Fragile

Everything feels very fragile here.  The entire fabric of society is as thin as new ice, and liable to break down completely at the least incursion. 

Changes and more changes

When I get unhappy, or dissatisfied, or generally things are not feeling right, I have a tendency to tear into things and make changes until it feels better.  When I wake up in the morning and can't imagine how I'm going to get thru the day dealing with a certain person, that's a clue.  Been doing that lately, and got rid of a couple of my more agita-inducing clients.  I think it's better now.  We'll see.

Also trying to get outside more, but with the rain and snow and generally muddy conditions here lately, that's not working too well.  Pablo and I have found a park we like to go to, which, considering it's woods and no paved paths, amazes me. He usually doesn't care for woods type settings, he's more a pavement kind of dog.  But this park has deer, and skunks (we've smelled those but not seen any), and a little pond that, the first time we were there, had a great blue heron floating on it, who took off before I could get a picture because another dog barked at it.

Of course, when we get home, I spend the rest of the day cleaning the mud off shoes and paws and picking up park debris that tracks into the house no matter how hard I try to keep it out.  But that's mostly ok. 

I'm waiting to see if the pond really freezes solid.  So far, no, but we've been having these mild weeks in between the cold ones, so even if it's shallow (which is hard to tell, the water is mostly black-looking), it hasn't frozen solid yet.  Someone we met there told me the park used to be a Christmas tree farm, and the pond was built there so kids could ice skate.  The person who told me this is close to my age, I guess, and yes, when I was a kid, we used to have parks with ponds that froze solid enough in the winter to be skated on.  Pretty much doesn't happen around here anymore. 

I wanted to go to the park today, because it's warmish and I was off work, but last evening the rain came down by the truckload, so thinking mud, mud, mud, we pretty much stayed home.  Even my back yard is soggy.

So pictures are from a couple/few weeks ago, on a couple of dryish days. 

The trees are mostly younger than I would expect in the area, probably because it used to be a Christmas tree farm, rather than woods.  A lot of land around here was once orchards of various sorts.

Pond on a sunny day last month.  It's been more overcast the last few weeks.

 

Ice forming, I like the crackly texture.  And the water looks really black here.

 

Just this past weekend.  Solider ice in spots, but nowhere near frozen solid. 

So that's what we've been up to lately.  Nothing exciting, and still trying to organize the house and find stuff I haven't seen since before the move.  That's being a treasure hunt.  Keeps things interesting.

Anything to keep from working

Motivation is being a huge issue around here lately.  I haven't got any.  At all.

So in order to prevent work from taking over my entire day, here are some doggies pictures from my kids' and granddog's recent visit.

It was hot, and they got tired.  What else can I say? 

In case you haven't been following, the big one is my granddog, Kaylee.  The little guy is Pablo, who lives here.  They are color coordinated, of course, and also go nicely with the house decor.

There's something charming about dogs laying about the house.  IMO. 

End of summer....except it's not

Doesn't feel like the end of summer.  Usually by about mid-August, things are cooler and people are thinking more about shopping for back to school than going to the beach.  Not this year.  Still in full beach bloom, if you can call it that.  Hot, and buggy (as I scratch my latest mosquito bite), and not at all evocative of fall and changing colors and falling leaves.

Rats.  I always kind of like the end of August because it is a preview of fall.  But no.  Not this time around.

So I managed to find another flat of hens and chicks, which are sitting on the front yard waiting for me to be comfortable enough in the temperature to get out and install them.  Somewhere along the way I decided to do a lot of succulents.  Maybe because some of them have spikes, to keep people away, and maybe just because I like succulents, they do tend to take care of themselves, and they have a way of spreading out and taking over areas.  Very nice feature for my front slopey parts of the garden, where I'm afraid I'll slide down the hill when I try to dig or weed or anything.

What also helped was Kaylee (or someone else perhaps) knocking a piece or two off my potted prickly pears (nopales), so I had to find a spot in the ground to install those.   They have joined some bulbs I didn't know were there in the front slopey. 

The slopeys are two rather steeply pitched sections of the front yard, leading down to the sidewalk.  The fronts of these patches are populated by humongous sea grass type things, which when left unattended create a sharpish jungle to wade thru in getting up the steps to the front door.  I suppose if I left them to their own devices, at some point noone would be able to get up the walk.  Might keep the postal people away, I guess.  I could come and go thru the garage. 

