The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Time to clean up Boot Hill.

Landlady has big plans for Boot Hill, the place we all plan to end up – many, many years from now. In the meantime it’s filling up with pets. But in the fullness of time there will be a real fence like a proper cemetery, and so right as markers go in we’re trying to establish a little order. Plus this is the high desert, and lots of wind and heat and cold and UV mean everything needs at least a little maintenance from time to time.

Ghost and a cat now have their markers in place, and all the pedestals are re-painted.

Speaking as the person statistically most likely to be the second human buried there – many, many years from now – I can think of worse places to end up.

Thanks in part to a Paypal donation from a Generous Reader, I was able to do this…

Seven brand-new stump socks! Which, added to the four I had already more gradually acquired, means I can retire all the more threadbare of my up-to-now current stock of socks and actually start wearing these things full-time. Still have a way to go till I can rotate them properly for better longevity, but this should reduce some pain issues and also the merely irritating matter of matching socks and nylon sheaths every damned morning till I have something that fits the prosthesis socket. As long as we’re not imposing it on individual people, sometimes uniformity is good, is all I’m saying.

Thanks!

Look to the lower right…

Might want to zoom in if you’re having trouble seeing it. And don’t feel bad, sometimes I have trouble even finding the camera.

“Little Bear, wanna go for a walky?” No reaction.

“Little Bear!” Much louder. He looks up. “We’re going for a walky.” He gives me the side-eye, like he just learned he’s going to the vet to have his claws removed.

“And a Jeep ride.” He leaps to his feet and trots to the leash hook.

So we went outside where he had a pee, then walked maybe twenty yards from the cabin where he suddenly squatted, took a copious dump … and then turned 180^o and trotted in a determined fashion to the Jeep, and I could follow if I wished. Done with walky now.

LB likes his Jeep rides.

Today’s supposed to be a little cooler and a lot windier. Excellent incentive to hit the Lair-painting early, because you don’t want to be painting in the wind. When it actually dawned a bit cloudy, that was perfect because the next task was the east wall, and the east wall heats up fast when the sun’s out.

The first couple of times I painted the east wall were real trials of my ability to overcome acrophobia for the cause. Then last year I got smart and just bought a really long telescoping roller pole, and the problem went away. This coat took less than an hour and a half, and a ladder was only involved on the corners.

It went so well I hit the south wall and just kept going.

The bulk of the south wall is Hardie Board, which didn’t even really need paint except for where I plugged the bolt holes where the satellite dish used to be. Things got more complex and slowed right down when I hit the addition, and of course the new downspout. Then the roller went away and the wall brush came out. And when I was done with that, I used up the last of the paint in the tray painting in the deep grooves of the new (thick!) paneling on the west wall.

A really good morning! Started before seven and knocked off right around ten, when the sun came out and the wind started to rise.

Still haven’t decided what to do about the back door. Of course I still have to put up trim there, and that’ll get painted the same color as all the other trim. But the door itself? Probably the same color – maybe an ironic rat sign or something.

When I was a kid I loved vienna sausage. I’d eat it right out of the can. Of course when I was a kid I’d eat anything right out of the can.

Long ago, when I was quite a few years from being a kid, I tried that and recoiled. What foul stuff! I felt betrayed, and never wanted to look at another can of vienna sausages again.

But a couple of weeks ago I was up in the Lair’s loft and looking at quite a few cans of it – Big Brother keeps including it in his monthly care packages, and they had kind of piled up – and it occurred to me that I was being unfair to the humble cylinders of, er, meat.

After all, I like Spam but I’d never consider eating it right out of the can unless I was starving, and even then I’d gag. I eat Spam sliced and fried most mornings, in Spammo Classico. Otherwise I cube it up, fry it and add it to potatoes and onions or rice or cheap spaghetti sauce.

Regular readers know Uncle Joel is no chef. But it seemed obvious even to me to wonder, how would that work with vienna sausage?

Turns out it works perfectly well. Doesn’t quite have the flavor of fried Spam, but it’s different. And when you eat more-or-less the same thing day after day, as old creature-of-habit Uncle Joel does, different is good.

Yesterday I made a pot of spaghetti, which with our unseasonable heatwave needs to be eaten up quickly or it’ll spoil. Normally I don’t really care for spaghetti because the dollar-store canned sauce needs a lot of doctoring or it’s like eating paste.

But sliced up and slightly fried, the sausages were a big help in the doctoring. Belated thanks, BB!

