E:\LETTERS\MayBan10.txt 3 May 2010 Tourist season opened with a bang -- or perhaps I should say "boom": they had a cannon at the Civil War Days festival. There's been signs of Coming Event in the bike trails all week, and on Friday the Fat and Skinny Tire Festival started setting up. They didn't block Park Avenue. I expect the folks on The Island noticed the festival more than I did -- Auditorium Boulevard was blocked off to set up vendor tents and to reserve streets for the criteriums. They had a bunch of little kids holding sidewalk bikes lined up on Canal Street during one of my trips through; don't know whether they were starting a criterium or handing out prizes or giving a safety lecture. Saturday was also Free Comic Books day -- a nationwide event -- and the opening day of the Farmers' Market. While I was getting ready to go to the market, Dave noticed flashing lights on the fairground. The telescope showed him police cars and a van, but didn't give a clue as to what was going on. When I got to the fairground and saw that a re-enactment festival was going on -- a lot of the same stuff that shows up for Days of Kosciusko, but it turned out to be Civil War Days -- I figured that that was it, but one of the vendors at the market told me that a completely unrelated exercise was being held on the old race track. I rode up to the Civil War Days gate and talked to the gatekeepers a bit, but didn't go in. I wanted to get to Chimps before it got crowded, and with the weather threatening rain and me dressed all in cotton, I didn't want to dilly-dally anywhere. Didn't see anything at the market I wanted -- there were only four vendors, and one of them got cold and went home before I arrived. I did look thoughtfully at the potted tomatoes, but decided that setting a plant out every morning and taking it in every night was for the birds -- particularly when tomatoes appear in the Farmers' Market before they appear in the garden. (I sure hope the Yoders sell greenhouse tomatoes again this year.) The folks collecting free comic books were exchanging chits for pre-selected comics, so there was less of a mob scene, but I didn't see how one collected the chits and didn't want to bother people by asking when I didn't want one. I suspect that one was expected to study the ad and make a decision before coming to the store. I took a glance at the fifty-cent comics, and decided to come back when I could sit on the floor without tripping people. I'll be riding nearly every Saturday until October, after all. Having gotten that far downtown, I toured Lowery's and Pretty Pillow before finding the menswear store -- no wool socks, but the proprietor said that they are available in Goshen -- rejecting the "Smartwool" socks at Blue Moon, and going to the library. Briefly considered lunch at Subway, ate a granola bar and a fruit-and-grain bar instead, and went to Owen's for milk and chocolate. Also got a pound print of butter and we've used nearly half already. I put a quarter in the cake, a slather in the mashed potatoes, and we had blueberry pancakes for breakfast. I don't think that the butter will last until corn season! I melted the chocolate and butter right after church on Sunday, let it cool during my nap, and popped the cake into the oven not long before the chicken came out of the smoker. The baked beans came out when the cake went in, and were a bit more dry than I like. I put massive amounts of walnuts into the cake, to cut the richness a bit. I also made gravy, thickening canned broth in which I'd poached the spine of the chicken on the previous day. I thought it in great need of seasoning, but Dave liked it and I don't eat gravy on my potatoes. I washed the dishes in honor of Dave's birthday, but missed two measuring cups and a lid. I did wipe the stove. The mother duck and her twelve ducklings have been hanging around our back yard, once Dave saw her in the front yard, and once I went out to check the driveway alarm and it was her. Al has been very interested. I think it's lucky for him that he can't get out, though her primary defense strategy is "waddle for the lake!". Once we saw her choose a route that put a goose between her brood and the dog, which I thought rather clever. 