the beginning of the melt - ice storm tennessee january 2026

 

 

 

 It is February 3rd, and the ice has begun to fall off the roofs, but the road is still covered in it.  Yesterday, at the peak of the temperature, an hour before dusk, some bits of the road were slushy.  Other areas, mostly in shadow, were still as slick as the bottom of an enameled bathtub.  Today, at 9:30 am, no bit of the roads are slushy, yet.   And today is overcast, where yesterday had sun.  It is forecasted to rain a bit this afternoon, as well - we will see what happens.  I loaded the propane tanks into the car, and a box of salt and a couple of bottles of water.

I walked out to the 600 hill again, which is halfway to the highway from us, about two miles there and back.  I saw a blood trail where something, perhaps a deer, had crossed the road.  My hound went nose-down into the woods and followed it a bit, and came back to tell me it how it smelled.  I worried about her last night, when she went out at 1 am and didn't return until after 4.  I told her she almost had me planning missing posters with all the melting and falling ice and slick gullies etc, and the coyotes howling and foxes arguing that ring out over the hills.  The geese and turkeys have been loud - and I heard a woodpecker when I was out there this morning.  I saw a murmuration of starlings at the highest point of the hill.  I did not see enough melting to go get in my car and try the hill.  I barely saw any road at all anywhere, only where the one neighbor has had his monster truck in and out to check on his relative and then struggled getting it back up the hill to his house.

 I feel trapped and that perhaps I should be brave and just go for it - but I've also been down in the ditch in a much worse situation than I had been earlier in the morning, for trying such a thing.  And that time it was very difficult to get anyone to  come out and help even the next day - they heard where, and said 'no, not in this weather.'

Mark says 'don't go down the mountain until you know you can get back up it.'  Yes.  The only good thing about that is if these roads become clear, we can be certain almost everywhere else is.  Yes.  He has been cold all night (66 degrees) which is less than he can usually afford with his breathing condition.  We had a wellhouse heater and a heat lamp in there to bring it up to 69 yesterday, but for safety's sake had turned it off and turned the house heat up for the night.  With the propane, we keep it at 72 for him usually.

So, *blow air up forehead*  I'll get my walking in and go back out there again after another few hours.  Sat down and drew a hungry heron looking at a fish in the water before I set out this time. (below) with a bit of gold wishing in the corner for the sun to shine a bit more on this ice and melt it.

 

Le Vide?

 Saw that the French nickname for this part of the year is the void (le vide) and yes, I've experienced the 'what day is this anyway' already.  Because, two days off is something I just don't get anymore, much less two days off, two days on, and another day off!  So I woke Friday night and had no idea what was going on or what I should be doing Saturday morning.  Even though I do the postal route every Saturday.  What is this.. Saturday?  What is time?  Where am I, even?

Enough of that.  Studying a lot more Latvian, using bern istaba and tuta lietas, ba ba dum and baltoslav.  I often forget the names of those things and can only remember the flavor - so I post here what they are so I can look it up again later.  I love Tuta's style - and my daughter just recently noticed the hats.  Why does she have an airplane in her hair?  So I had to explain it to her.  

One of the most useful things towards learning is to have the subtitles on in Latvian, stop it, open up a second window, try to type the word I saw (without peeking) and then find out the translation of it.  I have to remember the word and remember what was said about the word, find out the translation, then try to relate it back to what I heard - quickly, and then maybe replay the sentence or wait until the next time they say the word again with better knowledge of it.  It is very real learning.  When I am playing baltoslav in Latvian, after studying a lot on ba ba dum in Lithuanian, I stop and three-point-translate the words that are different, like 'pillow' is different in Latvian and Lithuanian (a lot of words are almost the same, too) and recognize what the word is in English, Latvian and Lithuanian all at once to make contact points between the languages.  I can feel 'brain burn' during this, like when I started learning Catalan (in Spanish).  It actually feels great :)

I studied Greek on the other platform, and have been improving my Spanish to French score on the third platform.  That contributes perhaps, to 'le vide'.

Other than that we are eating leftovers, and I am trying to clean a thing here or there.  There is always laundry.  I say I won't take down the Christmas tree until after January 5th, but most years I am still forgetting to take it down come April.  

I've planned to go out and spend a gift certificate that was gotten on the postal route from one of my residents.  We don't often go out to restaurants at all, and there is some social anxiety about it.  I talked to E about the social anxiety (and I had a lot of it yesterday morning after giving a gift back to that resident in return, and all the social 'did I do that right' etc. insecurities about that kept me beating myself up for two hours or more) and told her it really helped when my dad finally told me that he did that too.  

The biggest thing is you always feel it was silly and didn't matter that much after it - but when you're inside it, and you can't break out from it, it feels even worse to tell yourself it is silly, it doesn't feel silly.  The only thing that helps, as my dad also said, was to 'plow through' it - do other things that need to be done, find something like a book or music to distract you for a moment - and eventually the 'reverberation' of the anxiety will die down some.  THEN, after it did ease up a little, THEN remind yourself that you made it through to this point, that it feels silly but only after the fact, and that life goes on and things need to be done.  You're the person that is there to do them, and then go do them.

As I said on another site : Some days I have to remind myself that it is okay to have difficulty with being a singular entity inexplicably residing in a corporeal form that is adherent to the laws of space and time.  Other days, I have to just admit that I am (anxious / impatient / annoyed / frustrated) and get myself up and do some chores.

 

bits - kick my tail, imaginary time

had some reflective 'I should kick my own tail' thoughts today that I have several more small stories and books and I just haven't been able to drag myself to work on them but then I go and spend a few hours here and there in Minecraft building a huge empire that doesn't exist - which imaginary world is more productive? It is all 'imaginary time', like dreams, but a bit more tangible.

 

I have another Mikki story I had half-realized - and several others, and then a few more popped into my head today and I captured an iota of it... and yet I sit here staring at what I sent myself on my lunch break and saying 'Do I really want to work on that or do I want to go build a road to nowhere in the game' again...

 

Both past times can be done at midnight or 3 am...

only one of them will ever amount to something in my publish queue....

 

  

 

Mikki Mack - the quite pretty small grey cat with the glorious long fluffy tail 

 

I worked on a few simple illustrations and thoughts for that story.  And I thought about tomorrow, which is the Solstice.  I have to work tomorrow, and it will be early.  What if, instead of walking all the way up to the road and watching the first light and walking all the way back down, I made coffee and an egg and watched the red day lilies light up in the garden?  I think that would be good.  And Saturday will perhaps be a hard day, starting late at the post office and as long as it takes to get it done - and not a route I run often.  There won't be a lot of time the next few days to do much leisure / thought process.  Sunday I have not volunteered, though - and I hope it won't be a call in situation, so we can all go to the store.

