Monthly Archives: July 2015

Climb Every Scaffold

Posted on by

Spaniel Horne welcomes you into a MEGA POST.

Whew I am a tired person. I wanted to tell you about my Twin Peaks weekend, but I was hung up by bad wifi at the Inn we stayed at and then went right back to Ladies Hammer Club when I returned. We did not even remotely get enough sleep over the weekend so I went to bed at 8:30 for something like three nights in a row. Last night I woke myself up three times in a massive puddle of drool. I am finally feeling better now!

So, let’s get to the meat here. I made a Twin Peaks 2015 album. It’s got pictures of the fest as well as pretty extensive pictures of us constructing our costumes. We decided to go balls deep this year and GUESS WHAT, Franny took first place.

This is her as the Audrey Horne Action Figure with one of the festival organizers. Her prizes were a vintage Twin Peaks poster that was put out way back in the day by ABC, an original drawing of David Bowie’s character from Fire Walk with Me, a log signed by the Log Lady, and some various other cool swag. Also she gets free entry to the festival next year.

I went as Windom Earle, master of disguise, in his horse costume with Leo Johnson in the back. I can’t find a full picture of my costume, but this was the idea. I took inspiration from centaur costumes I’ve seen and created a rolling harness to be my back end. I did not place, but nerds recognized me immediately. My sister was, if anything, more obscure. She wore a pig costume and chomped on a cigar, and declared herself Jerry Horne’s smoked cheese pig.

We had a little moment of drama on Friday morning before my sister showed up when I realized that Franny’s costume wouldn’t actually fit in my Honda (taking the Elco didn’t seem like a great idea because rain was forecasted and happened). P. thought we could cut two of the seams and fold it, and that I could duct tape it when I got there. I was very nervous about this because I knew there would be a large, drunken crowd and I didn’t want to do anything to tank the structural integrity. He was absolutely right and I’m glad we made this change since I was able to put it back together in the changing room at the golf course where the banquet was held.

Franny did A LOT of work decorating the box. I assembled it and figured out how to get the items into it. We went to Goodwill to get her costume, and used fabric markers to create Audrey’s reverse saddle shoes. This is the back of the box, before she highlighted the trees:

We started at Mt. Si High School for check in and trivia. Morgan got into the top 8 but couldn’t beat out the people with flashcards. The organizer later announced that at check in people ate 25 dozen doughnuts! WHAT. I had a cup of Good Morning America instead.

That night was the banquet. It was in a different venue this year, which was a very nice golf course in Snoqualmie Ridge. I was relived they had air conditioning, unlike the North Bend Community Center, which was the old venue. The drawback is that they decided to go from 6 p.m.-1 a.m. this year, so it was after 11 before we were instructed to get into our costumes and I think some of the older celebrity judges were quite tired. Franny and I brought snacks and ate dinner beforehand. The good news is that Franny met and got the signature of every person who was on the panel this year (Log Lady, Betty Briggs, Pierre Tremond from Fire Walk with Me, Mike Nelson, Dick Tremayne, and Lucy Moran).

We got back around 12:30 or so and took a while to fall asleep. Then we had a bus tour at 9 a.m. Saturday morning, which was very fun because we sat up front near the author of a book on the show and probably the #1 historian of facts from the show and movie, who were co-leading our tour. It was kind of funny because later at a hotel party the author put the moves on my sister who was thinking 1. UM NO and 2. So your book flap says you’re married?

Awkward.

Saturday night was the David Lynch movie night. They showed Fire Walk with Me again. which was okay because I hadn’t seen it in a year and Franny never had. A lot of people were disgruntled about the rerun though. We were also being talked about a bit because I brought full-sized patio chair cushions to sit on. I heard later on one of the Facebook groups people were posting “I was wondering why those women brought cushions until I sat in the North Bend theatre seats for a couple of hours….” Yeah, that’s called planning ahead. Next year I could probably rent cushions and make the price of the festival ticket back.

