“Sandy”, #inktober52, #inktober

My college roommate was from the east coast, which she thought was superior to Ohio.  She waxed on about the Atlantic Ocean which I’d never seen.  I got sick of her putting down my home and said Lake Erie was just like the ocean.  It looks limitless from the shore and has waves.  In fact, the lake is far better because it’s fresh water and doesn’t have human eating monsters in it.  One summer she visited the lake and I visited the ocean.  We both exclaimed, “You were so right!”  We both kept sand from our visits.  It was a good summer.

Grandchildren are visiting next door.  They’ve been there long enough for me to both get used to them and not long enough for me to get used to their screeching.  Why do kids have to scream so much?  The girl has found more screechers to play with and has progressed from the perfectly adorable little child she used to be into an occasionally sullen near-teen.  Before you know it, she’ll turn into one of the most evil people on the planet, an 8^th grade girl.  It’s too bad we can’t keep them 9 years old forever.

I rejoiced when the grandmas filled the car with coolers and towels for an obvious trip to the beach.  I had a lovely, quiet day.  Towards evening, I found I was looking forward to the kids coming back.  The grandmas are boring neighbors.  The only entertainment they provide is a reason to complain about their lack of proper suburban lawn care.  The kids are like having a flock of butterflies flitting around, a pleasant diversion during my covid seclusion.  Their car pulled in and the shrieking recommenced.  I scratched out my butterfly comparison and thought about unoiled heavy machinery.

The weather has been extremely hot lately, yet it didn’t occur to me until now that I should go to the lake -- sand, sun, fun, and all that.  I like swimming and the rocking of the waves.  Then I thought, sand gets everywhere, I’m pigment impaired and will get sunburned, and it’s not like I can socialize while doing these things because of Covid-19.  I argued with myself to go to the beach in the evening – but the bugs come out in the evening.  I hate being a responsible adult.  I want to be a shrieking butterfly.

I find that when society shut down, I shut down.  I quit reading my daily horoscope.  What’s the point if I’m not actually out in the world?  Actually, I’m not sure there’s much of a point to the daily horoscope to begin with, but it was part of my daily routine.  I don’t go to the store.  I don’t even know why my attitude changed so much when my actual life didn’t really change other than seeing a friend seems to require a hazmat suit.  I just feel like I’m waiting out the pestilence while my brain tells me that there isn’t a quick solution to any of this.  In fact, everything is probably just going to get worse.  I think I’m having a childish reaction.  Make myself small and maybe it won’t see me.  I think I must not be the only one responding this way but I don’t hear of anyone else talking about it.  They complain about being stuck at home, but they don’t seem to share my feeling that time has stopped.

Ohio is in the medium range of US infection.  Nobody I know has it, but the disease is around, or so they say.  I don’t actually see evidence of it which makes this all feel surreal.  The governor says everyone has to wear a mask when they’re out, and I hope people comply, though I’ve seen too many act like jerks about it.  A lot of people also don’t seem to understand their nose has to be under the mask too.  Oh well, I tell myself the nicer people stand a better chance of surviving.

Sand in a timer doesn’t seem very “sandy”, but it is what I’d painted just before I saw the word for the week.  I think this is the last Barbie painting I’m going to do for a while though I’ve enjoyed painting them.  You may notice some of the elements in this piece were in previous paintings.  I was consolidating my thoughts from the other paintings.

#Inktober52, #Inktober, "Praying Mantis"

I was about 8 or 10 the first time I saw a praying mantis.  Who could've thought bugs could get so big?!  I ran inside to confer with Dad and showed him the insect monstrosity in the entomology book.  I was disappointed Dad already knew all about them.  We moved the mantis to a place it wouldn't be run over by the lawn mower and that was pretty much it.  I don't have a good story for this week's prompt.  I don't even have a good drawing.  I did this little sketch, thought to myself it looks like an alien, and decided that's good enough.  I have another project I want to work on.

Sometimes life is like that.  In the past, I often spent more time on what other people might want me to do instead of what I wanted to do.  I'm pretty sure nobody really cares if I spend a day creating a better mantis.  The painting I'm working on will make me happier and will have a much longer shelf life.

I've been fighting with myself about living life in balance lately.  I listen to too much news, get upset about politicians' stupid decisions, and don't focus on my own priorities while all this social distancing is providing plenty of opportunity to paint and think about better things.  Hence, I'm going to paint today.  I hope you find something to do that makes you happy today too.

Volunteering at the food giveaway makes me happy, and it gives me insight into people's attitudes towards Covid-19.  I'm less happy about the current attitudes.  Everyone wore a face mask in April.  This week, very few had on masks.  People apparently believe the worst is behind us and we don't have to worry about the disease since the state is opening up businesses even though the numbers in Ohio are going up.  We're less safe now than we were in April.  Wear your mask.  Social distance.  Be smart, stay safe, stay healthy.

In ditch digging news, I went out to the back 80 last Sunday and hit the ceiling when I saw the landscapers who take care of the property behind me dumped a huge pile of weeds and dirt in my ditch, effectively blocking the water flow.  I had already sent a nice letter to the owner of that property to get the landscaper under control.  I didn't receive a response.  I chastised the guy driving the lawn mower around.  I talked to the owner on the phone this week and am pretty sure this recurring landscaper problem may finally be addressed.

