A teacher friend of mine wanted to know what a day in my life was like. I told her to let me think on it a couple days and then I'd put something up - I must apologize for taking so long. Describing a day in my life isn't an easy task. My day is not your average work-a-day schedule. Sure, I have the normal daily tasks and they happen at normal times of the day, but even in those things, the changing seasons have an effect. My mornings are likely the most stable part of my day. Regardless of the season, pretty much the first thing I do is make coffee, check my emails and do my advertising on Facebook and Twitter. After that, the seasons play tiddlywinks with my daily schedule.
In the summer - from June to roughly the first part of September - I leave for work at seven in the morning. Returning home after work is a mite flexible, but mostly I leave there at five, or when I run out of work, whichever comes first. This concrete part of my life dictates my summer mornings, and now that I have internet, I get up at five, which gives me two hours for my morning ritual. As soon as I get back home, once again, I catch up on my emails, but also during that time, I'm fixing supper and possibly doing a few homely chores. On my one day a week off, I burn trash, wash dishes maybe clean the house a bit, whatever comes up that needs doing. Frankly, during the summer, my day seems really crunched.
During the winter, my day is much more relaxed. My morning starts at dawn, which isn't so bad since dawn is around eight in the morning this time of year. Once again I fix coffee, check my emails and do my advertising, but also mixed into my mornings, now that it's freezing at night, I go out and split up an armload of firewood. As it gets colder, that chore will migrate to the afternoon so I don't have to go out first thing in the morning before coffee.
Long around noonish, the battery on my computer is about run out so I go out and start the generator. I treat myself to a couple Facebook games for an hour or two and then I spend another hour or two on homely chores, whatever needs doing. This is usually the time of year when I dig into the corners of the house and scrape out the year's accumulation of gunk. This year I scrubbed walls too. (I don't do that every year, but I suppose I really should.) As soon as whatever chore I set for myself is finished for the day, I once again sit down in front of my computer. I quickly check through my emails again but really I'm checking for comments on my blogs and catching up on Goodreads, then it's on to writing or editing. Currently it's mostly editing, but once in a while I get a bur and need to write down an idea to be developed later. This sometimes happens in the middle of the night too. I love writing in the middle of the night - it's so quiet.
Supper and after also happens in front of the computer, and if my husband can leave the TV off (never), it's back to editing or writing for me. If the TV connection sucks (80-90% of the time), he demands a movie (DVD). If I get wrapped up in the movie, I'll usually go back to Facebook and one of my games or I'll go to Goodreads and chat with my friends there.
Usually, somewhere between ten at night and midnight, I fold and it's off to bed for me to begin it all again tomorrow.
Well folks, that's a simplified look at my day. There are always little events waiting around the corner to throw a monkey-wrench into whatever I might develop for a schedule, but as you can see, the most important thing I try to do revolves around my writing, the rest is unfortunately necessary and therefore must be done at some point.
Anna of Alaska - Every day is an adventure
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
I've Got Mail - Maybe
I’ve gotten more mail in the last year and a half than I’ve ever gotten all together in my life, but it’s all email. Getting regular mail, or snail mail, as it’s come to be called, is difficult to say the least. When the kids were going to school, it was merely an issue of making an extra stop after school, but even so mail only came twice a week. Back then, we took great pains to not have monthly bills; the only one we had was the phone bill and we kept that one paid over the phone, we still do. The rest of the mail was just junk mail anyway most of the time. There were the occasional Christmas cards from assorted family but all in all, there was really very little.
Now that the kids are grown and gone, getting the mail is not so easy. With the post office being over twenty-seven miles up river, and since I just don’t get that direction any more, going to the post office has to be a planned affair. I’m old and lazy these days so the trip pretty much kills my day. During the summer, it’s a two or more hour run up there, a delightful chat with Joe, the Post Master and maybe a nice visit with Norma, his wife, and then it’s another two hour trip home - faster going down river, but really, it’s not different enough to calculate - maybe twenty minutes faster going home than going up - I never really did the math. Of course you have to remember that during the summer, I’m also working at least six days a week. Now really, on my one day off, do you think I want to spend it running to the post office? As it is, I have six days of chores at home to catch up on.
Sometimes, my husband will check out the fishing up river and he will stop in at the post office when he does. Sometimes my boss does the same thing and he’ll pick up my mail too. Everyone loves Joe, and everyone likes to show off our unique post office. Occasionally some of my other assorted neighbors will collect the river mail and deliver it down the river and sometimes someone will bring mine over to work for me. It’s always a nice pleasure when that happens. All in all, if I can’t get my mail brought down to me, I don’t go get it until I can do it by snowmachine. It’s still a long trip, but I can pick my day, a nice sunny day. I can bundle up, put my sunglasses on if the sun’s shining, and toodle on up at a comfortable speed, enjoying the view as I go. I suppose I really should be more sociable on these trips but really, I just want to get there and get home. I really am kind of lazy when it comes to that sort of thing and I never have been a visiting kind of person.
There are great chunks of the year when a trip to the post office, or anywhere for that matter, is quite impossible. From somewhere in September usually to somewhere in December if I’m lucky the water goes down too far to travel by boat and I need to wait until we get a couple feet of snow before we can go anywhere by snowmachine. You see, down Twentymile Slough, where I live, there is at least two places where we need to shovel ramps in order to get on and off the river. One ramp is right here where we park the boats. That gets us down onto the river, but Twentymile Slough is a wicked witch sometimes and there is one place between us and the Yentna River where it only freezes over safe enough for travel at like twenty below (that’s Fahrenheit) (roughly -50C). So, rather than wrestle with this spot, we go around it, which calls for another ramp.
Breaking a trail all the way out of here is more than just shoveling those ramps. You need to be somewhat skilled at driving a snowmachine in powder snow, not my strong point. That’s Don’s department; I’m the one who gets to do the shoveling. Along with the first ramp, we generally pack and mark a runway down on the river, so while I’m shoveling, Don’s going up and down the river, packing the runway.
