The Old Horseshoe

The old bent horseshoe came with the house and hung above this particular door, outside, "heels down," for, like, 15 years until one nail came loose and I took the shoe down and left it by the door intending to nail it up again, and today was the day.

It's iron, all right: hot from the sun. I admit I'd never seen or touched a real horseshoe; this one still has one horseshoe nail. Age and origin unknown. Horseshoes repel evil. The tale is told of an Irish blacksmith confronted by the Devil, who demanded shoes for his hooves, right now! The blacksmith nailed on such painful shoes that the Devil screamed, pried them off, threw them aside and vanished, never again to bother humans at their work. (If you are idle, that's another story.) The Devil, traumatized, hasn't come near a horseshoe in ages.

It's also said their crescent shape or iron content repels evil spirits and that's why it's hung above the door.

Furthermore, it's said that nailed with heels up, the horseshoe is filled with, and retains, good luck. The Divine Cabin's horseshoe had been originally nailed heels down, and plenty of folks advised me that was not lucky. The lived experience with that door -- the late Demetrius's favorite port of entry to the room he favored and trashed -- was unlucky. Others say "heels down" lets the luck pour down on everybody passing through that door. Well, that's an old wives' tale, seems to me.

I'm lucky to be the owner and beneficiary of a real horseshoe, and to have the Divine Cabin, am probably the world's luckiest person, and want to keep my luck. Nailed the horseshoe up best I could, crooked and off-center, but hey. Or maybe I should turn it sideways. But then --  heels to the right or the left?

Amateur and Pro

How humbling it is after 45 years of writing and publishing to still be forced by criticism to do better -- and actually do better.

For half of 2017 and all of 2018, besides doing my job, I worked on writing a long complicated article. I have never worked so hard, frowned so much, stayed up so late. I sent it finally to my target journal. Its editors sent it back saying they'd have rejected it outright except that it was so well written, and they had scads of suggestions for me to rewrite and add a lot, and if I did that, they'd consider publishing it.

This was like doing the awful precision labor of sewing by hand a tailored suit of fabric you wove yourself, with a lining, cuffs, lapels, buttonholes, and zipper, and then ripping it apart because it didn't fit right and doing it over. By hand? Yes. Writing is one of the last hand-crafted things left and well-written is not enough. It has to fit. Fit not me, but a readership!

Not wanting to waste the months of work, I patched in and blended in all the footnotes, bibliography, analyses, quotations, details, references, rewriting, etc. they suggested. They accepted this version, and I hoped never to see or think about it again as long as I lived. Then, months later, I read it. My. It really was insanely good, with two or three brilliant spots. They'd set the bar higher. I'd cleared it. I'm not proud as much as humbled. Somebody had showed me I was capable of more.

It's A Beautiful Day

Yesterday: Head spinning, so near exhaustion I dread writing an email, I decide I cannot work this week and tell the boss I'm taking the week off.
Today: Greet HVAC repair guy who arrives at the door two hours early and fixes the issue in 20 minutes.
Dress and equip for mushroom hunt; after fruitless hunting, shower and dress.
Drive townward for a car emissions test.
While waiting, walk a block and get a hamburger. Using their WiFi, I find two pleasing work-related emails and send an email requesting a check, and am assured that it is being sent today.
Buy vivid green blocks of rodent poison, the large bag of them, not the small.
It's May 15, the frost-free day for Zone 6, so I select three baby plants, two basil, one rosemary, and tell them, "You are so lucky. You will be loved."
Buy new windshield wipers, amazed to hear that nowadays they are sold singly, the drivers' side wiper longer and costlier than the passenger side.
Return DVDs Steve Jobs, Fahrenheit 451, and Dallas Buyers Club to the library, four weeks late because it took me that long to watch them all.
Buy a jar of Noxzema and two bags of ground coffee.
Pharmacy pickup.
Drop recyclables into a UPS box.
Obtain cash at ATM.
Pick up dry-cleaned winter coat, costing most of the cash.
Get a drive-through car wash.
Buy a dozen lovely brown fresh local eggs at the feed store where I have been served by the same guy for 20 years.
Buy fruit and vegetables at House Springs. Golden Delicious are the best apples. I did not believe that when I first heard it, because Red Delicious are so cloying. A beautiful drive on a day all wildly blue and green.
At home, inspect the bluebird box in the meadow. All of the chickadees have fledged. Removed their nest and cleaned the box for the next occupants.
Process newly bought fruit and vegetables for the fridge and freezer.
Dinner: Cream of asparagus soup, slice of black-olive bread, fresh corn on the cob.
Assemble all required papers and finish online the two-year car license registration, ordering the special "Don't Tread on Me" snake design I have always liked.
Good Lord, it's 9 p.m.

