Midcentury Modern and a Road Trip

I've been in my suburban house for exactly 3 months today.  It's been a rollercoaster ride with a car accident and a new car, frozen pipes, broken boiler and a ton of other stuff that kept my attention in fight or flight mode for most of the last 3 months.  A new person in my life kept my attention in better places as well. 

As daylight hours grow longer, I'm beginning to look around my new place like I'm seeing it for the first time.  Since I'm living in the middle third of the house, I really haven't spent any time in the other 2/3 of the house!  Sunlight falls in new places on the walls. Actual sunlight!  Last week I saw light in a weird place in the basement and I started a bit before realizing that it was the natural stuff, made by the big guy upstairs.

My house is Midcentury Modern, designed by an architect and built in 1962, the middle of a time now known as the Midcentury Modern period, roughly 1950 to 1970.  (I can't find a pic of the house right now) Houses were designed to blur the lines between inside and outside.  Huge walls of windows bring nature into the house, and natural building materials like stone and wood make it seem like the inside is outside.  In the 50 years since my house was built, the original owner enclosed a few outside rooms, and covered up the walls of glass with thick curtains and drywall.  And awful pink paint.

But she left the blueprints behind and I can see how this house was originally full of light and air.  The room you see across the kitchen peninsula used to be open to the outside, a porch, before she made it closed in and dark and weird. Now that the string of winter emergencies seems to be over, I look at this room and imagine opening it up again, with glass walls on all sides and no roof, like it was designed.  I'm dreaming midcentury and salivating over Ebay listings of Eames furniture and atomic lights.

Which is how we come to be making a road trip to New Hampshire this weekend to pick up a $69 bench that I saw on Ebay and couldn't resist. I bid low, but was unopposed.  Apparently other people are too socked in by winter to furniture shop.  It was too easy.

Yeah, I know, I'm not looking for furniture.  But the price was right and I was looking for an excuse to take the new-to-me car out for a long spin and get a change of scenery to boot.  Plus, this bench totally fits in the house.  Here's a picture showing the room I'm using as a bedroom, and the wall of windows.  It's supposed to be a living room.  The air conditioner completely messes up the lines of the room and if I can stand it, it'll be gone, gone, gone after it stops being so bloody cold.  The curtains and blinds mess up the space too and are going away as well, after I prudently wait a bit to make sure it won't be too hot in there in the summer.  The prior owner really loved to cover up the windows.  And the floor?  And the 1980s-era ceiling fan?  I'm still thinking about what to do about those.

Here's another porch and another wall of windows. I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but in the short term at least, a hammock will be involved.

See?  Can't you tell I'm past the whole winter series of emergencies?  Someone caught in the throes of getting through each frozen day doesn't have time to think about architecture. I'm too busy making dastardly plans and dreaming MidCentury dreams to be glad, but it sure feels good!

Someone's Coming to Visit

Here's the house on Sunday, looking as desolate as it can possibly look.  I'm giving some of my wood to NM, so we went up to snowblow and move wood.  While he and his grown sons were throwing wood about, I did some inside cleaning of mouse poop and other little messes.

Fortuitous timing, because I got an email the next day from the real estate agent.  Someone wants to see the house! First showing in the three months the house has been on the market.  I hope she likes it!

Realistically though, the deep snow completely covers all the nice stuff outside.  The hammock I so artfully placed in November.  The table and chairs on the south side.  The raised beds.  The chicken coop.  All covered.  Since the yards are one of the best things about this house, it's hard to believe that someone will see how wonderful this place really is over the crooked floor or through the loose windows.  We'll see.  Hoping for magic, but not expecting it.

Probie

I'm a probie!
Was voted in last week after a multi-month process and finally got the turnout gear, and hat for the new department.  I can go on calls now, but can't do interior firefighting until after I pass the 6-month probationary period.

February Snow

My diabolical plan to make the snow stop was to borrow a plow blade for my ATV.  So, here's NM (New Man) trying out the blade last weekend at the top of the driveway.  I had this idea that as soon as I got prepared for this snowy weather, it would stop snowing.  OK .... hear me up there?  It can stop snowing now!