Sunday night was Leland Palmer Karaoke Night, which was canceled due to threat of rain. Everyone got medium to very drunk INSIDE the Roadhouse instead, which was where we were staying. I don’t think I’d had anything to drink in a couple of months. I ended up at a party at the Salish. Someone put on some good hiphop and the phone rang while I was on the toilet. Naturally I answered it and it was a noise complaint. I thought that might be a good time to leave. Then I realized there was no real way to get back from the Falls to Fall City (no cab service), where we were staying (and where Franny was snoozing in our room) so I said goodbye to Morgan and hoofed it back. Ran about two miles and walked the other two. Will I ever tire of drunk running? HELL NO.

However, I’m pushing drinking out to the very occasional category, and by that I mean, “There better be a serious occasion” like all the Twin Peaks weirdos are getting shitty, I’m out of town and in the fuck it bucket. Not anything special like an anniversary or birthday. I had some gastric distress and broke out in cool lesions in various places after months of great skin. I just don’t really have time to sabotage feeling great and getting shit done. But it was fun, and it wasn’t like a wheat knockout. We ate well all weekend, if monotonously. I brought a cooler with hardboiled eggs, jerky, a fancy aioli, tinned fish, nuts etc. We bought nice Yakima fruit in Fall City.

So the good thing is that I remembered I like running again. It was pitch black out there, partly cloudy, not a sound and only seldomly a passing car at midnight on a Sunday night. I forgot how much I love being out away from street lights. No animals, no owls, no BOB. Just me and my lungs. I got up this morning at 5:30 and ran my normal 5K loop like it was nothing. I have been cursing my case manager for making me run stairs at Ladies Hammer Club but apparently it’s paying off. I got back to the hotel room covered in blackberry scratches (hello ditch, I did not see you there) and Franny was snoring with her mouth open.

We took her home Monday morning because she wasn’t feeling great and went out to Kiana Lodge, where the scenes of Laura wrapped in plastic were filmed. We just kind of hung out for four hours and had a little tour there. The grounds are GORGEOUS.

So Monday I missed forklift cert day and jumped back in to a visit to the glazier’s union on Tuesday, and nailgunned siding to a Habitat for Humanity house yesterday. I was thinking as I lifted a scaffolding panel over my head for the umpteenth million time yesterday, how unafraid I am to do stuff like that, because I am very unlikely to hurt my back or tweak something doing it. I’m stronger in part because I’m more confident in my body now and not afraid to move or lift heavy things. I know if I get sore I will bounce back very fast as well. Hence me running this morning! Yes damn it does feel good to be a gangster.

#wheatprivilege

Posted on by

Something funny happened yesterday during my lunch break. We were at the shop, where I got to touch tools I’ve never used before, like random orbital sanders and hammer drills, and many I have, like your basic drills, circular saws.

[Text to P.: WHY DO WE NOT OWN A HAMMER DRILL?

Answer: Because I only needed one of those one time.

So pragmatic! sigh]

As another aside, I’m That Guy. I saw that some scrap lumber had nails it in and I gently pointed it out to the shopmaster before we lined up to do practice cuts on it with the compound miter saw.

“Is it okay if the wood has nails in it?” I asked, as if I didn’t know the answer.

“It’s okay, it’s just the one, on the opposite end,” he said. Cue sparks flying when my first classmate in line started to make a cut. “Okay, thank you,” he said to me. I also “fixed” the drywall saw when it was stuck in third gear by realizing that the torque couldn’t be shifted unless it was on a neutral setting.

This all sounds very braggy, YES, but it’s a relief that the knack I have for noticing potential trouble and intuiting how interfaces are supposed to work is carrying over into tool world. In tech world I always amazed my trainers at how fast I would pick up how UIs worked and would discover new functionality. (All hail the church of the Feckless Button Mashers.) I don’t think I’m magical or anything–this is just a strength I have. I’m hoping this will keep me out of trouble on job sites. I think it’s kept me alive longer than it should have, at any rate.

Anyway, something that amused me–during lunch yesterday, a woman in her 20s who reminds me, appearance-wise, of a young Sandra Bullock, brought in homemade cookies to share with everyone. This was me just a couple of short years ago, so I totally get her. I used to leave cookies or cake or whatever somewhere and let people know about it. If they wanted to partake, cool, if not, also cool. Me like bake. Sugar make human happy.