 

Quests for Humans

 It's been busy weeks - on top of busy weeks.  The cold let up a little - we're getting some rain but hopefully no ice overnight.  Got the little car's heater fixed.  Mark had his birthday - I gave him some clothing and some candy that Esme and I had picked out when we got propane one day.  He watched a lot of the cartoons and movies he likes - and ordered some things for his computer that is only just now arriving.  

It doesn't feel like Christmas will be here in a few weeks.  I've only bought a few things and to be completely honest - I never even took the little tree down last year. It's still up from LAST YEAR.  But it does need to be taken down and cleaned and the lights replaced and put back up.  If I can figure out time that I have ambition that isn't used for making dinner and laundry and existing.  I've come home and just sort of collapsed on the couch for a while and not been very conversational a few times.  That isn't really my style - It's been a bit like the epitome of 'flattened'.. edging back towards human at the end enough to eat and talk.  Usually my style is to come home and eat a huge pile of food and chat way too much until I deflate from the anxiety of the day and then ease back down from the high-tension end of the slide into normal.  I've had fewer of the 'keep doing what needs doing but anxiety of single being in a single timeflow with multi-dimensional timeflow thoughts that I can't process so I stick them down in the box all day until it overflows' type of days.  But I'm not sure if this is better or not - the 'I've kept doing all that needed doing but my 'brain box' is only full of dead space - no brain, no thoughts, just 'stop' or 'go' and now that I've stopped I'm flattened' feeling is a bit worse.  I guess other people would explain that as : 'I'm tired'.  But I guess that is proof I do still have those multi-dimensional thoughts when I start to think about it... when I'm not so tired.

Today I pushed on and after work went to the bank (hard quest, it closes less than a half hour after I get out of work, about a half hour drive away from bank), feed store (also closes an hour after bank does, but only fifteen minute drive away from bank), then another store for Mark and the grocery store, and then home.  I am really glad the little car made it through all those stops.  When the mail truck was having trouble with its battery that was an ever-increasing anxiety making multiple stops without running the truck long enough to charge the battery in between.  Quests for humans, indeed... with difficulty settings.

Not to mention it gets dark so early now.  And is extremely dark and cold and sometimes icy in the mornings.  It could be worse.  I don't want it to be.  Boss was ranting to me about somebody taking days off and going to be fired for missing work - and I told her my anxiety stack is still on all the ice days of previous years and I can't say one word one way or the other about anyone else because I'm just doing my best to be there every day and anxiety about what will happen if/when the weather changes.  She tried to assure me that I can't control the weather.  Yea.  That is what worries me.

I called all of our errands and my work days 'quests for humans' the other day to Esme - as she helped us get groceries with Grandma, and propane.  I told her it feels like that sometimes, like ticking off parts on some video game quest until you get all the bits done - but then it's just done for that day, and it rolls back around the next day starting all over again.  I had a very very busy postal route the other day, but not so much I couldn't get it done.  I'm wondering what this weekend will be like - Christmas packages et al.  This is the time of year they used to call in some help.  I used to be that help, on the weekdays - but now I am at the office job during the week.  Last Saturday they said that they were surprised I finished it all without needing help, but I said I didn't know they were providing help yet, so I pushed through and got it done - by continuously telling myself during the day : 'It's not going to help to sit here and stare at it - up, onward, get it done' over and over until it got done.  Thus: the quests for humans.  There is a book I keep seeing that is close to that name but it isn't quite the same emotion.

And I feel like my hips, knees, ankles, fingers and wrists are all clicky at the moment - it could be worse, don't want it to be.  It's like my muscles are made of toothpicks bound together with lots of rubber, and the toothpicks are clicky and shifting around and hoping they don't break.  I am glad the weather has been good - hope that continues to be.  Just keep getting home from work, dinner, head to bed after a bit.  I played the game a few days (Sims 3) and it still feels like I've just wasted most of that time.  I discovered how some things work again - without going and looking things up - but still, it got nothing done in the real world.

I've sent out several copies of my Mikki Mack book to people - sold one locally, and still need to find a way to get the rest of the stack to the local gallery.  They are open later on Fridays (or, at least they used to be) so I might have to take up that 'quest for human' mentality and just push push to have that be something I want to get done so I make sure it gets done.  At the office job that is how I make things work - just push push and when I stop to breathe for a minute line up the next stack.  Same thing with the postal route.  Same thing with lots of things, it's the only way I keep the balls in the air.  I'm just still adjusting to that weird feeling of stopping and there isn't new material coming in from all sides of my brain that has nothing to do with the task at hand or minimal tangents.  It's like missing an old friend that don't hardly get any time to spend with, except the old friend is my creative side which is asleep in a chair in the corner.

Languages - lots of Japanese.  A little bit of Czech.  Not a lot else.  The Japanese on my highest Duolingo profile is actually getting into new words FINALLY.... why has it taken so long?  It really has.  And I do like the little yomu yomu app that has short conversations or stories to listen to.  The Czech language app is a bit annoying in that it is supposed to recognize your speech and there are so many things I cannot come close to pronouncing (acc. to the app) but yet I feel like I understand them and am saying them as best I can. 

witterings and ramblings

 

A few things I wrote elsewhere I wanted to keep hold of: 

My brain is always going a million miles a minute, it feels like.. so this is just a taste of trying to put some of that down into text.

What is the concept of time?

"I've been thinking about this for years, since a dream I had in high school. Time is a fractured crystal/matrix on tangent point with the three dimensions of physical space, and -of itself the fractures in its own matrix become something like the Droste effect light going into infinite mirrors within mirrors - there is loss and duplication within the fractures of a magnitude we cannot quite grasp."

 I did have this dream - it was what, 1996, 1998?  somewhere around there, I remember looking at my computer in my mother's house and wondering how I could capture even a tiny bit of the idea to save it for later... I sat down and wrote 'The Crystal Matrix' and 'The Philosopher of Crystal Valleys' somewhere around that time.. and the type of dream still returns to me once in a while - and I can never quite grasp it - it falls apart the more I try to understand it.  I've written a bit about it in my book 'Time in December' in some ways, but had to mold the idea to fit the story in a way that was slightly more specific than the whole concept.  I do like the scene in the movie Interstellar (or, as I more commonly think of it, the movie with the girl named after Murphy's Law)... but I don't feel it quite hits the right 'umami' taste of the 'real thing' I experienced in the dream, very very close to the idea, but something was missing

 

Charlotte this morning : 

"Charlotte's blue heeler side was showing this morning - definitely herding dog there - I slept in today because it was Sunday and she was completely focused on getting me outside to feed the chickens, nose bump, alarm snooze, beleaguered sigh with chin on bed, nose bump, hard stare and excited eyebrows every time I move... okay you're FINALLY up....circle to door, sigh, head to stairs, ok.. yes human the coffee (but, chickens? you know about the chickens, right? *head twist and circle*), okay the cookie, I like cookie too.. but... chickens? Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, turns circles.. *I get the chicken feed in the container* OK oh boy! *nearly soar through air on the way to the door* we're finally feeding the chickens! If that dog could fly, she would have all the way to the coop with me."

