I got the first couple of lines and part of the last line, but my math knowledge wasn’t good enough to understand the whole thing so I had to get it translated.
In other news. . . I got yet another dead mouse today. But it was dead, and not feebly struggling. I wish I knew where these damn things were coming from and why. At this rate, I’ll go through a lot of mousetraps and latex gloves, ’cause I’m not going to re-use those traps, nosirree bob.
If throwing fits would make changes, I’d throw one, and then I’d be healthy and it would be rainy and cool again.
I’ve had to cut back to my former exercise schedule—every other day—because of the extremely unhappy post-bumble tendons holding my kneecap to my quadriceps. Or vice versa. Since the recumbent bicycle puts more stress on the tendons than walking, I’ve just been doing a walk in the park, staying on the flatter ground, every other day or two, depending on what the knee will tolerate. Ice and heat, ice and heat, I swear that’s all I do anymore.
This means I’m walking over the same area twice so’s I don’t get into steeper ground. Which is, frankly, annoying. Even the dog gives me geez-are-we-gonna-do-this-again looks.
As if that weren’t enough, it’s been in the high 70s or higher the last week or so, so the humidity’s been quite high (stop laughing, Northwood, I know it’s not as bad as it is there). Therefore, my lungs function as if they were breathing in pea soup. Put that and the knees together, and it means I’m going about the same distance or less half as often and breathing six times as hard.
This is so unfair.
Plus, after Ye Former Rodent expired behind my walls, yet another little beast showed up, leaving tracks (read: mouse crap) all over my kitchen counter. Not even a day after I finished cleaning out the kitchen from the last one.
So I got mad. I went to the store. I bought mouse traps. I baited two of them and left them on the counter. Mice are said to love peanut butter.
After I went to bed, I heard the trap pop. Yay! I thought. Got ‘im! I heard a bit of rattling after that, but put it down to the well-known phenom of death twitches. Yeah, I know, gives me the willies, too.
Next morning, I got up, staggered out to the kitchen and prepared to dump the mouse-cum-trap into the trash.
But it wasn’t on the counter. What the heck? I thought. I looked around. No mouse. I turned around and looked on the floor.
There it was. Clear across the kitchen floor. I went over to look at it, and the mouse twitched.
I shrieked, the ewwwwwwww kind of shriek.
The trap had gotten the poor little thing by the nose, and the mouse had struggled itself and the trap off the counter and across the floor. He’d been in that awful pain for hours and hours. And no one was around to dispatch him but. . . me.
Gulp. C’mon, you guys know me; I rarely even kill spiders. This was worse than awful.
I picked the poor, feebly struggling thing—by the trap—and dropped it into a plastic bag. Then I picked up a hammer and smacked where its head ought to have been. It quit twitching. But it left me twitching. Ewwwwwww.
Actually, I’m assuming—and I will believe—that it’s a mouse, not a rat. But it is some sort of rodent. And it has been scrabbling around in my walls for a couple of months or more, utterly oblivious to every remedy I have tried.
Naturally, I have deployed anti-rodent dances, banged on the walls and ceiling with sticks, put out poisons, laid venomous curses on it, threatened it, and served it with formal eviction papers. None of which was in the least efficacious. Probably, I should have given it Lydia Pinkham’s Medicinal Compound, which is guaranteed to be efficacious in every case.
Last week, I noticed that the trash had become a bit whiffy, so I took it out. The, erm, delicate, erm, aroma lingered, but I figured that was scented air particles floating about and that it would dissipate soon. Next day it seemed fine and I forgot about it.
Then it got hot. Really hot. And suddenly, Eau de Whiffeé returned. With a vengeance. Think nuclear retaliation and total annihilation of the earth.
And my trash can was empty of all but a few paper bits.
Fortunately, when it’s really hot, a person can keep the windows open all the time. I did so, and began the Investigation to End All Investigations. Eventually, I narrowed down the source to one particular area. . . of wall. Yes, wall.
While I am, on the one hand, thankful that Rodent finally decided to vacate my premises, I am, on the other hand. . . um, shall we say displeased? that it did so by dying in my freakin’ wall.
One reminds Gentle Readers that a similar event occurred a few years back with Grandma’s cat, although with a much more positive outcome. One hopes that Poe’s cask of amontillado had a better fate as well. And one wishes despair and agony on Rodent and all his or her descendants unto the nth generation. Gaaaaaaah.