This is where Sandra and my paths in the woods diverge, however. She approached me as I was finishing my lunch and thrust out a container of cookies.

“HAVE A COOKIE!”

“No, thank you,” I said. Now that I am old I run out of the gate without dithering or explaining myself.

“Why not?” This was a new one. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to turn down a cookie.

“I have Celiac disease,” I said. “And some other allergies.”

“SJ’s complicated,” my seatmate chimed in. She’s a tech world refugee as well, close to my age, also with kids. She gets food issues.

“Well what do you eat?” Sandra demanded.

“Meat and vegetables, really,” I said.

“Like a Paleo?”

“Yes, I am a Paleo.” I was laughing inside. I want to get a shirt with this on. But I was glad she got what I do.

“I can make you Paleo cookies!” she said. I was becoming a challenge.

“Uh. Well, thanks, but if you use wheat in your kitchen at all I probably can’t eat anything made there. And I don’t really eat sugar unless it’s a really special occasion.”

Like Monday night, when my sister came to dinner and P. made her a little chocolate birthday cake topped with fresh berries. YUM. I don’t think I’ve had cake since May or before. It was amazing. I can wait til the next birthday now.

Sandra had also chided me earlier that day for turning down some plums midmorning. I feel like such an asshole every time I open my mouth about my diet so I really wait until I’m asked. Again she brought the “WHY.”

“I’m still full from breakfast,” I said.

“It’s just one plum!”

“I’m not really a snacker,” I said, regretting it instantly.

“Snacking is good for you! It ups your metabolism,” she told me.

I just nodded. As long as I’m still losing weight at a steady pace, I don’t really feel like I need to resort to any tricks to “boost” my metabolism. I feel great with limited sugar and I think my body and I are doing fine on our own. I suspect I haven’t heard the last from Sandra about what or how I should be eating, though.

“The only thing Columbus discovered was that he was lost!”

Posted on by

Windom Earle: Garland, what do you fear most… in the world?
Major Briggs: The possibility that love is not enough.

Time is zipping along right now. I’m getting into week four of hammer club this week, and this is where it lets up a little. At first we were kind of immersed, going five days a week, and now it will ease off to three days, which is great with me.

In the second week we visited the cement masons, and had a day of work with an older vet and a guy around my age who’d been working with concrete for half of his life now. I was pretty sure going into it that I didn’t want to be a mason, and I left thinking the same. The guys were really nice, and showed some onsite GoPro footage about what it has been like pouring slab at the ass crack of dawn in the to-be Amazon buildings downtown. They did let it slip that the men in their org pour the slab, while the women were downstairs, patching what had already been poured. I know it’s inevitable sometimes, but I don’t want to spend eight hours a day cleaning up mistakes or what was missed. Working outside before and as the sun comes up sounds like a dream, though, really. I guess the die was cast when I got my first job at 15 as a papergirl.

We were all shoveling sand and rocks, and moving wheelbarrows around. I volunteered to slit open a bag of cement to pour into the mixer. It was fine, like mochi flour, and I was overzealous when I picked up the bag halves, and the cement went POOF and coated my chest and went into my eyes, past my safety glasses. I felt ridiculous, like a child, having to admit that I had cement in my eyes and being led off to the sink and air hose by the nice older mason. He and I talked baking and children; he has daughters, too. The ladies and I made stepping stones with our mixed concrete, and that was fun, but has very little to do with things like pouring slab day-to-day.

After troweling and beveling the edges, the next step was to lay a stencil and color the top of the stepping stone. I thought the provided brick stencil pattern looked very boring, so I made my own out of a cardboard doughnut that I cut into a spiky sun shape. “The warranty’s off yours,” the younger mason told me. I sprinkled powdered pigment on the top of the concrete, over the top of my bespoke stencil, and worked it in with my trowel. When I pulled it off it looked marvelous and weird among my classmate’s staid brick patterns. “Rebel,” the woman next to me said, and smiled. She’s a football player with a high fade and heavy gold chains.

Both of the masons shook their heads. “You’re speechless,” I said. “You’re amazed.” I got silent high fives for that. I know they didn’t want me, and I don’t want them, so I’m glad I could inject a little amusement into their day of leading hammer club through its paces. I need to remember to bring my camera places. I might as well–I couldn’t feel more out of place really. I don’t care.

