Stuff and Things

Part I, in which I whine.

"What the...???"

That's what I said when I opened the wood stove door a few days ago and saw this:

Can anyone explain to my why the grasshoppers came in droves to die in my wood stove over the summer?  The few yellow jackets and the June bug carcasses that greeted me when I swung open the door were no shock, as we gather a few of those every year.  But I am forced to conclude the local grasshopper population hosted some kind of cult ritual in my wood stove this summer, only to perish there en masse and crispify into titchy green exoskeletons.

I figure they're so dry they're just a little extra fire starter.

So, anyway, it's autumn.  I've mentioned that I'm not a fan of this season because it means winter is coming, and I don't like to be cold.  Not.  At.  All.  Not even a little bit.  Here's where I start becoming a contradiction, though.  Although it's getting cold and the house temperature has been hovering in the clammy low 60s, I've been stubbornly refusing to light, or to allow my long-suffering husband to light, a fire.  Why would I do such a thing?

Because it would be like an admission.  An admission that it's almost winter time.  That it's almost the time of year when we spend hours hauling wood into the house, feeding the fire, vacuuming up the debris from the logs we've carried in, and grousing at the dogs for chewing on the logs and spreading tiny wood chips across the rug again immediately after I've vacuumed.  It's when I have to put dorky sweaters on my almost-but-not-quite real dogs who start to shiver when the temperature hits 65.

It's when I have to get up in the dark, which is not helpful when you're the kind of person who hates mornings the way I do.  It's the time of year when I have to wear fuzzy socks all the time or my toes turn gross colors.  Winter means I have a really hard time finding produce, and spend a lot of time kicking myself for still not having gotten around to purchasing a chest freezer so I can eat local organic heirloom produce year round.

I don't want to admit it's that time of year.

But, after days of resisting it and freezing, we did eventually break down and light one evening fire to take off some of the damp chill.  It was quite yummy.  And I admit I had forgotten the other benefit of having a wood stove: it's a doggy baby sitter.

Part II, in which I worry.

A few weeks ago I posted that our poor Lucy was not feeling well.  We took her to the vet who suspected a tick-borne disease, and ran some tests.  They came back negative.  Lucy started to feel better the next day, so we thought perhaps it would just pass.

It hasn't.  The vet decided to prescribe a course of antibiotics in case it was either a tick-borne disease we hadn't tested for (apparently there are many) or else she'd had it too short a time to have built up antibodies that would show up in the test.  We hoped that would take care of it.

It hasn't.  She's still got some random wandering lameness, and has days where she's just kinda under the weather.  I hate it.  I feel helpless.  If she's not feeling better on Monday, we take her back for more tests.  I'm now seriously concerned that it's an autoimmune disease.  I really hope not.

I'd just like my poor kid to feel better.

Part III, in which my ego figures prominently.

Soooo... I'm starting to worry that allowing my husband to play with my camera will be bad for my ego. It turns out he's taking a lot of nice photos.  Yesterday I had to be in to work early, and on my way in I noticed that the morning light was just delicious on the dewy autumn scenes.  So I called my husband and told him he might want to take the camera with him and shoot a few pictures on his way in to work.

He did.

Sigh.

They're quite nice, aren't they?  I have competition.  I don't like competition.