When heat hits here, all my anti-heat defenses percolate to the surface. Since it was 90-something yesterday and almost that today, that means
This works amazingly well. Usually, there are only a couple of hours in the eve., between about 6 and 8 p.m. Grandpa also taught me to take tepid, not hot or cool, showers when it’s hot because hot ones make you hotter, and cool ones cool off the surface of your skin and it takes your body a while to recoup and send heat out. In the meantime, you’re getting hotter on the inside.
So there! That’s my excitement for the last couple of days and probably through the weekend. And you must admire my dedication, since even so I worked out yesterday. At least, as much as my patellofemoral tendinitis would allow. I really hate this getting-old stuff. Every time you get close to a more-decent physical condition, some idiotic injury or something comes along and undoes it. A week sans exercise, and you’ve lost one he!! of a lot more conditioning than it’s fair to lose, and two he!!s of a lot more than you would have thirty years ago. Pah, feh and pfblthththttttt.
When I go walking Ye Dogge, I tend to be very careful. The trail we mostly use isn’t very difficult except in patches, but it is dirt and rocks, back in the woods, and has inherent potential for disaster. I watch where I’m going and what I step on. When it’s muddy, which is most of the time, I carefully skirt the obviously slippery bits and tread cautiously on the less-obvious spots.
So toppling over about half a mile from the car yesterday, back in the woods, was not only painful and angrifying, it was unexpected and undeserved. Bloody damned unstable rocks! And it was dry, so not even slippery underfoot.
Fortunately, the knee bone did not snap, nor did ligaments, tendons or muscles rip, tear or explode, although they did stretch a bit. So yesterday and today have been transformed from Do Fun Things Days to Sit on the Couch with Ice Packs Days. Makes me really angry. I will have lovely bruises in a day or two and my wrist and arm are a bit sore. Somebody came along behind me pretty quickly, so if I had Done Damage, at least I wouldn’t've lain there dying for long. 
The most interesting thing about this incident was Bluedog. Where she normally runs all over the place, checking back in with me every minute or so, she stayed very close to me all the way back to the car—no more than 15 feet away from me. You always hear about dogs doing things like that, but don’t expect to see it yourself. I didn’t get a chance to say, “Go get help, Lassie! Timmy’s fallen in the well!”, but I’m not complaining about that!
Spent last weekend with the Snaothii. I love hanging out with them. We looked for some patio furniture, but they didn’t find any to their taste; but mostly, we just hung out at the house. They tied me to the couch and forced me to watch the US/Ghana soccer game, but that was OK since KrisDi cooked macaroni and cheese with Beecher’s, and it was To Die For. We had yummy Indian food at The Best Indian Food Restaurant Ever. And then later, she and Snaotheus made chocolate-chip cookies. She makes them the size of a dinner plate. Grandma, who likes her cookies about the size of a quarter, would be quite shocked.
Speaking of, I scolded the poor dear yesterday. Though I had not been there for two whole days, it was my fault that she couldn’t find her lower teeth, and she just knew I’d thrown them in the trash when I swept everything off her desk and threw it away. Despite the fact that I have never, ever thrown anything away without checking to be sure it’s both unnecessary and at least five years old, she persists in believing otherwise. Of course, the teeth were wrapped up in another damn Kleenex and shoved into a corner on her dresser. . . right, one should note, where *she* left them. I try to be patient, but every now and then I just lose it. I get really tired of being accused of and yelled at for doing things I’ve never done.
She was fine this morning, though. The ear-clip earphone seems to be working better for her, though she still claims she can’t hear anything. . . When you ask her quietly, from six feet away, “Grandma, can you hear me?” she replies, “No. This thing’s broken.”
So, bah. Time to change the ice pack.
Yesterday, I started a post that included asking y’all if you or any of your wide network of brilliant, creative, clever friends could recommend a good value for an intermediate-quality alto sax. The ether ate it and sent it off to Betelgeuse or somewhere.
I got recommendations from some other friends, notably for a used Yamaha 52, if it can be found. They don’t appear to be made any longer, so that might be a bit dicey.
Then I took my car in to get the oil changed prior to going to see the Snaothei this weekend. And lo and behold! there went what was my saxophone fund: $600 for the 45M tune-up plus new rear brakes. Damn.
Having determined that my Spanish is yet again getting rusty, I decided to find a new telenovela to watch. Imagine my surprise upon discovering that there is no plain ol’ Channel 28 Univision any longer! Instead, there is Channel 29 Univision, which evidently comes straight out of Seattle. It was a bit disconcerting to see news of local events and weather given in Spanish. Kind of entertaining, but a little odd.