I walked back there to check my drainage process another day and felt stunned.  There was no water at all in the ditch.  Wet mud.  It took me a while to actually comprehend I had succeeded in ditch digging.  I felt waves of joy surrounding me.  I'm pretty sure Lake Erie is flooding Canada from all the water I've drained into it.  In more realistic terms, the ditch was about 2 feet of water in it when I started, with plenty of standing water in the yards.  I'll continue to demolish ditch obstacles through the summer, but all that is window dressing.  My ditch works!

My next project is cleaning up my neighbor's yard.  He's old and can't do it and the younger guy who helps out is stretched too thin.  I don't want to come off as all holy or anything about this.  I'll be happier to see the yard cleaned up but mostly I've been happy with my ditch digging exercise.  I'm not disciplined about regular exercise but I can be very diligent with projects.  It's a win/win for everybody :)

#inktober52, "Yellow"

I had to stop working on my ditch because I wrecked the upper right quadrant of my body with too enthusiastic ditch digging.  Apparently, going from winter sloth to sustained hard labor is a bad idea?  Even worse, I spent my convalescence watching too much news and making face masks.  I'd rather dig ditches than sew.  I'm pretty sure the mask shortage is a Republican plot to domesticate me.  Okay, I'll do it, but that doesn't mean I have to do it with grace -- though I got better at it and was happy to give the masks to some friends.

I finally felt better enough to attack the ditch again and started stalking out to the back 80 when I was stopped in my tracks by a varmint who hissed at me with all 50 of his needle sharp teeth exposed.  A mole?  A shrew?  Hit it with the hoe!  Except I never actually kill varmints.  I just vociferously complain about them.  I looked closer.  'Possum baby.  Aw, he went from kind of ugly varmint to absolutely adorable in a second.  Don't question the logic of this.  It just is.

The grass gives you an idea of size but I actually measured for the vet.
This guy's body (not counting tail) is about 4" long.

When you find wild babies, the first rule is to leave them alone so they can reunite with their mothers.  I went to my ditch and tried to use some restraint in my digging.  I stopped myself from overdoing it and checked on the baby.  Still in the same place.  No longer snarling or hissing.  I made calls to find an animal rescue that's still open during our Covid lockdown.  Finally, someone reluctantly answered.  She ordered me to leave the baby alone.  I went back to my ditch.  I took a break and googled opossum orphans.  I tried to get the baby to lap water from an eye dropper.  He was not happy.  I reassured him that one way or another he just had to stick it out for the day.  I'd bring him inside that evening if all else failed, etc.  He seemed content enough.

The temperature dropped and it started to sprinkle.  My reluctant advisor called and told me to check on my baby.  It was gone.  I looked around and exclaimed, "It's a murder scene!"  Mama opossum and 3 of her babies were dead in the midst of trampling deer tracks, but mama's belly was wiggling with baby feet sticking out.  You see, Australia isn't the only place with marsupials.  Opossums are America's kangaroos.  Sort of.  They have a pouch like kangaroos at any rate and the babies crawled in there to suck at the soured milk and warm each other up.  Reluctant Advisor advised me to pull them out and put them in a box.  Ew.  I got latex gloves and did my duty, but the babies held on with their clever little hands with opposable thumbs.  I found a couple more babies hanging onto Mama by her neck.  They looked pretty cold and weak, but still living.

My advisor told me how to care for my babies and my heart fell when I learned I had to feed them every 2 hours.  I went through that with a puppy once.  It's miserable, but I resigned myself to the task when at the last moment a rehabbing vet agreed to foster my babies.  Halleluiah!  She even seemed happy when I asked her to give them back once they're big enough to survive in the wild.  You can see her Facebook page with cute baby animals here.  So, I'm hoping my babies survive and am looking forward to a summer with opossums.  They're nocturnal though so I'm not sure I'll ever see them again once they're back in the wild.

4 babies really glad to be in a warm box.

My apologies for infrequent, inconsistent posts.  The state of the world has me turned upside down and inside out.  I'm hoping everyone is well and finding creative things to do while the plague blows over us.  I made the art above for Inktober's "red" with the best intentions of posting.  It's my take on the corona virus.  I liked it better in red but decided to make it yellow and pretend I'm in sync with everyone else.

Ditch Digging

This is just a small part of a willow tree.

Illustrationfriday seems to have been hijacked for someone's personal self promotion so I don't have weekly words anymore.  The Covid 19 pandemic has upset me beyond the forced imprisonment at home.  I had decided to get a dog.  All the shelters are closed.  World events and political idiocy gets me down.  Sympathy for all the people who are or will be suffering is a bigger issue than I can fix. With all this going on I just haven't had the heart for blogging lately.  I've attacked my yard instead.  And my neighbors' yards.

The main duck pond with the tributary ditches I've dug.

I call this the upper duck pond.  If left alone,
I'm pretty sure it would join the other pond.