I shovel some and then walk down and up it to pack it some and then shovel some more. I keep doing that until I can walk up it without crawling, then Don drives up and down it a time or two. Maybe there’s some more shoveling, but generally, if I can walk it more or less, it’s good enough for the machine to make it up. Then it’s a day or two to let it harden. When we’ve recovered enough from doing that, it’s the seven-mile trip out to the main river, the Yentna, with its one necessary ramp about halfway there.
My laziness factor comes into effect here too. Once was the time when I would get a couple week’s work at the lodge during the Iditarod, but that hasn’t happened for a few years now, so the need to break that trail out comes down to my one post office run. Yeah, I only go up there once. Yeah, I’m that lazy, but really, I never have that much to go up there after. And it’s not as if we get a lot of visitors. In all the time we’ve lived down here, we’ve only had a handful of visitors stop in and that’s not counting the neighbors who live down here - two, one who long since moved down to the lower 48 and our next door neighbor who only comes out on holidays - he stops in at least once every winter.
At any rate, my need to break out a trail I’ll use only once is really rather slim. I think, now that my son is living in Eagle River, I’ll change my mailing address. It will be a lot easier for him to drop our mail off at a plane coming our way than for me to do all that work for a leisurely toodle to the post office.
In the spring, from somewhere in April to somewhere near the end of May, the river is once again untravelable. In April the sun in the afternoon is starting to do its work on the snow and the trails start getting soft - sink far enough and you hit melt water on top of the ice. At this time of year, you only have to sink a few inches to see water. There’s still plenty of ice down there, but you can still get stuck if you’re not careful, and I’m not strong enough to get unstuck. Walking on a trail that’s soft enough where a snow machine sinks is impossible unless you want to get wet up to your knees or higher - I see myself crawling. I don’t let myself get into that kind of situation.
Sometime around the end of April or first part of May, enough water has melted to float the ice - breakup, we call it. The ice will lift up, break apart and get carried down the river. This can be a very dangerous part of the year. The ice will jam up somewhere and the water behind it will build up, sometimes to near flood level. It did that here a couple years ago. I had to go down and babysit the boats. Not that they were in much danger of being carried away, but I wanted to ensure that they remained in the river when the water went back down. They kept drifting to the side, which would have left them high and dry, and so much harder to launch. As long as they were in the river, it didn’t matter if the water going down left them sitting on the bottom again, they wouldn’t be that way for long.
When the water rises high enough to lift the ice over whatever obstacle it was caught on, the whole thing gushes down to the next obstacle where the process starts all over again. The further these jams get down river, the less affect they have on what’s left behind, and all the time, both the sun and the water is eating away at the ice. This has all passed by the end of May and enough snow has melted to bring the water level back up to normal, or up far enough where travel by boat is again possible, and very shortly after that, I’m off to work again.
Now that the kids are grown and gone, getting the mail is not so easy. With the post office being over twenty-seven miles up river, and since I just don’t get that direction any more, going to the post office has to be a planned affair. I’m old and lazy these days so the trip pretty much kills my day. During the summer, it’s a two or more hour run up there, a delightful chat with Joe, the Post Master and maybe a nice visit with Norma, his wife, and then it’s another two hour trip home - faster going down river, but really, it’s not different enough to calculate - maybe twenty minutes faster going home than going up - I never really did the math. Of course you have to remember that during the summer, I’m also working at least six days a week. Now really, on my one day off, do you think I want to spend it running to the post office? As it is, I have six days of chores at home to catch up on.
Sometimes, my husband will check out the fishing up river and he will stop in at the post office when he does. Sometimes my boss does the same thing and he’ll pick up my mail too. Everyone loves Joe, and everyone likes to show off our unique post office. Occasionally some of my other assorted neighbors will collect the river mail and deliver it down the river and sometimes someone will bring mine over to work for me. It’s always a nice pleasure when that happens. All in all, if I can’t get my mail brought down to me, I don’t go get it until I can do it by snowmachine. It’s still a long trip, but I can pick my day, a nice sunny day. I can bundle up, put my sunglasses on if the sun’s shining, and toodle on up at a comfortable speed, enjoying the view as I go. I suppose I really should be more sociable on these trips but really, I just want to get there and get home. I really am kind of lazy when it comes to that sort of thing and I never have been a visiting kind of person.
There are great chunks of the year when a trip to the post office, or anywhere for that matter, is quite impossible. From somewhere in September usually to somewhere in December if I’m lucky the water goes down too far to travel by boat and I need to wait until we get a couple feet of snow before we can go anywhere by snowmachine. You see, down Twentymile Slough, where I live, there is at least two places where we need to shovel ramps in order to get on and off the river. One ramp is right here where we park the boats. That gets us down onto the river, but Twentymile Slough is a wicked witch sometimes and there is one place between us and the Yentna River where it only freezes over safe enough for travel at like twenty below (that’s Fahrenheit) (roughly -50C). So, rather than wrestle with this spot, we go around it, which calls for another ramp.
Breaking a trail all the way out of here is more than just shoveling those ramps. You need to be somewhat skilled at driving a snowmachine in powder snow, not my strong point. That’s Don’s department; I’m the one who gets to do the shoveling. Along with the first ramp, we generally pack and mark a runway down on the river, so while I’m shoveling, Don’s going up and down the river, packing the runway.
I shovel some and then walk down and up it to pack it some and then shovel some more. I keep doing that until I can walk up it without crawling, then Don drives up and down it a time or two. Maybe there’s some more shoveling, but generally, if I can walk it more or less, it’s good enough for the machine to make it up. Then it’s a day or two to let it harden. When we’ve recovered enough from doing that, it’s the seven-mile trip out to the main river, the Yentna, with its one necessary ramp about halfway there.
