Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Looking Forward to Fall

After a long and rainy summer -- followed by a couple of weeks of dreadful heat and humidity --the days are visibly getting shorter and the cold fronts are bringing actual cooling now. I sit here in the early morning, wearing sweats, though I will have to change before I go out, as we are expecting summer temps (low 80s, this is as hot as it ever need be, in my book) again today. Tomorrow, and the weekend. look to be a forerunner of autumn though and I am SO looking forward to it. Not that I wish it wish away the year -- there is still much to do before Samhain which I have set as the "buttoned down for winter" deadline. But the cool weather will make the work possible.

I haven't blogged recently as life has been very full. My weedy garden continues to surprise me with produce ( and I likely have still more cukes, and maters to pick, an I know there is half a row of red onions that need doing, and some of the beets as well. I've put up one batch of pickles and there will be more. At least I managed to get a box of wide mouth jars, this time!

Hexing has been going well, too. So well, in fact, that I have yet to complete the written interview I have been asked to do. Hopefully before the end of the week, despite another order for 4 indoor signs and the rush I put on one last night to ship to New York. I was contacted yesterday by Gourmet magazine, wanting to borrow several for potential use in a photo spread, as background. I will get credit if the shot makes the cut, so after some discussion, I am sending several of the 10-12 inch signs I have on hand, plus I quickly painted one of the small change signs that they liked so much. Cross your fingers we make the cut!

I have been spending a lot of time carrying K back and forth to appts and sitting in medical offices and it looks to continue for a while. At my mention of a need, his main doc referred him for physical therapy, so there will be that 2x a week. First appt is tomorrow, in Dover. Today we go back to Bangor to get the leads removed from his 24 hr. EEG. He is terribly worried that he is going to start getting bills for all of these expensive texts, and that they will continue to show nothing abnormal -- despite the fact that he is NOT right, and indeed that the neurologist did see strange things during his exam. He has a dental appt next week, as well.

I am "running away from home" for a day on Saturday, though! (maybe with, maybe without K, depending on how he feels) to go to Caribou to the National Weather Service open house. I am hoping to learn more about their trained weather observer program, as we are now part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) . I urge everyone who is interested in the weather to log on, sign up and pony up for the wonderful "official" rain guage that we are required to use.

Since it is such a long ways out to Caribou (about 3.25 hrs according to Google maps) I have decided to make a day of it and visit Madawaska (the most northely town in the continental US), about an hour farther on, and then head over to Fort Kent (20 min) before coming back down 11 (a little over 2 hrs, they say, but likely more with photo stops -- hoping for MOOSE! and then back home, nearly another 2 hrs on 95 and such. Despite the fact that it will be a grueling drive -- I do not not long drives well any more -- I am thoroughly looking forward to the day, especially since I have the following day off to recoupterate. Hopefully pix will be forthcoming!

Looking Forward to Fall

After a long and rainy summer -- followed by a couple of weeks of dreadful heat and humidity --the days are visibly getting shorter and the cold fronts are bringing actual cooling now. I sit here in the early morning, wearing sweats, though I will have to change before I go out, as we are expecting summer temps (low 80s, this is as hot as it ever need be, in my book) again today. Tomorrow, and the weekend. look to be a forerunner of autumn though and I am SO looking forward to it. Not that I wish it wish away the year -- there is still much to do before Samhain which I have set as the "buttoned down for winter" deadline. But the cool weather will make the work possible.

I haven't blogged recently as life has been very full. My weedy garden continues to surprise me with produce ( and I likely have still more cukes, and maters to pick, an I know there is half a row of red onions that need doing, and some of the beets as well. I've put up one batch of pickles and there will be more. At least I managed to get a box of wide mouth jars, this time!

Hexing has been going well, too. So well, in fact, that I have yet to complete the written interview I have been asked to do. Hopefully before the end of the week, despite another order for 4 indoor signs and the rush I put on one last night to ship to New York. I was contacted yesterday by Gourmet magazine, wanting to borrow several for potential use in a photo spread, as background. I will get credit if the shot makes the cut, so after some discussion, I am sending several of the 10-12 inch signs I have on hand, plus I quickly painted one of the small change signs that they liked so much. Cross your fingers we make the cut!