4 May 2010 Hope I can remember everything I've got to do today. I've got to vote, select my candidates -- preferably not in that order -- wash clothes, change the bed, straighten up my back wheel or take it in to have it trued (I just had an overhaul, &%#@!), get my shirt ready to take to Handwork Circle, and go to bed early because tomorrow I have an appointment to have my new crown installed at 9:00 a.m. in the morning before I'm usually out of bed. I'm sure there was something more. The laundry is underway and I've already stripped the bed, so two chores are sure to get checked off. Yesterday I finally put on my shorts and went after the remaining two branches in the lake -- the water is still ice cold -- and they turned out to be one weirdly-bent branch. The first time, I thought the "three" logs were one branched log until I got hold of one. I dragged it well out of the water, then decided to let it drain and air a bit before trying to haul it to the woodpile, but Dave appears to have taken care of it. He mowed both lawns yesterday, during a brief spell when the grass was dry. This morning I heard two people -- perhaps maintenance crew at Grace -- saying "Have you seen the orchard?" "Didn't notice anything." "It's been mowed! He must have mowed it last night wearing a snorkel." I learned yesterday that Dave's new lawn mower has a fitting you can connect a hose to after mowing and it will clean itself out. I think he told me before, but not until I saw that it had been parked still dripping did it soak in. A few days before, when I wanted to open the attic staircase, I learned that you absopositilutely cannot push that thing, you have to turn it on and let it move itself. I'd been told that long ago also. I also spent five minutes running the culta-eze over the garden, but spent most of yesterday playing with the computer. In the evening, I read three or four of _The Thirteen Crimes of Science Fiction_. I've read at least one of those before. --------- Grump. I wrote "black #1 snaps" on my shopping list, but didn't look at the list while I was in Lowery's on Saturday. One item I left off my list of things to do today was "torture Al". Yesterday Dave noticed that we'd been neglecting his ears, so he's going to have to get them cleaned out every evening for a while. He is already showing improvement. Got only two thirds of the wash washed (but it's all put away). Still didn't get the shirt fronts ready to sew snaps on -- but the dime dropped and I did *that* at Handwork Circle. Couldn't take the sewing machine (the more so because it's the treadle that's set up with silk thread) but the miter seams are hardly an inch and a half long. Used my tracing wheel to mark the stitching line, and discovered that I'd also marked a handy guide for stitch length. And I got exercise: it was easier to trot up the stairs to the parlor a few times than to bring the ironing board down to the ramp room. Sewing snaps on can be done at any stage after this, so I can save that for next week's Handwork Circle even if I get industrious. I do plan to mark the places while the fronts are flat. With basting thread, so the marks won't rub off. Also didn't look to see what's wrong with my back wheel, but Dave asked me to empty my panniers so that he can take care of it while I'm at the dentist tomorrow. I did select candidates before we walked to the polls, but forgot to take my cheat sheet with me. I think I remembered mostly right. So the only thing left on my list is "go to bed early". The ducklings are about twice as big as they were the last time I saw them. 5 May 2010 We've seen our first goslings. Four, with two parents. I counted only nine ducklings the last time I saw Mama Duck. Every last snack in the house is *crunchy*. I stopped at Marsh on the way home from the dentist, but didn't think to buy bananas. Looked at some ice cream; should have bought it. The new crown went in quick and easy, but the glue hasn't set. At least that answers the eternal question -- What's for supper? Chicken-corn chowder. After I got back, we looked at my back wheel, then I took the bike to the Trailhouse and ordered a rebuild, with all new wires. Later on I realized that I could have taken just the back wheel to the shop and put the back wheel from Dave's old bike on mine. Dave found a spare back wheel in the shop, and in the morning I'm going to take it to Trail House and ask whether my bike is still on the premises. The tire on the spare wheel went snap crackle and pop while I was pumping it up, so I let the air out and pumped again. Never did get all the stresses relieved, but I'm pooped. Who says cycling doesn't give you any upper-body exercise? Dave planted six jalapen~o plants today, four in the new strawberry bed and two in the old one. 7 May 2010 My bike wasn't on the premises, but the truck hadn't left for Tarkio (where the main workshop is; Trailhouse has a repair stand and a few tools, but not a full workshop) so he said to give him the wheel and come back in an hour. When I did, I thought that instead of pinning