Before settling on a tele, I ran across something called “Mujeres asesinas” (”killer women,” roughly). Not sure exactly what it is, but it appears to be a dramatization of women who’ve gone off their nut and whacked somebody. Lacks the kind of wildly overdone melodrama of the teles, fortunately, although it seems to have its own overacting issues. I’ll learn a whole new vocabulary—this time about murder and poison and such, rather than incest and rape and twins separated at birth. Hee hee. 
Happy natal day to my adorable daughter-in-law!! (Yes, I called her, and I even have a present for her.)
You’d think that at my age there would be no “firsts” left, wouldn’t you? And you’d be wrong! Today—the ides of June!—was so chilly that I actually turned on the heater to take off the edge. How’s that for bizarre?!?
The afternoon is gloomy, dark, with roiling black clouds glowering overhead and slinging a bit of wet now and then, like the flecks of foam flung by a rabid dog stalking crazily down the street. I am walking back in the woods with Ye Dogge, with no one in sight or sound for what seems like miles.
Suddenly, around a curve ahead emerge two guys straight from “Deliverance.” The old one appears to have nothing but skin to hold his saggy bones together, though his beard has encroached on his face so that all you can see is two dark sockets, with a mean glint in the back. The young one will look just like him when he’s older, but right now he just looks gaunt, scruffy and mean, with a filthy JD cap on his head. The tree canopy adds to the gloom, making it difficult to distinguish details about them.
Except that they have three dogs. All pit bulls. Big, muscular animals, better fed than their owners. Two on leashes. All three with that look that fighters have… and I know dogs, so I am not mistaking this look. The young man grabs the off-lead dog and snaps him on.
Ye Dogge is blithely bounding up to the dog with the old raggedy man.
“Are we going to have a problem with the dogs?” I chirp.
No response. Both men just glare at me.
“Yes? No?” I try again.
Silence. Except for their dogs, whose growls and barks are shattering the turgid pre-storm air.
The old guy’s dog charges mine and he barely has the body weight, let alone the muscle, to pull him back. The dog snarls and snaps and lathers, growls and barks, much as I suspect the two guys are doing mentally. I grab Ye Dogge by the collar and pull her away. The young one with the two dogs passes me, glaring through narrowed eyes, and those dogs, trying to get to Ye Dogge and me, nearly break their leads and threaten to splinter the man’s arm.
Though I am creeped out beyond creeping out, Ye Dogge isn’t showing undue distress and she’s a pretty good judge of character. We get past them in our respective two pieces and continue our walk. I resist the urge to look back, both because I want plenty of distance between us and because I suspect they may have disappeared into the gloom, like ghosts. I am grateful that we don’t run into any of their relatives, who I suspect are swinging through the trees a little ways back in the woods, or maybe stirring a cauldron full of incipient meth. We actually have a very pleasant, longer-than-usual walk that’s otherwise uneventful (thank the gods).
When we get home, hot and sweaty and skinned over with mud, I make the grave error of opening the shower door before I remove my spec-tackles. Danger, Will Robinson, danger! The dudes from “Deliverance” were probably less lethal than the, erm, ecosystem in there! Ewwwie!
Well, here’s one of the joys of living by yourself. I try to convince myself it’s not as bad as the “Deliverance” guys… but come on. We all know better.
Why, if God is good and loving, does he not see fit to provide me with a man who will do those yucky chores… without presenting me with a bill?
Hee hee! I think I made my first killing on the international money market. Since the Euro v. $ has been down the last several days, I took the opportunity to buy Vital Equipment from a European source. I got for $67 what I would have had to pay $140 for a couple of weeks ago.
I feel very pleased with myself.
:-)
Today, I am aggravated. Aggravated about my ongoing difficulties with getting proper holes in spindle whorls.
Given that all three of my sons call me mechanically declined, you might surmise that I’m utterly incompetent. It’s not quite as bad as they think, but mechanical things are not usually my friends. Most of my scars come from malevolent mechanical life forms, and then there was that unfortunate incident that left spiral blood spatter on the wall… But that’s another story. Also, I spent most of my life around first my dad and then my now-ex, both of whom had woodworking down pat and had great workshops. And yet another also, I’m accustomed to using precision tools for graphic design (pre-computer).
If you have experience with both, you know how frustrating it is to try to work with half-baked tools when you’ve used high-quality ones and have come to expect the kind of quality you get from good tools. I don’t have enough room for a wood shop, nor the money for good tools. Seriously, I’d have to put woodworking tools in my bedroom, and I’m just not willing to share my bed with wood and/or plastic shavings. Nope. And my budget is of the “if you can figure out a way to make it and not spend any moolah, go for it” variety.