Something I have noticed here that is pleasant.  You can leave things like flats of plants sitting on the front yard, and noone comes up and steals them.  Unlike the place I lived before this. 

Speaking of which, I hear that Pablo's oceanfront girlfriend, Heidi, has been walking by the old place, looking for him.  Love can be tough when you're a dog.  She's a Yorkie. 

I'm meandering.  I'd better go check on the laundry, and stop the random thoughts from spilling out here.  Ciao!

Hot hotter and hottest

Third time's the charm, they say.  I've started this post twice before, and got interrupted.  The story of my life.  So I'm trying for the third time, maybe this time it'll get done.  Fingers crossed.

It's been absolutely miserably hot here the last week or so, unreal in as much as in all my years of living here, I don't think there's been anything like it, in terms of heat, humidity, and duration.  Going outside is kind of like wading through a pot of boiling soup.  Not my idea of fun.

Of course, this hasn't stopped Pablo from wanting to be outside, although it has slowed him down a bit.  Thank goodness.  I don't think I could manage a mile or two walk in the afternoon when the weather is like this.  And while I can carry him home, I'm afraid he can't do the same for me.

So we've been slogging along, sometimes literally.  Sopping wet feels familiar now.

Today it was finally not so bad, and I shut off the a/c.  Give it and my electric bill a rest.  Which was fine until I somehow got the bug in my head to go out after dinner and trim back some of the blasted decorative grass that fronts my property.  Pretty, yes.  But I am tired of feeling like I need a machete to get up the front steps.

Of course, one thing leads to another while in the yard, and I eventually wound up clearing out all the crud that was growing wild and uninvited in the front sections of the front yard, where the slope is steep and I need cleats to not slide down it.  So now I'm sopping wet from that (it isn't COOL out, it just isn't boiling hot). 

And of course I decided in the process that I need to go back to the store and buy another flat of hens and chicks, because one is not enough to fill the area I just cleared out.  Tomorrow's project.  It's ok, tho, I needed to get more for the back yard as well.  Sigh.

In my spare time, of which I have surprisingly little (I thought I would be working less, it's off-season in my business, but no, I'm working more than I did last summer), I've decided to try to snag some photos of some of the nice features of the neighborhood; the ones that make me smile when I see them, out on a walk.  It's not easy.  It seems people are not so comfortable with a person walking around taking pictures of their stuff.  But I shall persevere, and try to post some here from time to time.

This is the first one I'm really almost satisfied with the photo of.  Yah, it's national end a sentence with a preposition week, get over it.  It's across the street and up the block a bit.  I was hoping to get some of the little globule thingys being red, but it seems the red ones fall off once they turn red, so it could be a matter of split second timing to catch it just right.  The plant is a Japanese dogwood, I've been told, and I absolutely love the lantern, which stands on a stone post, about chest high (for me, and I'm short).  This particular house also has a brick driveway, which I absolutely love, but driveway pictures can be kind of blah.

So, other than sweating and working, that's what I've been up to lately.  That, and a jaunt yesterday into the West Village, to meet a new client.  I did a little bit of walking around, too, since the area has it's nice touches (and has yet to be overtaken by glass and steel monoliths).  So this is my favorite stoop:

If I had to live in a city, I would like to have these guys guarding my stoop.  If you don't know "stoop," Google it.

And that's all, folks.  Happy last days of summer, looking forward to opera season!

You never get what you expect - or hope for

I figured, once tax season was done, and I moved, etc, etc, I would be able to work less. 

In my dreams.  I'm working more, actually.  I'm tired.  I want to go home.

Which leads to the other not what I expected.  I'm still feeling like the new house is a temporary place, like a vacation rental, and I'm going to have to give it back soon.  How weird is that?

However, Pablo has declared it to be home, so home it is.  Since he's the real boss around here.

So.  I just came back in from drilling more drainage holes in my front porch flower pots, since they have been getting flooded and not draining with all the torrential downpours we've been having.  The red geraniums are looking soggy.  They needed help.  So glad I bought a drill, I can do these things myself, instead of looking for some guy with a drill to give me a hand.  So far, I've mostly used it to drill holes in the bottoms of plastic flower pots.  At least there my aim (or lack thereof) is not critical. 

