The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Post morning walkie.

Tobie likes his bed, the more so since we retired the main room’s reading chair almost two years ago and moved the bed next to the desk where I’m most likely to be if I’m sitting. Which, being a one-legged old man, I do a lot. I did that for practical reasons having to do with getting the fabric bed away from a hot woodstove, but…

…the move actually corrected some behavior problems. The bed used to be on the other side of the room and so I had my back to him all the time. He did not like that. Not one little bit. But he didn’t have any constructive way of saying so, and it turns out he likes being beside me keeping me company. In fact when the thunder monster comes he gets up and keeps me company very close to the chair – the better to keep me safe, no doubt.

I came up with a new personal engineering term this morning during morning walkie! I’m so proud.

I’ve been carrying a medium-frame .44 revolver every day for something over 12 years now, with the exception of about six months starting late 2016 when I tore a rotator cuff and couldn’t draw a proper pistol. First it was an old beater .44 Special snubby, then a like-new Taurus Tracker, and now my third-hand-at-least M69.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now, right? And in fact except for my unfortunate habit of judging things by how I feel about them right now, I certainly had. But lately the pistol on my belt has been bugging me. A lot. It just always seemed to be in my way, and I was always aware of the weight. And I blamed it on the pistol, which was kind of stupid given that the pistol hadn’t changed. The holster had.

I got this holster in late 2015, wore it nearly every day since, and like all things leather it just plain wore out. It was an angsty couple of months while I determined what to do: I really didn’t want to buy a new leather one which would have to be cut on immediately to accommodate the optic. There was nobody around to talk to concerning custom leather or kydex. Then I remembered that Fobus makes a plastic holster that I’ve found perfectly acceptable for two different pistols and that they do make one to fit an L-frame – so I knuckled down and spent the money online…

…and that solved the problem affordably – with just a tiny bit of sculpting for the optic – and all of a sudden my revolver isn’t a burden anymore. The whole package weighs just under three pounds loaded, and it turns out that a little bit of floppiness goes a long way toward that weight making itself felt on your belt.

Speaking of belts, this seems like a good time for a product recommendation… Continue reading →

Under the bridge to the woodshed that crosses the drainage ditch for the gulley behind the Lair, I lay down a couple of drainpipes and then cover them with a berm of dirt recovered from the many times I’ve had to dig out the ditch. I do that to support the sewer pipe, which unfortunately has to cross the ditch at that point. If I leave the pipe unsupported for lengthy periods of time it fatigues and breaks, with the resulting mess you’d expect.

So for most of the year the ditch can only drain through those two pipes, which is more than enough – until the first time the gulley really flows during Monsoon. Then it’s important for the welfare of the Lair that the ditch be able to flow unimpeded by any berm. It worried me at first – until I realized that the gulley was perfectly capable of dealing with the issue itself before overflow could approach the cabin…

If it’s anything like last time I’ll find those pipes halfway down the driveway this evening.

Oh, we’re finally getting “that” thunderstorm, even as I type this. Sheeting rain, super close lightning and blasting thunder. The gullies are rising all around the Lair: over half an inch measured in less than half an hour. Tobie is having a Anatolian-style meltdown.

I often wake up with odd old songs in my head. Lately they can be so old I don’t even remember the lyrics – just the tune, the tag line, and a vague memory that there were lyrics. In these instances YouTube, being a repository of basically all the old songs, is my friend.

Or maybe not…(Trigger warning: Don’t click this unless your tolerance for oldschool twangy C&W is higher than mine.)

…Yeah – the problem is that my earworms often edit out all the stuff I hated about an old song and looking up the actual song is like reliving a forgotten bad experience.

I grew up with this shit – for a period of time I was sort of trapped with it – and to this day the sound of somebody twanging away on a steel guitar can get my fight or flight going. I really hated this song when I was … however old I was at the time, I’ve edited that out as well…

ETA: Huh – I just looked up the song history and this particular song isn’t quite as old as I thought it was. It would have come at the very end of that particular bad time. I’m surprised I even had such a strong opinion of it. Maybe it’s just a perfect example of that genre and I’ve lumped all the songs in it into one ‘bad apple’ basket, I don’t know. Don’t really care. I’m going to go back to not thinking about it now.

Monday! And the water run has been moved to Friday, which means I blissfully have no social obligations whatsoever. After morning chores and walkie I bag up some ammo, put in my earplugs and go for a sort of walking target practice. Come home and it’s time for what passes in my life for zen meditation…

…communing with the m69’s inner workings amid the scent of Ballistol.

Took my phone out of my bag to find I had a text message from D&L: We’re stuck in (the biggish town about 35 miles away) trying to get D’s knee x-rayed, could you do the horses’ lunch?