Mark says I could make four panel cartoons of this sort of thing.. and that is the best I can do in description.

 

And, about the night before last : 

"I had this dream last night where my brain was trying everything to wake me up, zombies, extra limbs, fantastic glass objects with light streaming through them in a temple where the water was rising, going through books that don't actually exist, seeing people in an office that I knew were TV actors and saying hello to them as their characters, walking through mazes that defied gravity, crowds of unfamiliar people, a ghost, papers and signs in foreign language, vehicle issues where my key didn't want to work, logging into work terminals with the wrong password, trying to open combination locks from years ago - just one puzzle/problem thing after another and each thing I faced I was like 'ok'.. go through the motions, get through this thing and you just know something else will show up etc.. but none of it actually pushed me to awake - and then, I picked Esme up at the bus stop during the rain in my mail vehicle (instead of my normal one) which the mail vehicle doesn't actually have a seat there, and I never take it home in the first place ---- and THAT did it --- it was such a surreal mix of real and 'wait, what - that isn't how this goes, this is never how this goes' that it finally did wake me up. And I thought.. wow, zombies, extra limbs, Japanese and Escher-type mazes didn't do it, but being in the wrong vehicle at the bus stop does. *that's my brain, I guess*"

... "still what makes me almost/ (the most) amused is that all the far-beyond-reality stuff doesn't 'faze' my sleeping brain, it just tries to find the way around it as if I am already knowing it is a dream and 'meh, these things happen' etc.. but the actually almost real normal thing but still 'hey the details are wrong' task was what shook me awake. In the dream I was asking myself 'is the stripe on Esme's coat just like that, I don't think it is....' and enough of those mismatches made me question enough to kick me out of the dream entirely" 

 

I really wish I could explain the glass figures - they were absolutely ethereal delicate, breathtaking and luminous - like sundial-shaped shells - - I worried if I tried to pick them up they would shatter just from the pressure of the touch - they were sitting on a shelf in front of some clerestory windows, but the water was coming in from the stairs above, rising in the sunken temple area (blue-green stone, similar to the minecraft underwater temples) and I needed to get out of there and continue my 'quest' - I think at that point I was looking for a bookcase to put the books in my office that I was sharing with several characters from Fringe and Warehouse 13, but really in the dream, I understood that my brain was playing with me there with the actors/celebrities/characters and the books that didn't exist were foremost on my mind (if I can see them and they are books I can make them again etc.) that if I was going to have them for a while yes I did need a bookcase... and then of course other things happened, in the crowd there was a girl in a yellow dress, who was asking me questions and I suddenly decided I could phase us into a ghost mode and get through the crowd and bring them to where they needed to be and warn them and some other people about some things, give them some philosophy etc. which was fairly basic, and then continue on my quest, saw my mail van, delivered some mail, sorted out codes, had the combination lock question, 39, 11 and I don't remember the last one, maybe 5 or 45, I didn't get it open - it was from ten years ago, and then I saw my daughter and two other girls getting off their bus, but not at the bus stop, and picked her up, but her coat had the wrong stripe, and I didn't recognize the other girls, and that my van doesn't have that seat there is a shelf there (which has happened in dreams before, conflation with another vehicle) and then I was still right-hand driving and somebody on the side of the road wanted us to pick up furniture in the van and I was dubious that it would fit or that I could lift it, but I got out and loaded it up with superhuman strength, and realized the texture of it was all wrong and at that moment I was investigating why it didn't feel correctly under my hand and that kicked me fully awake

the dream of three heads exchanged

 

 There are the three heads of state, they are meeting.  One is the Wizard, with his long hair and robes.  He is stern, and angry, and can move and change things with just the sound of his voice or the wave of his hand.  And yet, this does not satisfy him.  Another is the Scholar, who is not actually meeting.  This is his house, and the other two have showed up, and are having some sort of insistence on having a meeting.  The Scholar arranges his inks, looks at his books.  He wishes there was a room in the house that he could get away from the other two, and work on creating the drawings and books that are still so disorganized after so many years.  In many ways, he has been running from both of them for years.  He has been running away from the entire world, perhaps for all of his life.  He picks up bottles of ink from another room, how have they wandered there?  He scowls at his housekeeper girl, who reminds him so much, in some ways, of the King.  No matter how well the house is organized, something is always wandering away one way or the other, sometimes even by his own absentmindedness.  In that, he himself reminds himself of the King. 

 

The King is a young and strong man, with a curly black head of hair.  The Scholar is trying to tell him things, trying to pass information through stories, bringing out maps, drawings - hoping to pick up the man's interest.  The King actually does visit here often, with one thought or another to discuss, and the Scholar tries to remember information he has found that might help him or help him make his decisions.  But the King is not in the mood to think, he feels like all he does is think all day - on things everyone asks him to do, laws to make, things that seem to swirl around and around and hardly ever come to anything but by inches.  

 

The Scholar is upset, and wishes he could make the Wizard go away - he is a bad influence on such a young hothead as the King is at the moment.  And the bringing of the three together, at this place, at this time, does not bode well.  There is a prophecy of the switching of three heads, and that in this could end the world.  

 

The Wizard strides angrily around the room, interested by everything but not having time for any of it.  He paces and does nothing useful.  He breaks things, he smacks the mouth of a small white monkey that is attempting to get affection.  He threatens to take its mouth away entirely by magic, if it does not go away.  The housekeeper gives it a bit of fruit and it sits clutching her robes at her feet and bares its teeth as the Wizard paces about.  He gestures angrily at everything, whether it is right or wrong.  The thought of the end of the world actually makes him excited.  He rubs his hands together and thinks of all the ways it could be accomplished.  And yet, something does hold him back.

 

The Scholar gathers the last of his inks into one room, on the desk, even though he is afraid with one sweep of his hand the Wizard will simply dash them to pieces.  Then, with the Wizard to his one side, and the King to the other, he begins to make his case.  I know what you have come to do, brother, he tells the Wizard.  And I know you do not think you can stop him, but you have come anyway, he tells the King.  And you do this because you do not know, neither of you, the way everything entangles and becomes from things you have not yet discovered.  Without you here, King, this could not happen.  If you had left and went far away, this would not have happened.  Without you here, I would have no need to worry, he tells the Wizard.  And yes, if I was not here, if I went out that door and left my home and all of these books, it would also not happen.  However, how can I leave you, with your destructive nature, and you, with your carelessness, here in my library?  You come here to my home, and because of that, I do not leave.  We are all to blame.  