It's coming up on two months with this guy and I'd been holding off on writing about it for fear of jinxing it.  He knows I write a blog, but has never seen it (a good decision, I think).  I've thought (but not too much) about how as soon as (literally 3 weeks after), I moved off the mountain and stopped being so desperate for a partner, one comes along.  I've never been in a relationship like this.  He lets me know during the day that he's thinking of me.  We talk a few times a day.  It's new stuff for me, and pretty cool.  I'll write more when I'm less concerned about jinxing it.

Desmond is still perking along, more or less OK.  He's still interested in food and his surroundings, has learned to get up sometimes when he falls, so I don't have to pick him up as much.  He's not too upset by living in the basement (he can't go up stairs and I can't carry him up and down). So we're in a holding pattern for now, until the next emergency happens.  He's such an easygoing dog!

 Maggie jumps over the piled-up snow, but Desmond's world got smaller when the snow piles got too high for me to dig a path through them.

Top of the driveway looking down to the road and the pond across the street.  I was a little terrified of sliding down the hill, but my new car is heavy and all-wheel drive, so I haven't slipped even once on this hill.

And finally, the mailbox.  It's a little amusing to drive down the street and see people digging out their mailboxes.

Let Us Go and Make Our Visit

The title is a nod to a poem by T. S. Eliot and describes what we did Sunday.  Visit the house in the hills with a snowblower.  Good thing, because the snow was over three feet deep around the door.  It would have taken hours to move enough snow to get into the house with shovels.  At the end of the driveway, it was solid and frozen.  And deep.  I had a chair leaning up against the woodshed door to hold it shut, that was completely covered with snow.  This house has been here for well over 100 years (some would say it's been 200 years), and even though I've worried about it this winter from my house down in the city, every time I come here and step inside, I see how solid it is.  It could easily stand another hundred years.  It's got a nice, new, metal roof!

The other house has only been on this planet for 49 years and it's youth is showing. Things break.  Things don't work.  But it's close to work and to life in the city and I like it very much. At least the 1/3 of it that I'm living in.

Here's a picture of the parking lot at work yesterday, showing Mount Snow growing daily.  Much of the problem this time of year is where to put the snow, since it's not melting between snowstorms.  Huge piles around driveways and stop signs make it difficult to see when cars are coming.  Snowblowers reveal archeological layers of white snow, then grey snow, then more white, etc, etc.  One can count the snow layers and tie them to particular storms.  "That one is the Christmas Eve storm," and "the one above it is the storm a week later", etc, etc.

It's interesting, but I feel a major case of winter blahs coming on.  The temperature has only turned the corner for warmer within the last week.  Thankfully, the extra minute or two of light each day mean that I can turn the light off at home while I am gone during the day.  It will be light when I get home from work. That counts for something.

Amazing, I Know

But on the coldest morning in umpteen years (-14 on the way to work. Thirty degrees colder than normal for those of us keeping track), everything is OK.  All my animals are alive and healthy and at home.  All the systems I use to live, like the shower, the sink, the stove, the boiler and the car are working as they should.  I breathed (brothe?) a big sigh of relief this morning and was very thankful.

Maggie makes herself a nest in the snow and sits for hours (in this weather it's more like minutes) watching for deer.  Like this one who showed up outside the bedroom window on Saturday afternoon.  Since Maggie was keeping vigil on the other side of the house, she missed him entirely.

It's indescribable how much calmer I am now that I am back in the city.  Some aspects of the homesteading dream are still there, but are sleeping for now, while I thrill at being able to be at a restaurant in 5 minutes instead of 45.  I've been reading the travails of another solo female homesteader, frozen pipes, nonworking vehicle, dead animals, afraid to leave the 'stead for fear of a catastrophe, but afraid to skip work for fear of losing a job.  I remember the feeling, reeling from the body blows of solo country living and I'm glad I don't feel those now, in this sub-zero weather.  Thankful I am.  Yes, thankful.

Bundt Cake Anyone?

I'm such a resourceful person!  Snow season caught me a little flat-footed, and I successfully repurposed whatever was lying around in service for spreading salt on the driveway hill.  Since I've never in my adult life (or childhood life) made a bundt cake, I doubt I'll miss this cake pan in the kitchen.  Or maybe an extremely important Bundt cake event is coming up soon!