Oy – that’s why I always walk around with this dorky thing sticking out of my ear…

…specifically so I don’t miss calls like that. My role as neighborhood handyman has dwindled to only a couple of customers in the past several years but I do try to stay available to them if only because they’re all substantially older than I am and when they need help they may need it right f’ing now.

But in this case it was only horses’ lunch and there were still a couple of hours before it was due so no harm done. Tobie and I drove over at about 11:30…

…fed the boys…

…cleaned up the corrals…

…and I was just weighing out feed for their supper when D&L made it back, having apparently gotten tired of sitting around waiting their turn and cancelling the whole thing. So Tobie got a twofer: Not only a Jeep ride, which doesn’t happen every day, but attention from friendly neighbors which almost never happens. Best day ever. Tobie’s an Anatolian mix and Anatolian Shepherds are reputed to be dubious about non-family humans – but whatever that ancestor bred with to produce Tobie seems never to have heard of that trait. Tobie LOVES new people. Friendly as a Golden, to the point where I suspect that may be his other genetic half.

It got positively chilly yesterday. I got home from the water run, changed out of my new pants and gun burka, put on my usual summer ain’t-goin’-nowhere shorts and sleeveless shirt, and pretty much immediately recognized my mistake. It rained off and on most of the afternoon, only in chilly little drizzles. Outside temperature was low-sixties which has to be some kind of record for mid-August. I boiled water for dish washing for the first time since May.

Bed covers for this time of year are normally a thin sheet – more to keep the bugs off than for warmth – or maybe that and a winter flannel sheet. The quilt Landlady made for me several years ago was long since stored away under plastic…

…but it came out yesterday evening, as a couple of sheets were definitely not going to cut it.

Having long since gotten over the wearing-camo-everywhere thing, more and more the quilt gives me a “kid’s racecar bed” vibe I could kind of live without. But as the only such artifact anyone ever took the time to make just for me, just because she wanted to, I’ll probably keep it close for the duration. I’m not typically rated worthy of that much effort. 🙂

…because we didn’t get enough rain last night to make the wash run.

This is an extremely moderate run, nowhere near even bank-to-bank much less raging torrents that cut new channels through juniper thickets that have been there for centuries and try to carry tractors away. But we can get those floods even when it’s not raining hard here at all, because here isn’t where those floods originate. They start up on the plateau east of here, which is surfaced with non-absorbent shale and is cut by two big canyons that are the start of my wash. When it storms up there, it floods down here. So far it hasn’t really stormed up there – or anywhere else for very long. I can dream that it won’t, because that’s a pain in the ass.

On the other hand if there isn’t at least one good flood annually to carry off the loosest sand and pack down the rest, the wash gets hard to drive on – so you win and lose either way.

…that his opinion of my management of the weather is lowering by the day, since Monsoon finally decided to do something. We just had a mighty flash followed by a most disagreeable kaboom, and he sees very little reason to be polite about that. Probably wants a word with my manager.

We haven’t had a real thunderstorm yet, where we’re right in the middle of it and really wondering when something expensive is going to explode and/or catch fire. That happened at least once, last year or the year before, and he didn’t deal with it well at all. Perhaps this brief incident was a reminder, can’t say. But he does wish to express his opinion that this “thunder” business could have been addressed in greater detail in the brochure.

That actually seems to be a universal opinion among the dogs that have spent time with me here, so maybe I should add a warning paragraph or two to the recruitment literature.

Went into Ian’s Cave this morning to check traps. No kills, but there seemed to be a large quantity of miniature mouse shit in the kitchen sink.

“How did you get there?” I asked the air, and then looked more carefully…

Poor terrified little thing – and of course it had reason to be. I already got three of its siblings and now it was this one’s turn.

I should look up what the average litter size is, see how many more I can anticipate. Trapped in the Cave, the adults became susceptible to the traps they had previously ignored: Now the babies are falling for them. Sooner or later I’ll run out.

The gullies ran copiously as the rain crashed down and the thunder rumbled all around.

Tobie protected me most closely…

“Not to worry, Uncle Joel,” he said, over and over, “As long as you stay close. If we’re separated I can’t answer for your safety.” I was very appreciative.

Okay: We got like a fifth of what fell yesterday. The gullies ran a little bit. I don’t think the wash ran even a little bit. I’m talking it up for Tobie’s sake: There was lots of thunder and he protected me from it very faithfully. Maybe that was what he was doing. 🙂

My old leather holster is too worn out to be tolerable. Even if there were someone around to do the work I could never afford the custom holster a red dot-equipped L-frame kind of needs and I’m really not prepared to take a razor knife to a brand-new leather holster.

I don’t mind desecrating a new Fobus, though.

I’ve done it before. 😉

And anyway, this holster is almost cut as if it anticipated optics. The required desecration was extremely minor.

