Xander and I had taken our walk around the loop after I had gotten home from work and I had made him do his three tricks for me before I gave him his Greenie when I was finally able to plop down in the Kateri/Xander Chair and relish in the fact that I didn’t have to wake up to an alarm in the morning and was already at the start of my weekend… hooray! As Xander crunched away and added another layer of foamy drool to the carpet, it was nice to just sit, relax, reflect on the day/week, and just breath for a minute. After a moment of quiet and calm, I did like most people in those situations and started flipping through my phone to pass a little time.
I had made a few notes on the ol’ iPhone 8 earlier that I knew I was just gonna delete. So, as I sat there wondering how many gallons of Canine Saliva the rug has soaked up over the last year and a half, I took advantage of where I was at, opened the app and deleted the notes. I then proceeded to scroll through older notes to see if I could get rid of anymore! Yay for iPhone Storage Maintenance! Now, I would like to say that I am organized and can effectively use technology to help me stay organized, but I’m one of those people who would much rather jot something down on a piece of scrap paper or document important things in multiple spiral notebooks than use “this app “or “that software” to keep my life in order. Regardless, once in a Blue Moon I’ll dictate something into my phone while driving so as to remember whatever random thought I felt I needed to remember, or I’ll type something in the moment because I felt whatever information I just heard needed to be immortalized in some cloud for the rest of human civilization… all to feel like I’m hip and not falling behind The Times!
As I was scrolling through keeping this note or deleting that one, I came across one from last year that kinda stopped me dead in my tracks. It said, “Feb. 18/19, 2022… My mom and I just put Legos together until 1:12 in the morning.” Yup… that brought back a flood of memories! Not to mention that I had made the decision to set the world aside for a tiny bit the evening I was going through old notes and was gonna put a Lego together while in comfy clothes as I watched something informative and educational on The Boob Tube such as The History of the Combover for my Friday Night and found the Lego thing to be a nice little coincidence!… and then I cried as Xander stared at me from his spot on the couch across the room. (He doesn’t have “a spot”… the couch is his.)
After allowing myself to just “Go with the flow of the moment”, I felt the need to breath normally instead of the hiccupy gaspy breathing pattern crying forces us to do! So, as my breathing slowed my mind was able to shift from memories of my mom and some of the experiences we had back to present day life. It felt good to take some deep breaths as I massaged my forehead and pressed my fingers into my eye sockets. The room was blurry from the wall of tears still resting under my eyes and it felt good to rub them away. I sat there for a moment…with my eyes closed… going between rubbing the eyeballs to wiping the salty water on my pant leg as my brain began to apply the brakes and I started to think about what I could take away from this experience. Before I decided to open my eyes, I gave my shaved head one more squeeze… my face one more wipe as I stretched my eyelids and eyebrows to my temples… and slowly watched as life came back into focus. As my hand was retreating from my face and when it got to about ten inches from my chin, I saw the various scars of Kitchen Life on my weathered fingers while another part of Present-Day Life came into focus as it was making its way around my knuckle…………. A TICK!!!… and yes, I FREAKED!!!
Let me tell you… and “Sorry” Mom… but my mind pushed EVERYTHING aside and went straight into SURVIVAL MODE! I didn’t know what to do! I can’t just flick it!… I’d only be flicking it to another position IN my house! Could I make it outside?!… before it latches on?! Maybe?! Maybe not!! As I jumped out of the chair (in a controlled manner so as not to set it free in my home) I saw the woodstove and my brain instantly went, “Flick it in there!”. So I lifted the lid, strategically positioned my hand in the opening, and plinked the little bastard with 127 pounds of pressure from my fingernail somewhere into the two square feet of ashy prison I had decided was the best place for it to go! I feel like my plan would’ve been good… if I had a fire going… but I didn’t. Now I’m worried it’s gonna somehow get out of the stove, back into the house, and latch onto my back somewhere… just out of reach…! So, I do the logical thing and start catching pieces of newspaper and junk mail on fire and then quickly opening the lid to throw them into The Tick’s own little personal crematorium! I mean, I’m not gonna put paper in the stove and then put my hand in there to light it… there’s a tick in there! After about a Sunday’s Edition of the New York Times worth of paper, I felt safe enough to say, “Crisis averted.”.