I swear this winter has been the coldest, snowiest that I remember.  Even colder than my first winter on the mountain, two years ago, where my power was out for 3 days.  This winter, I've got a small, plastic shovel that I'm using to clear my 250 feet of driveway and the hill.  Yeah, it's not working well.  Maybe because I've gotten something like 4 feet of snow this month, in snowstorms that seem to be coming two a week.

I've got a plan though, to attach a borrowed plow blade to my ATV. Crossing fingers that we can get that done this weekend.

Where would we be if things that we thought were fixed didn't keep on breaking? Being relaxed and calm is overrated (ha!).  I came home from work yesterday afternoon to a very cold house and a nonworking boiler.  Aside from being in the same (boiler) system, this failure is completely different than Sunday's failure.  A similarity though?  Both required an emergency call to the fuel company and scrapping any other plans.  Here are the repairman and the new dude.  At least yesterday's emergency call came at a reasonable hour!

Lest I Become Complacent

God Forbid I relax or anything! 
After a few weeks of relative peace, beginning to enjoy city life and new "friends," I was woken up at 5:00 Sunday morning by the boiler's constant noise.  It was not going off.  After a little investigation, I found out that it was not going off because a pipe had burst in the back bedroom, and the entire back of the house was flooded with warm water, spraying from the baseboard and pouring down into the basement.

I called my new "friend" who was like all sane people at 5am Sunday, sleeping, and didn't hear the phone.  Then I called the gas company and 3 hours later the emergency was over, but several pipes in the basement had been cut to empty water and isolate the back of the house from the rest of the house.  Small sigh of relief, but emergency over meant that the cleanup could begin, starting with an early morning trip to Walmart to buy a wet/dry vacuum, disposal of the soaking carpet and cleaning up of water.  The gas company had to come back in the afternoon when one of the cut and capped joints started leaking, but I think it's all OK now ... more or less.

Here's the culprit break in the pipe that caused the ruckus. The blue-striped wood at the front of the picture used to hold down a carpet.

I didn't sleep well last night.  The heating system sounds different now, that it's been emptied, filled and purged a few times.  I'm different, too.  I've lost some trust in this house and I start at every strange noise,  meaning I woke up about a thousand times last night listening for rain in the basement.  I got up a few times and walked the house, making sure that the water noise in the pipes was safely confined to the pipes where it belongs.

Another thing is different now.  After almost 12 years of having only myself to rely on, another person asked me to let him help.  I've been through so many emergencies like this alone, that I'd forgotten how nice it is to share my nerves, "should I worry about the washing machine pipes freezing, or the floor freezing because it's not totally dry all the way through,"  "what do you think if I put a heater here ... and here," etc, etc.  It's all stuff I would have struggled with alone, and turned over and over in my head until I had it figured out.  With this other person around, I can bounce it off, answer it, do something, and move on. That's nice.

December is the Darkest Month But January is the Coldest

This is the time of year when I pore over weather averages and records, day by day, and get indignant when temperatures are below average, like they were today, this week and most of the last month.  I almost can't remember the brief January thaw we had a week ago.  It's been frozen out of my head.  Today's average high temperature is 31 degrees, 15 degrees higher than it is now.  Average nightly low is 12 degrees, higher than tonight's expected 4.  I can't imagine the warmth of 31 degrees. It seems balmy.  If it were 31 degrees, I might wear shorts, like so many hardy upstate NY souls.

For the next 17 days, the average temperatures continue downward, until finally, on January 30th there's an infinitesimal turn for the warmer.  February is slightly warmer than January.  Slightly.  You can be sure that I'll be throwing as much ooomph as possible to make sure that February is, at least, average.  I'll be keeping track.  Closely.

So This is What it Feels Like

I've always been a, "finish everything that needs to be done and then relax" kinda gal.  If that didn't work, I was a, "worry about everything that needs to be worried about and then relax after everything's fixed" kinda gal.  Or maybe I was a, "work really hard to get everything just right and then relax" kinda gal.  You've probably figured out that I don't relax often!  That carried over into the realm of finding a partner because I viewed that as another task on the never-ending list.  At times I felt a bit desperate as I struggled with 2 cats, 2 dogs, 5 chickens, 2 goats, a full-time job, etc, etc, while looking for someone to share the load and, oh yes, be the love of my life.  It was tough.  No wonder I didn't succeed.

