Last night the Lady of the House came home with her dog, Lucy, who had spent the previous several hours running at top speed with her sister, Peggy, in and out of semi-dry clay puddles left in the yard on family land, about 15 miles from where I live, by the well drillers working to put in running water there.
When I got home I checked my email, as I always do I hate to admit, and, as always, Lucy flung herself down at the foot of my chair while I was at the keyboard.
It having been near dark when I corralled her into the back seat of my car I hadn't seen the extent nor the density of the clay which was clinging to nearly every inch of Lucy's body and I continued to be oblivious until she got up from near my chair and left a measurable oval of clay dust and grit in the spot she had been dozing. Then she shook herself. A veritable cloud came off of her six feet in every direction. Nothing to do but give her a bath.
So into the tub we both go, one of us more instinctually than the other. I turn on the water which, if I was a dog, might sound like Niagara Falls what with the sound bouncing off the closed bath stall doors. Lucy's shaking like a leaf and panting up a storm and I'm telling her that she's going to be just fine and the grit is pouring off of her and she's trying to keep her feet dry which, given the circumstances, is of course impossible and anyway why the hell didn't she think of keeping her feet dry when she was barreling through those puddles earlier?
If only I had had some Poop-freeze I might have sprayed the puddles of mud and hair, waited a moment for the liquid to turn to solid slab, simply lifted the chunks into a dustpan, tossed, and wiped my hands on my apron.
Alas. Life is more complex now than it was when Ladies Of The House wore aprons. This is true even in the speck of a town where I live, never mind the mere nanosecond of a place where the well drillers were working. Nothing is simple anymore. This is lavishly illustrated by the fact that when someone sends you a joke email about Poop-freeze, and you Google the product, you get 22,300 returns.
Lucy lost about 70% of the grit in the tub. Another 10% came off on the three white towels I used in my feeble attempt to dry her off. (I only own white towels which, in most circumstances, fulfill my every need.) An additional 5%, + or - 2%, is on the bathroom floor, the dining room floor, the kitchen floor, the rug in the living room, and the two spots on the carpet where she slept in my bedroom. The rest is still on her and will need to be gotten off by, perhaps, a swim in a lake. Or perhaps, if there was such a thing, the rinse and spin cycles of a doggie washing machine. Now THERE'S an invention that's waiting for American ingenuity.
Since Lucy wouldn't have any of my ideas about using a blow-dryer, she went to bed damp. The well drillers, on the other hand, were successful. So, eventually, one will be able to turn a lever and have water come out from a faucet, automatically, where now one applies muscle power at an ancient hand pump. Miracles.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Terrorists and Angels
I bought the Weekly World News today for $1.89 just so I could own the picture.Plus I get to learn how blowing your nose makes you stupid (page 21) and whether the Vatican will make the three stooges saints (page 47).
Rome better work fast because on page 10 there's a story - dateline Washington - about how angels have been declared an endangered species - so it sounds like they have vacancies to fill.
The feds arrested Ted Sargo, a duck hunter who allegedly lives in Jackson County Alabama, for shooting an angel - one of the over 200 cases reported to authorities so far this year.
They think that another 1000 such accidents have gone unreported because people keep mistaking angels for ducks, deer, and wild pigs. Some angels have even been killed by lawnmowers and trash compactors.
An insider has been quoted as stating, "You better believe President George W. Bush is going to get personally involved."
I sure hope so. Or better still, maybe they could add him to that saints list, too.
Haying
You stand in a field where there's been hay mowed and bailed and tied with a machine that has not had to be improved upon since it was invented during the Industrial Revolution. Most people have shown up to the field at about 4:00 p.m. not because it's a job or anything but because they're just helping the hay provider because he's helped them in the past or they know him or some reason like that.
Hopefully you have gloves. (I had forgotten mine but no one else was wearing them either so even if I'da had them I wouldn'ta worn them. This is just a point of toughness on my part - seeing as I'm a city kid returned to the village I feel like I should take every opportunity to show that I still can take the pain just like all the folks who live there all the time. In that neck of the proverbial woods, for example, no one wears sunglasses. They just squint. It's like umbrellas - they're a sure sign you're a tourist - people who have lived here for generation just get wet and figure the weather will change in a while....)