 

But I also know that this was prophecy because it will happen, at some point.  I have read it, in many languages, and have spent many years thinking over what it could possibly mean.  And now, my brother, for yes - you see, I remember in many lives, I was your little brother, my Wizard friend.  And you, also my brother, you were my little brother in many lives, my friend the King.  And I know you both as brothers.  You, my elder brother, are hotheaded and do not think things through, and are even more angry when you discover the very information you wished for but did not have when you acted.  You, my younger brother, are strong and ready to act, but have the worst habit of getting yourself into exactly the place you do not need to be.  It is not entirely a fault, without that, we would never solve some things that need solving.  For my fault, all too much, is that I will avoid the fight at all costs except the loss of knowledge.  

 

Here, we sit, looking at the prophecy that says the end of the world will come from the switching of three great heads.  And you, my elder brother, are all ready with the sword to take them off and reassemble them by magic.  And you, my younger brother, are also ready with the sword, with no plans whatsoever.  For years I have been trying to rephrase and reword, are they heads of state, are they headwaters of rivers, are they this, are they that.  And here as I sit between you two I find that they are actually the changing of minds.  

And now that I cannot back away from this situation any longer, I have a proposal.  We should switch our heads.  Ah, yes, I have your attention.  Hold with me a little longer, as I explain how.   The Scholar holds his hair for a moment up on top of his head, mimicking the Wizard's hairstyle, then flattens it down to his head, mimicking the King. He turns to address the Wizard first.  You, my elder brother, should become a Scholar.  If you were to become a King, in your frame of mind - you would destroy the world.  But something holds you back because you want to know what will happen - and that curiosity needs to be developed.  You must learn more and solve the anger that burns in your eyes.  You must take to maps and stars, chemistry and botany and use your powers to discover how the world is put together, in order to use your powers in ways that do not destroy things.  Don't look at me like that.  Think.  That is the thing that you Avoid.  The scholar avoids too much, but he also teaches, and collects information so it can not disappear.  I see that recognition now in your eyes.  This is what it means to exchange our heads - to exchange our old ways of thinking, and try on new ones.

 

And you, my brother, the King - you must become the Wizard, taking your energy and your vitality out into the world learning to make things move in ways that do not involve the horse and the sword.  You must animate your energies and organize things beyond campaign and country.  And to do this yes, you will also need to learn, and you will need a teacher, perhaps in our eldest brother, the Wizard here, as he becomes the Scholar.  

 

And I will also need a teacher.  I, who do not wish the position and would avoid it at all costs, must become a King, and go out into the world and use what I have learned in books.  But they do not always work in the real world, as you, my little brother the King, know all too well.  I must try to arrange the affairs of real men and women, laws and countries.  And without the power of the Wizard to point and make things happen, for that only works in one or two places, where the power of the King is to move many minds and set up structures that will move whole societies in good and purposeful directions even in the places he is not present.  

 

And in this, we would have swapped heads, and the world would not end, as it might if we lost all the knowledge I, the Scholar have put together in this place.  And we might surely lose it if you the Wizard, my dear brother, destroys it out of anger.  We might also lose it, though, if you were to became the King.  For you are so used to having your way immediately at the snap of your fingers.  And if the Wizard has thought this through, and has any love in him still for his little brothers, he will open his eyes and take to quelling his impatience with the world.  

 

And you, my youngest brother, the King.  In learning how to move (the very elements of) things yourself, where you are, in the powers of the Wizard, and with your wisdom and knowledge of people and their ways, perhaps you can influence in one or two places the world as it is, and move it the directions you had always wanted to, bit by bit, inch by inch, still, but in a different way that you can see and touch.  Perhaps this will fill that longing ache within you for the things that never seem to happen, no matter how hard you have tried to get people to agree and work towards them.

For in the end, you can know all there is to know, but do nothing with it.  You can move mountains, but not in the right directions, if you have not studied the flow of the rivers and the animals that live there.  You can move nation states to peace or to war, but it is still a game of chess and the moving of hearts and minds that often cannot agree.  In changing our heads, we each can grow and become more, instead of less on the chopping block.  The Library is yours, my eldest brother.  Please be gentle with it, and let it show you the wonders of it.  If you become impatient with one thing, open another - and another.. and through the learning of many things the structures of this world you have moved so easily in the past will reveal their miraculous interwoven web.  A world of energy and possibilities awaits you, my youngest brother, and a change to move your chess pieces on the world stage differently and with more purpose.  And perhaps I will need both of you to point my way out into the World of men and minds, as well.  

 

So, can we decide to cooperate, instead of destroy? 

Friday slide into work weekend

Earlier this week my truck battery had begun to have issues - the only truck we've got at the moment, and it really sent me for a loop, emotion wise.. but I dealt with that as best I could, including going to the mechanic to see if I could get it fixed without major repair etc.. and I wasn't entirely certain even up to this morning if the fix had 'taken'... but all the numbers seem to be going in the proper direction today (I'm a bit obsessive, I want data, and I put the voltage tester on it the other day and again today to make some sort of mathematical sense out of it all) although, the indicator light is still on, and I can't find anything in my manual or on the internet about what charge voltage that needs to be for the light to turn ON/OFF for low voltage.  Apparently, it's higher than the other day, but not there yet.  The mechanic said 'it should turn off, after a bit'... he's usually right on those things.  

So I got to my short work shift this morning, got home, took my data for numbers on the voltage, and then fell over for a nap.   I made fine egg noodles and tomato sauce, served with peaches and leftover pulled pork for Esme and I for dinner, watered my garden, watched some silly old tv stuff with Mark and did my Japanese (plus that little bit of Chinese on Clozemaster).  Mark put his pulled pork on a sandwich.  The old tv stuff had captions it said were in Swedish, but I kept feeling they were actually in Finnish.  I didn't go tracking it down too hard, but I kept recognizing Finnish words and I don't know Swedish that well.

 

Work again tomorrow.  I'm more confident that it should start and get me there and back tomorrow than I was this morning.  Last night I was just trying to tell myself it was a decent number when I had left it, to just get in and try to start it this morning and bring all the tools and backup battery, jumper cables and the voltage tester with me for if I had any problems getting back home.

 Overpreparation, obsessive studying and overworrying of the problem even though I don't have the answers... yep, that's me.  I think I've done better over the past few years finding the things that 'center' me, or at least allowing myself to actually rest more comfortably (or at least, statically) in that center instead of constantly feeling like I'm balancing on top a pole instead and going to fall.  When I can't distract myself with something useful though, language lessons, laundry, cooking, finishing little projects, it does get hard to quiet it all and Mark has seen some of the physical almost yoga poses I do sometimes when I'm trying to find a balance.  I told him that since I feel like that will help, and it can't hurt, I'm just going to sit like that for a minute and see if what my body is telling me will feel better actually might.  I'd say it is a bit between yoga and reflexology and just reminding myself that I am in this body and 'we' (the body and I) move together and exist together //zen?  I don't know.

