The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Good news: Neighbor L seems to have come through her surgery quite well. They’re shipping her right out of the hospital to a – well, ‘nursing home’ is excessively grim, some place where she can get therapy for a week or so before coming home, or that’s the plan I was told. I spoke to her on the telephone yesterday and she seemed astoundingly strong and normal.

But of course this is 2021, and there’s a bureaucratic price to pay: Before they’d do anything as helpful as send her out of the hospital, D had to provide proof that she’s vaccinated, right? Which meant a picture of her vaccine cert. No problem, it was right there on the table, and he had her smartphone. Which he had no more idea how to use than Tobie could use the Large Hadron Collider.

So he handed it to me, and damned if I could figure it out either. It’s an Android, and none of the pictograms meant diddly to me. Fortunately I’ve been messing with pics on an iPhone for years now, so I quickly gave up on his and started over with my own – and that worked just fine. So the blog came in handy.

Extra adventure ensued this morning, because it was time for the Monday morning water run as well as D’s first physical therapy appointment, and we were completely out of designated drivers. So I put on my Good Citizen face and drove him there myself, then filled the water bottles and did my own chores while he was bent and mishandled.

Among those chores was dropping the Jeep’s rearmost driveshaft at the local auto shop to get it a new u-joint and a replacement for the missing shackle bolt. We’re supposed to go back for more PT on Wednesday, and hopefully after that I’ll be able to put the drivetrain back together. Yeah, I could replace the u-joint myself but it’s been 40 years since I did it even with a shop press and the right dies, and I’ve always hated improvising that job.

Maybe I’m just thinking about hubris, but I think there’s a better term for this…

Let’s just agree that there are places you shouldn’t take an ordinary road car. And that you can sometimes find one of those places without notice.

This guy’s day probably went from “pretty nice” to “Oh, shit” pretty abruptly.

I actually met this guy, shortly after his little oopsie. He’d already called for help, and really really didn’t want to talk about…

…how he screwed up and made Greta Thunberg cry.

My neighbors D&L are … how shall I put this? … particular people. They like things the way they like things, and mostly the way they like things is labor-intensive. This is not a personality trait with which I fully mesh.

Case in point…

Several sets of neighbors keep horses, or have in the past. I have helped with those horses in numerous cases, sometimes as-needed and sometimes full-time, so I know how much work most people actually put into their horses. In most cases, it’s not 13 hours in a day. Seriously:

6 am: First feeding.
8:30 am: Clean corrals, check/fill water troughs, groom horses. If needed, empty tractor bucket of horse manure.
11 am: Lunch. Clean corrals.
4 pm: Dinner. Clean corrals. Prepare hay for midnight snacks.
7 pm: Midnight snacks.

This daily schedule doesn’t include training, exercising, and … you know, things like using the horses.

With both D & L now laid up for probably a substantial period of time, the basic minimum schedule now falls on me. I’m not normally a praying man – but it’s a two-mile round trip and I expect that by the end of next week I’ll be praying to whatever gods care to listen for speedy recoveries all around.

D tells me that L did indeed break her hip pretty good yesterday. She’s scheduled for surgery this morning, so I hope to know more later today.

A few minutes before noon, just as I was getting ready to feed Tobie, I got a voice call from Neighbor D.

Neighbor D just got back home last night from knee replacement surgery. While he’s healing, the plan was for L to do … well, basically all the driving and chores. Which is why his surgery was delayed till she started to recover from her round of chemo. That plan didn’t last the first morning, because L took a header in the barn and broke her hip.

I found them both in the middle of the driveway, with a third guy I’d never seen before. He apparently was there to help D set up some physical therapy equipment, and happily he had some medical training which none of the rest of us do. Unhappily the ambulance was late, and shortly after I arrived D got a call from the dispatcher explaining exactly how lost it was somewhere in our maze of dirt roads.

Tobie and I jumped back in the Jeep and went looking for the ambulance. Enroute I got another call from D saying the driver had directions to a road number that was not only wrong but miles deep in the nothin’. If the driver actually followed the given directions, the ambulance would also need rescue. So I changed routes and charged off into the nothin’ as fast as my ramshackle Jeep could take me.

Faster than was advisable, as it turned out…

There was a bump and a BANG…

…and what seemed at first like a big problem.

There’s nothing really wrong with the shaft, though we’re going to need a new u-joint. What happened, apparently, is that one of the shackle bolts backed off and fell out, and with all my bumping and bouncing the u-joint separated company from the rear diff. The Jeep coasted to a halt, miles and miles farther from home than the old one-legged guy was willing to walk through rough country.

At first I thought I was in real trouble, just when I was supposed to be working on a neighbor’s much bigger problem (wife lying in agony in the middle of a driveway is big.) Then it turned out I could still get the Jeep to go in 4-wheel, it was just now a front-wheel-drive vehicle. While I was gingerly heading back to the bulldozed roads, I got another call: The ambulance had found its way to D&L’s and would I please get my ass back there.