My laziness factor comes into effect here too. Once was the time when I would get a couple week’s work at the lodge during the Iditarod, but that hasn’t happened for a few years now, so the need to break that trail out comes down to my one post office run. Yeah, I only go up there once. Yeah, I’m that lazy, but really, I never have that much to go up there after. And it’s not as if we get a lot of visitors. In all the time we’ve lived down here, we’ve only had a handful of visitors stop in and that’s not counting the neighbors who live down here - two, one who long since moved down to the lower 48 and our next door neighbor who only comes out on holidays - he stops in at least once every winter.
At any rate, my need to break out a trail I’ll use only once is really rather slim. I think, now that my son is living in Eagle River, I’ll change my mailing address. It will be a lot easier for him to drop our mail off at a plane coming our way than for me to do all that work for a leisurely toodle to the post office.
In the spring, from somewhere in April to somewhere near the end of May, the river is once again untravelable. In April the sun in the afternoon is starting to do its work on the snow and the trails start getting soft - sink far enough and you hit melt water on top of the ice. At this time of year, you only have to sink a few inches to see water. There’s still plenty of ice down there, but you can still get stuck if you’re not careful, and I’m not strong enough to get unstuck. Walking on a trail that’s soft enough where a snow machine sinks is impossible unless you want to get wet up to your knees or higher - I see myself crawling. I don’t let myself get into that kind of situation.
Sometime around the end of April or first part of May, enough water has melted to float the ice - breakup, we call it. The ice will lift up, break apart and get carried down the river. This can be a very dangerous part of the year. The ice will jam up somewhere and the water behind it will build up, sometimes to near flood level. It did that here a couple years ago. I had to go down and babysit the boats. Not that they were in much danger of being carried away, but I wanted to ensure that they remained in the river when the water went back down. They kept drifting to the side, which would have left them high and dry, and so much harder to launch. As long as they were in the river, it didn’t matter if the water going down left them sitting on the bottom again, they wouldn’t be that way for long.
When the water rises high enough to lift the ice over whatever obstacle it was caught on, the whole thing gushes down to the next obstacle where the process starts all over again. The further these jams get down river, the less affect they have on what’s left behind, and all the time, both the sun and the water is eating away at the ice. This has all passed by the end of May and enough snow has melted to bring the water level back up to normal, or up far enough where travel by boat is again possible, and very shortly after that, I’m off to work again.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Spring come Summer
Originally posted on my primary blog on May 7, 2010. As a window into my life, it belongs here.
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Only seven days ago, I was complaining about spring yuck - now it's almost over. There's only a few spots of snow left, and the frost heaves along the trail are rapidly melting. They'll be muddy for a little while, but they're easy enough to walk around. I had to cut off the tops of a pair of hip waders so I could cross the little runoff creek that crosses the trail but the water is only ankle deep and it too will be gone soon enough.
I walk down to the river now every day, to check on the water level and to make sure the boats are alright. Yesterday, we had our first thunderstorm of the season but the rain didn't last long. The day before, or rather that night, it rained pretty heavy for part of the night. Now, though less than half of my water buckets, carefully filled with melted snow, was available, they are now three quarters full of rain water. It's always a gamble to see if I make the gap between enough snow to melt and either the first rains or until I can get to work. The well there is too deep to freeze, and even if there isn't water to all the buildings, there's water at the well and I can bring some home in jugs. It's what I do for water during the summer if it doesn't rain enough.
The last few days, I've been able to go out and do some raking. Always, in the spring, I regret being so lazy during the winter, but always, at the end of summer, I'm so ready to be lazy for the winter.
Today I chopped some wild rose bushes and elders out of what used to be my strawberry patch. We'll have to see just how many strawberries are left there. Not really much of a problem though. Over the years, they've spread quite a ways into the lawn surrounding the place. If there aren't many on the mound, I'll just have to do some transplanting.
I also trimmed a bunch of baby birch trees from around a stump, leaving one, the prettiest one, to grow. It was all a task I'd put off for too long. I also uncovered some rocks I'd put there ages ago; they now line my flower garden. Since my iris are sprouting already, I'll have to clean that up soon - maybe tomorrow.
Such is another look at my life. I'll be starting to work soon. Maybe I'll talk about that some too.
~~~~~~~~~~
Only seven days ago, I was complaining about spring yuck - now it's almost over. There's only a few spots of snow left, and the frost heaves along the trail are rapidly melting. They'll be muddy for a little while, but they're easy enough to walk around. I had to cut off the tops of a pair of hip waders so I could cross the little runoff creek that crosses the trail but the water is only ankle deep and it too will be gone soon enough.
I walk down to the river now every day, to check on the water level and to make sure the boats are alright. Yesterday, we had our first thunderstorm of the season but the rain didn't last long. The day before, or rather that night, it rained pretty heavy for part of the night. Now, though less than half of my water buckets, carefully filled with melted snow, was available, they are now three quarters full of rain water. It's always a gamble to see if I make the gap between enough snow to melt and either the first rains or until I can get to work. The well there is too deep to freeze, and even if there isn't water to all the buildings, there's water at the well and I can bring some home in jugs. It's what I do for water during the summer if it doesn't rain enough.
The last few days, I've been able to go out and do some raking. Always, in the spring, I regret being so lazy during the winter, but always, at the end of summer, I'm so ready to be lazy for the winter.
Today I chopped some wild rose bushes and elders out of what used to be my strawberry patch. We'll have to see just how many strawberries are left there. Not really much of a problem though. Over the years, they've spread quite a ways into the lawn surrounding the place. If there aren't many on the mound, I'll just have to do some transplanting.
I also trimmed a bunch of baby birch trees from around a stump, leaving one, the prettiest one, to grow. It was all a task I'd put off for too long. I also uncovered some rocks I'd put there ages ago; they now line my flower garden. Since my iris are sprouting already, I'll have to clean that up soon - maybe tomorrow.
Such is another look at my life. I'll be starting to work soon. Maybe I'll talk about that some too.