I told Esme this morning (about the overprep / data thing) that it is like I have a little mouse in me that is running around and screaming, but I don't let the mouse run ME around, I just stand there and give it logic and numbers and tell it that we'll have to see how things work out and still, it just keeps running around, and there really isn't way to make it stop, the point is to make sure that you get other things done even with the mouse distracting you, and don't let the mouse make you start to panic as well.  Sounds silly.. but I'm also big into analogies, philosophy and et al.

how we motivate

it's Monday

ok brain, we're at 80% but we can drag ourselves up

yes -- I'm here talking to my brain/body like it's a second person, because it's a conscience: (jiminy/pinocchio) type feeling a lot  like I know what I have to do (jiminy conscience) but I have to pull myself with hooks and ropes to get it done bit by bit (pinocchio/puppet)

got Esme off to school, fed the chickens

did the dishes and the floor towel/rug laundry

cleaned some other things (sink, stove, counters), swept some

--it's not everything that it needs, but it's some, and that's better than none

--if we didn't do the some when we can, none of it would get done

--told myself to pick two more things that I don't do everyday that should be done right now

//cleaned the cat food counter (Loki did not appreciate, and he attacked my feet very gently later because he had been shooed down)

//washed one of the concrete floor sections (but then the cleaner was too much for Mark and after I do one section I'm kind of done, too and worry about getting a headache from it, and from the hanging my head down and getting back up etc etc..) 

did my Japanese homework on two platforms, that leaves two more later

-- my remembering ear is getting pretty good for Japanese, almost as good as for Welsh and French.  I can remember most of what I've heard in a single long sentence and where it should go (order)... but some of the in between things like 'wa' and 'to' and 'mo' I still have to ask 'did I hear that?' etc.  My vocabulary needs a big expansion, doing babadum for that and realizing how very little DL has given me for word number

made my budget paper for the month so I know what I need to remember

--that can be depressing and I've got it in my head but that's not the same as writing it out and filling in figures and checking things off 

--asked myself what was one thing I had asked myself for a number on (spending, percentage, etc etc..) that I didn't have a firm answer for last week?  Check that.  (which means finding a paper it is on) Ok, I know that for certain now.  Rarely when I have those questions am I anywhere I can look it up.. and then I forget to when I have the time unless I store it in that 'mental box' AND check it when I have a moment.

made a grocery list, checked the animal feeds

--one of the grocery items limits where I can go for it, and that makes getting the feeds probably another day

smacked myself that I have to check the oil in the truck

--whimpered that I need to check the transmission fluid, as well (very difficult, it is so far down in the engine after they did that rebuild a few years ago I have to fight with it several times before I get anywhere AND then if it needs some, I have to close it up, go get some, open it again AND find a way to get it down into that tiny space - last time I rigged up a CPVC pipe and a funnel and some tape in order to get it done)

--and I should go do the checks on the truck before I go get the groceries

--so I'll know if I need to buy oil or transmission fluid while I'm out

and none of that is going to do itself by my checking my email and my social media and drinking more coffee

// checked the oil - it was ok, checked the transmission fluid, it was ok

// took the truck to town, and filled it with gas, got the animal feeds

// then the battery light came on (long story, has to do with it being a mail truck with a return spring that breaks a lot on the brakelights) - and realized I had not been pulling the brake lights back up this entire trip which I needed to do since the spring broke again on Saturday

// came home instead of getting groceries, and put it on the charger (after the charger alligator clip was broken, and we had to fix that first)..

// can someone please send me a bucket of luck or something, I need it

me(brain)-->kick studio <--laundry crunch

 So the long work weekend is over - and it looks like I have today off.  It is dim and humid from the rains the past few days, so I am still feeling a little quiet and wondering how much effort I want to put into things that need effort put into them.  And if I should play a little hooky from sweeping and laundry and etc for a few hours and work at my studio table, which would be very much more enticing if there was adequate light.  I've been playing with Hungarian again the past few days, remembering what I had nearly forgotten before it ran out of my brain - same thing I did with Finnish a week or so ago.  And I've done some French today to counterbalance it.  I worked on a bag yesterday while we watched the Hunt for Red October. 

After the small route yesterday, in the rainstorm, I was SO tired - enough to go to sleep, but I had gotten the pork loin on the way home anyway, and rounded everyone up to go out in the afternoon (since the rain had stopped, and that also makes me tired), and go get our major grocery list (still forgot a few things).  I was standing in front of the aluminum foil with Esme, trying really hard to do the 'bouncing ball map thing' with the entire list so I knew where we were going and how fast etc.. which I usually do in the back of my head -and I couldn't even focus on which aluminum foil we had at home compared to the assortment in front of us - and for a moment, couldn't even realize if Reynold's Wrap was aluminum foil or saran wrap.  Esme saw that and she knew I was very very tired, if I couldn't do that, and also didn't know ten steps ahead of myself where we were going next (I knew maybe the next two).  I was honest with her about that, so she knew why I wasn't doing my usual thing.  Mark was off on the other side of the store (he drove, luckily) getting other things.  

That kind of tired feels like being drunk, knowing that my brain isn't working to the potential I'm used to - I said it was a lot like this Princess Bride quote to both of them in the store, as we walked out- and then I had to make the meme.

But, I snapped up enough to get all the items that were on the list and a few that weren't (but missed two or three non-urgent things, because I didn't want to go across the store, and the other we weren't entirely out yet).  And we got home, made dinner and I didn't even crash hard until at least nine.  And then the dogs got me up and down half the night - so I'm halfway to brain power this morning and starting on my second pot of coffee at 10:30 am.

I'd like to push myself over to that studio table to work on a large sheet of paper with all my pencils, but I know that will take a few hours -

hours that could be used folding laundry, making a bed, washing counters and sweeping floors, and just general pickup from having been on at the post office for five days - and then there is just general buildup of stuff overall that happens with my ADHD and I don't find it bothersome until I actually get time maybe to do something about it (and even then, bah)

I think about the ink I was so excited to get four months ago, and have used twice?  That almost does it.  I think about yarn that looks like yarn the computer keeps advertising to me and I say 'if I just dug that out, maybe I could do something nice with it'.. and again, I counterbalance that potential use of time with the laundry, and cost-sink-analysis of how much benefit I'll truly get out of it as future me scowling at present-me wasting time doing-things as much as wasting time staring-thinking-things.  I think about time and space and that feels like lighting up a giant light bulb, I think about lots of things, chemistry, geometry, baking, the garden - and still the biggest factor is the dimness and the outside weather.

since it was wet outside, and she didn't want to miss dinner when it was eventually served yesterday, Lyffan slept in the table space just behind my computer monitor for a while yesterday.  I caught a couple of pictures of her, although it was entirely voluntary- she let me know she could have gotten up and left during that 'snappy eye thing' but she didn't - and please let her know when the tuna was ready.  *can opener did that, and Esme still had to poke her a bit to make sure she understood yes, now, come downstairs!*

Esme also made up a great batch of our Dragon Spice porkchop spice from Mark's metric recipe.  I have trouble sometimes without the scale he has doing it by hand.  I ordered some maple sugar chili spice the other day and will be interested to see what that is like when it comes.  I like to look at what the spice combinations are and keep some on hand to add to rice and stirfry stuff - but only for things Esme and I eat.  Mark keeps his mixtures for things specific, like meatloaf and porkchop spice, and they're good - but I like to try some different things. 