When I raised the white flag and moved back into town, I promised myself that I'd use the hour a day I save on my commute to take care of myself better.  I specifically meant working out, but shopping for and cooking good food for myself falls into the realm of taking care of myself.  It was hard to do for a while as I recovered from the car accident and kept up on my list of things to worry about, like frozen pipes, Maggie's leg, Desmond, fast disappearing oil, where my WSJs were disappearing to, did I buy a lemon car, etc, etc.  But slowly, over the last few weeks, I've been putting together something.  Oh, and I met and started dating someone.

He showed up on OKCupid, a dating site I've been using for 8 years.  Yes, that's right.  Eight years.  We're only 3 or so weeks into it, so I'm not going to say much now.  But in the last few weeks, stuff has been falling together and I realized this morning that everything is fine.  I have no tasks that I have to get done.  Nothing is broken.  I have nothing to worry about.  Of course that's not really true if I examine it, but I'm not worried, or running down my invisible to-do list.  The car is fine, Maggie's leg is healing just fine, the pipes won't freeze, both houses have full oil tanks ($1,400 worth!). 

I'm relaxed!  It's been so long, I couldn't remember exactly how it feels.  I got up this morning and did stuff I wanted to do, including an errand trip to JoAnne fabrics and the grocery store, and some cooking for next week.  Now that I live close-in, it's easy to run out to the store.  It's easy to fit stuff into my life that wouldn't fit before, including another person.  Funny how it happens.  We were talking the other day when I learned that he worked on a farm from age 10-17 and milked cows, mucked stalls and all that good farmy stuff. And yesterday I learned that he used to keep bees. Pretty neat.

That's all I'm going to say for now about that.  Except that things have gotten better (literally and emotionally) with him around  and that's a good feeling to have.

You Would Tell Me if it Clashed, Right?

Here's Sparky, trying out the pocket on my spinning wheel bag.  (Who says cats aren't social creatures?) Yup, it doesn't match.  But I couldn't resist the orange-y midcentury pattern.  And there will not be another bag like this in the whole, entire world!  I'm going to use the same fabric for straps on the other side, so the whole thing will be sullied with "clash." Oh, the thrills.

Yesterday was a good day. A very good day.  My boss notified me that I'll be getting a raise in this week's paycheck, which is nice after two years of frozen pay, and very nice to help me worry less about paying multiple mortgages.  (I think I'll take 25% of that raise and get that membership to the YMCA that I was hesitating on for not wanting to spend money.) Then later, I got a call from the fire department on how my application is progressing.  Good conversation.  The department has a new chief since last month, and the guy explained why they have a poor reputation, what's changed (ie who got kicked out) and what they're doing to change their rep.  He also said that they've had girls before (local college students from Rennselaer Polytechnic), and suggested that I go down right away and meet the new chief.  Which I did.  I've got a MUCH better feeling about that place! 

Very good start to the year.  I said this last year, but I have a feeling this year is going to be a good one!

Peace and Pieces and Piecing

It's been so blasted COLD for the last month, that I got the idea I needed some decent turtlenecks.  Last year, or maybe it was 2 years ago, I bought some cheap turtlenecks, and the sleeves shortened when I washed them.  I *hate* too-short sleeves, so planned a self-treat day of shopping for my birthday, Dec 30th, to look for some quality turtlenecks. (Yeah, what was I thinking.)


I stopped at LL Bean where I saw these - any size you want as long as it's Extra Small and any color you want as long as it's something garish (apologies to anyone who loves these colors, but they're too bright for me.)  I tried another store or two, but quickly lost interest in shopping.  After years of only shopping at the Salvation Army, anything that costs more than a few dollars feels too expensive.

I also bought some pieces parts for my current sewing project - a carrying bag for my spinning wheel.  It's pretty easy to buy a boughten bag, but they run $120+, which is too rich for my blood.  I had a great time picking out upholstery fabric for the bag, and a semi-clashing fabric for the handles/straps.  My current house has me in a midcentury mood, and it looks like I'm going through an orange phase, colorwise.