In related news, Joel offers professional proofreading and copy editing services at bargain rates! Contact info available on the Send Joel Stuff page, clickable above. 😀

There’s still lots of brush work ahead – and also lots of trim painting – but one phase of cabin painting is complete.

Well…complete for now, anyway.

I ran into a big problem when I tried to install trim around the front bedroom window. I had barely enough 1X3 to do the job, and then it turned out one of them got a big bow in it while in the woodshed. Bother! There was no way to work around it, so I’m stuck on that window until I can score another stick. But if that’s the worst thing that happens this season I’ll be delighted. Also I still have to figure out how to trim around the new back door, and of course after that the brushes will come back out.

But for now, I can turn my attention to the walls. Leak-chasing on the gutter is complete since I just gave up and covered the damned connector with sealer tape, then painted it brown. The downspout will become green when I put another coat on that wall.

Meanwhile some other chores are complete, and others will probably continue indefinitely. I took the second grave marker pedestal out of the form this morning and put it in the sun to cure. These’ll get planted on Saturday if all goes according to plan.

And here’s a brand-new and no doubt repetitive chore, related to Little Bear kind of getting to be an old dog. He has to pee a lot, and wants to move no farther than absolutely necessary to do it, so he has thoroughly befouled the dirt of the front yard just in front of the porch. I didn’t mind until it turned warm, when “scent” pretty much undeniably turned into “stench.”

The good news, I suppose, is that there could not be any doubt in the mind of any possible coyote as to where Little Bear, who views coyotes as enticing chew toys, lives. Of course that was never really in doubt before, either. And the bad news is, well, stench.

So this morning, coming back from chicken chores, we stopped in the wash and shoveled up a tub of nice clean sand. It’s starting to warm up, and so far the sand seems to be successfully killing the smell.

Laptop’s acting up again. At this rate I’m going to have to break out the other one – right now I’m using the “Plan C” tablet and Bluetooth keyboard BB left with me, and which is lately proving useful during my evening Babylon 5 film festival. Gad, that show was sillier than I recall, with acting, direction and dialog that make me embarrassed I was ever a fan. Still enjoy the overall storyline, though.

Anyway, maybe the laptop will decide to connect again, it always has in the past. But in the meantime I have no email, which means I can’t do pics, and there’s the whole left button/right button on the mouse thing which is such a part of my muscle memory and makes so very many things possible – I can’t even figure out how to highlight text with this rig. Maybe it’s time to break out the Plan B laptop, but it has its own issues.

Grumble. I’m going to be driven to actually update the antedeluvian software on my principle ‘pooter, I just know I am. I’d much rather continue to procrastinate over that.

ETA: Oh, for heaven’s sake. While I was typing the above on the tablet, the laptop quietly decided to connect to the hotspot anyway after refusing several consecutive times. Swear I’m going to back to pressing cuneiform into clay, that’s more my speed.

…and I’m not even the NRA.

Hat frickin’ tip.

Looks like the temp is going to peak at 94. In the shade, of course. It’s supposed to moderate a bit coming on toward the weekend. Figures we’d go straight from “late winter” to “SUMMER” without a whole lot of transition.

And I haven’t got a lot done today, but a few things…

Went out early while it was still cool and took the form off yesterday’s grave marker pedestal. Could have come out better, but it’s been a few years since I poured one and I kind of forgot the knack…

The second one will be better. Hit them with some paint and nobody will be the wiser.

Came home to make bread while it was cool…

…and looking at that picture reminds me of something: Does anybody out there reflexively save bread bags but not have a use for them? Because those are so much better than the ones I buy on line, and if you don’t want them I sure could use some.

While the bread was rising, since it really was going to be too hot to do anything substantial outside unless you start earlier than I did, I fixed a problem with the bedframe that’s been bugging me. Continue reading →

I mentioned in passing a few days ago that a randomly-observed cow was probably pregnant. In fact I may have maligned the poor dear – she may not have been pregnant yet. This admission is drawn from me by the observed persistence of breed bulls in the Gulch. They appear to be doing their job with due diligence, but the cows are many and they are few.

I have also stated that I won’t normally stop for a bull in the middle of the road. I was forced to make an exception the other day, but not out of consideration for the bull. It was the cow he was, er, counseling that had been rendered immobile and incapable of quickly moving out of the Jeep’s path.