*stare into coffee cup a bit more*  if it wasn't so dank, I'd think more about baking

it's going to be one of those days, and the pinball method is probably the best thing for it.  do three things here, do three things there, continue moving until you're tired, try not to sit too long before getting up and pinballing a few more things - look at progress - decide the next three things etc etc...  the look at progress thing is just as important as the small break to drink coffee etc.. and to say 'that needed to be done, and now it's done' helps to do the next three things

11:30 I decided, after folding and sorting and starting another load of laundry, and putting away all the eggs from last night that had been set out to dry - that I needed to make a little french toast and then see what I wanted to work on next after that.  I've turned on some extra lights up here, picked up a few things, and planning some more steps.

4pm :  I've done some Japanese, and finished the laundry stuff, and Mark had roasted one of the ends of the pork loin since this morning so we all had sandwiches

7 pm : I did something at the studio table, and it wasn't half bad.. but I played a lot of my game, as well  I also went out and filled the chicken's nest boxes with fresh chips and poked around the garden, then cut up a bunch of cherry tomatoes, a few peppers and some of the lime basil and put it in a freezer container to make some food with in the next few days - the cherry tomatoes had just been in a bowl in the fridge building up but it was high time I did something more with them

drawing

engres cau'r ça va

/philosophy post/ I find myself saying this little mantra to myself, and others, even without knowing the true provenance of it, when I'm just trying to get over the hump between now and 'a little ways from now'... was talking with Mark about that, I've gotten so much better on the postal route with the 'encapsulation of useful time'... I'm not wasting time, I'm getting paid and doing a necessary job, but still, it often feels like I'm just pouring the time into a bottle, corking it, and setting it on a shelf to look at but nothing really 'happened' during that time.  I delivered mail, another day, and I'm tired again.  

engres cau'r ça va 

It's hard enough, but it's okay.  / We've closed the hard thing up, and it's okay.  

après ci ca va

after this, it's really okay

aux troussé / à ses trousses 

It's on my heels, I'm being chased by it

Assez quoi! / Quoi?  / A ne se très se quoi / je ne sais quoi

Enough already / What is it? / It doesn't matter a bit / I don't know what it is

 

Some of that feeling, I've come to realize, isn't all anxiety, some of it is my ADHD.  And I'm using my own brain against myself (in a way) to keep myself on the task at hand, and since that is a huge effort, it feels like anxiety, but it IS getting the job done.  And I'm getting better at it.  But the 'extra tired' also comes with that territory, of doing the task and also doing the task of keeping myself on the task.

In the past, when I first started doing mail, there was so much more to worry about overall that I would actually feel mini anxiety panic attacks - because there was so much to worry about, and I was here pouring time into this task and trying to make it make everything else okay, eventually.. finances, life, goals, ultimate understanding etc etc.. I let my brain spread out too thin and didn't keep it on task - and then when I was finished with the route I STILL had all the regular worry waiting at the end of the 'string' of time.  I would spread it all out all day long like a huge four dimensional matrix in my head and look at all of the red flashing lights and then turn myself into a ball of stress.

It took a long time to hold my feelings in my hand, separate them down into their elements and look at them and not feel that domino-effect cascade of panic with it - and not have that panic come and take me over at the end of the day or whenever something else went wrong later.  That's a lot like the kids who sit still all day and then have a meltdown at the end... but all this time it was just masquerading as something else in me.  But also, the answer to it was in me - I just had to look at it for what it was telling me, so I knew what I needed to respond with.

So sometimes I have to take myself by the lapels (figuratively), and go through the paces:  I am one creature, at one sequential time, that this sequence has a beginning, and an end, and is moving at a set pace that I cannot change much.  The only thing that will make this feeling better is to continue along this time-string doing this task until it is done. (small breaks can help sometimes, but that's also a bad habit - it's like stopping while climbing a rope, you're still hanging there, and getting through to where you can put your feet down is so much better)  So, I'm doing this, and will continue to do this until it is done.   Because it is a task that does need to be done, and I'm the one here to do it.  And then, later, we will think about the other million things.   THEN I can let it overwhelm my timestream and matrices like a Rubik's Cube and work like an overactive pinball machine trying to make sense of this Universe.  But not while we're doing this NOW... and yes, somehow, that still feels a lot like anxiety, but a different color.  And treating it just as 'I have anxiety and worries' never helped before, like having this reminder about time does when I know it is this.

 

an attempt at what it feels like, to be stuck doing the one thing, but your brain continues to bounce while you try to hold it to the one orange line that is the shortest distance between the two points, it is naturally wanting to be a quantum particle anywhere at all within the triangle 

languages : I did mostly French, Japanese and Russian today with just a touch of Finnish to see if I still remembered the words.  I also did the 'minimum' on both profiles (about 50 xp) and we'll see how much time I have tomorrow.

bits of surrealism

a sketch : Turkey Mama and her Chicks

I couldn't convince myself to get into paints or pencils last night, even though I've been sort of 'itching' to - I can't get over the hump of spreading out even more things, among the things I've put away and those I haven't yet ... and doing messy work that takes physical time, and then putting it away or leaving it out - having yet another physical thing that no one else will ever see except maybe here etc etc... even though the urge to create is really really strong -- I understand most of our society's response to such a creative SPLAT as I used to make daily was : 'Do you ever sleep?  What do you do with all of that?' and those are both valid and further confusing questions

it's an ongoing existential crisis thing and I feel like I deal with it pretty well considering the absolute event-horizon space-warp thing that goes on in my head all the time.  I've worked hard to 'slow my clockrate' as Mark calls it - we're both 'high clockrate' people in his terms, but it's all mental work and sometimes especially after waking up from dreaming, it feels a bit futile and like I really SHOULD race around doing eighteen things, and then I remind myself that I'm only human and it's impossible to do everything at once, no matter how much coffee you drink.  It all feels so surreal, finite vs. infinite, NOW time vs. all other time.

 

So part of my coping with the exact difficulty of 'create--don't create' at the moment is reminding myself I can open my graphic processor, which is not very technically advanced, use it to choose colors and put some things down like a digital etch-a-sketch and just because I don't want to go to my studio table or art easel, it doesn't mean I have to choke that urge down to put an image 'out' of my brain, or play with the process, like the turkey mama and her chicks above.