Last week we spoke to the electricians, and I didn’t get anything into my eyes, so things were looking up there. I bent and cut conduit and worked with wire. This week we’re going up North to visit the sheet metal workers, and we get two days in the shop to have a serious introduction to a large variety of tools. Our shop time is supposed to culminate in a project that we get to keep. I’m going to make a storage bench with small spaniel stairs for the end of the bed. Even if they choose not to use it all the time now, I think it will become valuable to them in the next ten years.

This weekend Franny and I are making a big push to finish our Twin Peaks costumes. She is doing a lot of painting and I am doing a lot of assembling. I need to and will finish tonight, since I have “school” this week. Franny has more time to paint and dick around if she needs it. She’s grounded for busting curfew recently and is working on a lot of art as a result. Her boyfriend is writing her letters since I’ve got her phone on ice, which I think is actually very sweet. My sister is quietly delighted that Franny will not have her phone next weekend when we’re out of town together. I blabbed this to Franny and she said, “Well I wouldn’t be texting the WHOLE time. This is a special trip.”

I know I should be running the drill myself this weekend, but I like working with P. so I tend to just hold the wood while he runs it. I am doing sawing and general assembling, which is fun. P. is invaluable for consulting with, since I’m not working with any existing plans. I think without him I would tend to overbuild, and I need my costume to be as light as is reasonable, while not falling apart. It’s a lot more fun than building the beehives, to be honest, since there was a lot of, “Oh god, actual creatures need to live here once we’re done” and it was funny angled boxes that needed to be pretty perfect. So the costumes–I’ll publish the pictures on Friday, here and Flickr, before we skate out of town that morning.

This year’s festival marks the 25 year anniversary of the show, so it’s slated to run through Monday, instead of just Fri-Sun. On Monday I’ll be missing my forklift certification, which is unfortunate, but I don’t think it will hurt me in the long run. Yah-tah! I’ll be back soon.

ABV Always be vigilant

Posted on by

Compared to the usual, things have been very exciting around here this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I LOOOOVE boredom. Super into it. But a couple of things actually happened.

I got up early on Friday and fed the chickens and made coffee. I heard a car running outside the fence and peeked over–there was a sedan, running, empty, with the windshield wipers intermittently flapping. P. was actually wearing pants so I sent him outside the fence to investigate.

“It’s stolen,” he said. “The ignition is completely gone.”


Nightmere basking in the morning sun in the chicken pen

We called the cops and an officer came shortly afterwards, and told me that the car had already been reported as stolen. It turns out the owners were right up the street, because a man and woman walked up a few minutes later. Franny espied on what they were saying–they had last seen the car at 8 p.m. and had gone to bed later, and it was gone in the morning. They got in and drove their running, ignitionless car home. It still had half a tank of gas (I looked).

There’s been some progress with the bees. Somehow, we lost our first queen in the orange hive. It’s very possible that we crushed or drowned her, or maybe she up and died on her own. We could tell things were going wrong, because one week they were pretty mad, and then the population began dropping, and the only new bees being produced were drones. This means you have laying workers.

It’s kind of cool if you think about it. No queen equals no fertililzed eggs being laid (fertilized eggs result in girl bees). So the workers take over and create as many boys as possible, which will then go out and hopefully spread their genetics with a queen in another hive. Nature is smarter than just waiting for everyone to die. This condition is commonly referred to as a “colony of lost boys.”

However, you can maybe help turn things around if you have a “queenright” hive. We pulled bars with open larvae out of the healthy orange hive for three weeks in a row, brushed the adult orange hive bees off, and inserted that bar in between existing bars in the ailing purple hive.

Miraculously this can do a few things. The larvae emit a scent that smells like a queen and can suppress laying in the workers. The workers are aware they are missing a queen, so they accept the open larvae, and raise them up to be a new queen. Old hands say this process of adding new bars can take 3-4 weeks before things get corrected again. In the meantime we knew we were providing the purple hive with already capped cells filled with girl worker bees, which would hatch and help nurse new bees and feed the hive. Bees accept unhatched bees as their own.

