A Great Day in America

Looking out the kitchen window at the first snow and WE COULDN'T BE HAPPIER. The snow is incidental, in fact most friends know I'm not a huge fan of the fluffy white stuff. BUT we are relieved and delighted and excited that sanity and hope prevailed and Barack Obama was re-elected. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
I'd have to admit we will all be sleeping more soundly here after the favorable election outcome. I had soem trouble sleeping soundly, worrying about what would happen to all of us (that's ALL of us) if that Romnesiac had been elected. Please. How about huge tax cuts and more moolah for the uber rich? (who most assuredly wouldn't trickle that to us any time soon. Didn't happen in the past, wouldn't happen now!) No health care, war with Iran, drill baby drill and frack baby frack. Yeeesh. And let's pause to consider that Republican war on women.
But the campaign did provide some remarkable moments of levity. Several times, when I could not sleep, I sought comfort on the Internet, there discovering some truly outrageous and hysterical bits by concerned citizens. A few nights, Bob actually got woken up by my peals of laughter at 3:00 a.m. Parodies of Dr. Seuess (One Mitt, Two Mitt, Red Mitt, Blue Mitt), "Romney Style" videos and my very favorite, Dogs Against Romney. Dogs Against Romney sought to educate people about Mitt's treatment of their then-dog Seamus. It is true that he was ensconced in a pet crate and strapped to the roof of the Romney car for a 12 hour trip to Canada. Can you imagine? And Mitt thought he was fit for the presidency?  Of course, Mitt wasn't concerned about the so-called "47%", of which I guess (as an artist) I am very happily a member.
Anyway, enough! Congratulations to President Obama and his great family! Thank goodness that "Linda" didn't win after 90 million dollars (couldn't spend it on something classier than trying to buy votes?) A good day all around, even with snow.

A Job "Well" Done

Or is that "All's Well That Ends Well"? Either way, the new pump works and we have water. I couldn't be happier...
On Tuesday afternoon, after the mayhem of Sandy the SuperStorm had blown by, the Pump Crew reconvened and the new pump (see above photo) was connected and ready to be sent back down, all 250 plus feet into obscurity. You spend hundreds of dollars for a part that you'll hopefully never see again... Not like conspicuous consumption!
Anyway, feeding the pipe back down was easier as you're not hauling the pump up, but the pipe had to be cleaned so that the well isn't contaminated with leaves and boogers and junk. Dumping a bottle of chlorine in helps, too.

That's Bob laughing at my attempts at "photo ops". I was yelling from my position as caboose to "hold the line" as I ran into the house to get the camera. But this picture does give some sense of scale. This is a good 7/8 of the way through the threading the pipe back down. Fortunately, no disaster like kinking pipe or frayed wiring occurred.
About an hour later, after refilling the tank with air and testing, we had water. It smelled like chlorine and I can't say I'd drink it or cook with it yet, but flushing the toilet was sheer joy.

What to do in Event of a Hurricane

There we are (I'm on photos) preparing to hoist the pump approximately 250 feet out of the ground. The day is stormy but not totally woolly yet; winds picking up with light rain. More blustery than actual hurricane.
Time is certainly of the essence as our power is still on and there's not much sense in fixing the pump if we can't even test to see if it works!

Here's a small section of what the pipe looks like. We hauled and hauled and I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the end of our driveway, lugging the very end. Bob and Joe were closer to the well head and Andy pulled the pump up from the ground. The pipe is only like three inches around but over 260 feet long with several wires running down to the pump. How this stuff works to bring us water is beyond me!

Here's Joe in the carport (my future studio) cleaning out the pump housing. The pump is indeed shot- it's old and tired! But as luck would have it, Andy called the plumbing supply place and they were just closing. But the highway was being closed, too, so we would never have gotten there in time anyway. 

We're on track to complete the project today as the weather has held off, Sandy seems to have spun herself away from us and there are actually patches of blue sky!

Storm Surge

Ironically, the buckets to flush the toilet are not due to Sandy but that stupid blown well pump. Despite major efforts to rectify the pump's demise yesterday in the face of the burgeoning hurricane, closures of plumbing supply houses and highways prevented completion of pump replacement. But we never lost electric power...
The wind sang and shrieked and pushed and pulled and threw assorted sticks, branches and other leavings. I'm sure we all experienced some aspects of that hilarity! But we played Scrabble and sipped gins and tonics and slept like babes. I had some truly peculiar dream about James Taylor proposing marriage to me and saying how he had wanted to marry me since the first time he saw me (when I was like 12 years old). I kept suggesting reasons why this was just not feasible (like I have been committed to Bob for over 20 years and I never liked folk music in the first place and James Taylor liked cats and I liked dogs...) Plus James Taylor kept trying to serve me odd milky drinks in strangely shaped plastic cups. Weird.
Anyway, we're on course to repair the pump today. Wish us luck.
The next posting will begin the saga of pump repair. Stay tuned..