I have been spending a lot of time carrying K back and forth to appts and sitting in medical offices and it looks to continue for a while. At my mention of a need, his main doc referred him for physical therapy, so there will be that 2x a week. First appt is tomorrow, in Dover. Today we go back to Bangor to get the leads removed from his 24 hr. EEG. He is terribly worried that he is going to start getting bills for all of these expensive texts, and that they will continue to show nothing abnormal -- despite the fact that he is NOT right, and indeed that the neurologist did see strange things during his exam. He has a dental appt next week, as well.

I am "running away from home" for a day on Saturday, though! (maybe with, maybe without K, depending on how he feels) to go to Caribou to the National Weather Service open house. I am hoping to learn more about their trained weather observer program, as we are now part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) . I urge everyone who is interested in the weather to log on, sign up and pony up for the wonderful "official" rain guage that we are required to use.

Since it is such a long ways out to Caribou (about 3.25 hrs according to Google maps) I have decided to make a day of it and visit Madawaska (the most northely town in the continental US), about an hour farther on, and then head over to Fort Kent (20 min) before coming back down 11 (a little over 2 hrs, they say, but likely more with photo stops -- hoping for MOOSE! and then back home, nearly another 2 hrs on 95 and such. Despite the fact that it will be a grueling drive -- I do not not long drives well any more -- I am thoroughly looking forward to the day, especially since I have the following day offto recoupterate. Hopefully pix will be forthcoming!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Too #&$*%*#@% HOT!

I am sorry that the weather decided to make up for the cool and damp of early summer and give Maine (and indeed, it seems, much of the east and north eastern US) the entire summers worth of heat in a week. If you have read my blogs for long, you know my opinion is that 80 degrees is as hot as it needs to get. And that by that, I do NOT mean "mid-80s" or gawd forbid the "high 80s" to 90+ degree temps that are forecast for today. [metric translation: My opinion is that 27 degrees is as hot as it needs to get. And that by that, I do NOT mean "low-30s" or gawd forbid the "mid-30" degree temps that are forecast for today.]

It is too hot to move, too hot to breathe but yet the garden still needs weeding and especially needs water, so I have been trying to weed early in the morning, in the very heavy dew and have been applying soaker hose to plants on a rotating basis. But that still leaves putting food by (even the bit of heat to blanch a few veggies is noticeable in he kitchen) and housework which as multiplied with the pup.

And speaking of pup, Coffee appears to be a very smart doggie. She is learning quickly about the pee and poop outside thing, and has not messed in the bedroom since about the second night we had her... and she HAS got me up in the wee hours to go out. She seems to know what is expected, just with a bit of confusion and possible lack of maturity (inability to hold urine sufficiently long to get leashed up and taken out on occasion). Her "accidents" are pretty much directly in front of a door (not always the door to outside, though that is becoming increasingly the only place accidents happen.) and since said doors are covered with linoleum or an old mud mat that came with the house, the scolding of "bad dog" only carried the energy needed for training and no extra "oomph" from the stress of a potentially ruined floor.

Hex orders have dropped again, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, as I need the time (once the weather cools enough, especially) to clean and organize the workspace. I do have one job pending -- the painting of a hex on a rock for a friend to place overlooking his garden. And of course I need to update the website.

Other than that, life continues. We have finally got a lumber list and a friend will be ordering it for us from a local fellow with a sawmill, so we can build a small deck and decent set of steps for the back door to the dog yard. This has been an issue since we moved in -- the bottom two "steps" are nearly 18" tall, which makes it difficult for me and the big dog and impossible for the small one. The delay on this is partly a money issue and partly a motivation of Kevin issue.