So you're in the field. Some guy drives a big flat bed up and you throw the bales (which weigh about 30 pounds each when you start but by the time you're done they weigh at least 50) head-high onto the bed where some other guy stacks them according to a method only he knows about. The point is to do it in such a way as to prevent to hay from falling off the truck when it's on the road in traffic and there's about a mile of cars behind it and everyone in each car in hoping that the truck will pull off into the next driveway.
After the flat bed is loaded you stand around for about 45 minutes telling
stories about each other and horses and the weather and other fields you've hayed and fishing until finally, on some invisible signal, everyone just stops talking and heads to the assorted cars and trucks and you pull off onto the highway behind the flat bed and head to the destination barn.
Once you're at the destination barn some guys set up the conveyor belt from the ground near the flatbed to the loft in the barn while more stories are told. Then you throw the bales down from the flat bed and up waist-high onto the conveyor which takes the bales up to the loft where four or five people stack them according to a plan only they know which allows as many bales as possible to get tucked in there while still leaving room for the owner to get at them throughout the winter efficiently. This is done simultaneously with still more stories offered about each other interspersed with discussions about the design of the barn loft and praise or derision for the guy who built it.
When the loft is about as full as it can get some guy who's been keeping track of the total number of bales supplied (on this night it was 748 - a rather small load) calls out to stop, the number of bales is yelled down to the provider who strolls over to the livestock owner and works out payment.
Now the job is considered done and the only thing to do is to break down the conveyor and while offering some guesses about what tomorrow's weather may be so that everyone can gauge about showing up if it's going to be a dry day. No one is asked directly whether they'll show and no one makes any commitments but since no one says they won't be there, it's assumed that everyone will be.
By now it's about 11:00 or midnight or 2:00 a.m. so everyone's out of stories and besides, most of these people also have their own jobs to go to in the morning so everyone calls it quits and piles into the various cars and trucks and leaves down the road home.
I got a huge blister on my right ring finger, chaff cuts all up and down my arms, and hay dust in my nose, hair, and clothing but l loved every minute of it.
Hopefully you have gloves. (I had forgotten mine but no one else was wearing them either so even if I'da had them I wouldn'ta worn them. This is just a point of toughness on my part - seeing as I'm a city kid returned to the village I feel like I should take every opportunity to show that I still can take the pain just like all the folks who live there all the time. In that neck of the proverbial woods, for example, no one wears sunglasses. They just squint. It's like umbrellas - they're a sure sign you're a tourist - people who have lived here for generation just get wet and figure the weather will change in a while....)
So you're in the field. Some guy drives a big flat bed up and you throw the bales (which weigh about 30 pounds each when you start but by the time you're done they weigh at least 50) head-high onto the bed where some other guy stacks them according to a method only he knows about. The point is to do it in such a way as to prevent to hay from falling off the truck when it's on the road in traffic and there's about a mile of cars behind it and everyone in each car in hoping that the truck will pull off into the next driveway.
After the flat bed is loaded you stand around for about 45 minutes telling
stories about each other and horses and the weather and other fields you've hayed and fishing until finally, on some invisible signal, everyone just stops talking and heads to the assorted cars and trucks and you pull off onto the highway behind the flat bed and head to the destination barn.
Once you're at the destination barn some guys set up the conveyor belt from the ground near the flatbed to the loft in the barn while more stories are told. Then you throw the bales down from the flat bed and up waist-high onto the conveyor which takes the bales up to the loft where four or five people stack them according to a plan only they know which allows as many bales as possible to get tucked in there while still leaving room for the owner to get at them throughout the winter efficiently. This is done simultaneously with still more stories offered about each other interspersed with discussions about the design of the barn loft and praise or derision for the guy who built it.