Wow, it finally decided to rain. It rained from before noon till after 3, sometimes in real drenching cloudbursts. According to my rain gauge we got over an inch in two hours. Which of course means…

…the wash ran – a little, at least, during the very first real rain of the Monsoon season.

And now I can whinge about mud! My life is complete.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Answer: Absolutely nothing, for the first time since sometime in February. The Jeep is backed into its proper parking place.

Last winter something very bad happened in the valve body of the Jeep’s newly-rebuilt transmission. Park was some forward gear, locked of course by the parking pawl, and Reverse didn’t work at all. It happened overnight: One day it was fine, the next I started having to be very careful never to get myself into any situation requiring a reverse gear.

Then this morning, with exactly the same lack of any triggering event, it started working fine again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

At first I assumed it was a linkage problem, because of course it would be. But it wasn’t: The linkage was just fine at all points. So it pretty much has to be a valve body problem, but why it would work perfectly fine for a year, suddenly gum up for several months, and then just as suddenly ungum, all overnight, is quite beyond my ability to speculate.

Meanwhile, Uncle Joel has continued his murderous ways.

In late spring I knew there was a mouse nest in Ian’s Cave. Never found it, of course, but I recently found how the mice were getting in and out and then I started getting kills in the (several) traps scattered around within. Now for two days straight I’ve gotten kills on juvenile mice, having apparently run out of adults. I’m winning the war, at last on that narrow front.

…is kind of a problem if you live by yourself in the boonies, are vehicle-impaired, and don’t want to just dig a series of holes and bury things that won’t rot in the desert surrounding your place. After seventeen years in the boonies that last solution would become a problem, though when Ian’s big backhoe still worked I do confess the thought of one huge midden pit did occasionally come to mind. Almost certain to cause more problems than it’s worth.

Anyway, I have worked to reduce my actual garbage accumulation to necessary minimum, but there’s always some. Happily, for the past few years my garbage production and that of D&L have reached a sort of equilibrium…

The time it takes me to fill one of these big plastic trashcans that I inherited eight years ago when J&H moved away is more or less exactly the time it takes D&L to reach max capacity on their half-dozen barrels. So I help them load their truck, and in return they leave room for my one can. It has worked amazingly well for years now.

For the foreseeable future we’re going to be doing the water run on Friday rather than Monday, for reasons having to do with when the local food market gets its produce delivery. While in town today I picked up a care package from Generous Reader MM:

A nice new pair of cargo pants. I generally purchase one of these every other year or so just so I have one pair that’s presentable when I leave the Gulch, and it was time. Thanks, MM!

A beautiful cloudless morning for once…

The cloudless part probably won’t last but we’re not scheduled for any rain today. Even on days when rain is scheduled we haven’t been getting much. Early August, and so far Monsoon has been a complete bust. Can’t really say I’m sorry: At least the heat wave broke.

Tobie and I went out for chores and walkie…

A quick turn around the bend of the wash to take care of physical necessities, then to Ian’s for morning chores…

Checked the mousetraps: Got a second kill which might be the last since I repaired that holey window screen though that’s not the way I’m betting.

And then we were off for a more extended walkie before it gets hot. Not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of the day. Yesterday was senior day at the Palace of Food…

…and that always uses up all my gregarity (that’s not a word, it says here. Gregariousness? Gregariosity?) for the week. Tomorrow is the Monday morning water run, which henceforth is to be held on Friday. Today I may not need to meet a soul.

The Monday morning water run has been moved to Thursday or Friday, details still being worked out, which left me rather at loose ends this morning after morning walkie and chores. I badly needed a hardware infusion, plus Big Brother had left me a package. Happily, it’s a beautiful morning. So…

I got to play with the ebike. Love this thing: It’ll be four years next month since it came to live with me, and I can enthusiastically recommend Rad Power Bikes. It’s only broken down on me twice, the first time being unforced: A cold solder joint which, granted, shouldn’t have happened but I must applaud their customer service – and this was in summer 2020 when everything was crazy. The second time was after a crash, when a connector inside the frame pulled loose and I was able to diagnose and fix it myself. Neither incident would have happened on pavement, so I’ve pretty convincingly put my Radrover through a thorough workout – 1256 miles on hilly dirt roads – and we’re still friends.

I didn’t get the plumbing parts I wanted, but I did get what I needed – I’m not crazy about plastic sink drains but it’s what they had. So later today I’ll go unf*ck Ian’s kitchen sink and clean up the mess I left there. Uncle Murphy being the fun-loving fellow he is, I’ve been waiting for Ian to show up unannounced to a horrific mess demonstrating what a lousy caretaker I am.