my pants legs to ride it back, I'd take my pants protector along. And if I was carrying a bag, why not shoes, hat, scarf, gloves, and water bottle. (That last because I was a bit thirsty and wanted to sip during the walk.) I got a turn when I put the helmet on. On Sundays, I put my hair up in a Gibson and leave it until my scalp gets sore. This week my scalp didn't get sore, and after a while I switched to a Mama Katzenjammer to keep from re-combing it so often. (I still unwound it to make a flat four-pin pancake instead of a tall one-pin knot, and that also loosens the slicked-to-the-head effect, so I guess it was halfway between Gibson and Katzenjammer.) So I had a moment of thinking something was really, really wrong with my helmet, then loosened the chim strap a good bit -- a hat with a loose strap is not a helmet, but I wear it only to give me a place to hang my mirror. Turns out that a hat too loose to be a helmet is also a lousy mirror support. I have reverted to my youth: while walking through the playground parking lot, I noticed a business van -- something about bumpers, paint, and dent removal -- and strode through the empty parking spot next to it with most of my attention on trying to puzzle out its purpose in being here. In this parking lot, each space is marked by one of those pre-fab curb-like thingies that tell you when you have pulled too far forward. Yup, tried to swing a foot through the thingie -- the right foot, judging by the dirt on my shoe. Skinned both knees for the first time in over sixty years. Didn't get scabs like I did as a child, presumably because I was wearing long pants instead of shorts -- and it was pavement instead of gravel. Both knees still sport bright-pink patches with dark-red flecks. Worse, the van was occupied, and the driver was alarmed and concerned. We counted ten ducklings the last time we tried. Got the patch pockets hemmed and the center-front lines and hems of the fronts basted, but when I started to baste over the dustpaper-marked notches of the yoke preparatory to sewing it to the front Al got very helpful, so I knocked off and had lunch. I did get the notches thread-marked before naptime. 8 May 2010 Counted ten ducklings again today. Haven't seen the goslings again. We've been eating a lot of asparagus sautee'd in butter. Went to the Farmers Market this morning but saw no sign that anyone had ever been there. I suppose they went home about the time I nipped into the pawn shop to wait out the rain. It was quite clear for the rest of the morning. I got soggy before going into the pawn shop, but everything was perfectly dry before I left Marsh except my outer gloves, which were only slightly damp. From the fairgrounds, I went to Warsaw Health food because we were out of sunflower seed. Got some dried cranberries while I was at it. To my surprise, something- or-the-other Farms was setting up a plant sale in the parking lot. I bought a peppermint plant, and now don't know where to plant it. It would take over the herb bed. The winter onions can compete, but peppermint doesn't like the north side of a house. It would make a lovely foundation planting where we cut the sickly bushes down, but that spot is under our wide eaves and is always dry. Peppermint flourished on the south side of our New York place, but I'm already growing catnip south of this house. In the meanwhile, the pot is sitting in the hanging basket with the rosemary, parsley, and basil. Next I went to Chimp's Comics, but they weren't open yet. Figured to stop by on the way back, and went to Lowery's. When I left Lowery's, it was five of eleven. I thought of going back to Chimp's, but it wouldn't take five minutes to get there, so I went through Pretty Pillow first -- and then forgot all about Chimp's and went crooked (there is no straight route) to Marsh. And on the way back I had frozen food in solid-packed intricately-knotted, thoroughly bungeed panniers, so I didn't want to dally & couldn't buy anything that didn't fit into a pocket, so I stayed on Smith Street. I did stop at Sherman & Lin's. and bought two chocolate bars. I *finally* bought my black #1 snaps. and they are brass, too. Zipped them into a pocket of my windbreaker to keep them from getting lost, and later put the windbreaker on. When parking my bike in the garage, I snagged on something and looked down to see the pocket torn and gaping open and empty. ARRGH! But on closer inspection, the pocket was unzipped from when I'd taken my gloves out of it -- the snaps were in the *other* pocket. And still are, now that I think of it. The ride and getting rained on seem to have taken a lot out of me. I napped