When the loft is about as full as it can get some guy who's been keeping track of the total number of bales supplied (on this night it was 748 - a rather small load) calls out to stop, the number of bales is yelled down to the provider who strolls over to the livestock owner and works out payment.
Now the job is considered done and the only thing to do is to break down the conveyor and while offering some guesses about what tomorrow's weather may be so that everyone can gauge about showing up if it's going to be a dry day. No one is asked directly whether they'll show and no one makes any commitments but since no one says they won't be there, it's assumed that everyone will be.
By now it's about 11:00 or midnight or 2:00 a.m. so everyone's out of stories and besides, most of these people also have their own jobs to go to in the morning so everyone calls it quits and piles into the various cars and trucks and leaves down the road home.
I got a huge blister on my right ring finger, chaff cuts all up and down my arms, and hay dust in my nose, hair, and clothing but l loved every minute of it.
When I Lived in The City
It's summer in Chicago.
Driving out of the neighborhood where I'm staying and where I never see another white person (other than my house mates - urban 'pioneers' - and the occasional bevy of parents in Dockers and cargo shorts, and their peewee softball kids in their uniforms, carrying picnic baskets behind the fence at the high school), I see a guy and his two friends hanging on the corner outside of the liquor and grocery. He's shimmying to something I can't hear but the python around his shoulders doesn't seem to mind. It's an affordable model that's only about four and a half feet long and he has to shift it around several times while I wait for the light. Maybe he's new at owning a snake. His friends are all looking directly into his face as they talk, way too cool to acknowledge about the python or even look at it.
Traffic starts to move again and I continue down to this cafe to work and be on the WIFI and on the way I spy a woman and this guy who's pushing her against a car, his forearm at her throat, and she's crying so I drive around the block and by the time I get back to where they were she's there by herself still crying. I pull over: her former boyfriend...she called him lots of times today so he stomped his phone, tried to strangle her, took money from her to get a new phone, and took her car. She's worried about her dog. I tell her to get some phone numbers from the police when they arrive for some battered women's hotlines. She acts like it's the first time anyone's suggested "battered woman" to her. She says, "I'm a graduate student and I work hard for my money."
Driving out of the neighborhood where I'm staying and where I never see another white person (other than my house mates - urban 'pioneers' - and the occasional bevy of parents in Dockers and cargo shorts, and their peewee softball kids in their uniforms, carrying picnic baskets behind the fence at the high school), I see a guy and his two friends hanging on the corner outside of the liquor and grocery. He's shimmying to something I can't hear but the python around his shoulders doesn't seem to mind. It's an affordable model that's only about four and a half feet long and he has to shift it around several times while I wait for the light. Maybe he's new at owning a snake. His friends are all looking directly into his face as they talk, way too cool to acknowledge about the python or even look at it.
Traffic starts to move again and I continue down to this cafe to work and be on the WIFI and on the way I spy a woman and this guy who's pushing her against a car, his forearm at her throat, and she's crying so I drive around the block and by the time I get back to where they were she's there by herself still crying. I pull over: her former boyfriend...she called him lots of times today so he stomped his phone, tried to strangle her, took money from her to get a new phone, and took her car. She's worried about her dog. I tell her to get some phone numbers from the police when they arrive for some battered women's hotlines. She acts like it's the first time anyone's suggested "battered woman" to her. She says, "I'm a graduate student and I work hard for my money."
It's the driest summer here since the Dust Bowl - really. Lawns are burning up and probably the Lakes are thirsty but the humidity is lower than usual. The Saturday NY Times says that Sunday's NY Times will have an article in the Travel section about how the glaciers are melting in Alaska and tourists are flocking there in huge numbers to see them because maybe this is the last time. Bet only a few of them took public transit to the airports. This is what it's come to.