Smell-O-Vision

I'm seriously tempted to paint a white stripe up Jules' back. It's Day 2 with no water and both Bob and I woke up in the middle of the night smelling skunk. Our friend Joe said that the bag that Bob gave him a loaf of bread in smelled. too. I just came back from the store and can't imagine what others think! God bless anal gland expressions!
Jules and I  took a truncated walk this a.m. Up to and bit down the dirt road, but no heroics as the wind was started to swirl and tear pretty powerfully.
So this is a preamble to the valiant postings to follow. Our afore-mentioned friend Joe and his friend Andy have come over to help in replacing our well pump. Such valor! We're just hoping that the plumbing parts store is still open. And that no one gets blown away. Repair efforts will be suspended if the storm gets suddenly worse today. So far, not too much rain, just that constant tug of wind.
Another thing that stinks is the "perfect storm" that reporters are brewing about the possibility of an electoral college tie. How can this be? How can there be so many stupid, hateful; people? Maybe they're just drumming up worst case scenarios to keep the the populace interested. Can it really be that close? And I've heard so many things leading to the conclusion that it's almost impossible to have a clean election anyway. Mitt Romney's son owns part of a voting machine company. Didn't we go through this last time?? How come we can't fix this situation? We try and bring democratic elections to third world countries and monitor their results, and here we subscribe to a different set of rules!

A Big Fat Milestone

This is officially my 200th blog posting. How can that be? A milestone! A blog that began on a whim- to document Bob and I on our householding/homemaking adventure- and here I am creating my 200th posting!
The bridge above, which spans our little stream, seems an apt metaphor for the crossing of so many bridges in this going-on-two-year journey. It has been such a great time!
But I will admit that today erupted with less than stellar events. First, Bob and I woke even earlier than usual as we were really hungry. We'd attended an opening last night (good show!) and never really ate dinner; just picked at appetizers. So we had coffee at 5:00 am and when I took Jules out, it was 6:00 and still totally dark. I turned on the back light and crossed the yard to talk to Crisco the Stallion, who always greets Jules and I.
But then I realized the yard smelled truly awful, like a chemical dump had occurred on the nearby highway.  I saw Jules rolling and Hey Presto! he had been sprayed by an accommodating skunk. Oh hell!!
I bathed Jules as best I could in tomato juice that Bob had whirred in the blender and then hosed him off. (Jules, not Bob). But by now, the whole house and Bob and I smelled less than sweetly. I guess I'd never smelled brand spanking new skunk spray, as it has a different note than the regular octane. The good news is that after a few minutes of being surrounded by the odor, you kind of don't notice any more. But if you
go away and come back, you just can't miss it... Bob went to help a friend batten down the hatches in preparation for our annual October Weather Event and our friend Joe assured Bob he did indeed
smell ripely.
And then, what with the already frenzied frenzy that has been whipped up around the arrival of Hurricane Sandy ( united in unholy union with not one but TWO other weather patterns), I'm feeling jittery and stinky and I finish washing the dishes and go to fill a bucket to sponge mop the kitchen floor (thinking to make the house smell more wholesome) and there's suddenly no water.
Of course, I first suspect power outage as our kindly utility has sponsored robo-calls to pre-announce wide spread power failures, in advance of the storm but it dawns on me that the lights still on. So a friend confirms later in the day that the pump on our well has blown. Perfect timing!
Tomorrow, in the face of 75 mile an hour wind and torrential rain the pump is due to be hauled out of the well head and replaced by heroic heroes (me included). Anyone care to join us for fun and games?

And yet the stream looked lovely today. Peaceful and serene and awaiting true havoc and chaos in the form of Storm Sandy.

Another lovely microvision to leave you with, before all hell breaks out in the morning...

Road Side Archeology

Often when I take my morning walk with Jules, my eye is drawn to something; a rock or a very colorful feather or even a random bit of plastic. It's remarkable only in that of all the hundred million leaves, rocks, twigs, birds, and discarded fast food bags that I encounter on my walk, one thing will have that major impact on me to stop and examine the cause.
Today's find was the above stone that looks like the fore finger of a statue. See the fingernail and even the slight cant to the right? Bob thought so, too. Maybe tomorrow, Jules and I will find the rest of the hand.