Tag Archive | another day in paradise

A Productive Morning

Sep15

I’m grateful I had a productive morning, because I lost the afternoon to the aftermath of a wasp attack. It was a grilled cheese kind of a day: chilly and grey outside, and cold in the house. Smoked gouda with avocado and garden tomato, yum! It kept getting cooler, so I decided to build a little fire in the freshly-cleaned woodstove. There was no kindling split yet for the season, so we stepped outside to crack a few sticks from a well-dried aspen log set on top of the two stumps I’ve been using as a kindling-cracking pedestal for many years.

Crack! one stick. Crack! two sticks, and a wasp on my wrist cuff, and then another, latched onto the fabric, and suddenly I realized I’d disturbed a nest in one of the stumps and they were streaming out angry and determined. I also noticed poor little Wren running around snapping at her tail end, so I hurried to the other side of the house calling her after me. One stung my right index finger and I pulled out the pumping stinger. I swept my arms gently, not frantically, to keep them away, and they kept following. So we kept hurrying away. By the time I got to the back gate there were only a few left but they were persistent. We went out the gate and I pulled off my sweatshirt and swung it slowly in a circle above my head to keep them at bay, but one had gotten up my loose shirt and bit my belly. I dropped the sweatshirt and we kept hurrying away, Wren spinning to bite her back end and me sweeping my limbs to clear the air.

We walked the whole Breakfast Loop and came around to the front gate, grabbing the can of wasp spray from the back of the Mothership where I’d set it after spraying a nest in the side door the other week. I don’t like to kill them. By and large I let them live as they like, and just avoid areas where they nest, but as I was working on the Mothership and needed access, I had to kill that nest. I didn’t mind that one wasp snuck up my sweater sleeve last week and got my thumb pad when it felt trapped, even though it itched and hurt for days afterward. But I felt inclined toward vengeance after this all-out attack, especially since they hurt Wren.

But first things first. She was still hurting when we got inside, and so was I, so I poured some liquid baby Benadryl into her bowl which she lapped up, and I took the Therapik to my injuries to laser the venom enzymes. Maybe it helped, maybe not. By then my finger had swollen stiff and gone numb, and my whole had was turning red, so I popped a couple Benadryl tablets and squeezed on some cortisone cream. Then I looked out the window and watched where they were entering the stump. I waited until near dark so they’d all return to their nest before spraying the crack. The can quickly emptied, but there seemed enough to do the job, as no wasps flew out.

I’m grateful for Cousin Nurse who suggested a topical anesthetic, which reminded me I have Aspercreme with Lidocaine, so I’ve been slathering that on liberally. Wren calmed down and we both went to sleep for the afternoon. She seems now to have recovered completely, though I have not. I popped another couple Benadryls just now and am trying to type with an ice-pack on my hand which isn’t very effective–kind of like the Benadryl tablets, which are pretty old. Time for lights out, grateful for surviving another day in Paradise.

Ice

Dec31
Morning has broken…
Today I’m grateful for ice, and all that ice implies.

Grateful for ice, I am grateful for all that ice implies. First, for this kind of ice at least, water, clean tap water, and all that that implies: a reliable water source of snow-capped mountains, a delivery infrastructure, a water treatment plant, more delivery infrastructure, staff to build and maintain all the physical means of delivery and storage, a cistern, the people who dug the trench a quarter mile from the road and buried the pipe, dug the hole and buried the cistern, the plumber who plumbed the house and the several plumbers since who’ve maintained the household water system — deep breath — a freezer in which to make the ice, what a luxury that is, what a luxury all this is, to have clean water delivered to my kitchen sink, to have a kitchen safe and warm, with a refrigerator and freezer.

I’m grateful to be able to reach into the ice bin when I touch the hot skillet and hold an ice cube as it melts until the burn subsides. I’m grateful for ice trays, and how they’ve morphed through the years from those old aluminum trays with the handle that squeaked when you had to pull it up to break the cubes free of the metal grid. Grateful for the twisty plastic kind, and now the fun silicone molds that let you make whatever shape ice you could possibly want, cubes and spheres and sticks of ice.

Grateful for the spherical ice mold Amy sent, even though the frozen globes won’t fit my favorite new drinking glass!
Grateful I have more than one favorite drinking glass!

I’m also grateful for Ol’ Wilson, a new handyman in the neighborhood, who built a contraption to prevent my shower drain from icing shut this winter, and helps shovel snow, who cuts dead trees and stacks firewood, who built a shed for the generator after it’s spent 25 years under a tiny ‘temporary’ roof on a deteriorating rickety stand, and a lean-to in the food garden for hoses and tools. Wilson is cheerful and resourceful with an engineering mind, and grateful for the work, and grateful to live here; he arrives calling out “Another day in Paradise!” and he is absolutely right about that.

Using stuff that was around, Wilson insulated the shower drain outlets at the base of the birch tree, because sometimes ice isn’t what you want.
The generator shed before it was quite finished last month.