A Spring Rant
Originally posted on my primary blog on May 1, 2010. This blog didn't exist then.
~~~~~~~~
Here at the end of April the beginning of May, I thought I'd give a bit of a rant. In case you haven't caught on yet, I don't really care much for spring. Oh yes, April showers bring May flowers and all that, but for me, that never really quite happens. For me the snows are melting quickly, leaving behind soggy ground and months worth of man's sins. Out here, 'man's sins' are few and far between, but in the cities and towns, they're everywhere. There's the little plastic shopping bags dangling from a bush or a fence, invisible under the snow all winter long. There's the bag of trash that some dog tore up before it got to the dumpster and never completely picked up (if at all). It's as if no one wants to touch trash after it's gone into a trash-bag once. At that point it suddenly becomes totally contaminated - life threatening if ever touched again without a full-body contamination suit like you see on TV. Then the snow melts away, revealing plastic water or juice bottles, or chip bags, or used paper towels, or the empty soda cans. We all know what we throw away. All the little wrappers, boxes, papers, clippings, and even hair from a trim, now all becoming visible as the snow melts away.
Currently, out in my soggy front yard, littered with snowmachines that have yet to be put away for the summer, is a carpet of dog hair. Last December and January, my dog decided it was time to shed. She'd go in and out several times a day and scrub her body in the snow - she really loves doing that. I think it's a doggy version of a bath. I'd give her a bath more often but without running water, it's really quite difficult and the creek water is very cold. She generally gets one in the summer though, when the water is a little warmer and I can make her fetch a stick from the creek. She really does love to fetch and it really must be that stick. At any rate, two or three plunges and she's thoroughly rinsed. But that was way last summer. Last winter, along with her gleeful scrubbing in the new snow, which left behind a brown spot, she apparently left behind far more hair than I was aware. I knew she was shedding, I even went out and combed her a time or two, but she really hates being combed and seldom holds still for it, so I knew about that hair, but really, someone could weave a living room rug from all the hair out there. What did she do, molt?
For years, my husband wanted a stack of firewood here in front of the house, convenient for splitting and stuffing in the stove only steps from the door. And since we generally cut a tree at a time that idea was fine by me. So for years, long about now, or a little later when the ground is dryer, I'd rake up all the chips of wood and bark left behind by that chore. This year, what with LOTS of cut wood, there was no way I was going to have all that wood in front of the house so room was made in the long neglected woodshed. Well, tired of my spring ritual of raking up wood chips and bark in front of the house, I figured what better place for that mess than in front of the woodshed where, for the most part, it can stay. Deep heavy sigh here, I still have to rake the front yard. I wonder if hair rakes up any easier than bark.
So yeah, spring, for me, is the ugliest time of year. The snow is no longer white as all its accumulated dust is now on the surface. Nothing is green yet. You can't walk anywhere without getting your shoes full of snow or slipping and sliding all over the place. I did manage to make it down to the boats and made sure all the plugs were in, so when the river comes up they'll float. There's certainly no driving a snowmachine down there. Well actually, that's not quite true. If we REALLY had to, we could drive down there, but that would be driving through mud on both ends and having to turn the machine around by hand on that end - not fun.
My walk was not a stroll in the park. It was very slow and diligent, every step had to be taken with care. I even took my snowshoes, just in case. You see, there's this one part where, when it fills with spring snow-melt runoff, the icy water is generally around three feet deep. This is the place I had brought my snowshoes for. I knew the trail would still be there, but that didn't mean that the water under that trail wasn't deep. As it turns out, no water yet. Back to the walk. Since the trail goes through the woods, it's still about a foot or so deep in most places, but it was soft. I was lucky, most of the time the trail held me up, but there were plenty of times when it didn't and the foot doesn't always go straight down. It's not so bad when the foot slips forward - you gain a few inches. It's a little irritating when the foot slips backward - those two or three inches make a difference. It's awkward as hell when the foot slips out - I mean, how much have you had to drink? The absolute worst is when the foot slips in, under you, it's all you can do to not end up in a heap, there's just no way you can get your other foot over there where it needs to be to keep you off the ground. But that's not the only frustrations of walking this time of year. There's the deceptively solid trail that suddenly decides not to be so solid, only after you've trusted your body and soul to its strength - then you go down that foot or so rather abruptly, and you may or may not encounter one of the slippery problems enumerated above. This always happens right after you've lifted one foot to put it in front of the other, so once again, you're left staggering. You really should try paying attention to each and every step for a quarter mile, though I don't recommend you do it in snow your first time. It can so easily develop into a cussing issue if I was a cussing kind of person. For those of you trying it along your nice safe sidewalks, I'll give you the first dozen steps or so before something (very small) distracts you and you don't think about the next step or two. I totally understand. It's really very boring. It's not unlike walking heel to toe along a line that's not at all straight, but at least you have a task to hold your concentration there.
Ah, but that's enough of my rant about spring. Summer will come soon enough and the trees will start shedding their pollen, and then I'll be miserable for a healthy half of the summer. If I didn't love my job I'd hate summer too.
~~~~~~~~
Here at the end of April the beginning of May, I thought I'd give a bit of a rant. In case you haven't caught on yet, I don't really care much for spring. Oh yes, April showers bring May flowers and all that, but for me, that never really quite happens. For me the snows are melting quickly, leaving behind soggy ground and months worth of man's sins. Out here, 'man's sins' are few and far between, but in the cities and towns, they're everywhere. There's the little plastic shopping bags dangling from a bush or a fence, invisible under the snow all winter long. There's the bag of trash that some dog tore up before it got to the dumpster and never completely picked up (if at all). It's as if no one wants to touch trash after it's gone into a trash-bag once. At that point it suddenly becomes totally contaminated - life threatening if ever touched again without a full-body contamination suit like you see on TV. Then the snow melts away, revealing plastic water or juice bottles, or chip bags, or used paper towels, or the empty soda cans. We all know what we throw away. All the little wrappers, boxes, papers, clippings, and even hair from a trim, now all becoming visible as the snow melts away.
