself, which I decided to do recently. I bought a thirteen dollar bag of Non-GMO wheat, grown in Kansas. When I went to put it away in the cupboard I noticed an old three dollar bag of wheat that I had already open, and that's what I used instead. 

At the same time, I'm trying to re-use plastic containers that come our way. So I stabbed some holes in the plastic egg cartons that come from a person giving away eggs on my Buy Nothing group and went to work making cat grass. Here are my grass starts.

I reuse the original cat grass pots, add more dirt, place the starts in the pot, add little more dirt. Water. Wait.

Voila! Boy kitten has been working on this one a bit and finds it to his liking.

It's little things like this that make me happy.

Summer's End

I really wanted to call this one Summer's Eve, because that's the name of an old school feminine hygiene product. My friends, and one in particular, would approve.

Sometimes she calls me her best friend. And I used to confidently refer to her as mine. But right now she wants some space. We had a year of Pandemic Monday phone calls, initiated by me. I never bailed. I didn't really consider whether I wanted to talk, because for the first time in forever I had her attention. We talked about every single thing on the face of the planet. And now that we're not stuck in the house any more, she has time for everybody else. Right after the trust had been rebuilt and my heart opened she indicated that she'd like to let me know when she wanted to talk again. The longer it goes, the more I understand what I had previously misunderstood. I have to say that it feels cruddy. But whatever. It isn't like we haven't done this before.

In the meantime the summer is ending and the days have been beautiful. I harvested tomatoes and then cut down my tomato plants yesterday. Then I cleaned up a bit in the aku room. The tomatoes were not plentiful but were delicious. I still find it fairly miraculous that I kept the seeds stuck to a paper towel for a year and then mistakenly flicked them onto some dirt and made 13 tomato plants. Gave some to friends. Grew the others myself because I felt guilty that they'd lived. And the other day I was able to eat a sun-warmed tomato while feeding the wee beastie.

It could be so much worse.

Adventures in Powdercoating, Part 2

The tables and chair came out looking great and I am so happy.

First, I heard that the tables were done and I could come pick up and then choose the color for my chair.  So I did that (I was working from home).

Witness the beauty of the table. It was rusty and sad before, and it was free because my sister left it behind when she moved to the Midwest. Now it is beautiful.

Then I had to pick out a color for the chair. What I really wanted was a blue-violet. But my choices were limited. They'd just painted a firetruck, so there was red. I knew there was yellow because they were working on coating some bollards for the roads agencies. There was teal (barf) and a translucent blue that I was too chicken to take, and then there was this blue. A very 1975 elementary school blue. I like it.

They told me that I could pick it up in a few hours and it looks effing amazing. It is smooth and bright and beautiful. I still have to make a new seat for it, but I put it right back out onto the porch and put my Buy Nothing Project giveaways on it. Makes me so happy.

Here are a few photos of the progress and the result:

What can I paint next? This level of transformation is addictive!