Yesterday, on the third week after we had begun Operation Purple Queenright, we found many queen cups, which are special cells workers build when they are creating a new queen. Possibly the first strong queen to hatch took over. She then races around and kills any other hatching queens.

So there they were as we peeped in–hatched queen cups. They look like they have little porch roofs over the cells, unlike worker cells (flat) or drone cells (domed).

Here’s a close up of what was happening:

The arrow on the left points to a vacated queen cup. Worker cells are flatter. As a bonus, you can see an emerging worker bee. This is what I meant by the bonus influx of workers you get from sharing bars among hives. So, already in this first year I am very happy to have two hives. Three might be ideal, but that adds a half hour a week to maintenance, and I am not sure we’re ready for that just yet.

The weather is causing the bees to beard (aka “hang out on porch”) in the afternoon to cool things off. We are doing the same.

I bought a silly pool from the drug store.

We’re getting highs in the low 90s here, so the garden is doing great.

1. Zucchini; 2. Tomatoes; 3. Shiso; 4. Thai basil; 5. Lemon cucumber; 6. Italian basil

This morning I woke up to Strudel on the couch.

“THERE WAS A RAT IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT,” she said.

“Oh lord. Was it big?”

“YES IT WAS HUGE. IT WAS ON MY HEADBOARD.”

Uh oh. We did some investigating and I found poo behind her bed, which did not actually look like rat poo to me. I brought the dogtectives in. Strudel had slammed her door shut, and if the rat was truly as large as she described, it was probably still trapped in there.

Edith found the poo and gave it a good sniffing.

“Yes, without a shadow of a doubt, this is definitely poo, Mother” she said.

“Find Squirrel, Edith!” I said, hopefully. Extrapolation has never been her strong suit.

“Yes, Mother, I have found this amazing poo that you have seen and discovered on your own and it smells weird. My job is done here.”

I called in Det. Horace, who had been sent out to take a morning wee first. He inspected the poo.

“FIND SQUIRREL, HORACE!”

Within thirty seconds, had had tracked the rat to under a dresser. P. sighed and got some gloves and tongs (?), not knowing what he would encounter. He emerged with a baby possum that was the size of a large rat.

“A cat definitely brought this in,” he said.

“Put it in our sucky neighbor’s yard!” I said. He did not. Det. Horace got a raise!!

Franny made a wee card. She said this is what you get when you die.


I love it!

The No 1 Ladies Hammer Agency

Posted on by

Today Morgan and the girls and I went downtown to buy spices. I went a little apeshit (nigella AND sumac) and Morgan went more practical. She’s getting into vegetables too, and that means SPICES. I suggested a field trip since we both have the day off. Everywhere we went people talked to us like we were tourists, of course, since it is high tourist season here.

A young guy with those nice evil “v” eyebrows at Pike Place made me feel a mango.

“FEEL this mango.”

“Okay,” I said, giving it a halfhearted pat like you would to a guinea pig recovering from mange. I was not going to be roped in to his bullshit.

“How was that, EH? EH?”

“It was okay.”

“Listen to this one!” he said about me, as if I was being clever.

“I’ve felt a lot of mangoes.” I just wanted to get my lettuce and to GTFO.

Someone else at a pawn shop asked us if we were tourists as well, of course. I am still on my mission to find those rapper name plate necklaces from the 80s. Where did they go?

“Were they melted down or what?” I asked the clerk behind the counter. He was quite rotund and looked sweaty even in the cool AC.

“That’s what I would do with them,” he said. I didn’t expect him to know or anything.

“Remember when we had lunch at that one place with Mom and some sketchy dudes wanted to pay for our lunch and you got mad?” my sister asked me. That sounded like me.

“Man, no,” I said. “I am such a jerk.”

“Well, it was really shady. Who does that! Mom was all delighted and you were all HELL NO.” I have taken the adage about free lunches to heart, I think.

I had to say that I actually had completely forgotten about it, and it only sounded vaguely familiar. I have blocked a lot of stuff that happened with our mother in my 20s out, and I think that might have been the very beginning of my memory really going sideways. I just have no interest in storing those memories I guess. It’s funny, though, that it was another time when our mother was taking things one way and I was demonstrating a completely different set of behavior and values. Morgan came down on my side.