 

 

and I can try to urge myself to finish other things I've started

pulled this off the little loom and finished it up  

It has a button closure underneath there and is big enough for a pair of glasses, a checkbook or several pens

It's 8 am.  I stayed up until 10 last night (didn't even make nine the night before) and was up only once with a dog, and then slept until 6:30 am.  

Finished the A1 Russian course.  I'll keep going on Duolingo now as I had sort of held off of it and done the other languages because I was guaranteed to get some practice every day doing that.  I feel I can read Cyrillic a lot better than when I started that - which was a goal for Bulgarian learning.  The Bulgarian site sends me a word of the day every day, written in Cyrillic, and I've been able to pronounce it from the word quite a bit better before clicking it to go to the page with the translation, trans-literation and pronunciation audio clip.

did a smattering of Greek, Danish, Spanish and French, will do something on my phone later

started another crochet tote bag to make during television time, it's smurf blue

have to call the mechanic later today (he didn't respond yesterday but I only called him once) and see if he has ordered the parts for the truck.  Work Saturday - of course that is still a worry about getting home, but what can I do about it other than call the mechanic today, which has to happen a little later.  I'm feeling lately like Samuel Beckett just before the Quantum Leap... like I have way too much energy but if I begin to expend it instead of save it for the things I need to do, I will fall to exhaustion instead.  So it's a bit like having your physical body on a leash while the brain is a bouncing puppy.  And yet - I don't want to get into other huge things either, because I can't sustain them.

Baking might help.

Watching a bee gathering nectar in the clover, while watering the garden and filling the chicken dishes, helped a little, too.

Made breakfast, egg and cheese on toast.  Set out a stick of butter from the freezer to thaw to make something with later.

Made cinnamon rolls, with just a glance at a recipe and hardly any measuring (the butter was pre-measured, because it comes in a stick) - they turned out pretty good, at least, while hot and with coffee.  Sometimes these things get hard as a rock when they cool down - will look at that.  I can see why some people use cream cheese in this type of recipe, and perhaps with more flour and something like that I could roll the dough even thinner on the parchment paper and still get it back up without it becoming lace.  It's been years since I even tried to make them from scratch, coffee cake used to be my goto because it didn't require the rolling.

Cat in Space, yarn and bank errors

 

 navy blue cotton thread cone

ordered this thread online to try to weave something in all cotton - it is quite a bit thinner than I thought IT would be, but about the thread width of what I had previously wanted for another project.  So, we'll see.  It said I have 800 yards of it to try probably both projects out.  Been making a bit more progress on the navy blue weaving - did a big block of the blue and will be switching back to the red in a bit.  I have to pull it over the top to continue weaving soon.  I still didn't take the navy and green acrylic mat off the other small loom.  I did make a big waffle-weave dishcloth for the sink (needed a new one) and two potholders, both in just plain red yarn.  And that was my weekend, other than grocery shopping and working much more than usual.  It's Tuesday and I'm saying the weekend is done now, so see what that tells you about that /ha /sigh

This morning I was up from like 3 am to 5 am then even slept in and would have forgotten about the small route they had put me on except something nagged me in the back of my brain - and when I checked the schedule again yes lo and behold, there was me scheduled for it.  So I put some of what we were supposed to get done today off to tomorrow and went and did that.

It rained some yesterday and a lot this morning - and then even a bit more.  The garden appreciated it and nothing looked flooded.  I bought one more pepper plant for the garden when I went for chicken feed, and planted it after I got home.  

rant : 

I had a hassle with the electric company and a fee that was really their mistake, but I paid it, unhappily.  I was disappointed in their logic, and felt down quite a bit yesterday after I talked to them because it just didn't make any sense what had happened - they should have known better trying to double cash a 78 day old check when they were already paid in full (for the three month bills since then!) - there was no way to win-for-losing ...I would have gotten some fee from them or the bank any way you slice it apparently - yet, THEY 'have to get their fee back' from me and the girl was very bubble-gum chew and 'but yea, that happens, we don't like, control it or anything, it's all the computer now'.  Well then, the computer can be better, can't it?  Can't it? 

...(and there my faith in logic becomes Stoic Spock and I have to reorient that not everyone is this stupid, I'm sure... )  Esme and I have had this discussion about similar things - in the car, describing how many people don't think ALL the time, they simply don't have to juggle five streams of thoughts that are overlapping and reminding you about this thing and that and doing calculations - their mind is focused on one or two things at a time that are right in front of them usually and when they finish with it - they move to the next thing, and sometimes their minds are even just blank, and they like it that way, they often aim for it.  They don't watch a show or read a book and have it reverberate with a hundred other connected thoughts for weeks and years later.  They're definitely not estimating the number of cows in that field or thinking about dispersion patterns or trying to compare the electron shell diagrams of Strontium and Tin while driving to work.  They don't remember the last things said in one place returning like echoes of the past when you return there, or have a constant back-checker making math calculations adding things up and dividing percentages after they leave the supermarket.  

 

Strontium and Tin

 

They probably don't have a 'collision detection' system running all the time about what calamities might befall everything around you - people running into each other, cars on the highway, things falling, burning, breaking, times and schedules (it helped today, with the 'boy you should look at that schedule it looks weird from here (here being looking at it for thirty seconds last week)) - it involves everything announcing what could go wrong with it in some extra 'awareness' box like a red light on your mental dashboard that won't stay off... my mom called it the protector instinct, when we discussed it when I was a bit younger than Esme, before I got a good handle on it - it can get really loud some days when I've already got too much to juggle and keep track of actually doing myself and yet sometimes especially with radio or music I can tune it down to a normal level.  This is how my brain works - and Esme has some extent of it, and she finds it annoying at the very least but does understand it.  I know I'm being cynical in some percentage except, that she listens to my philosophy rant and says it 'explains a lot, actually' - about the world she sees, about why we are always anxious (because we don't 'turn off' our brains)  and why everything so spectacularly doesn't work in many places, even after a millennia of people fighting over the right way to do things.

Anyway, gah.  The more I think on it, the more lost I will feel about it having no solution.  So, I'm weaving, and knowing I need to sort a hundred other things in the house and I've only begun to do so in my head here and there and pick up and move a few things at a time.   There are one or two things in 'space' I would like to lay hands on again and I know where they are or were before the storage container fell a few months ago, and that I put them safely somewhere new, but when I tried to get them earlier today I didn't take the time to feel 'down the rope' to where they were now.  Instead I ran into something else that would serve, and grabbed that up, and hung up the phone on finding the thing until later.  I've done mostly Spanish today and will do my Russian program in a a bit. Hopefully, I can continue and finish running the errands tomorrow.