I'm Self-Adhesive, Are You?

Feeling that I couldn't possibly make it worse I bought some self-adhesive fake tiling for the bathroom backsplash area. My spatial skills are poor so it took time to figure out how the four sheets of fake tile fit together, even though they were lettered "B," "C," "D" and "E" -- where was "A"? And the walls and fixtures are themselves crooked. I did the best job  I could. I've seen much worse in photos of pre-World-War-I Eastern Europe -- and I like the stick-on tile very much, maybe just because it's a change.

So enchanting was the stick-on that I decided I would do self-adhesive tiles on the kitchen floor. There is no way I could make it worse.

I watched every YouTube about laying down self-adhesive flooring, and measured, and bought 50 tiles (you buy extra in case you mess up a few) and the right kind of grout and a putty knife for the gouges and ragged edges that currently expose the concrete floor just beneath. With the floor prepared and cleaned it is perfectly okay to lay down new self-adhesive flooring on top of it. Yes, that bruised and cracked stuff is my old kitchen floor. It's not dirty; it's as clean as I can make it. Even my amateur DIY can't possibly make it look worse and there is a chance it might look better.

I chose this gray-green flooring (68 cents per tile) because it's called "Basil" and will show neither white dirt nor black. I haven't laid it down yet. Am still mapping and visualizing the work the floor will need. I can't move the fridge and stove until I find a magic lamp and a genie comes out who will move them for me, so the whole kitchen can't be self-adhesive floored until then.

You might wonder why no one is helping. Or maybe you aren't wondering. It's because I'm self-adhesive. And nobody else I know would think this is fun.

Stranded in Paradise

The creek rose and I saw I might be trapped at home for days by flooded roads, as in December 2015, if I didn't leave right now. I threw together electronics and chargers, boxed up the coffee machine and fled to a Fenton hotel where I have lived since Saturday night, waiting for the flooding here west and south of St. Louis to crest and recede. Tomorrow I will attempt to drive home.

I'd have stayed there if I didn't have important business in town Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, worth paying the hotel bill for, and a hundred things to do online. As I've told you, during stormy weather the Internet satellite won't work, and there was no point in staying home without the Internet because that's how I do my jobs--except that there were hummingbirds who should be nectar-fed and baby bluebirds in the bluebird box.

Today I'm lounging in the room with its spiffy king-sized bed, a couch, microwave and fridge, an impressive TV, free breakfast and working with no distractions except maids knocking at the door to ask if I need something. (Yes, a martini and Cheetos. Unfortunately not available here.) I bought coral-colored roses to lighten it up a bit, and then received roses for doing a writing task. It does get a little bit solitary and the roses help.

This windy and rainy morning I woke lonely but went down to the breakfast area to find it packed with sweet-looking young people who ate like locusts. Curious, I asked one if they were athletes or a debate team, whether they were stranded here because of flooding. This was the Oklahoma Christian University Choir heading home from a concert in Illinois or somewhere like that.

A nice place to stay while the flood decides whether it will allow I-44, Highways 30, W, FF, F, O, and 109 to open a way for me to get home.

A "hundred-year flood" every two years? We know the culprit: development and paving. Pave paradise and it will flood. Yes, the hotel sign stares into my window at night.

The Installation

"They'll be there between 9:00 and 1:00," the promiser had promised, and I waited, bags packed, because when the deed I'd paid $800 for was finished, I was leaving town. At 1:00 p.m. I called the promiser and said, "I was supposed to get a garage door installed today," and at 1:01, I am not kidding, the truck drove up. It was like conceptual art.

There was only one laborer. For his electric tools he had a 30-foot yellow cord that just barely reached through my front door and into my bathroom, where the three-prong socket nearest the garage is. We were both relieved it wasn't farther. I asked, "How long will this take?" "Couple hours," he said. I couldn't imagine how he'd dismantle the old wooden garage door alone, and disassemble the pulley tracks and put up new ones, and install a new door, but couldn't watch; I stayed busy to keep my mind off the ticking clock: The later I left home, the later I'd get to where I was going: 10 p.m.; then 11 p.m.