I bought the girls slushy apple cider and was assured that it was 100% apple cider before I paid. I helped Strudel get her lid on and some slush dripped onto my fingers, maybe half a teaspoon. I licked it off without thinking about it. Strudel drank the whole thing down happily, as did her sister. I started feeling funny about an hour after we arrived home–what I call “balloon head on a string.”

“How are you feeling, Strudel?” I asked.

“Urgh. Bad. My stomach hurts and I’m spacey.” Shit. Franny is feeling unwell too. I think corn is the most likely suspect right now. I am sad to be corned this weekend. This is hard to write and I have found countless typos and poor grammar. I am sure I will leave some in.

I quick pickled a bunch of asparagus recently.

I’m not crazy about it so I haven’t tasted it. I am told it is “less Victorian than usual,” which probably means I backed off on the allspice a bit.

Edith is on a reducing program on the vet’s advice. About six months ago our vet said she was getting into the chubby zone. Not dangerous, but a good time to stop feeding her pecans, her favorite.

It may be hard to see here, but she has a bit of loose skin now.


Strudel is having a good summer of mostly boredom, and hanging with a friend who just moved a few blocks closer. She came into my bedroom and told me that she’s “a tween now.” Followed up with, “I’m going to go paint my toenails.” She is off to Celiac sleepaway camp at the beginning of August.

You may ask yourself, “What is this idiotic posing?” I started my class this week (Monday) and today is a holiday, thank god. I got my protective gear and boots right away. I think I am ready to apply for my chosen trade but I am keeping an open mind about the others we’re exploring, in case I want to apply for them too. I don’t want to be more specific because I am a tiny bit superstitious about counting chickens.

It’s nice to be back in class. I don’t want to be an eternal student, but I am ready to learn something new, which is what a trade is in the beginning. I am kind of thinking of it as paid collage.


“MOM I’M GOING TO POSE IN YOUR BOOTS KAWAIIIIIII” Ok.

I’m enjoying getting to know the ladies in my group. There’s youngsters and I think there’s a couple older than me. I don’t say much because I mostly just want to listen. They all have incredible stories about what they’ve done. Women with records (Our teacher: “Trades don’t care.”), women who are currently in shelters, past homelessness, women who live with their parents with their children, women with past lives in many other careers and jobs. There’s stories about dire warehouse jobs, wage theft, being pushed around by corporations, and life-changing motorcycle accidents. There’s even a Microsoft refugee with two children close to my age and of course talking to her was very familiar.

During the OSHA class, the teacher started doing some L&I payroll tax shit on the whiteboard that involved simple calculations.

“Who has a calculator?” she asked. I started doing them in my head and calling out the answers before the person with a calculator on her phone could get an answer. “Who’s good at math?” the teacher said, turning around to see who was answering. I raised my hand. No one has ever said that to me before.

So far I’ve gotten an OSHA 10 cert, first aid/CPR, and practice doing mock interviewing. I think I’m the only one who doesn’t hate interviewing. I’m just used to 1-5 hour loops, not 15 minutes, which is what I have to make a pitch to the committees I’ll be facing this fall when I graduate. There’s going to be math, but it’s easier than what I’ve done so far on my own. Some of it’s amazing and some of it’s kind of time filling. We literally run stairs almost every day, and it’s killing me, carrying this twenty-pounds-extra caboose. I’m doing really well, though, and losing at least a pound a week. I’m looking forward to job site visits and shop days (I’m going to build a bench).

Sometimes I want to not pay attention in class and just interview all the women all day, students and the guest teachers, and find out about their histories and lives. We keep being asked “why I’m here” and I want to say “because I got sick and almost died and when I could walk again I found out I could run and do math.” This is weird, so instead I say Career Change and I Like Math.

I wired this today and they all work, just some of the bulbs are burned out. These are the original ceiling light fixtures from the rec room downstairs. P. has implanted them into the wall and we will panel around them and put the brass and frosted glass covers back on, and then they will be ~arty vintage mood lighting~. My idea.