Snake! - March 28, 2020

We had our first snake-on-the-porch event today.

I heard The Husband say, "Oh, sh*t!  Snake!"

Ever since the first snake-on-the-porch event (the summer after we built this porch), we've kept a shootin' iron of some sort within reach of the back door.  The Husband grabbed up the gun-au-jour, a serious pellet rifle, and blasted the intruder.  Its blood left a crimson stain on the floor, but I'd rather have the stain than the snake.  We generally don't kill non-poisonous snakes unless they invade our personal space, but our porch is screened in, and we don't intend to try to run a snake out the door.  Nope.

Now, I've been sitting on this porch, crafting, most of the day, except for trips in the house for drinks and supplies and tools.  That snake has either crawled by me while I was sitting here, engrossed in something, or he's been out here with me THE WHOLE TIME.

It plumb rattles me, and has driven my crafting mojo away.

I tried to get back into the "zone" after I washed the blood off the porch.  One of the things I was working on earlier was paper beads.  I've been meaning to give them a shot for some time.  I played around with them a little when I first saw the idea, but quickly discovered that I needed some tools if I wanted *pretty* beads.  I had things around here that would work for practice, but no time to hunt them up...until today.

The last time I tried paper beads, I cut them out of a magazine with scissors, and they weren't very precise.  Today, I decided to fire up the Scan-n-Cut - it had a shameful layer of dust on it - and see if I could cut out perfect beads.  Of course, that required a refresher course on how to make my own cutting file, and scrounging up a cutting mat that still had a little sticky on it.  After searching a couple of rooms, I found some pretty craft paper that I'd been saving for a rainy day.  (It's not raining, yet, but it's coming.)  Miraculously, I remembered how to load a file on the Scan-n-Cut, and managed to cut out a dozen, perfectly-shaped skinny triangles from the pretty paper.  Even more miraculously,  the skinny triangles peeled off the mat without tearing.  Oh, this was meant to happen!  I grabbed a wooden skewer and some toothpicks out of a kitchen drawer, and a bottle of glue and some Mod Podge, and took them out to the porch with the snake.

The beads didn't turn out half bad.  The pretty paper had a pretty back-side, and so I was able to make some coordinating beads.  I didn't do such a great job with the Mod Podge, but today's beads are only a vehicle for playing with some embossing powder and the heat gun I got for Christmas, neither of which I have used.

While my beads dried, I was going to watch a couple of videos on how to do this properly (I was winging it today), so that once I figure out the embossing powder I can make some *good* beads.  I found a promising video and grabbed a nearby pad to take notes.  The one pencil within reach had no usable lead.  I took it to the pencil sharpener, which lately has been rocking when I turn the crank and has taken to sharpening only one side of a pencil.  I've been meaning to investigate this, so today I did.  Finally got a sharp pencil and went back out to the porch, now capable of taking notes during the video.

I had no sooner got the video started than The Husband came out on the porch, looked up at the ceiling fan, and asked, "Do we have any light bulbs?"  I've been griping for a few days about the burned-out light bulbs in the porch ceiling fan, and after finding the snake on the porch, I'd said we REALLY need to fix the light so we can check for snakes after dark.  Since it was my bright idea, I felt obligated to look for light bulbs.  So, I got up, went to the utility room, and scrounged up some light bulbs while The Husband took the light cover off the fan.  While he changed the bulbs, I washed the dead bugs out of the light cover.  Then we tried to put it back on.  OMG, getting those chains through all that tubing....  My neck is going to be sore tomorrow.

Ok, so here I sit.

What was I going to do???

Oh, yeah...the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU9RvX7p9ZA

See ya.

Housebound - March 26, 2020

If you've judged me for all the whining and complaining I do on this blog, it may surprise you to know that I really am a person who regularly counts my blessings.

* I have a job, and my boss is a really great person who puts family and health above all else.
* The Husband has a job that is stable, even in these uncertain times.
* My children have good jobs in industries that are considered essential.
* My grandchildren are smart and healthy.
* We live in a rural community, surrounded by family, where our every-day dangers are generally not all that life-threatening.