By the time I did make it back I saw a heart-stopping sight: L was not only still lying on the ground but was also apparently unconscious. Turns out the EMTs had knocked her out with a shot of no-pain. And that was good because it took all four of us to get her on a backboard, thence to a gurney and into the truck. She came to halfway through the process, demanding that I shoot whoever was causing her so much pain. I didn’t admit that that would involve suicide.

Then I borrowed D’s Jeep to lead the ambulance on the least-bumpy route back to the county road, and I’ll be doing all the horse feeding for the foreseeable future so I hung on to his Jeep.

When I got home to finish my own designated chore, I noted with dismay that D’s Jeep doesn’t have a trailer hitch. So I took my second-best chair off the trailer and up to the porch, where I’ll wrap it in a tarp for a while. I need to get the yellow Jeep to the shop in town as soon as I can arrange it.

…always mean playing Tetris with the furniture.

Tobie’s bed fits very neatly between the woodstove and the bedroom doorway. That also happens to be exactly the space needed for the woodbox and a dog’s feeding station, plus that fabric bed was never going to work there once the stove gets hot. Ergo, come winter we were always going to have to do some fiddling.

At first I figured he’d just move into the bedroom with me, but for whatever reason he won’t sleep or even spend much time in the bedroom. I get the impression he has decided that’s Uncle Joel’s lair and he doesn’t feel comfortable there*. Either way, main room or bedroom, the time has come when there isn’t room in the Lair for two reading chairs.

So I moved the second-best chair out to the trailer, and later today I’ll take it to Ian’s place for the winter. I brought the best chair into the bedroom, where it doesn’t fit as well but it’s the best chair. And I already knew there was a small problem with the next step…

The next step is to put Tobie’s bed where the best chair used to be, but I’m not going to expose Chewpuppy to the temptation of all those wires.

So…

I found some OSB and a scrap 2X2 and made a shield to deliver him from temptation. The bed went where the chair used to be…

The feeding station and woodbox went where the bed used to be…

…and rather to my surprise he seems okay with the new arrangement.

ETA: Unfortunately the second-best chair is going to have to spend some time under a tarp on the porch instead of at Ian’s, because see next exciting episode.
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* He’ll come in to check on my wakefulness in the morning; he usually comes in briefly to sort of say goodnight when I retire. And of course he stands watch at the bedroom windows when I’m not there, if I leave the door open, because he’s a dog and dogs are sneaky. But if we’re in there together he acts nervous around me in ways he never does when we’re both in the main room. I dunno why. As far as I’m concerned he’s perfectly welcome to sleep in the bedroom as long as he doesn’t try to claim the bed. Who can tell the ways of a dog?

Landlady stopped by on the road north, and mentioned in a text that she had a “metric ton” of packages for me.

She wasn’t exaggerating…

Where to begin? You guys are making me work. Continue reading →

“…clearly I’m forced to a very poor choice.”

I can’t think of any other way to put it…

For the dedicated desert hermit this is actually great. I used to kind of enjoy going to movies, and if watchable movies were still being made I’d really miss them. But now I can just sit back in my hovel and mock without having to first spend money to actually watch the movies.

Unfortunately that’s analogous to making all people’s lives equal by making them all equally squalid. Which hardly ever turns out to be a good thing, except of course for the exceptions.

So yesterday after it warmed up a bit I went back to Ian’s for round 2 of the new game, Plug That Hole. And I think it went well…

I’m gonna go back pretty quick to take the board away and see if it actually did go well. Next I have to figure out how to fill the very last part without making too much of a mess of it.

Tobie was an extremely good boy.

He sometimes gets into laying in the sun, which he doesn’t actually get a lot of chances to do since I don’t trust him at all. And of course at some point out of the blue he’ll remind me why it’s probably best to continue not trusting him until he grows up some more. But yesterday while I was working he did get very interested in the sound of a deceptively loud engine in the distance…

That red speck (sorry, phone camera doesn’t do distances well) is Neighbor S’s ancient Bobcat loader on another very slow trip to the wash for a load of sand. He always has building projects going on, and lately for some reason at least one of his projects has required a lot of sand. Later track evidence suggests he was back and forth half the afternoon.

Speaking of cameras and the wash, Tobie and I were out for our long morning walkie down the wash before the sun broke over the ridges. And on the way back there was something I’ve seen a few times before…

The sun changes angle at different times of the year, of course, and it just touched those eroded bits as we were coming back in a way that made me wish I’d thought to bring my new-to-me real camera. And that, in turn, reminded me that there are rumors of a serious care package dump coming soon, which might include more photographic gear, like a tripod. I want to come out here a little earlier in the day and try my hand at a real Wannabe Ansel Adams shot of that spot at that time. Pretty sure I don’t understand the equipment well enough yet to do much more than get it in better focus, but what the hell. It’s a pretty spot for about five minutes on a sunny late October morning.

At the height of Monsoon Ian’s place developed a big leak at a useless spigot he put in the retaining wall between the Dome and the powershed. I had to jackhammer a big hole in the wall to cork up the leak.