We also had a nice long walk, to a neighborhood with more shade, where I almost bought a house but didn't, I bought this one instead.  Something to do with the bloody infernal racket from the railroad crossing gate that's only a block away from that place.  It's a nice house, too, and it looks like it's still vacant, tho there's no realtor sign on the lawn.  The shade is provided in large part by sycamore trees of great height.  I love sycamore trees (as long as it's not me sweeping up after them), they have that bark that peels off and is crunchy to walk on....takes me back to being a kid. 

Now, in my own yard, I've finally got the blank spot where there used to be a rather large maple tree turned into a cute little garden spot, aka an obstacle course for Pablo.  I'm not the lucky one who had to have the tree removed, but they left a lot of stump, and of course you can't do much of anything about the roots, so planting things can be a challenge.  Like when you attack the earth with a shovel, and it just bounces off. 

I posted before and after pics on FB, and people reacted more to the before than the after, which is a tad annoying.  So here I'll just put up a couple of afters, and actually it looks better today (a week later) because the Stella D'oros have bloomed some more, which I didn't expect at all.  Of course, with all the rain, the weeds are coming back.  Can't win anyhow.

Same thing, different angles of view.  The outside pots there are tomatoes, and the middle one is volunteer marigolds.  I have tomatoes happening, none of them are ripe yet.  The circle is actually sort of a small scale hill, too, so Pablo likes hopping over the stones and running up and down the hill.  It's also now got a couple of solar lights, took me a while to find them in the garage.  Conveniently, they were right next to my drill.

So that's what we've been up to, in the little spare time I've had lately.  And Pablo has new favorite sleepy spots, as you can see here:

Afghans 'r us.

The other side

While the front of my house overlooks a typical suburban street, the back has a different aspect.  There's a gravel road in back (right, no fence to fence neighbor back there), which goes up the hill into an area with sparse, likely very expensive houses that are a part of an older development called Fox Hill.  I've heard there are actual fox back there, as well as the deer we've already met, and an assortment of smaller mammals, like chipmunks, squirrels, probably skunks and what all else. 

This morning Pablo and I took a short walk up the road, to the point where I suspect he was having sensory overload from all the scents, and decided to turn around and go home.  It was a slow walk, because there is just so much information there for a dog to read.  Pretty, and I hope we can make it a regular part of our routine.

Visitors last evening

So from now on I will take a camera with me wherever I go, even if it's just out in the back yard to de-pee Pablo.  We had seven deer last evening, fortunately on the other side of the fence, munching the much more expensive landscaping of the neighbor back there.  Naturally, I did not have camera or phone with me.  Pablo of course took up his best defensive posture and barked his tuchas off, and I noted that the deer did not seem to feel threatened by him (don't tell him that), they just took their time and sauntered off, gracefully trotting around the BMW and Mercedes (some kind of convertible) parked in the driveway back there.  I guess those people can afford to have the deer fleet munch their landscape.

Guy across the street told me there are also foxes.  That must be why the neighborhood behind me is called Fox Hill.

You learn something new everyday.

I owe you all something here....

It's been a couple of weeks now since the move.  I got totally over exhausted in the process, then had a wait to get my internet set up, and it's sort of here but not really what I wanted due to the Verizon strike.  So it's still transitional.

But here I am, sort of basically settled into the new place.  Pablo has staked his territories - he has a lot of them - and I still have zillions of boxes to unpack, but the basics are unpacked.  This past week I've been sick with a stomach thing, likely from all the exhaustion and stress and what-all.  So I've worked a little, unpacked a little, and spent an awful lot of time in the bathroom.

Anyway, here are a few pics of the new place.

 
It's small, and cozy, and not quite set up to where it will eventually be, but you get the gist of it. I think it will suit us just fine.  Pablo is considering it home, now.  I guess I am, too.

This is a last day posting

We're almost done packing, the movers come tomorrow morning.  Two closings on houses tomorrow, one selling the beach house, the second buying a new place over the river and up the hill.

I think it's good, but will need some real sleep before I can tell for sure.  Last nite was full of dreams of torrential downpours, roof leaks, and ceilings collapsing.  Presumably those dreams will stay here, while I go.

I will not have internet service for a week or more, beginning tomorrow.  Verizon has to come do an install on the new place, but they are on strike (rightly so, IMO), so no idea when the install will actually happen.

Change always comes with turmoil.  I hope this will all settle in due course, and life will go on.  And I'll still be close enough to the beach to drive over for those dog walks.