Finally, at 3:30, I went outside to ask how it was coming, and he was heading toward the house, coiling up the electrical cord, and he said it was finished. He'd left some dirty fingerprints on the new white door, and a swipe of blood (must have cut himself) and carefully wiped  them away and showed me how the door can now be lifted practically with a finger, and how it locked, and not to fling the door upward with all my strength until a couple of weeks had passed, and gave me a silver sticker from his company that I could put on the door or not, and call the number on it if anything went wrong.

Well, it just knocked me down with a feather, the whole event. "It's beautiful," I said. "Where's the old door?"

"There." It was in his truck bed, its four sections stacked; each section had simply been unscrewed from the other, and that's how he took down the weighty garage door. And put up a new one. I had to leave right after that, but I almost wished I could have stayed to admire the new door until I got my fill of it.

Happy Labor Day

Labor is beautiful.

"A job is the worst way to make money." Let me second that. For 20 years my day job actually paid me LESS take-home every year. They instituted a shocking parking fee (half a month's take-home), taking it out of our paychecks, then decided I had to pay part and then one-half of my health insurance (both benefits had been free). They kept taking out and taking out. When anybody complained we couldn't live on our salaries and 1.5 or 2 percent raises the bosses told us to get a second job. I did. And a third job. At one time, with spouse unemployed, I worked seven separate jobs: webmaster, freelance webmaster, freelance editor, night school teacher, guest night-school teacher, freelance writer, and jewelry crafter. (The bosses asked me why I didn't show up at the department's evening events.) I diverted 16 percent of my day-job check into a 401K; wasn't nobody gonna do it for me. For three years I paid my dying spouse's health insurance at an extra cost of $4000 per year. Now I was really stuck with that job solely because of insurance. After 11 years the comptroller decided to downgrade my job and salary from Level 9 to Level 6. Finally in 2010 I was laid off with a nice severance so I wouldn't sue them for age discrimination, and right there in front of the two lead-bottomed bosses (who had a cellphone out on the table in case I got violent) I went into ecstasies. Being laid off was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I set up my own successful business, have an awesome regular freelance gig, teach online, have passive income from stuff I wrote years ago, and make much more money than when employed in a "job." My job is to stay in my cabin and write all day. I'm insured by Obamacare. I employ an accountant, a housekeeper, and a man who mows the lawn. Happy Labor Day. I'm working today because I love my work.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

As the year ages like fine wine, I woke planning a hike at mid-morning today, then was deluged with messages and calls demanding instant action everywhere at once, and could have worked 16 hours and maybe get through it all, but then I thought about my ancestors who'd say "What foolishness," and after working all morning fixed a nice lunch and furthermore, sat down and ate it, and don't care who knows it. I settled for an afternoon walk at Glassberg Conservation Area, circling its three-acre lake I sometimes fish in. (I didn't fish even once this summer; too busy.) An odd little gem of an island in that lake, you see here.

November hikes must be short and planned. After 2 p.m. the shadows lengthen by the minute; after 3 p.m., about the time this photo was snapped, the hills begin swallowing the sun, and rocks and streambeds exhale icy breath; after 4 p.m., darkness unwraps its chilly lengths and nothing stops it. The bright side: Only five more weeks until the daylight begins lengthening.

House Beautiful

"House proud" is being overprotective of the appearance and cleanliness of one's house, for example hating to have people sit in your chairs or eat at your table or enter your front door -- and it afflicted many in my parents' generation (now flattered as "The Greatest Generation") and many fewer members of my own generation. Yet heretofore I was too house-proud to winterize the Divine Cabin by putting plastic on its exterior, while for 10 years I have faithfully, with blood, tears, toil and sweat, plasticked or double-plasticked from the inside the single-pane, airy, leaky, original windows, using cellophane -- and shut off from the rest of the house the beautiful but horribly drafty 30 percent of the house called "the Studio" from October to March.

