Apparently I want to keep a diary, at least for awhile. Who knew? I can’t imagine who would find any of this interesting enough to read–probably even me in a few years–but then I read other people’s trivia with interest, and “it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to” (sung to the tune of “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to”. And if you’re old enough to remember that song–hi.)
Today was less productive than yesterday. Both things planned for this afternoon fell through. The oil tank guy didn’t come by–apparently his office person called to make sure I would be home, but I don’t hear incoming calls (Skype plus ipad has limitations), and by the time I called back, no one was answering. The guy (I want to say kid, he looked maybe 22) did come by to drain the old tank, but it turned out the pipe was too narrow for the fitting he had with him. He said he’d come back next week with a fitting that will work, though, so it wasn’t a total bust.
But on the plus side–I met a couple of neighbors, who made a point of introducing themselves to me. I’d been sort of expecting this to happen, small western town and all. I grew up with the expectation that people welcome newcomers to town by introducing themselves, offering to help, etc., so I wasn’t surprised to see that is still intact. I remember when I was in Ghana in the Peace Corps having a a bit of a hard time adjusting to the different cultural expectation there. There, it’s on the newcomer to go around to people, introduce him/herself, make a point especially of introducing oneself to the local chief, possibly bringing a small gift. It’s definitely more comfortable for me to have people come to me.
And I found a good place to walk the dogs, down by the river (which is very high–there are flood warnings out on it, but they don’t affect me) only about 6 blocks from the house. The place I had found last summer is essentially flooded–there’s no way to drive into it. I may buy some wading boots so I can see if I could take the dogs there anyway–they’d be happy to splash through the water, but somehow I didn’t want to get my feet that wet.
The weather was unexpectedly sunny, intermittently. Periods of rain and hail (not both at the same time) were interspersed between periods of sun. At one point, the deck was covered with hail; half an hour later, the sun was back. I got a little yard work done this afternoon–I’m going to have to figure out what one does about disposing of yard clippings around here. In fact, I’m going to have to figure out what to do about garbage in general. I don’t want to pay for trash pickup year round, but when I am here, I have to do something with it. I’m not to the point of desperation yet, but I can see that the garbage is piling up, even though I’m burning all paper trash in the fireplace.
Oh, and the shower. It was very nice to have a shower this morning, but I need to replace the shower head. The water blasts out of it, about shoves you to the back of the shower. And I ran out of hot water in what was probably less than a 10-minute shower. I like to take 15 minute showers, so that’s not optimal, shall we say. I’m hoping that a shower head that allows me to dial down the amount of water coming through will help with both of those issues. I bought a cheap one today, and will try to replace the old one before my next shower. Some day I’ll want to do something about the whole shower set-up; right now it’s oddly low, so that if you’re taller than about 5 ft. (I am) you have to duck to get under it. Which is why I’m only putting in a cheap one this trip.
So that was my day. Shower, dog walk, a bit of shopping, a bit of yard work, tending the fire, a short nap, meeting some neighbors–overall, a good day. Not exactly exciting, but oddly satisfying. Again, a bit like camping. I’m not sure why camping is so satisfying, why I like it so much, but I have long had the feeling it had something to do with the fact that we are programmed to cope with daily survival, and when we have to expend energy and attention on just doing what needs to be done to survive, it fulfills some kind of need in us. Or some of us–I remember trying to express some of this to my mother once, and she basically said she’d had her fill of that kind of survival activity when she was growing up on the farm, and she’d take condo living from now on, thank you very much.
Tomorrow I’m going to go furniture shopping. I miss my recliner a lot (I was desperately wanting a nap today, and frankly a nap in bed just isn’t the same), and it’s old, and I’ve been thinking about getting a new one anyway, so I figure it makes sense to get one up here. And I’m going to shop for a king-sized bed, in the interest of getting my brother and his wife, and my niece and her significant other and child, to visit me; both sleep in king-sized water beds at home. I’m not going to go so far as getting a water bed–I want to sleep in this bed myself sometimes, and water beds hurt my back–but I can do the big bed (just barely, in the downstairs bedroom), and so that’s the plan.
Time for supper. More of that survival stuff. Some time in the next few days, I need to get the kitchen organized. But it’s probably just as well to live with it a bit first, to see where things migrate to.
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