So. Enter spindle whorls.
Two-inch and larger circles do not exist on my circle templates. That meant I needed something with larger circles so I could easily find the center of the whorl. Seeing as how I have several kinds of compasses, this was simple: fine-point marker, T-square and triangle, clear plastic, and voila.
Next was the hole-drilling bit (no pun intended). I tried all sorts of half-@$$ed methods but, since I’m accustomed to being able to use a drill press and get holes both accurate and vertical, yet no longer have drill press access, I was in the proverbial swamp. I was actually considering getting a drill press, despite the aforementioned bed-sharing etc. with it, until I discovered that Dremel makes a little drill-press-mounting kit (they call it a workstation) for their little tools. And they’re cheap.
Having had experience long ago with something similar for full-sized drills, I was pretty skeptical. They just don’t work very well with big drills. And right out of the box, the dang thing reinforced my skepticism:
1. They have changed a few of the specs and parts, but have not changed the instructions. This aggravated me no end, because it meant I was looking for parts that weren’t there, but that the destructions said should be there. Finally, I gave up and just put it together the way it looked like it oughtta go.
2. I was not terribly impressed with some of the mounting materials. “Secure” will be a relative concept with this thing, at least with regard to the vertically mounted pole.
3. I was not terribly impressed with the “tools” that came with it—you know, the assembly tools that most mfrs include, those cheesy little wrenches and things. I had to go find my crescent wrench to put it together.
4. It turned out to be necessary to get out my rubber hammer to mount the assembly on the upright. This isn’t all bad, since it at least means a tight fit, but it’s annoying. Why can’t they just tell you you’ll need a rubber hammer?
5. My Dremel tool did not fit easily into the mounting. This wound up taking the crescent wrench as well. But eventually, my brilliant intellect (okay, so it was dogged determination, don’t pick nits) overcame the inherent evil of mechanical objects, and I had it put together. A couple parts were left over, but apparently they were extraneous. (I hope.) Cf “not changed directions” above.
6. Another serious aggravation was that the destruction booklet said you had to use “workpiece hold downs” to hold the work in place… but they did not include any. Nor do they even make any that you could purchase. Nor do they inform you of this before you buy the thing. Instead, they include yet more badly written destructions for making your own!!! Which meant I had to make another trip to town to get carriage bolts and wing nuts. =>:-\
So, here we are. I marked a couple of centers using my spiffy little template. I centered the first one under the mounted Dremel. I turned the Dremel on. And I pulled the little handle on the side down. And voila!!, a vertical, perfectly centered hole.
I feel ridiculously pleased about this, and somewhat vindicated, too, for having. . . this time. . . Mastered the Malevolent Mechanical Monsters.
I used two coat hangers to make a balance scale. You know, like those antique jobbies with the pans suspended by chains from the balance arm? It’s ugly, but it works, and it’s pretty amazingly sensitive.
:victory dance, hoot, guffaw, giggle: I rock!
I was just informed that if you Google “handwriting,” my Web site comes up on the first page, and if you Google “handwriting improvement,” my site is the very first one! I think that’s astonishing. But very cool.
Missy Dogge did something unprecedented yesterday: She jumped all over another dog back on the off-lead trail. The dog was a clumsy and inattentive puppy (or at least young dog, no more than a year) who kept lurching sideways and banging into its owner, who was attempting to jog, but not very successfully given that she kept getting knocked sideways by this large black klutz whacking repeatedly into her knees. I actually had to grab Herself and haul her away. Very strange.
So, let’s look at this logically, although logic doesn’t always apply to behavioral issues.
1. Ye Dogge has never exhibited any territorial feelings about that trail.
2. She has no issues with black dogs.
3. She has no issues with running dogs, or even black running dogs, or big dogs, or shaggy dogs, or any other kind of dog.
4. She has no issues with blonde women, joggers, or other people (with the exception of tall guys with beards and farmer hats).
5. She doesn’t care if people talk to me and vice versa on the back trails.
6. She does dislike puppies jumping all over her, and will snap at them; but this wasn’t a snap, this was a serious “knock it off or I’ll kick your ass” deal. And the dog was a good eight or ten feet away from her.
7. She does not tolerate dogs roughhousing and growling and play-fighting, and consistently runs between them to break it up and prevent any unauthorized fun. I’ve attributed this to herding behavior, an instinct to stop anything that looks like it might be harming a herd member.
Therefore, I’m suspicious that she may have thought the black dog was attacking the woman, and that she was defending the woman from the rambunctious and inordinately clumsy young dog. This is an interesting development, and I shall have to observe further.