The Studio's picture window made it a wonderful work room and  guest bedroom, and last year with our freakishly mild winter and the house's new heating ducts and frantic caulking and one electric heater, I actually used the Studio in winter for the first time (after 10 years' occupancy) and fell in love with it. But although it was cellophaned from inside, elusive drafts still shivered the cellophane and me.

Knowing that this winter would have to be colder because it couldn't possibly be warmer, I put on exterior plastic and tape, and this is how it looks now. Martha Stewart wouldn't approve. The plastic is translucent so I've lost, for the winter, my meadow view.

But after I finished the job, the room was so much warmer and draftless I thought I was imagining it. Came back later. No, the plastic was working. Seriously working. So I can seriously work in the studio. Useful is beautiful.

The hanging plant is my surviving basil plant, also beautiful and useful.

The Household Improvement Project, Part 2

To dress for refinishing I picked out of my rag bag an oversized fleece jacket in red and black buffalo plaid, and worn brown stretch-corduroy pants with burn holes from building fires. Good time of year to work: not too cold. Garage has no electricity; all must be done by daylight. Here you see my work setup, which I love, and  the carefully stripped and sanded drawer, and also the first coat of varnish (color: "natural") on the cabinet door. Yes, I wear a respirator when I scrape and sand and varnish, and read the instructions too. And while I breathe, I meditate. Seven coats of stripper (over nine days) taught me patience. I wasn't however willing to strip down into the (cheap, thin but genuine) wood to gouge the very last of the paint traces out of there. So it's gonna show the grain. It's gonna show a history. I could buy and use a darker varnish. Don't want to spend any more money. And better honest imperfection than a lying, cheating coverup for a bad case of pride. I'm pleased to be doing this, enjoying spring inspiration, no matter how it turns out. "Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," said Vilfredo Pareto.

Went to Dickey Bub's hardware and found there was one more hurdle: replacing the hinges. Mr. D. there hunted high and low but the fact is the hinges I brought him were so elderly that today's hinges -- all of them -- are drilled completely differently. To make any new hinges fit I will have to drill new holes into the cabinet frame. I'll show you how that turns out when I do it.

See My Christmas Present

See the overgrown brush? I'd planned on hacking at it two hours a day for four months until I cleared it. (See entry "My Machete," Dec. 19, in menu at left.) This is the "before" picture.








See my friend and hero Reeve? As my Christmas present he brought his gas-powered brushcutter and cut all the brush and briars from hell's half-acre in one hour or less, and then made a bonfire of the debris, using just one match.

The "after" picture. (The fallen branch along the bottom is the same as in the "before" picture; there's just a lot less of it.) Best Christmas present. Reeve got a big omelet, a big hug, and other good and valuable consideration.

My Machete

Demetrius the Gardener died almost two years ago now, and left in my garage his machete, his favorite and most savage tool, which I never touched until today because I was afraid of its size, weight, and wickedly sharp double-edged head. It's 54 inches tall. I'm 62 inches tall. He also left me all the heavy outdoor work he used to do.

My winter project is clearing two years' worth of weeds, briars, fallen branches and Japanese honeysuckle around my twin oaks, with an eye toward a hammock or treehouse between them someday, and I've toiled along with a weed whip and then brushcutters, but in places the brush (you can see some of it behind my blue jacket there) made barriers so dense I couldn't cut through them except with an axe -- or the machete. As usual when I'm reluctant I told myself, "Ain't nobody gonna do it FOR you," and got to work and learned it. The concave side was good for hacking down piles and layers, six feet tall, of dry fallen branches; the convex side for pulverizing them.

While I worked I kept peeling off clothing and wondered why I dreaded winter when it wasn't that bad at all. And every now and then I rested, because I'm older now, and saw that the machete was really a handsome tool. And when I got tired I took off my work gloves and told myself, "Put the machete away now; you have no business using such a thing when you're tired," congratulating myself on my wisdom, except I told myself, "Just a few more minutes" and that's when I cut and scraped my hand -- not on the machete, but on a dry branch sticking up. I said, "Okay, I get it; that was a warning," and put the machete away for the day.

Sex First, Work Last: Is Anyone Surprised?

"When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working."

The above is from the NYTimes today, results of a study on daydreaming and "wandering minds".

