Posts Tagged ‘surprises’
Different Surprises
My day started with a most rewarding surprise yesterday, compliments of Swings. Cyndie and I have been listening to “The Telepathy Tapes” podcast, which has made me more conscious of all the chatter and earworm songs going on in my mind when I’m with the horses. With Cyndie’s past experience hearing communication from horses telepathically, I’ve long believed it is likely that the animals end up tolerating the constant noise in my head.
Yesterday, I put effort into calming my mind, focusing on telling the horses I love them in my thoughts as I scooped poop among them under the overhang. I wasn’t aware that Swings was paying any attention to me until her face was right on my ear. I assumed she wanted to exchange breaths in their common method of greeting, but before I could act, she surprised me with the most precious, gentle boop on my nose instead.
Cyndie came out of the barn and found me grinning and giddy and asked what was up. Just the power of horses to melt our hearts, that’s all. I got booped on the nose by a horse! How cool is that?
An hour later, I was on my way to the dentist for a cleaning appointment. I expected a quick and harmless session, but instead, I was given the news that I would need a filling. It was my lucky day; they could fit me in right away, so I didn’t need to return another day. Oh, joy.
I left for home with a numb face after a much less welcome surprise of the morning.
After a little rest to allow my nerves to wake up, Cyndie and I took on the work of bringing the landscape pond out of hibernation. Putting a net over the pond to capture fallen leaves has been a great way to make spring clean-up easier.
Then, Cyndie did some vacuuming while I pulled out the dead reeds from last season.
There is still a lot of rock arranging I’d like to do to call this job complete, but we got the pump and filter installed and started the waterfall at a minimum.
We left it at that to go feed the horses, and I did a little mowing with the push mower before dinner.
Work on the shade sail posts has been rescheduled to next Monday, in hopes the ground will be a little drier by then. As far as surprises go, it’ll be a good one if the holes we drill turn out to be dry at the depth we hope to achieve.
.
.
Unwelcome Surprise
She was repotting some houseplants and pouring potting soil from a previously opened bag into one of the pots. Suddenly, Cyndie shrieked, jumped, and dropped the bag as a very long snake slithered out.
That bag of soil had been stored in the garage attached to our house. This means that the snake had been rooting around in the garage long enough to make its way up onto the lower shelf and find the bag opening to get inside.
For a better perspective of how disconcertingly long this snake was, here it is with our shadows for comparison:
Much to my dismay, it didn’t make haste to wriggle its way off into the woods. In fact, while I was sitting in the glider nearby as Cyndie worked, I suddenly noticed the snake had turned around and was making its way back toward us.
No thank you. Suddenly I was the one making haste to remove myself from the vicinity of our front door. It will be bad enough if I encounter this snake in our garage but if it somehow makes its way into the house I may be looking for a new place to live.
As far as I’m concerned, winter can’t get here fast enough. Ice-cold temperatures and oodles of snow. No bugs. No poison ivy. NO SNAKES!
In the eleven years we have lived here, I haven’t seen nearly as many snakes on our property as I have this summer.
For the record, in case you haven’t noticed, I. Do. Not. Like. Snakes.
.
.
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!
.
.
Two Surprises
Tuesday night as we were falling asleep, our motion light over the deck popped on. I saw a flash of wings moving up by the light and then the little night stalker landed on the railing. Surprise! It was a young owl.
Cyndie got out of bed to snap a photo. Cute little bugger. I think it was literally bugging, as in, trying to grab the big moths flitting around near the light. It’s nice to see there is a new generation of owls in the vicinity.
The second surprise happened yesterday, and it wasn’t as much fun as seeing the owl.
Our backup generator hasn’t been coming on as part of its weekly self-test lately and I finally remembered to look into why that is. Since I so rarely interact with the machine, working on it becomes a bit of a guessing game. Luckily, there was an obvious red LED indicating a problem. Stepping through the menu I found a note indicating there was a problem with the battery.
It’s ten years old, so I’m not going to mess around with anything other than simply replacing it. Unfortunately, there was nothing simple about removing it.
The positive cable came off with minor effort but nothing else was easy about the extrication. I couldn’t reach the nut on the clamp around the negative post and I couldn’t slide the battery around the wall.
I started trying to remove screws from panels with the hopes something would shift just enough to free the battery. Too bad I didn’t even know if any of the hex head screws would serve my purpose until they were out. Too bad they weren’t in positions where one could actually turn them easily with a wrench. Less than a quarter-turn movement before needing to reposition the wrench over and over is frustratingly tedious.
It’s like salt in a wound when the screw finally comes out and the panel doesn’t move one bit. It wouldn’t even flex.
I looked for other alternatives. The third try was the charm. After two long but fruitless battles of unscrewing, I found a plastic guard that moved enough to give better access to the negative terminal. Two screws were holding it, both of which took painfully long to wrench out.
There was only one battle left. Holding the plastic guard up and out of the way. Of course, removing the screws didn’t mean the guard could be pulled out entirely. After I suffered a couple of ill-fated attempts to work around the stupid guard, Cyndie showed up with an offer of assistance.
I asked her to hold the guard up while I got a wrench on the clamp of the negative post. Once both cables had been disconnected from the battery, I was able to tip it up and finesse it around the end panel to get it out.
I will not be surprised if the installation of a replacement battery ends up being just as difficult as the removal of the old one.
.
.
Relative Something 