Speaking of bikes – Big Brother has been an enthusiastic recumbent rider for – oh, several decades now, I think – and one time he sent me a picture of him on the bike that had ended up published in a local magazine. This was 2020 or 2021 and he was wearing a balaclava – in southern Florida – which struck me as a rather odd thing to do. Maybe it was a nod to face masks? But he’s more sensible than that, there must be a better explanation. Being an extremely private person myself I don’t normally ask personal questions of other people, but in this case I made an exception and the explanation did turn out to be quite sensible: He’s prone to sunburn and doesn’t like slathering his face with sunscreen. Okay.

He reminded me of that incident this morning with a gift I definitely didn’t expect…

My very own dayglo thermal balaclava. “Maybe it will extend your riding season,” he wrote. And maybe it will, indeed. 🙂

These things…

There is a species of big black ant around here – they will suddenly form a big new nest seemingly overnight with seemingly squillions of – well, big black ants which will delight in giving their lives to quietly crawl all the way up your leg and bite you in your squishy bits, leaving painful welts that will linger for days. I hate these things. They’re not in the league of fire ants, but they’re not your friends.

Their nests are everywhere, so it’s really easy to find yourself trying to work in what they clearly consider their territory. The nest above just recently appeared in Ian’s yard, where I spend substantial time, so it was time for some targeted mass murder.

This stuff…

…works every time. Quickly, too. Overnight. They can’t resist it, and the very next day there won’t be a living ant in sight. I don’t use it promiscuously, ants not making their homes right where I live and work are welcome to do their own thing in peace, but when they inevitably move in on my territory, they die in large numbers.

I figured out how those mice were getting into Ian’s place…

Pretty simple, really. That particular window ledge is easily accessible. I found little chewed chunks of rotten nylon screen scattered inside, moved a drum that was covering that spot, and there it was: A big open front door.

Happily…

…I’m prepared for that.

Finally…

S&L have gone to visit family in the Big City and needed somebody to come visit their cat and chickens twice a day. Tobie thinks this a terrible thing – I should not be allowed to make the trip alone lest I become suicidally depressed or something.

This is the one situation where I can absolutely depend on Tobie to do exactly the right thing outdoors: If you say “Wanna ride in the Jeep?” and open the cabin door, he would shoulder rabbits out of the way if necessary in his single-minded sprint to the Jeep’s driver door. I think it’s funny as hell, given his original attitude toward such things.

Tobie and I have entirely different approaches to the concept of “walkie.” I’m generally going from one place to another at a determined pace, and regard diversions from the mission with glowering disapproval. Tobie, a big strong young dog, wants to check all the peemail and chase all the rabbits. “Arrival” suggests we’re going somewhere particular, and who decided that? The walkie is about the walkie, Uncle Joel, not about checking “walkie” off our to-do list.

His approach is probably more sensible, really – but it conflicts with my nature and I’m the one setting the agenda here.

This afternoon, though…

It looked like it might actually rain for once. Thunderboomers! Great wind gusts! Black, threatening clouds. We might be stuck indoors till evening. Better get a poop break out of the way right now.

And for once, instead of dawdling and playing the fool, Tobie was right with the program. He MARCHED to his current favorite pooping spot, did the deed in an efficient and workmanlike manner, and wanted back to the cabin Right Frickin’ Now. Because every time the thunder rolled the ruff rose on his neck indicating a desire to be almost anywhere but out here, preferably in the closet farthest from any window. And was I crazy? Going outside where the thunder might get us both?

We got home just in time, too. It did in fact rain enough to run off the eaves, for the first time in this so-far pointless Monsoon season. Only time will tell if it does any more than that today, though: It’s backed down to a drizzle.

When you find multiple horrid arthropods cavorting about the drain of a sink that’s done very little besides collect goo since it was installed several years ago, it’s best to assume that what you can see is not the whole problem. Every time I confirmed a kill I saw evidence of something worse lurking in ambush. I’m quite sure I didn’t get the big one.

But I can testify that there are no centipedes left in the immediate sink plumbing, because…

…there is no immediate sink plumbing. It’s scattered all over the Cave floor and yard.

I’ve never been very happy with that particular piece of plumbing. It was put together from disparate bits, was never entirely leak-free, and I finally decided this episode was nature’s way of telling me I should tear it all out and rebuild it right. So I visited the hardware store this morning and brought home everything (I thought. HAH!) I needed to get that drain out of my life. I just took it apart piece by piece, dealing with centipedes as I encountered them. Two confirmed kills: Death to Bugs.

I got it all apart, tried to put it back together with new parts – and that’s when both sink drains…

…just…kind of fell apart, I dunno. They both came loose from their respective sinks and refused to re-tighten, and when I took them off to investigate the problem, the tightening threads were just sort of gone. I suspect bug sabotage.

So – it’s back to the hardware store, and no kitchen sink in Ian’s Cave till I do. Not that that particular sink really gets used all that much, but it’s the principle of the damned thing. I tried to fix something simple, and everything I touched broke till I hit cast iron.