September 25, 2004

• Loud Snow

  
  The comment that sobasysta
  left on the photos in yesterday’s blog was prophetic.  She said,
  “I love the changing leaves. I guess winter isn’t far behind for you.”

  This is how it looks out there today.  Or that’s how it looked a
  few hours ago.  It’s deeper now, and not falling so noisily. 
  This morning’s snow was mixed with sleet, and when I talked to Greyfox
  he said that at the lower end of the valley, fifty miles away, he had
  rain mixed with sleet.  The weather guessers said the snow would
  turn to rain this afternoon, with no appreciable accumulation. 
  I’m seeing a couple of inches out there now, and there’s no more sleet
  tapping and rattling on surfaces.  This is just a normal silent
  snowfall now.

  It
  looks pretty, piling up on leaves, smoothing out and covering the tarp
  on the new woodpile, my car, and the oil tank I can see through the
  window behind my monitor here.  It is pretty early for this much
  snow.  If the weather cools and it stays, it will be about three
  weeks earlier than usual.

  I slipped into my boots and darted out to get these pics while I was
  getting tools and materials ready for another of our winterization
  jobs:  visqueening the windows.  Visqueen is Alaskanese for
  plastic sheeting, although I haven’t seen that brand of poly sheet in
  stores for years.  It was exceptionally clear, but thin and
  fragile, and extremely solar-degradable as well as expensive.  The
  stuff we use now is heavyweight industrial poly, and not so
  transparent.  The pluses are that it comes in big rolls at a low
  price, and is reusable.  We can cut a sheet to fit each window,
  and if I’m careful when I take it down next spring I can use it again
  and avoid the tedious measuring and cutting. 

  This year about half of the windows will be reusing last year’s
  coverings.  In the back room, I have replaced the black poly that
  covered that window last year with something that lets light in instead
  of the stuff that was intended to keep our light from shining
  out.  Doug’s window never got covered last year, but it has been
  done already today.  I didn’t do it last year because I needed to
  nail some strips around his window to tape the poly to, and it got too
  cold for carpentry before I got it done.  At least that was my
  excuse.  There were other reasons, too, I suppose.  There are
  lots of jobs around here that if they don’t get done before it gets
  nasty cold, they don’t get done at all.

  Another window that never got covered last year, the one here behind
  the computer desk, is covered now.  That was the last of the three
  windows Doug and I did after I got up this morning and before he went
  to bed this afternoon.  I had already covered the bathroom window
  a few weeks ago with last year’s sheet, soon after I closed that one we
  leave open for the cats’ convenience all summer.  The kitchen
  window remains to be done, and I have remnants from today’s work that
  will cover it.  I’ll procrastinate as long as possible on the
  living room windows, until the warmth becomes more important than the
  unimpeded view, then I’ll reuse last year’s sheets on them.

  This window behind the monitor didn’t get done last year, and we
  settled for taping the edges of the drape to the wall for insulation,
  because Doug and I could not see a way to do the job without moving the
  computer and a bunch of furniture.  The task loomed impossibly
  hard in our minds, so we improvised an easier but less heat-efficient
  fix.  This year, we moved what had to be moved, climbed over a
  bookcase and under the dining table, and covered the window.  It
  wasn’t easy, but I think it will be worth the effort.  I didn’t
  rehang the old drapes and I’m going to be looking in thrift stores for
  replacements.

  He
  might have taken some awkward shots of me climbing around on the
  bookcase to attach the poly sheeting in the corner of the room, but I
  kept him busy being my ground support, and the thought never occurred
  to him.  Before I got up there, when I had moved the stuff off the
  top of the bookcase, I noticed some things:  a dirty plate (making
  93 Corelle® bread and butter plates in my collection), an empty chip
  bag, a jar of beads, etc., that had fallen behind it.  I sent Doug
  under there to clear out the debris, and to right the shotgun that had
  fallen over as I was pulling the drapes out of that corner.  While
  he did that, I had the roll of sheeting spread across the kitchen
  floor, using the square grid on the floorcovering as a guide to help me
  cut the edges of the translucent sheet straight.  To get back in
  that corner, he had to go under the table.

  It
  used to be a dining table, for previous residents here.  Now it
  holds my jewelry-making tools and materials.  When I get space
  cleared on it, I make jewelry there or lay out my cards and other
  oracles to do readings.  If I leave it untended for any time at
  all, as with any uncluttered horizontal surface in our house, that
  clear space collects clutter, the overflow from the computer desk here
  beside it.  That’s its condition now:  cluttered both on top
  and underneath.  Fortunately, some of the clutter under there,
  styrofoam egg cartons, made soft knee pads for Doug.  

  Kneeling on the kitchen floor, I heard a clatter and an
  exclamation.  He’d knocked over his pellet rifle as he was setting
  the shotgun back up in the corner.  Anticipating my qurery as to
  his all-rightitude (We ask each other often if we’re all right, as we
  yip and grunt and scream our way through our days.), he said, “It’s all
  right folks.”

  That’s a cue, and I responded properly, “It’s all part of the act.”

  Even though it wasn’t unanticipated, his response, “Send in the
  clowns,” got a laugh out of me.  It was his delivery: 
  flawless timing and just the right falling inflection of resignation on
  the “clowns”.

  Next, after some clattering and grunting, I heard his muffled voice again, “You might want to get a picture of me under here.”

  I said, “Hold it a moment, I’m working on something here.”

  He answered, “That’s okay, it’s comfy.”  He’d been yawning and
  professing sleepiness when I interrupted his game to get to work
  earlier, and that had been two windows earlier.  When I finished
  cutting the visqueen and came over to take a look, I discovered there
  was no way to get the whole young man in one shot.  I got the feet
  in ambient light, but under the table where the rest of him was, it
  wasn’t light enough. 

  When he saw the flash, he said plaintively, “Did you have to use the flash?  It adds ten pounds.”

  There
  in the shot above, his midsection is draped over and through a gate-leg
  holding up one of the drop leaves of the table.  In this next
  shot, his upper portion is dangling down off the chair that is pushed
  under the table.  I didn’t stick around to see how he got out of
  there, but from the sounds I could tell it was challenging.  Then
  we got into the climbing and stretching and taping and got the job
  done.  After we put the furniture back in place and tidied up our
  materials, he went off to bed.  All that’s left for me is to put
  my jewelry materials back on that bookcase next to the window behind
  the table.  That will wait.

  I think one of my next projects is to clear off the workspace on the
  table.  There’s a backlog of readings to be done, and seeing all
  my stones and beads has inspired me to get back to the jewelry.  I
  hope my brain cooperates with my catching up on the readings project,
  and my hands are steady enough for the fine tool work afterward.

  I  got a bad scare when I tried to boot up the computer.  It
  flashed me that all-too-familiar “operating system not found”
  message.  We’re on our third hard-drive in this machine, and it’s
  still under warranty.  After about five power cycles, though, it
  finally found its OS, so here I am.

  And here I go.  I’m bushed, exhausted, pooped and worn out. 
  I put together a batch of New Mexico style enchiladas right after Doug
  went to bed, and had a little serving while I was uploading pics
  here.  Now I’m going back for seconds and then I’ll settle down in
  Couch Potato Heaven for a while.  If my energy regenerates enough,
  I think I’ll start moving the rock collection off its main shelf and
  make room up there for the lamp that is taking up space in the
  hallway… if I work really hard, I may get this mess cleaned up in
  time for Greyfox to move back in and mess it all up again.
  

  • 9:05 pm
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