 

 

Lyffan in from the wet outside, after her dinner.  Mark had seen her chasing frogs when we first called her for dinner - after a rain like this there are hundreds of little hop frogs that appear all over - she was 'completely occupied' he said - and  so we watched a bit more of a movie for another hour and then all the cats were finally ready.  Now she is sitting here sorting out her belly fur and trying to fit in this too small of a space, and maybe knock my garbage can down.  Minion usually sits here - right next to my computer space, but she is downstairs taking Loki's chair away from him that he has been in all day.  I saw him stretched out in the hallway floor and that's unusual for him, peek in the bathroom and there she is licking her feet in his chair with Charlotte lying on the rug saying 'I don't get it - but I'm not involved, I just sleep here.'   As I type this Lyffan has now fell asleep and is shaking her paws and whiskers chasing some outside creature in her sleep.

 

seems relevant short story idea : several geeks in a big office with headphones on jacked into some machine they haven't been told exactly how it works yet.  And yet someone is standing there with a clipboard trying to see what the results are.  Hey, do we just say 'Aliens, Hello?' or what?  How are they going to hear us?  Where is the microphone?  Do we just think really hard : 'Hello?'  No, man, you have to try something original, like 'And here we are back from Planet Earth with another line of smooth jazz and greetings to tell you, 'hey, we're listening'.. to what though?  How does all this work?<--that was the line of reasoning in a dream this morning just before my alarm went off.  

thoughts, pensées

 I had planted ordinary plain basil in my garden for what the fifth time, from seed - recently?  It was a few of those dollar store packets, 4 for a dollar, not much seed in them etc etc.. It was one of those experiments in futility I've been laughed at again and again for... but I thought, yea, why not, this time I'm standing in front of this, pondering buying and planting again as an exercise in futility perhaps, but also in hope - and 'this time for sure' as Mark says.  So instead of waiting months and putting it away for some day - I went out that very day with the little packets and put them in a pot that had been sitting in my garden getting watered - and I made sure to keep watering it, with the rest of the strawberries and such, just in case those seeds succeeded.  And so far, if I can keep water to it - they have - the basil is up and has second leaves all over that little pot.  

So, why did my other attempts at basil fail?  I don't know - I waited too long with the seed, I put them 'someplace special' in the garden that wasn't already a part of everything, and thus, they somehow didn't get enough attention?  The one lime basil I thought failed actually didn't - there are four plants, but they're tiny and I had overlooked them up until now considering the amount of seed I had planted the 'germination' rate vs the cheap packets is dismal.  But - I don't really think that anything was truly wrong with all the regular basil before - it's just perhaps luck as well as utilizing what was in front of me at the right time.  I'm hoping I'll get some good basil leaves to use in cooking later.  

 

a pink tomato variety I'm waiting on ripening

 

I thought about all this while I was pulling a strawberry plant out of a nearby brick out there, it having wandered -- and looking at that pot, and the one next to it with the last strawberry plant I pulled out of somewhere, that is also thriving there.  As I walked down to the garage with the pulled plant, asking it if it had a chance, telling it I was going to give it one, and we'll see what happened, this was the best I could do - I thought about the other situation right next to it, and what philosophically I could get out of this, besides 'keep at it', 'keep looking in front of you' and 'do what you can where you can'... basically, just keep trying.

 

The other thing I did was bring my new garden hose and fittings up from the kitchen into the studio, to be closer to the front door -- I keep passing it by where we dumped it that day putting away the groceries, and knowing I need to do the work to put it on the hydrant and check if all the fittings work together - but I keep passing it by all the same. Bringing it up here will be one less step for when I pick it up and take it outside.  I don't feel I was ready to do the project the day we bought it - it was my birthday gift - and I've been dragging my heels since.  I wonder if there is a fitting I'm missing, and yet, I haven't pushed myself to check because I don't want to break anything taking the old one off the hydrant when we need it so badly in the heat.  It's not going to do itself.  *kick tail* 

 There.  I did it.  Bringing it upstairs first, and then going out after another hour or so for the rest was the key factor.  Besides carrying it upstairs there was the cutting of all the zipties and untwisting the twist ties and unwrapping it from the coil and doing all the rest.  I didn't need any other fittings - but now I'm wondering about the old hose if it would do best as a secondary switchout (would buy another quick connect end for it) or move it elsewhere.

 

 

little butterfly asked me why I was chasing it - well, look at those colors!

It's the Fourth of July, and we're not sure if we'll do anything tonight.  I have to work for four solid days after this - so I always look at that horizon and say 'I'm already tired for next week'...  It is also going to be stupendously hot.  We bought a watermelon yesterday and cut it up, shared some of it out.  That's celebrating, right?  

Speaking of starting and keeping at it, I finished one knit dishcloth yesterday and am part way through a second one.  I know those don't take very long, but they still take some time, preferably while I'm doing something else, like listening to the French podcast or watching a movie.  If we don't go anywhere later I'll take the green and navy weaving off the little loom at the very least and tie off the warp strings, but maybe not weave all the other ends in.

my left hand picked up a pen today and I saw this little dragon nesting with rabbits in the scribbles 

The Catalan is kicking my tail today working with some of the idioms and phrases

I read an article about how many words you know in any language, and of course, it was an ad for a kind of learning software that uses that as a term 'known words' and you mark if you know it or not in all the lessons they have.  I used that software for Japanese for a little bit - but I haven't been back to it since it now wants me to join with a payment plan.  

 

But I was thinking, after reading just a bit of that - how many words do I know in Latvian.... I know it actually is a lot, since I do the vocab program (which is free, BaltoSlav) and regularly score 60-80 in a session, with maybe an average of three sessions being what I mark as an occurrence on this chart. When I do the other program (Babadum) I choose to goto 50 or 100 or 200 points, which means I got at least that many (but maybe some duplicates) correct.  DuoLingo only thinks I know about 4000 French words - but is it true, or do I know more?  It feels like a lot more there - and many more than 3000 Welsh words.  But in actuality, we usually use a small portion of the words we 'know' to actually speak the things we need to every day - unless you are a voracious writer of many topics.  *eyebrow*  

 

I decided to do a little 'reverse' Czech - that is, as if I was an English learner and using the interface in Czech - which really battened down some words for me when I am learning Catalan from Spanish (the only way it is available).  I found the same thing with the Czech - words I only previously knew one 'facet' of suddenly made much more sense and seemed more 'whole' when using them in the interface and having to select the English word for them and reverse-translate sentences.

And I mean, I like charts.  I was doing a Czech word list (that contained lots of declensions, forms of the same word) for Mark, but I'm not about to go counting them on my own for every language.  Stands back and thinks about that... tempting, but no, at least not right now, I've got other things to do. // but maybe I could do a little book in several languages, if I get any ambition towards quantifying a set of words that would be good to make a set for.  I just can't even keep track of flashcards anymore.