until it was nearly time to fry the chuck steak I'd bought at Marsh, and I didn't at all feel like making salad and devilling eggs after supper, but I perked up during our walk. 13 May 2010 What all has been going on since the last entry? I saw something in the park that might have been a goose, a gander, and four goslings. Mama Duck has been around off and on. Al savagely attacked a sparrow, who didn't notice. There will be no more asparagus after I've used up what's in the fridge. The deer have discovered our asparagus patch. I spent most of yesterday fooling around with the computer, but did baste gathering threads into the sleeve caps of my new shirt. While I was doing that, the turn-under for the flat fell to be applied later tried to unfold and I reached for the little fabric-masher Grandpa made for Grandmother, but couldn't find it. I greatly fear that it fell out of the notion drawer when the table was being carried around in the church. Anyone who found a little strip of aluminum on the floor would throw it into the trash without a second thought. 17 May 2010 Picked a few more spears of asparagus yesterday. Left a few that weren't big enough in the hope that the deer would overlook them. The air was full of cottonwood fluff yesterday. Perhaps today's rain will bring the rest down. I don't notice it much, but it bothers Dave. There was a gosling nursery school in our back yard this morning -- at least seven adults and the beach was carpeted with babies. The were gone the next time I looked, which seemed mysterious -- the babies can't fly, and it would take some dedicated walking or swimming to get out of sight in such a short time. It's washday again. Only two loads, and the whites are only half a load. Belatedly thought that I should have put Dave's stained shirt in Oxyclean last night. I think maybe I've already tried that. Haven't seen Mama Duck lately. Ducklings were pretty well grown; might be that I wouldn't recognise them. But one can always tell it's a clutch and a parent by the worried look of the mother. 24 May 2010 Ducklings are still teen-agers. She hasn't lost any, remarkably. All spring I've been worried that I couldn't remember where I put my "green" scarf last fall. (It was green, but all the blue dye and most of the yellow dye have washed out.) My other linen scarf is thick, fuzzy, and half cotton, so quite unsuitable for the sort of weather that began yesterday, and I've been scanning my stash for thin linen to make a new one. This morning, as I looked under a yellow all-cotton scarf for one of my last three clean underpants, I reflected that I'm always alerting on that scarf because it's a triangle, like the linen one, but I've looked in the underpants drawer dozens of times because that's where scarves that don't fit on the pants hanger belong. But it would appear that I hadn't *felt* in the drawer. My off-white wool scarf had a washed-out linen scarf on top of it, neatly folded to the same shape. So I ran out to the bike with the "green" scarf and brought the orange one in to wash and put away for the summer. Dithered, then put the orange scarf with the colored clothes. If I wash it with the bleachables, it will turn pretty close to international orange, but red-orange marks it as a warm scarf. I've got a lot of that orange cotton-and-linen, three and a half yards of it bleached. What can I make of *warm* highly-visible linen? Three loads of wash: one bleached, one sheet-and- whites, one everything else. Didn't include the orange scarf, as there was a tad more than would fit in that last load, and there's no hurry. Took some ease out of the sleeve pattern I drafted last Friday, cut out the second muslin, and started writing about it in the blog. There are only small pieces of the red-and-black floral polyester print left, so I'll have to find some more scraps for the next iteration -- I'm sure this version hasn't done it. Didn't get to sewing up the side seam of the silk shirt, as I'd intended. I've been writing in the blog so much, I tend to reach for the other enter key whenever I don't want to make a new paragraph. (The main enter key puts in paragraph coding when I'm working on the blog file.) Dave now has two web cams, but only one is on the Web. 29 May 2010 Three now, two with URLs. To get to the front-yard cam, change "Dave" to "Salsa" in the back-yard URL. Little progress on my new linen jersey, but I do have the silk shirt all done except for one sleeve and the hems. And one more snap, on the collar. A trip to Aldi took all of Thursday. I did drop off some stuff at Goodwill, and also get a bag of cat food at Big R. I wanted litter too, but