There aren't any patterns for these things and the wheel is irregularly shaped, so I used dimensions from a blog post.  And then proceeded to cut a bigger bag, meaning I had to add pieces to the long, side part that I had cut too short, then cut a piece of woven plastic to be a bottom cover piece to cover up my ... seamy indiscretions.  First, I sewed batting to the side piece, then added the long outer piece.  And then remembered I had to put in the zipper (cue the sound of doom soundtrack).

Good lord, but it's been years since I put a zipper in anything, I'd forgotten how, and I've NEVER put a zipper in upholstery fabric this thick, after it'd been sewn to something thick and big.  It wasn't pretty as I worked out how to use a walker foot and the zipper foot alternately, depending on what worked best.  Don't tell anyone I broke a needle and the top half of the bag is an inch narrower than it's supposed to be, but the finished product will look just fine!  Piecing this thing together is kinda fun, but hard work using rusty brain circuits. Ninety percent of sewing is half mental ... or maybe that was something else.

And the last piece is "peace."  In the single digit temperatures of the last month, I've been worrying about pipes freezing at the country house - and running out of oil, hastening said freezing of pipes. A friend with a truck came to the house with me yesterday.  We took a load of stuff from the shed and drained the water pipes. No more chance of frozen pipes!  Whee!  Peace of mind! (If only it were that easy...)

Snow!

I fell asleep early last night, reading the Grapes of Wrath (I know that reading in bed has dangers of falling asleep, but I still do it.  Go figure.), and woke up to this.  To get a sense of scale, the snow is approaching 2 feet on this railing. 

In my few waking moments through the night, I thought about shoveling the driveway and getting to work, but realized this morning that that will be impossible.  Gotta wait for plow guy to clear the driveway.  I waited until the moderately reasonable 7am to call plow guy's house, where his wife says he'll be out - sometime this morning.

It's still snowing.  Beautiful, white, fluffy flakes.  I didn't think (last Wednesday) to bring my work laptop home, so I'm stuck here, thinking that this is a real snow day.  Time to realize that I've done everything I can do for now and relax and enjoy, just like in school.  Wonder if I want to go out with the dogs and make some snow angels.  More likely I'll make some hot chocolate, put real marshmallows in it, and open the book.

Everybody's Better

Things got so much better after the vet (on our second trip yesterday) showed me a trick to keep Maggie's bandage from sliding down her leg and her from taking it off so often.  Tape. Specifically sticky tape.  Stuck to her hair.  This particular bandage has stayed on since dinner time yesterday, which is kindof a record for us.  When I was comfortable that the bandage wouldn't come off, I let her out off leash, making her a happier dog, and all of us a happier family.

The boiler peeps are coming today ... sometime.  Meaning I have to stay home until they arrive.  Not an awful thing.  I'm slowly coming out of emergency management mode as things resolve themselves and stopped at the library yesterday to pick up a classic to read.  My attention span has gotten so short, by reading news articles, that it's time to stretch the old attention span a bit by giving it one of the oldies.  The Grapes of Wrath.  I started it last night and fell asleep on about page 5.  Not an auspicious beginning!  I checked out Anna Karenina, too, which I have also never read.  But it's a thicker book, so to the shorter one I went!

(The above pic was taken with an iPhone app that Walt Mossberg recommended, Hipstamatic.  It makes pictures look all old-timey.  Cool, huh?)

Against the good advice of my mother, I bought the car in the lower pic, a VW Passat 4motion station wagon earlier this week.  I traded in the monster truck and used some of the money from the Scion settlement.  The car is All Wheel Drive, so should be able to get me up the hill to the country house with no problem.  And it has excellent reviews and only 75,000 miles.  Plus, the place I got it is the repair shop I've been using for the last 2 years - folks I trust. It makes me happy to get decisions like, "what am I going to drive" out of the way, and for less than the combined value of the truck and the car, giving me a small cushion in case of emergency.  To address my mother's concern about giving up the hauling/transporting capacity of the truck, I've got a few options that are less wonderful than just having a big truck sitting ready, but more wonderful than having to drive, and park, said truck every day. Thankfully, about 90% of what I'd want to transport will fit in here, and the other 10% (all the furniture in my country house), can go in one trip of a moving truck.