You see, several years ago Mr. Next Door Neighbor (NDN1) had a dead willow tree on his property.  The city made him cut it down.  Mr. NDN1 had a bad attitude about this and dropped the giant tree into the drainage ditch.  Water has been backing up in all the yards as a result, and the pond of stagnant water that formed in his yard invited ducks and swarms of malarial mosquitoes.  I can't even scream at this jerk because he died.  As I've complained previously, Mrs. NDN1 never does yard work.  The neighbor 2 doors down (2DD) and I have been cutting her grass for years without a thank you or a contribution for gas.  She's certainly not motivated to fix the ditch.

2DD and I discussed burning the willow tree but we agreed the city would probably have an issue with our plan.  I also suggested dynamite.  2DD is aging and can't do ditch digging.  The neighbor on my other side (NDN2) is old and housebound.  He can't do ditch digging either.  I decided to take my housebound frustrations out on hydro-engineering and manual labor.  I've been at this for weeks, ever since Ohio decided I need to shelter in place.

I've been whittling away at this tree root with a hatchet and hammer. 
It may be a life-long project.

The willow tree is no longer the problem.  The current issue is all the other trees and their roots which have grown in the ditch since the jerk started this mess.  I got water to run in the ditch again and dirt and debris blocked it up again.  I dug it out again.  It got clogged again.  3 weeks of this and the ditch is still getting clogged up.  As the water level drops, more roots are exposed which block the water.  Water from uphill poured down.   It rained.  It rained again.  It kept F-ing raining.  I found it hard to offer sympathy to a friend who is living through a drought.

This is how I've been managing my sequestration.  Part of me moans about my sore muscles and many minor injuries and the other part of me is thankful I have a yard unlike people stuck in city apartments.  I look at my birds, threaten my groundhog with my hoe, and toss things in the deer's nest.  I'm determined to have a mosquito-free summer if I'm going to be stuck at home this year. 

Here's some photos of my efforts.  This doesn't even show the whole length of the ditches!

Looking North

Looking South

Looking East -- and yes, that is a lot of directions!

What have you been doing?  Stay well!

"Dice 2"

My mom insists you catch cold if you go outside in winter with wet hair.  This isn't how viruses work but she's immovable on this.  Maybe Mom caught a cold as a child, or maybe Grandma said it.  It doesn't matter.  If Mom wants to dry her hair she can dry it.  It doesn't hurt anybody.  Drinking bleach to kill Covid-19 can hurt someone though.  Don't do it.  Let's severely punish the person who started that rumor.  Damned crazy people.

I went to the store and watched the Asian woman in front of me pile a large quantity and  variety of disinfectants and bleach on the conveyor belt.  I wondered if she's paranoid or if her Asian relatives told her something I don't know.  I went home, put away the groceries, and washed my hands.  That seemed sufficient to me?

I don't know how paranoid I should feel about the corona virus.  I'm pretty dismissive of mass panic and media scares.  It's like weather people who always predict blizzards and catastrophes.  They cry wolf too often, but once in a while it snows when they say it will.  Maybe Covid-19 is a disaster?  But mostly I think predicted blizzards will be an 1" of snow.  You might skid and get in an accident, but it's more likely you won't.  You might catch the virus and feel crappy for a few days and go about your life.  You might die.  We all might be put under house arrest until the whole business dies down.  It could be the apocalypse.  How are we supposed to know?

That said, we're going to have a national and global emergency.  They're closing all the bars and restaurants in Ohio.  Young people are going to starve to death because they don't know how to cook.  Restaurants will go out of business and their workers are going to be in a bad financial situation.  Workers and businesses won't be paying taxes.  Farmers won't be able to sell their food.  Truckers won't be driving all that stuff around.  Multiply by all the other businesses effected.  The stock market goes up and down because nobody knows what's going to happen.  The government spends more to help people, but with fewer taxes the national debt will go up.  People's retirement savings will be wiped out.  More government help, more debt.  Keep multiplying.  It's a mess.

Something I don't hear anyone talking about though is how this all fits in with climate change.  Animals are moving because of the warming weather.  This animal talks to that one and they share their diseases in new and frightening ways.  People eat the animals and catch their diseases then hand them off to others who travel and spread the diseases all over the world.  Antibiotics aren't working on everything, partly because of their overuse and the oversanitation of everything.  We're going to have more pandemics.

Let's be sensible.  Us regular people can't solve all those problems.  We can considerately cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze.  We can avoid going to high-risk places and stay home when sick.  Eat right and exercise.  Smear lamb's blood on the door so the angel of death passes us by.  I'm obviously kidding on that last point.  Lamb blood probably contains Covid-20.

How do you feel about this pandemic?  Have you changed what you're doing or how you're doing it?  Do you know anyone who has gotten it?

I said last week my only other "dice" idea was chopping up celery.  Since everyone will be spending more time at home, and maybe getting sick, let me recommend making chicken soup.  Here's how to dice celery.  You can freeze it in a freezer baggie for later.  Squish out any air in the bag and freeze flat for easier use...

Remove bad spots and trim off dried ends

Slice lengthwise.  I like to keep one end intact for easier handling

Slice across stalks to dice.  Keep the tops.  They're tender and taste good.