Your intrepid reporter was unable to shake his camera out of his pocket before the cow had managed to disentangle herself, apparently feeling that three’s a crowd…

…and the bull didn’t take the interruption well. So it was a while before I could pass. Fortunately I had no pressing engagements at the moment, and LB and I enjoyed a moment of merriment at his expense while at the same time I did wonder – you’ve got the whole bloody desert to do that in, so is it really necessary to do it in the road?

Which in turn reminded me of Sir Paul’s eternal question…

“Because you’re not cattle, you stupid Liverpudlian git. They just naturally have no class or sense of decorum, and they’re owned by cattlemen who were apparently born with no sense of anybody else’s property, so why the hell wouldn’t they do it in the road? Everybody else – except possibly overpaid rock musicians – is held to at least a slightly higher standard.”

Sorry. Still coffee-ing up here.

I have two cans – a little over three pounds – and that’s the last I’ll ever taste. Every sip is one fewer.

But that’s okay. I’m a Stoic. Be of good cheer, I will endure. With quiet dignity…and grace.

1. Rocks grow eagerly and must be regularly pruned.

How could they do this to me? How? Trader Joe’s! How much have I ever asked of you?

This stuff has been getting me out of bed all through this century! Why go on???

If you’ll excuse me, I need a few moments to work through my grief. I don’t promise to do as well as Homer…

We’ll be experimenting with different blends for a while. I can’t assume that life will ever be quite the same, but no doubt there’s a new normal in there somewhere…

Perhaps I should take this as opportunity? Only yesterday I was thinking of perusing blackriflecoffee.com. Never tried it…

ETA: Ouch. At more than a buck an ounce I’m going to go right on never having tried it.

I wrote the post below johnny-on-the-spot, very pleased with myself and ready to rush out and get some work done in the cool of the morning. Opened a preview screen, proofread the text, made a few minor textual changes, clicked “publish”…and the whole site had gone down.

Ah, well. Amor fati.

So I went out to get some work done while it’s cool. Cleaned the biggest rocks out of the dirt piles from yesterday’s trench, filled in around the drain pipe, mixed a nice thick cap of Quickcrete for the downspout…

People have asked me about this since yesterday’s afternoon post. I even got an email from a regular reader who objected to it strenuously, on the perfectly valid grounds that making that installation permanent by literally cementing it into position is not in my long-term interest. I was surprised – ever since I was a kid, I’ve always seen it done this way when a downspout connects to an underground drain pipe. First, it’s not permanent – it’s just a cap of brittle quick-cure concrete. You can break it up with a light hammer. Its purpose is to keep dirt from filtering into the underground pipe and blocking the water flow. Really, I didn’t know it was controversial – seems perfectly natural.

When I was done with that, which only took a minute, LB and I went to Landlady’s barn for a rather more involved concrete project. She emailed me last night and asked me to put on my Sexton Joel hat and prepare two pedestals for pet grave markers in Boot Hill. That involves digging out a standard mold I made and filling it with concrete, then sticking in a couple of lengths of scrap rebar for anchors.

When it’s in place, Landlady will stick a marble marker on its angled upper surface with construction adhesive. Works pretty well – we use it for pets and people, though so far the one person we’ve buried there got a bigger marker than the cats and dogs.

Ten years ago last month, and we still miss him. It’s a rare party that “what would T do/say” doesn’t come up at some point. Helluva guy.

(shakes self) Anyway – somebody else asked why, since the Lair now has an official rain management system, there’s no rain catchment system. Rather than rehash that topic, I simply direct interested readers here, where it’s discussed at some length. Short version: I’d do it if I gardened. Lacking a garden, since you wouldn’t want to drink what grows in those barrels, there’s not much point.

One of this year’s projects is replenishing my stump sock supply, which I had allowed to get painfully* threadbare. My procrastination was only partially caused by economics – I literally didn’t know where to go for new ones. My entire experience with prosthetic supplies has involved finding a brick-and-mortar Hanger Prosthetics outlet and saying, “I needa.” And then they told me what the new restrictions were, and I did the minimum necessary to scrape past them. For example, in California I could only get a replacement foot with a doctor’s prescription, so I had to go find a doctor – any doctor – cross his palm with silver and get him to agree that I did indeed have a prosthetic leg which might indeed need a replacement foot from time to time. A plumber or a fry cook could have made the same observation with exactly the same level of expertise, but we mustn’t question the law.

Anyway, I’m a helluva long way from the nearest Hanger Prosthetics outlet and I don’t easily travel, but it seemed straightforward enough: I asked Landlady to do it for me. And she agreed, and they turned her away! No, there was no law involved – it just seems Hanger finds it a lot less profitable to sell somebody a stack of socks than to extort a consultation and examination fee first.