As I stood there in my living room with my hands on my hips… Xander staring at me quizzically from his couch… I laughed at myself and simply went on with the start of my weekend.
When Bruce got here, he immediately mentioned that he thought it was something bigger than the valve and gave me the number to Sargent Artesian Wells since it was coming upon quitting time for just about everyone. Luckily, when I called Chaz from the well place he was just as awesome as everyone from ARC and said he would get there tonight at some point… which didn’t happen… but I was fine with it. Even though the experience was somewhat nerve wracking on a couple of fronts, my interaction with Bruce along with knowing what is currently going on in the world made it so I wasn’t freaking out about what the possible fixes may be. However big the issue was… however painful it may be financially… I was gonna be fine.
After Bruce couldn’t fix the issue and had gotten me in touch with the well guys, he helped me prep the well for Chaz… and then we chatted for the next hour and a half in my driveway! (He also had five gallons of my water in the back of his truck from when he was testing the valve that he gave back to me after saying that it was my water to begin with). The moment Bruce approached the wishing well and simply started pushing it over… my mind was blown. I didn’t realize it wasn’t attached to anything!… at all!… it was simply around the well and over the years earth and grass had accumulated up the base of it! I mean, I kind of understood that, but there were also wires going to the light in it… that we never used… but that didn’t stop the toppling over of it! Bruce pushed… I guided it down… and when it was on it’s side, just laying there in the front yard with the rotted parts holding on for dear life… I thought of Kateri.
It was a hot one this week. I mean, after nine months of winter, 85 was simply sweltering! When it hit 91… forget about it! So with the heat wave I thought I would make sure The Ladies had everything they needed to stay cool, clean, and safe. No… I did not sew little tiny face masks for their beaks (they are already quarantining themselves and have the social distancing down), but on Tuesday evening I shoveled out their shavings, put new hay in the nesting boxes, took out the vent covers in the rafters (well, where the top of the wall and rafters meet… I have no idea what that would be called… I’m a cook), clean water, new food, and even shoveled some of the shavings and shit from their little penned in area. Gotta say, nothing like cleaning a chicken coop after it has warmed up a bit!… yummy.
That seems odd… I thought I remembered latching it…?! And then I saw how the eye hooks were still attached to the shingles they were screwed in to, but those shingles were now attached to the door as if something simply ripped them from the wall!… the feeder was empty and broken, and Chicken (not sure if it was Chicken #1, 2, or 3…?), was a mangled mess laying lifeless just out the coop’s door in their little yard! Yay!…. Wednesday!
I even taped some Pop-Its to the steps to try and deter the visitor! And then Wednesday night happened.
Although “Squirt” is what a lot of people call Kateri, we got a kick out of thinking about how drivers who were following us would interpret it!
The story pretty much goes that my life hasn’t changed too dramatically as we are going through this whole COVID-19 thing, but enough has happened that I’ve had to refocus some of my time and energy away from my blog!… which has been an interesting little pause for me as I come up on Kateri’s Death Date. I guess that’s why I felt the urge to at least post something!
I think… like everyone else… I wish I could just drop everything, pack a bag, load the car, and experience wanderlust again for a while instead of plugging away at the grind. Not that things have been absolutely horrible… I haven’t been getting punched in the nuts when I wake up every morning or anything like that… but it DOES get a little tiring when you constantly feel overwhelmed, are constantly trying to “figure things out”, and life keeps showing you that there are things you have control over… and there are things that you don’t. So…. I’m just gonna keep plugging away at routines for right now… keep an eye on what I have control over… and maybe try to create some new routines! (Like ones where I have to brush my teeth at a rest stop, in a hotel, or next to my tent would be fun! Or in my schoolhouse… I have no plans of letting go of my schoolhouse! Gotta have home to come back to!)
The past couple of weeks have been good, filled with some good things. My lady friend and I went to Salem, Mass last week to get out of Dodge, see the ocean, and check out some witches! (the witches weren’t actually a main focal point) One thing I love about the East Coast is it’s history. Yes, we have some pretty horrendous history in this country, but everywhere does.
It’s fun to walk around a town made up of old brick buildings and wooden houses where you can read about what took place on that spot hundreds of years ago!… even though they weren’t good times. (I guess that’s how we learn not to do those things again… or not let them happen again.)