Currently, out in my soggy front yard, littered with snowmachines that have yet to be put away for the summer, is a carpet of dog hair. Last December and January, my dog decided it was time to shed. She'd go in and out several times a day and scrub her body in the snow - she really loves doing that. I think it's a doggy version of a bath. I'd give her a bath more often but without running water, it's really quite difficult and the creek water is very cold. She generally gets one in the summer though, when the water is a little warmer and I can make her fetch a stick from the creek. She really does love to fetch and it really must be that stick. At any rate, two or three plunges and she's thoroughly rinsed. But that was way last summer. Last winter, along with her gleeful scrubbing in the new snow, which left behind a brown spot, she apparently left behind far more hair than I was aware. I knew she was shedding, I even went out and combed her a time or two, but she really hates being combed and seldom holds still for it, so I knew about that hair, but really, someone could weave a living room rug from all the hair out there. What did she do, molt?
For years, my husband wanted a stack of firewood here in front of the house, convenient for splitting and stuffing in the stove only steps from the door. And since we generally cut a tree at a time that idea was fine by me. So for years, long about now, or a little later when the ground is dryer, I'd rake up all the chips of wood and bark left behind by that chore. This year, what with LOTS of cut wood, there was no way I was going to have all that wood in front of the house so room was made in the long neglected woodshed. Well, tired of my spring ritual of raking up wood chips and bark in front of the house, I figured what better place for that mess than in front of the woodshed where, for the most part, it can stay. Deep heavy sigh here, I still have to rake the front yard. I wonder if hair rakes up any easier than bark.
So yeah, spring, for me, is the ugliest time of year. The snow is no longer white as all its accumulated dust is now on the surface. Nothing is green yet. You can't walk anywhere without getting your shoes full of snow or slipping and sliding all over the place. I did manage to make it down to the boats and made sure all the plugs were in, so when the river comes up they'll float. There's certainly no driving a snowmachine down there. Well actually, that's not quite true. If we REALLY had to, we could drive down there, but that would be driving through mud on both ends and having to turn the machine around by hand on that end - not fun.
My walk was not a stroll in the park. It was very slow and diligent, every step had to be taken with care. I even took my snowshoes, just in case. You see, there's this one part where, when it fills with spring snow-melt runoff, the icy water is generally around three feet deep. This is the place I had brought my snowshoes for. I knew the trail would still be there, but that didn't mean that the water under that trail wasn't deep. As it turns out, no water yet. Back to the walk. Since the trail goes through the woods, it's still about a foot or so deep in most places, but it was soft. I was lucky, most of the time the trail held me up, but there were plenty of times when it didn't and the foot doesn't always go straight down. It's not so bad when the foot slips forward - you gain a few inches. It's a little irritating when the foot slips backward - those two or three inches make a difference. It's awkward as hell when the foot slips out - I mean, how much have you had to drink? The absolute worst is when the foot slips in, under you, it's all you can do to not end up in a heap, there's just no way you can get your other foot over there where it needs to be to keep you off the ground. But that's not the only frustrations of walking this time of year. There's the deceptively solid trail that suddenly decides not to be so solid, only after you've trusted your body and soul to its strength - then you go down that foot or so rather abruptly, and you may or may not encounter one of the slippery problems enumerated above. This always happens right after you've lifted one foot to put it in front of the other, so once again, you're left staggering. You really should try paying attention to each and every step for a quarter mile, though I don't recommend you do it in snow your first time. It can so easily develop into a cussing issue if I was a cussing kind of person. For those of you trying it along your nice safe sidewalks, I'll give you the first dozen steps or so before something (very small) distracts you and you don't think about the next step or two. I totally understand. It's really very boring. It's not unlike walking heel to toe along a line that's not at all straight, but at least you have a task to hold your concentration there.
Ah, but that's enough of my rant about spring. Summer will come soon enough and the trees will start shedding their pollen, and then I'll be miserable for a healthy half of the summer. If I didn't love my job I'd hate summer too.
A Sample of my Day
Today, October 1, 2010
A few days ago, the water finally went down far enough that my boat was sitting in the mud. The nights had been freezing - not really hard but still freezing, and I didn't want my boat to freeze down in the mud, so after two long hours of come-along-ing I finally got my boat up on rollers, out of the mud and on it's way up the bank. Those were two very long hours involving ratcheting on the come-along a few clicks and then going down the bank to the boat and moving it with a pry-bar, hoping that it moved forward an inch or two. Then it was up the bank to the come-along and a few more ratchets and back down again. Up and down, up and down, up and down. When I got back to the house, I was amazed I had spent only two hours down there.
Today, after three days of drizzle and rain, I went back down to the dock not only to check on the boat but to bring back gas. I'll talk about that task in a bit. One thing at a time.
Well, what with all the rain, the water had come up a few inches. Not that it was touching the boat, but still, why not. I decided to bring the boat up a few inches. Six clicks on the come-along and the boat scooted forward an inch or so. Ooh, so easy. So I decided I would bring the boat all the way up to flat ground. Click, click, click, it slid right up. Then I ran out of cable, so I loosened it up to get a new grip on the anchor rope or hopefully on the boat itself. Easy up - easy down. Just as I was almost ready to unhook the come-along to move it, the boat slid back down the bank to the bottom. No danger, no damage, just frustration. *Sigh* Click, click, click, back up the bank, a little farther this time. This time, when I ran out of cable, I took the loose anchor rope and tied it around the tree the come-along was attached to. Now even if the boat slipped, it couldn't go very far. V e r y c a r e f u l l y I loosened the come-along. Yeah, it slipped but the rope held and I got my re-hook on the boat itself. After that, click, click, click, the boat came right on up, until it tipped down to sit flat. I recovered all my rollers from being embedded in the mud - a successful task almost completed. All that's left is to move it out of the way of the trail the snowmachine will need to use.