they didn't have the finer- ground brand of corncobs and I hadn't yet opened the last bag. Checked out _Thirteenth Child_ by Patricia Wrede during my bike ride yesterday. Haven't done much but read it today. Pretty good, and quite a contrast with the collection I'd been reading before: McCaffrey's _A Gift of Dragons_. When one reads McCaffrey, one knows that one is, so to speak, dining at McDonalds, but really: when, in the third sentence of the first paragraph of "Runner of Pern" one finds "swishing it around in her mouth to moisturize the dry tissue" -- it would be a little too strong to say that it's like finding a cockroach in one's Big Mac, but it does make it hard to get back into the story. To change the metaphor a bit, it took all the fruit juice out of my Kool-Aid. 31 May 2010 I've been obsessing, when I've nothing to think about, about how Pern is completely connected with runners' traces, and also completely connected with roads for horses, and the two networks don't intersect except at destinations. And every last inch of the thousands of miles of the trace network is paved in soft moss that must be gardened -- at a tech level in which a well-tended major highway would have trees that fall across the dirt track removed within a week. [whap, whap, whap --- this is McCaffrey of the Well Furnished Planets!] At least the traces are created and maintained, not just there by authorial fiat, like the surface deposits of food-grade baking soda that are found within a few miles of rain-watered fields of bread-quality wheat in one of her other universes. (She *says* it's alien grain, but of all the millions of grains and edible seeds on this planet, only wheat and very close relatives will make raised bread, and only hard wheat will make light raised bread.) It's hard to tell the mother duck from the ducklings now. Still ten of them. It rained hard this morning and I haven't seen any cottonwood fluff today. Except what's felted onto stuff, of course. We had a white, fluffy lawn before the rain. I got cottonwood fluff on my black broadcloth when I tore off four yards to make banners this morning -- we must have been tracking it in. I haven't looked at the pontoon boat to see how much fluff the rain felted into the carpet. Dave has been trying to keep it leaf-blown off. I didn't want to wash on a day when I couldn't hang stuff out, but I also didn't want to leave baked-bean stains on my white jeans even though I dabbed detergent on the jeans as soon as I took them off yesterday, so I ran one load and hung it on racks in front of the air filter. I seem to have gotten the baked beans out, but there's a small stain on the other leg that I overlooked. Doesn't look like baked beans I forgot the chips when we were packing up, and never thought to take some of the beans. Dave was disappointed when we unpacked, as they were very good beans. Alice says that last time, I left a container of cranberries behind and she's been putting them on cereal. I eat dried cranberries straight, but not on cereal. Mom ate her cereal with orange juice, I don't think much of that either. Not much done on the sewing today, but I took the basted-on sleeve off the silk shirt yesterday. Hope to baste the other one on today, and see how it fits. During the party, I reflected that I'm short of shirts, and poncho shirts such as the one I was wearing are quick and easy to make. While trying to fall asleep last night, I pondered what sort of print would look good in a poncho shirt -- you really need a pattern designed around the structure of the shirt -- I have some white linen a little coarse for making bras, but just right for a shirt, a piece of lipstick-red lightweight linen, and lots of scraps of the same thing in curry. Plans got a *long* way from "quick and easy", but on inspecting the closet this morning, I see that I have a pale-brown print, 65% linen, 35% cotton, thin but not too thin, hand fairly soft. Should look good with my "oakwood" pants, if I ever patch them, and tolerable with off-white. 2 June 2010 Corn has appeared in the supermarkets, and we still have butter! I'm holding out for Sweet Corn Charlie and the Farmers' Market. The silk shirt still lacks a sleeve, but I'm holding off on installing it because a one-sleeve-missing shirt is handy for testing the sleeve I'm drafting for my "taxicab" (international orange) jersey. There were goslings all over the beach side of the back yard this morning. Never saw so many goose families in one place. Dave beat the deer to a few spears of asparagus yesterday. We have had small batches fairly often. We've decided we like asparagus better without butter.