He spends increasingly more time "lost" or "gone" into his own mind or who knows where.... asleep in part and just not here in part as well. Some of this is from pain, I am sure, some from the fact that even with the CPAP machine, he is not sleeping even close to a "normal" night. However his primary care practitioner finally made a referral to a neurologist for a look at several issues and we had the appointment last week. After an initial terrible meeting, due totally to screw-ups on the part of their staff, we got seen during a cancellation in the early afternoon of the same day as the messed up appointment. It was not fun cooling our heels in Bangor for several hours, with few necessary errands and a Kevin who was hurting, but we did it.

The doc only got started on ONE of the three issues, but even to my untrained eye, the exam found abnormalities for him to work with/on. This is in remarkable contrast to most exams of any sort, in which he comes out "textbook perfect" even though something is obviously the matter. Doc ordered an MRI (two CAT scans have failed to find anything) and a 24 hour EEG (typical EEG was one of those "textboox perfect" tests...) MRI is today at 6 PM and he gets wired up for the EEG next Tues. This is a set up where he wears a unit for 24 hours, and we push a button on the machine, and log in a journal, any "events" that might produce signals they would need to look at in detail.

The neurologist office scheduled BOTH of these appointments while we waited, as well as our next visit to that office -- one of the most efficient medical practices I have seen thus far. I have high hopes that he will uncover something; whether it will be something treatable, I am not sure. K's counselor seems to think that his exposure to ball lightning as a young child may account for some of the abnormalities in his brain.

In the yard, our humming birds and gold finches continue to visit the feeders and I still hear an occasional killdeer and see the swallows swooping on skeeter patrol.

We have been visited by a (couple of?) young skunks. One we both saw ambling across the grass and one was almost surprised by K and Coffee last night on their walk around the house. The young Pepe Le Pew was eating up spilled seed under the backyard bird feeder.

Thus far the two-strand monofiliment deer fence seems to be working and (crossing fingers) the turkeys have yet to find the garden. I have a "bunch" of about a half dozen grapes on one of the two grape vines, and have eaten a few blueberries, but I need to deer fence the berry area and the canes of the branbleberries have been being munched on by deer. I'll look today in the big boxes for the cheap plastic step-in posts, hoping they have resupplied since my last visit.

As I have been trying to get out and weed, I continue to find food in the garden; excavating the visible Brussels sprout plants, I noted the second planting of carrots still trying to grow under the weeds and have begun to give them light and room too... I'll put the soaker on the row later today so I can do a good weeing job on them tomorrow, with luck.

Peppers are not producing well -- no big surprise as they seem picky to me and have not had the care they deserve, but the tomatoes are beginning to come on, as are the cukes. Gotta get "stuff" for pickling today -- cukes and beets for sure.

Whew, that's a lot of words. Now I am typed out...

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Meet Coffee




Say hello to the newest member of our family, Coffee! (Those of you who know the Mainer liking for Allens Coffee (flavored) Brandy will understand our naming convention. Our older Saint is named Brandi.)

She is a 2 mo. old Saint B baby that we got last week, after seeing a sign "Saint Bernard Puppies" on our way home from K's doc appointment in Milo. We stopped and played with them but had no $$ as we had yet to hit Bangor and do banking, and "on the way" home stopped by to find the people not home. I left a business card and they returned the call later and I went back, with $$ to get her.

She just learned how to do steps yesterday (UP, not yet comfortable with the DOWN option) and we are working on house training. Walking on a leash she caught onto quickly (with a harness, not a collar, which she hates) especially when we walk with Brandi. B is pretty tolerant of the baby. There have only been a few "grr"... of the big dog correcting small one variety, however jealousy is in style, as big dog makes sure she gets what is big dog's due (regardless of my active commitment to love on and give attention to her in a heavier portion even than to the baby.)

Today we are off to the vet, first, for her checkup and second set of shots and then to town for an UNTIPPABLE water dish. Coffee loves to lay her head on the edge of the water dish and ends up dumping it... so we have a puppy puddle of a different (and much larger) variety.

Brandi also will go to town, as she is getting a pedicure at Petsmart today.

Readers...