That done, I looked up and saw the sky threatening to clear off, meaning a possible freeze again tonight. All the boats here have their plugs out so they don't collect water - all except one. My son's boat somehow during it's lifetime has had it's drain plug smashed closed and even though a plug still fits in the hole no water comes or goes there any more. So, with a threatening freeze, I decided to bail that boat out. Then it was on to my original task which was to haul gas back to the house.
Last June our 4-wheeler had a flat tire. The poor thing is ancient and the tires have leaked for years now. Getting them fixed was inconvenient to say the least. We just kept a can of Fix-a-flat around. This time, in filling the tire, the stem simply twisted off - instant flat. After some deliberation and some procrastinating, my husband came up with a way to fix it with a bolt and some silicone, then he drilled a tiny hole in the rubber and filled the tire with the rest of the Fix-a-flat like you'd fill a basketball. Worked great except that there wasn't enough Fix-a-flat left to actually fill the tire. Now 4-wheeler tires are supposed to be kinda soft anyway, but not that soft. Ah well, it worked. Day before yesterday I decided it was time to bring the propanes up to the house. If the rain was going to turn into snow, the 4-wheeler would be useless and the task impossible until enough snow fell to make using the snowmachine possible, and by then I hoped to have the boat up, which would make using the snowmachine . . . well, not impossible, but not easy.
I noticed that the tire was really low, the cold air was eating at the air volume and it was likely the patch was leaking ever so little. So when the propanes were all up here, I decided to park the 4-wheeler. Hence my bringing the gas up by hand, ten gallons at a time using a little kiddy sled. It's work, but exercise is good. I can always hope it will burn off a little of my extra weight. It hasn't happened yet, but I can always hope. So, for the next few days, I'll walk down to the boats and get a couple cans of gas and haul them back to the house. That's six trips for one barrel and maybe a couple more trips for what's left of the diesel. Who knows, maybe by then I'll have snow on the ground to make the sled actually slide.
A few days ago, the water finally went down far enough that my boat was sitting in the mud. The nights had been freezing - not really hard but still freezing, and I didn't want my boat to freeze down in the mud, so after two long hours of come-along-ing I finally got my boat up on rollers, out of the mud and on it's way up the bank. Those were two very long hours involving ratcheting on the come-along a few clicks and then going down the bank to the boat and moving it with a pry-bar, hoping that it moved forward an inch or two. Then it was up the bank to the come-along and a few more ratchets and back down again. Up and down, up and down, up and down. When I got back to the house, I was amazed I had spent only two hours down there.
Today, after three days of drizzle and rain, I went back down to the dock not only to check on the boat but to bring back gas. I'll talk about that task in a bit. One thing at a time.
Well, what with all the rain, the water had come up a few inches. Not that it was touching the boat, but still, why not. I decided to bring the boat up a few inches. Six clicks on the come-along and the boat scooted forward an inch or so. Ooh, so easy. So I decided I would bring the boat all the way up to flat ground. Click, click, click, it slid right up. Then I ran out of cable, so I loosened it up to get a new grip on the anchor rope or hopefully on the boat itself. Easy up - easy down. Just as I was almost ready to unhook the come-along to move it, the boat slid back down the bank to the bottom. No danger, no damage, just frustration. *Sigh* Click, click, click, back up the bank, a little farther this time. This time, when I ran out of cable, I took the loose anchor rope and tied it around the tree the come-along was attached to. Now even if the boat slipped, it couldn't go very far. V e r y c a r e f u l l y I loosened the come-along. Yeah, it slipped but the rope held and I got my re-hook on the boat itself. After that, click, click, click, the boat came right on up, until it tipped down to sit flat. I recovered all my rollers from being embedded in the mud - a successful task almost completed. All that's left is to move it out of the way of the trail the snowmachine will need to use.
That done, I looked up and saw the sky threatening to clear off, meaning a possible freeze again tonight. All the boats here have their plugs out so they don't collect water - all except one. My son's boat somehow during it's lifetime has had it's drain plug smashed closed and even though a plug still fits in the hole no water comes or goes there any more. So, with a threatening freeze, I decided to bail that boat out. Then it was on to my original task which was to haul gas back to the house.
Last June our 4-wheeler had a flat tire. The poor thing is ancient and the tires have leaked for years now. Getting them fixed was inconvenient to say the least. We just kept a can of Fix-a-flat around. This time, in filling the tire, the stem simply twisted off - instant flat. After some deliberation and some procrastinating, my husband came up with a way to fix it with a bolt and some silicone, then he drilled a tiny hole in the rubber and filled the tire with the rest of the Fix-a-flat like you'd fill a basketball. Worked great except that there wasn't enough Fix-a-flat left to actually fill the tire. Now 4-wheeler tires are supposed to be kinda soft anyway, but not that soft. Ah well, it worked. Day before yesterday I decided it was time to bring the propanes up to the house. If the rain was going to turn into snow, the 4-wheeler would be useless and the task impossible until enough snow fell to make using the snowmachine possible, and by then I hoped to have the boat up, which would make using the snowmachine . . . well, not impossible, but not easy.
I noticed that the tire was really low, the cold air was eating at the air volume and it was likely the patch was leaking ever so little. So when the propanes were all up here, I decided to park the 4-wheeler. Hence my bringing the gas up by hand, ten gallons at a time using a little kiddy sled. It's work, but exercise is good. I can always hope it will burn off a little of my extra weight. It hasn't happened yet, but I can always hope. So, for the next few days, I'll walk down to the boats and get a couple cans of gas and haul them back to the house. That's six trips for one barrel and maybe a couple more trips for what's left of the diesel. Who knows, maybe by then I'll have snow on the ground to make the sled actually slide.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Driving in the Fog
You might think that driving in the fog is no big deal. Maybe a little frustrating cause you should slow down just in case the guy in front of you is going slow, provided there is a guy in front of you. I mean, after all you have that nice line on one side that tells you where the edge of the road in and a nice dotted line that tells you where the middle of the road is, and if you stay between those two lines, all you have to worry about is the slow poke in front of you.
