November 02, 2009

8:14 a.m.

Deedly-Diedly-Doh -- Saturday

I slept way in. I don�t think I got up until 10:30. And I haven�t spoken to anyone today so I don�t know if this weekend is the daylight savings switch. A weird feeling.

It was a stupendous day. Indian summer. Warm. The wind came in great gusts sometimes, big walls of wind that took leaves down and knocked things over. I went outside and moved some scrap wood to the burn pile, rearranged the tarps, took rakes and the hand truck into the basement. I paced the field where the garden will go and tried to envision the perimeter, where the potting shed will stand, the blueberry bushes. I bathed and washed my hair, cognizant that Karl discovered I�d used half a tank of oil already. I�m scared of it running out now; how can we buy more oil on top of everything else? I don�t even have pellets yet, or a back door. The insurance bill finally came; I paid it. The roof was $100 less than the estimate, and that only because they recompensed me for the fridge being left off for days and losing some groceries. I will be more frugal with the heat, the hot water. We�ll get by somehow.

Anyway, the weather. I was too warm in my long sleeved shirt. I put screens in the windows and left the door open, until leaves blew in. I sat and read the goat book until I was dying for raw chevre. A trip to the local co-op was fruitless; they didn�t have raw goat cheese. I settled for goat milk instead, drank half the little jug on the way home. I put together an onion-and-four-potato soup, set it to simmering and continued with steam cleaning the pantry.

After a few hours� labor I have one set of cabinet doors cleaned and the three shelves inside. This is about one third of the upper tier of the pantry. There are a few drawers and lower cabinets as well. The time consuming part is because a) there is fifty-year-old waxed paper on most of the shelves, which has stuck onto the wood and turned brown and fragile as onion skin. It has to be scraped off, and whatever doesn�t scrape off has to be melted with the steamer; and, b) most of the shelving is coated with a thick layer of ancient grease that does not so much scrub off as swirl around in various patterns. Steam, scrub; apply Fantastik, scrub, wipe. Steam again.

The outside of the cabinets is a little sooty from the kitchen fire. I found myself hoping that had happened not long before the old man had to go to the nursing home; that way he wouldn�t have been living very long in a sooty kitchen.. Everything tinged slightly black. I thought it was one color, and it turned out to be another. Creamy white.

It�s slow work.

I found time to watch the rest of Hitchcock�s Strangers on a Train. With no special effects and none of the slick tools filmmakers have today, he certainly could spin out a suspenseful story.

The evening did involve a practice, so I guess I�m as ready as I can be for recording demos tomorrow. I should be in bed by now. As I�ve sat here typing, I heard the little gnawing mouse in the wall � this time by the front entrance. I�d never heard it there before. I did my banging on the wall, and as usual it took numerous times before the cheeky bugger stopped or went off somewhere else. I mean! As if it owns the place. I picture this blind, albino mouse that never sees the light of day, just roams around his miles of tunnels in my walls, making a meager little living off acorns and bugs.

It did finally rain a while, but the day was mostly gorgeous; sometimes sunny, sometimes overcast, but the air heavenly and inviting. I should have taken a walk. There was so much to do, a succession of little things leading to the pantry job, and I wanted to make the soup, and I just never thought to get out and get some exercise. I desperately need it.

I hear an odd, distant noise, like music. I think I�ll go investigate.

Monday

I never did figure out what it was; couldn�t hear it once I�d gotten to the front door.

It was, indeed, the weekend of the time change. I forgot all about it until I showed up at Chris�s house at what I though was 1:00 and wondered why he wasn�t back from church yet. After about twenty minutes of being annoyed, I took my laptop to their front porch, where I could get their wireless signal, and my computer clock adjusted. So I went to get a coffee and go pee somewhere, and by the time I got back it was the real 1:00 and Chris was home.

I got three songs demo�d (demoed?) and then we played around with Garage Band. I�m not very good on a keyboard but there�s a way to use the typing keyboard in piano mode, and I did a multitrack of Camptown Racers, to which we then sang. It was completely silly and fun. My Rode Podcaster microphone works beautifully with the software and sounds pretty good, too. I now know enough to make demos of my own songs to send to them as MP3s. Whoopee!!

I continue to enjoy Brad Kessler�s Goat Song. I haven�t read a book like this for probably twenty years, this kind of poetry harbored within a love of things pastoral, seasonal. He speaks of the way goats graze in �a loose confederation,� not bunching together like sheep but keeping one eye always on the herd. He remembers the summer light on his first day of haying: �We worked for hours in that slender orange glow as if suspended in amber solution, walking in and out of emerald swathes and lime green stubble. We worked until evening and salt burned our faces, but I recall a joy I�d never experienced before, as if I�d found some calling or communion I hadn�t known existed.� How the neighbors in herding communities help each other with the haying, when the timing has to be perfect and the weather steady � help not for the sake of the people, but for the sake of the hay. Everything depends on the hay.

This morning I had my oatmeal and tea with goat�s milk and I think about the farmers and the animals that provided it for me, and I give thanks.

Once again, time to get ready for work. Light, finally. I resisted turning on the heat this morning, though the thermostat said 62. It tends to kick on by then anyway, though it�s set down to 58. When I awoke it was still dark, but the yellow morning moon streamed into the window to the right of my bed.