But this virus thing . . . .

This is a scary time, for sure, but I recognize - every day - that it is not nearly as scary for me as it is for some of you.  Healthcare workers.  Small business owners and their employees who depend on foot traffic to survive.  Scary times, indeed.

My family and I are doing our part to help stop the spread of this virus.  We are staying home, cooking our own meals, sanitizing like crazy, hoping it will be enough to spare us from illness.  And praying.  Lots of prayers, for ourselves, for you, for the whole country, for the whole world.

Staying at home is not a chore for me.  I'd rather be here than anywhere (though, frankly, I do miss our Friday night dinners out).  My stash of craft supplies should last me for the rest of my life, even if it's a long life.  I've got plenty to keep me occupied.

Take yesterday, for example, which will require a bit of back-story.

My cousin sent me a text last Thursday.  She was in a panic.  Her daughter's wedding was 2 days away, on Saturday.  The original wedding venue plans had been nixed by the virus-related restriction on crowd gatherings, and the wedding location (and guest list) had to be modified at the last minute.  My cousin asked me for ideas on how to decorate the small country church we all attended as children.  Given more time and freedom to move around, I might have been able to come up with something "simple but pretty," as she had requested.  As it was, the best I could do was offer her the beat-up, rusted, (we'll call it "shabby-chic") walk-under arch from my yard and a access to my ribbon stash.

She and her husband came to get the arch Friday evening.  It had been raining here for days and days.  As we walked across my front yard to the side yard where the arch was located, we marred up to our ankles in mud, thanks to a multitude of mole tunnels hidden by the spring weeds.  I vowed then that as soon as I could, I would mow down the weeds to reveal the mole trails, stomp down the hills, and set a trap for the disgusting little critters when they resumed their digging.

Yesterday, I was sent home from work early.  It was not raining, so I put on my mud boots, dragged the push-mower out of the shed, and filled the tank with gas.  Miraculously, it cranked on the second pull.  This was meant to happen, I thought.

It didn't happen easily.  The mower marred up in the mole tunnels, and it required all the effort I had to push it.  Remembering that horses pull wagons instead of pushing them, I resorted to pulling the mower behind me, which was only slightly less exhausting that pushing it ahead of me.  Finally, finally, I managed to cut the grass and weeds from the area where the mole(s?) had been busy.  It positively scalped the yard down to the dirt in many places, and there are deep footprints everywhere.  I'm not sure I will be able to distinguish new mole diggings from the trenches left by my feet and the mower.  We'll see.

My 12-year-old grandson has been here for almost two straight weeks.  The schools have been closed, but luckily his dad's crazy work schedule combined with my modified work schedule have allowed one of us to be here with him all week.  Poor kid has been bored out of his mind.  Ordinarily, I would have protested his constant video-game playing and internet surfing, but these are crazy times, and I've just let him do his thing.  But since it wasn't raining yesterday, I mustered the troops (him and his dad) and enlisted their help in the yard.  Once the mowing and weed-eating and leaf-blowing were done, the grandson said, "Hey, Grandmama, can I wash the Jeep?"  It needed it, and it was a physical activity, one that didn't involve electronics, so I gave him the thumbs up.

Letting (or forcing) and teaching a kid to do a chore is sometimes harder than doing it, yourself.  He had tried to help me mow, but he had never used a push-mower, and I was afraid that he would slip in the mud and cut his leg off.  Car-washing seemed like a safe enough activity, one that wouldn't require much assistance from me.  Still, I helped him find a bucket.  I dragged the water hose out for him.  When he asked where he could find a rag to do the scrubbing, I sent him to the kitchen to get a rag from the basket where I throw the dirty dish rags and hand towels.  I did not pay attention to which dirty rag he had chosen until I heard my son say, "Boy, you need a rag that'll scrub a little better than that one."  I raised up from picking up yard debris and discovered that he had chosen one of my white, embroidered, flour-sack dish towels and had already used it to scrub off road grime and tree sap.

*sigh*

It's just a dish towel, right?  In the grand scheme of things, it's a small matter.  Maybe it'll come clean with bleach.