Landlady, being far more in the computer age than me, did something that never occurred to me – probably took her about fifteen seconds: She went on line and searched for a website that sold prosthetic supplies. Had no trouble finding one, and telling me about it, and now that’s where I take my business. They’ll sell me all the stump socks I want, at relatively reasonable cost and with no hassle at all aside from those normally imposed by my peculiar maildrop arrangement.

There’s only one catch: I do get prosthetics-related spam now. Some of it tries to sell me products that – even after more than 45 years – I still find a little bizarre. A good friend once asked me to put my shoes on, because “No offense, but it’s like talking to half a mannequin.” It seems that these days retailers want to turn me into half a terminator.

—
*and I do mean literally painful. When the toe of your stumpsock is down to the threads it tends to engrave a sort of waffle pattern into the point of your stump, a sensation I leave to your imagination.

Went to town this morning for the regular Monday morning water run. Came back with much liquid refreshment…

And then it was time to work.

We cut and assembled the parts for the downspout, that didn’t take much time. Lazy Joel wanted to knock off right there, because the next part was going to be one of my least favorite things…

The trench from the downspout to the drainage ditch is very short, very shallow, and would have been no concern at all except I happen to know that it runs through really rocky ground. Getting that part right there well done was going to be pretty much exhausting. This is the reason that an essential tool for life in the boonies is a neighbor with a backhoe. Failing that, you really do need a good mattock. Fortunately, after suffering along borrowing Landlady’s crappy mattock for a few years, back about six years ago I went out and bought a good one. And I keep it carefully in the powershed with the rest of my long tools, so I don’t have to buy one again.

I’m able to recycle some of that old 4″ ABS sewer pipe I dug up last February, but I didn’t have a 4″ elbow. That (along with drinking water and gasoline and beer) was my only reason for wanting to go to town this morning. Had I known it was going to cost 9 bucks, I’d have scrounged harder. I do have a length of 3″ pipe with an elbow and was tempted by it, but I’m not confident that won’t back the water up in one of our gullywasher Monsoon storms.

When I saw what downspout clamps are made of, though, I couldn’t see spending the money on them.

I’m currently rich in rolled flashing, so I just went home and made my own damned clamps.

Once I had the trench dug and graded and the downspout on the wall, I got to wondering how people go about cementing the downspout to the drain pipe without just filling the whole thing up with cement. I’ve never really seen it done.

Not exactly sure this is the approved way, but I figure if I mix the Quickcrete thick enough this hardware cloth should keep it where I want it till it sets up.

And that’s as far as I got before being interrupted by afternoon chores. In the morning while it’s still cool I’ll mix the Quickcrete and fill in the trench, and the gutter will be officially done except for paint.

There’s a sad, sick little cottonwood tree near the Lair, just where the driveway meets the main channel of the wash. It grew at a poor spot, at the tail end of a sandy island between two channels, where it probably seldom saw water.

It has never been healthy in all the time I’ve known it – some sort of bug was burrowing under the bark and stripping more and more of it to bare wood. But every year it leafed out, and every year it seemed to grow just a little.

Then last July’s big flood happened. Being in the geographic center of the wash as a whole, the little cottonwood was right in its path.

The whole trunk and all the lower branches were inundated. It must be well-rooted because it never shook even as tons of stuff hit it. Wrapped right around it, as a matter of fact.

After things dried out I cut away a lot of the wood the tree had stopped but there wasn’t anything practical I could do about the tons of rock and sand caught in the web of debris. The little tree literally took a terrible hit.

And it looks like it won’t survive it.

The bugs went nuts, there’s barely any bark left, and only an odd branch here and there bothered sending out any leaves at all this spring.

Doesn’t really matter. That whole island, which had grown a whole bunch of green stuff, is currently just sand and debris and this is no surprise. But if you don’t count junipers as trees – and it’s a question of some local dispute – that’s the only real tree anywhere in sight of the cabin. I’ll kind of miss it.

One of the (several) problems I’ve noticed with living in open range country is that when the cattle are here, the wildlife doesn’t seem to want to be here. Which makes playing with the game camera less interesting than otherwise.

A common sight these days is a cow – newly pregnant, perhaps, but I’m not a gynecologist – doing her slow, aimless thing followed by two or three or one time I saw eight bull calves, having the time of their short lives but never quite letting her out of their sight. She always seems fine with it.