It’s not leaking, I just sprayed a bunch of water into the hole before I took that picture. Before the first hard freeze – due any night now – I need to fill that hole with concrete. And I totally spaced on it until yesterday. Fortunately I have everything I need to do it, which basically consists of some concrete, mortar and scrap lumber.

I packed the hole with concrete as far back as I could, so the exposed pipe is already encased. Next I brace some flat stock against the hole leaving only the very top open and then start stuffing the rest of the hole with concrete. If that goes well – a big Spartan IF there – I skim over the former hole with mortar to make it not quite so ugly. If I’m lucky I might even find a package of pigment. Won’t match exactly but that wall’s so faded it won’t matter – and anyway I’m the only one who ever looks at it and my aesthetic taste could best be described as lacking, so what the hell.

… and it won’t work out well for everybody.

Okay, so it’s definitely time to light the bedroom heater.

Getting the pilot to light up is the only thing I dislike about this heater, getting the gas to the pilot flame is an endless PITA but otherwise it’s so perfect in every way. Of course after seven or so months of inactivity it does need a good cleanup first…

…and then the first couple of experimental snaps of the clicker exposed a possible … issue. I took off the isinglass sightglass to discover…

Oh, no. No, no, this is very bad.

Seriously, how is this even possible? She must have come in through the external vents, right? But…

…every bit of the nesting material was fabric and Tobie hair, there was no vegetable matter at all. So this mouse has been going back and forth from the firebox to the cabin interior, somehow without leaving telltale excrement or alerting my useless dog. Since the firebox is supposedly sealed to all but the cabin exterior, I have no idea how that’s even physically possible.

What’s more…

…as I hooked the nest bit by bit out of the firebox I saw an adult mouse and two fully-furred babies, none of which showed any willingness to leave the firebox despite all my commotion.

When I was sure I had removed all but the sweepings of the nest I lit the pilot, which as if in compensation for my other troubles went unusually well…

…and I’ll leave it that way for the rest of the day and night, but if they haven’t vacated by tomorrow morning I’m firing up the heater and living with the roasted-mouse smell till it fades.

D&L are sort of trading downtime back and forth. She’s getting her strength back from chemo, and now he’s scheduled for some delayed surgery that will put him on crutches for a while. But winter won’t wait, the bitch, and so…

…we’re stocking up on wood pellets and horse … well, pellets. If I understand correctly there’s a pallet of both yet to go in the next week before D gets cut on.

I knew when Tobie and I went for first walkie in the dark that the weather was quite unpleasantly cold, damp and windy. And there were occasional … bits of something … flashing by in the lamp beam.

It was only when the sky lightened up that I saw…

…it’s snowing. Well, sleeting, which is technically snowing. At 12 October. Yeah, I know, nothing special for Minnesota. This is the SW desert and I am not yet mentally prepared for this.

Look what the July floods brought us!

Not quite sure how to unwrap it and bring it home, it’s a bit much for my chainsaw. No way this is juniper, I’m assuming it’s cottonwood since AFAIK that’s the only actual tree that grows here – and not in great numbers. There are some in the canyons where they benefit from more frequent waterings.

Not sure how big around it is. I don’t carry a tape measure (prep fail!) But…

…my knife blade is 3″ so compare the two visually, naught, naught, fetch down the naught, and…

It’s probably bigger than my chainsaw can deal with, and I don’t like how it’s embedded in sand and rocks. Or maybe it’s really soft and/or lighter than it looks. One way to find out.

Okay, enough procrastination. Ian asked me to put a coat of stain on the exposed wood of his porch/sunshade/gazebo?-looking-thing, and I’ve been putting it off. Then when he actually paid me for having done so, I figured I should take the hint and do what I’d promised to do.

I have two modes of getting ready to leave the Lair: “Tobie’s coming with” and “Tobie’s staying here.” I think maybe he’s learning the difference, because he became positively militant in his opinion that I was making the wrong choice.

I figured maybe I was: Maybe he’d stay in the Jeep and be a good boy while I worked…

…and he did, too, for half an hour or 45 minutes. But he has obvious tells, same as me. And when you can hear him doing that Cassius Clay stutter-step of his from halfway across Ian’s front yard, you know he just declared war to the death on one of my belongings. Given that whatever it was was inside the Jeep at the time, it was probably the shotgun seat’s remaining upholstery.

Turns out it was the work gloves from out the driver door pocket, but that didn’t matter. Nothing further would be accomplished until he went home in mild disgrace. Probably for the best – I didn’t get back home myself for another three hours, and that was far too much to ask of a bored puppy.

Tobie and I had a busy afternoon, heading up to T&S’s mesa in the Jeep for the last time, assuming they make it home as scheduled. We got home a little after five, he got his food and his evening walkie, stopped by Landlady’s to tend the chickens, then when we got home for the last time I was distracted by something I needed to do and forgot my final essential Tobie-related task of the day.

…and sonuvabitch if that very smart puppy didn’t quietly stand behind me until I turned around, then drop his frickin’ Kong tire at my frickin’ feet.

Because I was supposed to give him a couple of treats packed inside it, and I seemed to have forgotten…