Playing With Fire

Someone from my old fire department invited me to a live burn exercise Saturday morning.  Since I haven't gotten a new fire department yet, I can still play with the old one, and I'm so glad I did. We burned a house down!

I'm finally getting serious about taking care of Maggie's wound.  I was SO resentful that she cut herself mere hours before I was going to let her and Desmond stay in the yard (and feeling badly from the accident myself), I wasn't willing to give her the extra work required, and I let her outside unsupervised even after being warned not to.  I'm not surprised that she busted her stitches, but it took a while for me to internalize that if she's going to get better, I HAVE to put in the time to take care of her.  Back on the leash for her time outside. Rewrap the wound as many times as it takes to give it 10 or so days to heal.   The human equivalent is that she partially cut off one of her fingertips (pads. The one partway up her leg.). I suspect that she'll just pull it off again if it's not fully healed and I'll have to go back and spend more money to have it re-stitched.  It's going to be painful to spend that money twice, but I have nobody to blame but myself. I hate when that happens.

It's still pouring.  The check engine light came on in the truck and something is wrong with the boiler/hot water heater combo at the new house and I'm running out of hot water ... sometimes.  I can't describe the feeling of being in the shower and running out of hot water when the bathroom is only 44 degrees to begin with.  Picture an agony of coldness.  This system is supposed to give me infinite hot water, but it's obvious something isn't working right.  Plus, I've somehow run through 1/2 a tank of oil in three weeks at the new house, even though 2/3 of the house is set at 50 and the the 1/3 I'm living in is set at 62 degrees.  The hot water and the oil situation were better at the old, crooked country house.  It sounds like I'm complaining (and I AM).  It's time to stop wishing things were magically under control and put in the time and effort to take care of my "issues."  Including the four-legged furry one.

Managing

Here's the peanut butter and pill sandwich I give Desmond every morning. 

He's thrilled to eat anything that has peanut butter in it, so I don't even have to disguise the pills, two glucosamine pills and one pain pill.  In the evening, it's one pain pill.

Maggie, on the other hand, likes to examine everything before she considers consuming it.  She eats in tiny bites, and a pill doesn't fall in the realm of yummy for her, even if it's hidden in liver.

I forgot that (blocked is more like it) Maggie's stitched wound on her paw has to be managed.  Keep the bandage dry with a plastic bag over her foot every time she goes out.  Don't let her run or jump or go up or down stairs.  Don't let her lick the bandage.

Most people with dogs know stuff like that is more aspirational than directive.  I spent Monday evening making Maggie a great plastic bag thing that tied at the top, and it lasted, oh, about 5 minutes on Tuesday morning before being shredded.  Then her bandage was wet and I had to take it off.  (oh yeah, and go to work worrying that she was going to lick the wound back open).  We got through Wednesday with the wound uncovered before she reopened it and pulled a stitch out while running across the yard Thursday morning.  Now, I'm reapplying the bandage about 4 times a day, as she takes it off. I'm trying anti-chew spray to keep her off the bandage while I'm at work. I just want to get a good scab or something on it, so it'll stay closed by itself.  She's getting used to being re-bandaged, and I'm getting used to doing it to her. Only 8 more days of this!

On top of that, I have to feed Maggie a pill twice a day.  For her, it's a little peanut butter on the pill, shoved far down her throat.  Then peanut butter on my finger to get her to lick my finger, accidentally swallowing the pill while she's focusing on my finger.

I've been a little resentful of the time all this managing takes, since I'm also focused on trying to feel better myself from the accident, while worrying about money, frozen pipes in the country, getting the ATV and lawn tractor over here and selling them, getting a possible new(er) car.  Oh, and learning my new house.  The bathroom I take a shower in was 44 degrees this morning, in the cold part of the house.  Last Friday, I made toast and set off a smoke alarm.  It's not terrifying unless you realize that one of the smoke alarms is hard wired to something (ie, the fire department comes when the smoke alarm goes off).  That's why I was freakily trying to STOP the thing, and why I was so shaky after I ripped it from the wall and realized the one that went off is not the one that's hard wired. Whew. 

