Posts Tagged ‘losing things’
Writing Results
On the 31st day of January in the year 2025, our weather is mild, and life on the ranch is serene. Yesterday, spring-like songs were floating in the air from birds taking full advantage of the softening of winter’s grip. Cyndie has been reporting from the coast of southern California and sending me pictures of textures in the sand and surf that she knows I appreciate.
The temperatures at each of our locations are not that different, but it’s chilly where she is and warm at home.
If you are a person who journals, this might be obvious to you, but it has been helpful for me to write about times when I find myself getting in the way of my own progress.
After posting yesterday about my situation with the trail cam and the pruning saw, I was compelled to take another crack at both. I stopped off in the shop after feeding the horses with the intent of giving a more intense effort hunting for the saw in the 4th place I thought I may have stashed it. It wasn’t there, but then I turned around and spotted it in plain sight on a shelf by my circular saw. A saw by a saw. Perfectly logical.
That success inspired me to grab the trail cam and set it up by the fence where there is an obvious animal trail that I believe is our neighboring fox. Asher and I left that spot and headed down the Perimeter Trail toward a series of young oak trees from which I wanted to remove low branches. To keep the dog tethered to me, I brought a clip to hook his leash to one of my belt loops. That allowed me to have both hands free to tend to my pruning.
It didn’t occur to me that taking my eyes off him might lead to something unsavory. I was working down in the dry creek along our southern border, which gave Asher access to the neighbor’s side of the ditch where I wouldn’t normally let him meander. When we set off on our way again after I finished sawing, I noticed he had a thick wad of grass wound up in the prongs of his collar. He had been rolling around in the tall grass.
With the warm temperatures, the thawing ground offers all sorts of scents that Asher can’t resist rubbing against. It wasn’t until we got back into the house that it became noticeable, but his coat now has picked up a heady aroma of dusty, dry grass and some wildlife perfume that smells a bit like plastic when it gets too hot.
It’s not as lovely as it sounds.
I am not writing that to inspire me to give him a bath.
We spent time out on the deck in the afternoon heat, where I could sand my current wood sculpting project without concern for making a mess, and Asher’s stink was only occasionally annoying.
No, I have no intention of trying to bathe him.
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Lost Glasses
So, this happened… Upon returning from my bike trip one year ago, I couldn’t find my main pair of glasses when I unpacked. After I had emptied every bag and every pocket and didn’t find them, I looked again. Every possible location got checked twice. Finally, I called Gary and asked him to check his car. I had ridden with him and that was the only possible place left where I could have stashed them.
He searched for me and did not find my glasses.
It took me about a month or two to get over it and accept that they no longer existed. I had looked everywhere I could possibly have packed them. I told myself that Gary must have missed them under the seat or they had fallen out of the door when I got out of his car.
This year, as I was preparing for the bike trip, I retrieved the blank piece that fills the void on my bike when I want to ride without the battery. I don’t use it very often. In fact, I hadn’t used it all year. It’s a handy block of hollow plastic where you can stow a tool kit or maybe some glasses…
Yep. I found my glasses that had been safely stored in that tube for an entire year.
Honestly, I thought I had looked in that tube, two different times. Did I just imagine that? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter at this point. The glasses sat in there for the whole year and I didn’t put that cover on the bike until the day before leaving for this year’s tour.
Before snapping it in place, I popped off the end cap and found the prize. Found the surprise.
I texted Gary first thing to let him know my glasses weren’t lost in his car last year. 😑
For the record, I hate packing.
I should probably take to recording myself narrating where I am putting things as I go so I will be able to find them again later.
It’s a first-world problem but now I have to figure out how to bring my old favorite glasses back into rotation with the two pairs that I replaced them with… ideally, without losing them again.
D’oh!
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More Boards
Are you sick of reading about our deck yet? I’m afraid this do-it-yourself project isn’t one we can conquer quickly, so the subject drags on. Yesterday’s weather allowed us to get back out there and drive a few more screws, but working in short stints like this will result in the end achievement coming in weeks instead of days.