Went out to my car on Monday morning to find that I'd been hit-and-runned. Driver's door wouldn't open. There was a note on my windshield: "License plate that hit your car .... grey mercury villager." Called my ins company, the police, and Enterprise. The cop arrived and within fifteen minutes had determined that the plate number belonged to someone up the street - who left the van with paint from my car still on it parked outside their house. The tow truck didn't arrive until 3:00. Enterprise didn't arrive until 4:30 but in the end they did pick me up. At first it sounded like these geniuses weren't insured but now they've come up with they are insured with Allstate. Not for long, though, because when Allstate gets done with them - shunting them off to their high risk secondary market - they'll be paying so much for car insurance they'll have to get three jobs just to handle it. And when Allstate found out that I work at home office - well.... not so much push back on reimbursing for lost wages. So it'll be about $2K in insurance money to repair my car which I will have back, I hope, sometime next week.
Drove in the red Dodge Neon rental car to see a doc on Tuesday - a referral from my physical therapist. The doc, after about a half hour, says she's thinking that I'll need a right hip replacement and is referring me to another doc in her practice. I see him on Wednesday. Perhaps I don't need to indicate that this wasn't in The Plan. I'm practicing saying it just in case it really happens.
But let's look on the sunny side: (1) Chicago is the best place to have these things done; (2) the technology is such that perhaps I can have minimally invasive surgery; (3) my friend Rob says that all the defective hip replacement parts have already been removed from the market per this malpractice suit he's working on - so the parts are off the market re new surgeries but are already in 6 million people. (4) The chances of septic infection are only 1:100 - perhaps not a ratio that one could call part of the sunny side. (5) I'm likely too young and mentally active to have major side effects from general anesthesia that have been found in Alzheimer patients.
But let's look on the sunny side: (1) Chicago is the best place to have these things done; (2) the technology is such that perhaps I can have minimally invasive surgery; (3) my friend Rob says that all the defective hip replacement parts have already been removed from the market per this malpractice suit he's working on - so the parts are off the market re new surgeries but are already in 6 million people. (4) The chances of septic infection are only 1:100 - perhaps not a ratio that one could call part of the sunny side. (5) I'm likely too young and mentally active to have major side effects from general anesthesia that have been found in Alzheimer patients.
Opera
I am an untutored listener to opera. I enjoy it very loud.
Two opera memories:
(1) Splitting wood on a cool autumn day, before Ipods, the CD playing on my car stereo next to where I was set up with the ax and the woodpile.
(2) The day after Thanksgiving years ago, driving through flurries, leftovers on the back seat, with a close friend who lived in a log house on the lake to my village by the ocean where we'd met years before, We planned to have lunch overlooking a spot where my friend and I had spent, years earlier, memorable summer days and evenings. She was in her mid-60's then and evidencing early onset Alzheimer's Disease. No one but she knew that I was in the area for Thanksgiving week to see her. Three Tenors playing over the tape deck as I drove. My first exposure to opera. I'd known her all those years and had not been aware that she loved this music. It was still flurrying when we got to the village but the weather cleared a little while we ate our turkey and stuffing sandwiches. Suddenly my younger brother walked up the dirt road. We gave him a sandwich and a ride to where he was keeping his motorcycle. Music again on the drive back to the lake. Within ten years the Alzheimer's would ravage her and my brother would be dead.
That's opera.
Two opera memories:
(1) Splitting wood on a cool autumn day, before Ipods, the CD playing on my car stereo next to where I was set up with the ax and the woodpile.
(2) The day after Thanksgiving years ago, driving through flurries, leftovers on the back seat, with a close friend who lived in a log house on the lake to my village by the ocean where we'd met years before, We planned to have lunch overlooking a spot where my friend and I had spent, years earlier, memorable summer days and evenings. She was in her mid-60's then and evidencing early onset Alzheimer's Disease. No one but she knew that I was in the area for Thanksgiving week to see her. Three Tenors playing over the tape deck as I drove. My first exposure to opera. I'd known her all those years and had not been aware that she loved this music. It was still flurrying when we got to the village but the weather cleared a little while we ate our turkey and stuffing sandwiches. Suddenly my younger brother walked up the dirt road. We gave him a sandwich and a ride to where he was keeping his motorcycle. Music again on the drive back to the lake. Within ten years the Alzheimer's would ravage her and my brother would be dead.
That's opera.
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