Yesterday I tested the 1960s-vintage oven and made sure several fans and the vent were on high, ... just in case.  (FYI, it works, but appears to run much hotter than the chosen temp.  Now I can make cookies for Monday's cookie exchange. Must pick something that's tolerant of being burned.)

Now, was there something about some dogs needing attention?

Ouch!

On Friday afternoon I blithely wrote something about overcompensating with my left side for my right-side rib that still hurts from the accident.  That was about 2 hours before I got hit by the figurative truck and spent most of the rest of the weekend in bed with a hotpad.  I first lay down right about dinner-time with the hotpad, and a few hours later idly looked up "symptoms of a heart attack" on the internet.  Big mistake.  I had most of them, except the sweating and the nausea.  Sharp pain up my back, radiating up the side of my neck and down the inside of my left arm.  Dull pain in front.  The hotpad wasn't going to warm up the muscles that hurt like heck going through the inside of me from front to back (or back to front).

Soo - it was a long, scary night Friday.  I didn't think it was likely that I was having a heart attack.  More likely a stress thing (think Jack Nicholson in that movie with Diane Keaton where they're both "old"), or pulled muscles from the accident.  I went to urgent care Saturday because I wanted to rule it out though - and they wouldn't.  Rule it out, that is.  The EKG was OK, but my pulse and heart rate were elevated.  Of course!  Duh!  I'm stressed!  They wanted me to go to the ER, but said I could drive myself, thankfully.  So I did drive myself.  Home.  I was pretty sure, by that point, that it would be hours of very expensive tests to tell me that I have some pulled muscles.

Finally yesterday morning I began to feel a little more normal.  It's been a long time of feeling crappy one way or another (it started with plantar fasciitis from firefighter training in October, which had just begun to lessen), so I had started to long for the days when I feel the age that my body is.  Not feel twenty years older.  I don't feel good now.  Not at all.  I still feel like crap.  But the way the pain feels now, I'll bet it was (and is) a direct result of the accident, like whiplash or whatever.  Not an indirect result of me favoring my right side as I had thought. Surprised it took a week to show up.  Hello pain.

That Friday night was kindof a wakeup call.  To start treating my body better, get in better shape, etc, etc.  Both of my mother's parents died young-ish, something I remembered Friday night.

Bad stuff comes in waves.  Maggie sliced one of her foot pads yesterday.  I had to physically force her to not lick it overnight (an ace bandage and one of Desmond's pain pills helped! And I held her head away from her leg all night as we sortof slept.) until I could get her to the vet today.  It's too big a wound to heal with pressure, and she is at the vet now for sedation and stitching. Pow! Money I was hoping not to have to spend. 

It's so weird that the only times Maggie has hurt herself have been times when I was feeling extremely bad myself.  Maybe Maggie is super sensitive, or maybe it's like a karma thing.  My normal good luck deserts me, and has me hunkered down in a foxhole looking to the left and to the right.  "What's next?"  "Where's the next pow coming from?"  And come, they do.  Good thing it's not very often!

Prattling

Nothing important to say, just a bit of this and that. This picture is from the top of the hill looking down to the road (and the pond!).  The turnaround is behind me.

There was a business card in my mailbox yesterday, from the guy that plowed the previous owner's driveway (for, like 45 years!).  I had been avoiding thinking about snow removal, being very uninterested in buying another piece of big equipment, like a snowblower or plow.  My suburban driveway is about four times longer than my country driveway (and on a hill, and with a turnaround), so my country solution (drive on top of the snow) wasn't going to work.  I completely lucked out when this business card presented itself before any snow presented itself!  Talked to the guy today and we have an agreement.  Whew! Bullet dodged.

I spent most of last week favoring my right side, where one of my ribs hurt from the accident.  So Friday it boomeranged, and now my back and shoulder are killing me because I've been so unbalanced.  Grr.  No more meds.  The hotpad and some aspirin is all I can do.  It's a message that I didn't slow down enough after the accident.  I was asked multiple times if I took time off work.  Yeah, Saturday and Sunday!