Course, if you're driving in the fog, you're an idiot. Now, before you get angry at me, please know that I add myself to the idiot list. You see, many's the times this time of year, when I drive to work in the fog; I'm sure we all do, even when it's really bad. But for me it's even worse. There are no nice neat lines on the water to tell me when I'm too close to the bank or crossing to the wrong side of the river. There is no wrong side of the river. The goal is to simply stay in the water and miss the other guy or whatever other obstacle may be just floating along. In the fog, that might be rather interesting.
Most of the time, I can spot the tops of the trees and can identify them by their familiar profile. The swirls and circles in the current are also quite familiar, I'm even thinking of giving them all names, they're so familiar. Pass George on the right side but keep Pete on the left. Stay far away from Betsy and start to turn left at 666, but don't drive over it cause 666 likes props. Ah well, it's an idea. Should I give the swirls in the water female names and the trees male names? Or should I do it the other way around? Na, I'm terrible with names anyway so I guess I'll just stick with keeping them in sight and where they're supposed to be.
And if there is some dark shadow looming in front of me, I give it a wide berth. I'd really rather not play chicken with a floating tree, or even part of one. Now, if you're flying in the fog, you're an even bigger idiot than I am. I met (sorta) one of those idiots once and it was lucky I'm sitting here telling you about it.
One day, years ago, my son and I were driving up the river in serious pea-soup fog. We could scarcely see a boat length in front of us and the tree tops were nowhere to be found. We were forced to drift first to one side until we could see where we were and then angle to the other side for another ghostly landmark. Suddenly, we hear a plane rev up for take off. From where he was, the only direction he had to go was right over us and there was no telling how close he was to us. For him to assume that the river was clear was pure idiocy. He couldn't see us, or even hear us inside his cockpit and certainly not over his motor.
We dove for the side of the river, willing to run aground if we had to, to get out of his path. We made it, barely, and he made it off the water before he reached our area, but if he'd been loaded, and if we'd picked the wrong direction, my son and I could have just as easily been splattered all over the river, never to be found or even missed until we were too late for work and someone called home to see if we were having motor troubles or something.
I think I managed to produce a couple gray hairs that day. I've only been so scared one other day and that was on a bright clear day. I'll save that story for another post.
So, to all you pilots out there who may be reading this someday, remember this one word. "Assume" Remember it by saying to yourself, "When you assume, you make an 'ass' out of 'you' and 'me'. I never could figure out where the 'me' came in, but if you're assuming something, you're definitely making an 'ass' out of you.
Course, if you're driving in the fog, you're an idiot. Now, before you get angry at me, please know that I add myself to the idiot list. You see, many's the times this time of year, when I drive to work in the fog; I'm sure we all do, even when it's really bad. But for me it's even worse. There are no nice neat lines on the water to tell me when I'm too close to the bank or crossing to the wrong side of the river. There is no wrong side of the river. The goal is to simply stay in the water and miss the other guy or whatever other obstacle may be just floating along. In the fog, that might be rather interesting.
Most of the time, I can spot the tops of the trees and can identify them by their familiar profile. The swirls and circles in the current are also quite familiar, I'm even thinking of giving them all names, they're so familiar. Pass George on the right side but keep Pete on the left. Stay far away from Betsy and start to turn left at 666, but don't drive over it cause 666 likes props. Ah well, it's an idea. Should I give the swirls in the water female names and the trees male names? Or should I do it the other way around? Na, I'm terrible with names anyway so I guess I'll just stick with keeping them in sight and where they're supposed to be.
And if there is some dark shadow looming in front of me, I give it a wide berth. I'd really rather not play chicken with a floating tree, or even part of one. Now, if you're flying in the fog, you're an even bigger idiot than I am. I met (sorta) one of those idiots once and it was lucky I'm sitting here telling you about it.
One day, years ago, my son and I were driving up the river in serious pea-soup fog. We could scarcely see a boat length in front of us and the tree tops were nowhere to be found. We were forced to drift first to one side until we could see where we were and then angle to the other side for another ghostly landmark. Suddenly, we hear a plane rev up for take off. From where he was, the only direction he had to go was right over us and there was no telling how close he was to us. For him to assume that the river was clear was pure idiocy. He couldn't see us, or even hear us inside his cockpit and certainly not over his motor.
We dove for the side of the river, willing to run aground if we had to, to get out of his path. We made it, barely, and he made it off the water before he reached our area, but if he'd been loaded, and if we'd picked the wrong direction, my son and I could have just as easily been splattered all over the river, never to be found or even missed until we were too late for work and someone called home to see if we were having motor troubles or something.
I think I managed to produce a couple gray hairs that day. I've only been so scared one other day and that was on a bright clear day. I'll save that story for another post.
So, to all you pilots out there who may be reading this someday, remember this one word. "Assume" Remember it by saying to yourself, "When you assume, you make an 'ass' out of 'you' and 'me'. I never could figure out where the 'me' came in, but if you're assuming something, you're definitely making an 'ass' out of you.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Lessons in People
A couple years after we moved here, this huge grizzly mama would come by bringing her cubs. We could tell she was around; the dog would go out to pee and her nose would go up and she'd be on the alert for the rest of the day, even when she was in the house.
This sow cased the place for a day or two, and then she would show herself at the far edge of our clearing, off in the tall grass and brush. All we could see of her was her head and shoulders. She'd stay there, calm as can be, while her cubs came on into the yard to explore.
At the time, and until a couple years ago, I had chickens, and at that time, I had a couple ducks too. These cubs really wanted to 'play' with those interesting smelling creatures in that little house. Now, at that time, I happened to have five roosters, and since it was time for the hens to be sitting on their eggs, and since the roosters would bug them unmercifully, I had left them out in the pen during the night. They were perching on a rail about four feet off the ground when the cubs managed to break down the gate to the pen. They were after the ducks and they got one.