Today I’m back commuting to the day-job, so decking is on hold for a while.
Yesterday, Cyndie and I ran into a few hiccups that kept our progress from soaring ahead into brag-worthy results, but we are both perfectly satisfied with what we accomplished in the time we were able to be out there.
On the plus side, the battery charger that seemed like it wasn’t working on Friday lit up yesterday with a perfect flashing green LED. I don’t know what made the difference, but my drill driver was very happy to have two chargers feeding its batteries again.
The biggest hassle was losing one of the three spacer boards we had been using. It suddenly disappeared and despite searching for too long, there was no sign of it anywhere. I finally gave in and we walked to the shop garage to hunt for another spacer.
Fifteen minutes later, after dropping yet another spacer under the deck, Cyndie found the first one we had lost was hung up down there behind a joist.
At least that made sense for where it had disappeared to because I was starting to worry I had absentmindedly set it down somewhere when I stepped inside the house or thrown it down on the pile of old rotten boards without realizing it.
I have forgotten enough things lately that this seemed like it could too easily have been another lapse by my feeble mind.
Since that wasn’t the case, I’m giving myself a clean slate and ready to assume my memory is sound.
My body, on the other hand, will be happy to have a break from the weekend of hard labor. Now it’s back to trying to stay alert on the long commutes to and from work for a few days.
Instead of focusing on more boards, I will be managing becoming more bored with the hours of driving.
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Embracing Uncertainty
Noticeable change happens again. The industrial influence on our morphing climate notwithstanding, change is always ongoing. It is a matter of degree and a relative measurement.
At one point, geologists thought continents drifted. Now it is recognized that tectonic plates are in a constant state of interaction. Astronomers figure the days are numbered for our sun, putting the beginning of the end somewhere in the range of only a few billion years.
Some people once thought the earth was flat, even though it wasn’t. I expect there are people who may have thought Saturn would always have rings around it, or at least, for the foreseeable future.
Two headlines in my Science news feed caught my attention yesterday and triggered this thought exercise about our perceptions of a dynamic universe from a static frame of mind.
New research is confirming the theory that Saturn’s iconic rings are temporary. The particles are “raining” down onto the planet, pulled by gravity. Saturn could become ringless within 300 million years, or sooner!
Meanwhile, scientists have discovered a new, and most distant object in our solar system. Who ever thought we actually knew how many planets there were?
Guess where this line from yesterday’s list poem came from?:
• Take care about ever being too certain.
Closer to home, Cyndie and I are trying to figure out how both of us lost consciousness around a simple act of returning a bucket to the house from the barn. On Sunday, we took a few minutes out to catch a couple of the Buff Orpingtons and clean their butt feathers. I hold the hens while Cyndie wields a variety of tools and tricks to reclaim feathers from a stinky mess.
After that, we tended to horse chores and then headed back to the house. Cyndie asked me to carry up a bucket of things, and one or the other of us (we are no longer sure who) had Delilah on a leash.
Two days later, in what seemed another world away, Cyndie asked me what I did with that bucket and the stuff that was in it. This many days removed, my first thought was, “What bucket?” I honestly had zero recollection of what she was referring to.
What had I done?
Slowly, I began to recall carrying the bucket up. It seemed to me that I was at dual purposes, and set the bucket down —on the front steps?— to do something other than going into the house. I suspected it was continuing to walk Delilah, but now we can’t be sure who had the dog.
Why would she have asked me to carry the bucket, other than because she was taking the dog for the extra walk?
Since I regained memory of having carried the bucket and its undefined contents up to the house, I figured I must have set it somewhere simple. Tuesday night, I looked in the garage, but didn’t see it in the most likely spot to temporarily set something.
As I stepped to the door back inside, the bucket came into view. It was empty and someone other than me (who could that be?) had placed it beside the indoor steps to the house.
Cyndie has no memory of having done so, thus her headlamp and face mask that she thinks were in the bucket remain mysteriously lost.
What is it with us and losing headlamps lately?
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Relative Something 