Found out what the insurance settlement will be for the Scion.  Nowhere near enough to buy a replacement.  I started thinking about what I would get if I traded in the truck and used the Scion check, but the things I'm looking at would require a bit more on top.  It occurs to me that the best thing to do is keep the truck, at least until my country house sells.  I don't want to drive the freakin' huge truck as my main vehicle, but would be kicking myself if I wanted to, say, move stuff from house to house and I didn't have a truck!  Plus, with multiple mortgage payments, spending money on a car is kindof the last thing I should do.  Sigh.

Desmond is losing patience with his basement arrangement.  One option that Sue suggested, is for me to contact the rescue agency I got him from to see if they think it's better for him to go somewhere else, or stay here.  There are arguments both ways.  One good thing is that the invisible fence was installed on Wednesday. Maggie got it right away, so she can run free.  But Desmond can't hear the warning beeps and doesn't really see the warning flags (I don't think).  I gave them a trial where I walked down the hill to the mailbox and they didn't try to follow (good dogs!). Tomorrow I'll try driving away for a short bit to see how they act.  If it works, then they can be outside while I'm at work, with the garage for a warmish place.  That should go a long way towards giving Desmond some peace (because all day outside will make him tired enough so that sleeping in the basement will seem like a fine thing to do), and Maggie some exercise. That's the theory anyway.

Being in the Fire Club

I always loved these clothing items that say you're in a club.  It's like a secret society that only the pure can enter (hah!) and every time I wear this, I advertise that I'm good enough.  I'm one of the initiated.  This watch cap has gotten some serious wearing these last few weeks as I've spent hours outside with the dogs at the new house.  I'm proud to wear this cheap, acrylic thing and happy to be a member of that group.

One of the decisions I'm making is which department to join in my new neighborhood.  There's the one that's really, really close to my house that nobody seems enthusiastic about, or there's the one that's a few miles away where I already know a few folks and their chief already said they'd love to have me.

So, on Monday I went to the closer department and spoke to the chief and the membership person.  On Tuesday I had the fire instructor call the chief as a reference, returned with a completed application, my $6 fee, and a few other required items.  I walked into the building about 15 minutes before their monthly meeting, into a room with 10-15 guys and noted as conversation stopped ... and 10-15 male heads swiveled towards me, not looking friendly.  I gave my stuff to the membership guy and he said (wait for it) ... they'd get back to me.  Clearly an invitation to leave.  I left not feeling good about this.  Not at all.

I have a pretty strong suspicion that I would be the first girl in this department, and that girls aren't exactly welcomed.  Never mind that most of the other departments in the area have gotten over this hurdle.  For some around here, it's been decades that they've had women firefighters.

This is another example of should I choose to stay and fight the good fight or "give up" and take the easy road out.  In another realm, I recently took the easy way out when after two years of struggle, I gave up the lonely fight to raise goats by myself up on the mountain (where, by the way there are now several inches of snow.). 

I understand that staying and struggling to earn respect would somehow make me a more virtuous person, but I have exactly zero desire to fight the good fight here.  History remembers the firsts.  The women who do the challenging, difficult thing and struggle to make the path easier for those who follow.  If history doesn't remember me, but I get to be part of a supportive fire department where I look forward to being with the crew, I'm OK with that.  It's been a rough few months (actually years), and all I want to do right now is take it easy for a while.  I do not want to move from one struggle right into another one.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but one of these days, hopefully I'll get a hat from a new department, either the close one or the farther one.

On a more positive note: I put off trying the washer and dryer at the new house as long as possible (because they look pretty old), but had to finally give them a whirl (ha ha) last night.  I'm pleased to report that they both work fine.  Whew!  I may ride this streak as long as possible and give the oven a try this weekend.  If everything works, I'll probably allocate scarce dollars to getting a new-to-me vehicle (trading the truck in), instead of buying kitchen appliances.  The truck is too big to realistically work as my full-time vehicle.

Car Photo

Here's what the Scion looks like now.

It's really cool how the crumple part crumpled and the passenger part stayed completely normal.  Good design!  I'm amazed at how the airbags went off at exactly the right moment to keep my head from going through the window.  Excellent design!