Earthly Possessions: Gloves

Deerskin leather gloves, the one outdoor-wardrobe item I grab and wear almost daily -- and I nearly didn't buy them because they cost $15 at the feedstore ten years ago. They've pulled poison ivy and briars, yanked cedars out of the earth, defied barbed wire, helped me plant and garden; steadied my hands on brooms, weedwhips, hoes, rakes, hoses, brushcutters, shovels, saws and crowbars; helped me carry ladders and cinder blocks and broken branches, and claw wet leafmeal out of gutters; and indoors they've helped me pick up shards of ceramic and glass. When they're really muddy I run' em through the washer and let 'em hang by clothespins to dry. I'll completely destroy women's garden gloves in one hour, men's regular work gloves in one day, part-leather work gloves in a week, but these deerskin gloves are gems -- also a rare great fit for small hands! -- and have redeemed their price 100 times over.

Which Twin Has the Toni?

OK -- raking an acre of "lawn" -- if you can call clumps of weeds, cedar-tree sprouts, and mole holes a lawn -- is a big job -- especially because I didn't do it last year. Raking the the leaves (oak and hickory) into a pile, I then very cleverly sweep them onto an old shower curtain and drag the curtain to a place I can dump the leaves . . . smart. . . brains. . . no dumb bunny.

Giddy-up, Snapper!

With this photo I will surely win the title of Miss Lawn Mower 2009 of Pacific, MO, hands down, no contest. Steve the handyman, and the new handyman, Tim, were out here this morning and taught me to use the riding mower and were game to take my photo. This was my first ride on a mower. To my surprise it is fun. I'm also surprisingly attractive. Who knows what's next, an ATV?

Full Moon in Libra

Life here is so fun. I come home in my suit after 12 hours' work and see the full moon rising over the woods to the northeast. Run to get camera and tripod. Go out into the field & shoot photos for half an hour. Then have seven marshmallows for dinner. That's the way to wind down. I wish you had been with me. Maybe you'll be here for next full moon in Scorpio, and I'll obsessively make us addictive s'mores?

Cut Hit Bit Shiver Sweat

Stepped on a rake once. The handle up and hit me in the face. Thank God no one saw me. I was 48 years old.

Anyone moving to the country in mid-life has to take the motto "Live and learn." You're going to get cut, scraped, sweaty, bitten. Ants will float in your coffee. I found a wasp drowned and ambered in my jar of honey. You'll slip and fall and be stupid. Live and learn.

A couple days after a flood I stepped up on what seemed like solid-packed creekside debris and fell through it up to my hips.

Stepped in quicksand (silica makes top-notch quicksand). It was like cookie dough and I couldn’t fix it to get one leg out so I could pull out the other one.

On a slick riverbank, fell backward into a bed of stinging nettle. Didn’t know what it was. Eight seconds later I figured it out.

Make sure guests don't park beneath the tree when the hickory nuts are dropping.

Clapped a fat huge four-inch tomato hornworm between two bricks. Thought I was being clever. It squirted 360 degrees all over creation including onto my glasses and mouth.

Oh, it don’t matter if that machete is a little too weighty for me and has a dull blade. . . .

Live here and learn.

Celebrating Steve the Handyman

On this Labor Day: on Friday I photographed Steve the handyman and his tools when he came by to install a new window in the Divine cabin. I put it here to remind myself that "labor" isn't a synonym for "people overseas," and also to honor all labor, even mine, and its contribution to prosperity, health, and contentment. Labor these days seems to be taken for granted -- why, we hardly use the very word anymore unless we're talkin about babies. Let's change that right now.

The First Tomato and the Flag Man

With awe I watched the hard little green pearls of May turn into the fat green beads of early June. Then one of them grew fat and soft, took on a lemony tinge, and then a red. And here it is. Gem of all gems. Summer's first tomato.

This is better than an award, better than a military decoration. It's beautiful, shiny, and fit. God, who is an artist, packaged this little, special gift of food. Not only is it wonderfully colored and crafted -- it will taste good and nourish the body. Great work, God! (Applause.) And, God, I'm sorry I've been tied up in the rush and details of life and not seeing the depths and wonders of your creations.

When I'm sitting in traffic waiting for a flagman to direct the rush hour around road construction, I like to remind myself that the flagman, who stands in hot sunlight on hot asphalt and deals all day with irritable and inconsiderate drivers -- is one of God's wonderful creations, is doing God's work of caring for us regardless of who we are, and that someone loves him very much.