During this hoopla, the roosters were very quiet, but as one of the cubs ran back to mom with his prize, one of the roosters shifted and fluttered. It was enough to get the attention of the other cub.
Now, to make this story even more humorous, I have to tell you a side tale. My roosters varied in size. They were all bantams. I'm not good with weights so I'll have to give you dimensions. I handle all my roosters so they were quite gentle for the most part. The smallest was barely more than a single handful; he was simply all feathers. Because of his size, the others always picked on him, fighting with him every time they saw him and running him off from anything he was eating. It got so bad that I was hand feeding him. I mean, he was so cute and so little.
Back to the bear cub. It was the littlest rooster who moved, and now that he'd been noticed, he jumped down from the perch and started to run. He ran like I'd never seen a chicken run, dodging and darting this way and that, staying just out of reach. The cub was doing his best to catch this seemingly easy target, after all, it didn't fly away, it had to be easy, right.
We were watching this little drama from our window; it was the commotion concerning the duck that alerted us to trouble, and remember, momma was standing out there on the edge of the yard, just watching. Don, in an effort to save my favorite rooster AND not kill a bear, cub or not (to kill that cub would have been so much trouble 'cause mama likely wouldn't have left at all then), was trying to get a bead on a point really close to the cub. He could have been writing cuss-words in cursive with the barrel of that rifle, that's how fast and convoluted the cub was moving.
Finally, he took a shot and succeeded in kicking some dirt up, scaring the cub away, breaking off the chase. The cub went crying to mama. He wasn't really crying but he did need a little consoling, then there was a duck prize to play with as they left. This year's lesson in people complete.
Back to my littlest rooster. Well, he'd run off a real bear. None of the other rooster could say the same. They had all stayed hidden on their perch during the entire ordeal. Never again did the other roosters get away with picking on him. He was cock of the walk after that. He was the one who did the picking. It was really funny seeing him face down his bigger brothers.
Now, notice the title once again, notice that it is plural. Mama Grizzly came back several different times. These cubs came back at least one more time, and she brought another pair of cubs by too. One visit each time; she was never an obnoxious visitor and she herself never ventured too close, nor did she ever come by alone. She did, however come close enough to mark one of our trees. One morning we discovered claw marks - the bottom of the scratches were nearly a foot above where the tallest of us could reach.
Her cubs never made it into the chicken house or it's pen again, though not for want of trying. We never had to shoot at them again either. It's as if mama brought her cubs by for a lesson on people, and as soon as they were bored with the lesson, she'd lead them away.
I haven't seen her for many years now.
This sow cased the place for a day or two, and then she would show herself at the far edge of our clearing, off in the tall grass and brush. All we could see of her was her head and shoulders. She'd stay there, calm as can be, while her cubs came on into the yard to explore.
At the time, and until a couple years ago, I had chickens, and at that time, I had a couple ducks too. These cubs really wanted to 'play' with those interesting smelling creatures in that little house. Now, at that time, I happened to have five roosters, and since it was time for the hens to be sitting on their eggs, and since the roosters would bug them unmercifully, I had left them out in the pen during the night. They were perching on a rail about four feet off the ground when the cubs managed to break down the gate to the pen. They were after the ducks and they got one.
During this hoopla, the roosters were very quiet, but as one of the cubs ran back to mom with his prize, one of the roosters shifted and fluttered. It was enough to get the attention of the other cub.
Now, to make this story even more humorous, I have to tell you a side tale. My roosters varied in size. They were all bantams. I'm not good with weights so I'll have to give you dimensions. I handle all my roosters so they were quite gentle for the most part. The smallest was barely more than a single handful; he was simply all feathers. Because of his size, the others always picked on him, fighting with him every time they saw him and running him off from anything he was eating. It got so bad that I was hand feeding him. I mean, he was so cute and so little.
Back to the bear cub. It was the littlest rooster who moved, and now that he'd been noticed, he jumped down from the perch and started to run. He ran like I'd never seen a chicken run, dodging and darting this way and that, staying just out of reach. The cub was doing his best to catch this seemingly easy target, after all, it didn't fly away, it had to be easy, right.
We were watching this little drama from our window; it was the commotion concerning the duck that alerted us to trouble, and remember, momma was standing out there on the edge of the yard, just watching. Don, in an effort to save my favorite rooster AND not kill a bear, cub or not (to kill that cub would have been so much trouble 'cause mama likely wouldn't have left at all then), was trying to get a bead on a point really close to the cub. He could have been writing cuss-words in cursive with the barrel of that rifle, that's how fast and convoluted the cub was moving.
Finally, he took a shot and succeeded in kicking some dirt up, scaring the cub away, breaking off the chase. The cub went crying to mama. He wasn't really crying but he did need a little consoling, then there was a duck prize to play with as they left. This year's lesson in people complete.
Back to my littlest rooster. Well, he'd run off a real bear. None of the other rooster could say the same. They had all stayed hidden on their perch during the entire ordeal. Never again did the other roosters get away with picking on him. He was cock of the walk after that. He was the one who did the picking. It was really funny seeing him face down his bigger brothers.
Now, notice the title once again, notice that it is plural. Mama Grizzly came back several different times. These cubs came back at least one more time, and she brought another pair of cubs by too. One visit each time; she was never an obnoxious visitor and she herself never ventured too close, nor did she ever come by alone. She did, however come close enough to mark one of our trees. One morning we discovered claw marks - the bottom of the scratches were nearly a foot above where the tallest of us could reach.
Her cubs never made it into the chicken house or it's pen again, though not for want of trying. We never had to shoot at them again either. It's as if mama brought her cubs by for a lesson on people, and as soon as they were bored with the lesson, she'd lead them away.
I haven't seen her for many years now.
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