The week of no easy answers

I’ve spent this long week struggling with logistical problems embedded in other logistical problems. To skip to the end, my beloved 2002 Forester is no longer drivable due to the condition that eventually slays all noble Subarus — a failed head gasket.

Apparently it’s been on the verge of failure for quite some time, as I struggled with coolant-related problems on a long trip I took last summer. We thought the problem was something else, but now we know the truth.

Fortunately, the day before I drove my 2002 to my mechanic’s garage he had purchased a 2011 or 2012 (I forget which) Forester from another customer after its engine failed. It’s exactly the model I was looking for, I love the color (pale teal), and the price is right.

Meet Kinga Forester! My former/current Forester, Clayton, is in the background.

What I don’t know is when my new old car will be ready. I’m hitching rides to and from work (thank you, Rick), wondering how I will get to my PT appointments, and doing errands like grocery shopping only when they dovetail with the schedules of others (again — thank you, Rick). The situation has added a level of complexity to my everyday tasks in a way I could not have imagined.

The next puzzle will be how, exactly, I will pick up my new car when it is ready for me. I don’t exactly live in a Lyft zone, as the Lyft app informed me when I searched for a way to get my dog to his vet appointment on Friday morning (thank you, Carol).

On top of that, although a new well was dug for my house last Tuesday and the electrical work for it was prepared on Thursday, the well itself won’t actually be connected to the house until sometime this week. I’ve gone to a friend’s house a couple of times to wash my hair (thank you, Sheila) and to another friend’s house several times to do my laundry (thanks again, Carol).

The same level of complexity has been present in my tasks at work, too. A particular question might seem easy, but the most appropriate answer depends on a lot of context. At one point I needed to get some money from one of my bank accounts to a friend (for whom I was raising the money), and I could think of at least four ways to make the transfer. When the time came, I just walked into the bank, told the teller what I wanted to do, and let her pick the procedure.

A few days ago, though, I discovered a free app that is literally making a game out of keeping me organized and on task. (There are paid versions, but how much fun would that be?)

You make your to-do lists, your habit lists, and your daily task lists, and you get little boosts when you do them. And sometimes you get an egg to hatch, a sword, a potion, or a food drop. So far it’s a fun way to be accountable to myself. I’m getting my chores done and I have a Skeleton Dragon, a Base Dragon, and a Cotton Candy Wolf.

Princess Peachtree hasn’t shown any growth but she doesn’t seem to be dying. Maybe I should add “water the Princess” to one of my to-do lists.

When I’m not doing my chores, I’m trying to read and to catch up on putting entries into my reading journal. Over the past few weeks, I read the entire “Ramona” series by Beverly Cleary. During this process I realized that I had only read one of the books as a child. So it’s more of a new read than a re-read. I had thought it would be something of a tomboy read, but I was surprised to find a lot of passages that had to do with more autistic/sensory processing issues. Ramona is texture-averse to certain foods, particularly slimy ones, and she often self-regulates with physical actions such as smashing bricks on the sidewalk, or squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube. There’s so much reality in these books, and the new illustrations help the books to keep up with the times. And now I have eight more book entries to create for my reading journal. There is also a lovely large book called The Art of Ramona Quimby that I’m working though. So that will be nine books about Ramona Q, one of my favorite fictional characters.

If you have any suggestions for my Tomboy Bookshelf, let me know!

No new typewriters were acquired this week. But I’ve been working on the logistics of picking up a 1934 Royal from a small town in West Virginia. Stay tuned…

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Knitwise, the Stripe Scarf is now at 42 inches long and I’m more than halfway through a grey stripe. I have just 12 grams left of the grey yarn, though. When I have finished this stripe I’ll weigh the remainder again and do a little math to help me see whether or not I will have enough yarn for another grey stripe. (I have 36 grams left of the black yarn, so no worries there.)

I don’t think that I’ve done any work on the other two current projects, though I’m sure you can understand why. We’re heading for a chilly week, so it will be good to concentrate on this one and get it to my son before he gets too cold.

Royal Canadian

The typewriter collection has grown to ten specimens, not counting what might be lurking in the basement, and it’s time to learn more about how to repair and maintain the various typewriters. I’ll start with the one that will be offered for use during the Creative Writing Festival that takes place the week after Thanksgiving. Just getting that one model ready for a full day’s use should be enough of a project for now.

The latest acquisition is another Royal HHE, manufactured at the end of the production year in 1955. That may have been in early December so that everyone was off for the holidays, so an exact date of manufacture may be impossible to pin down. However, rough estimates of typewriter “birthdays” are possible because serial numbers were typically noted on January 1, July 1, and December 1.

Seller’s photo (with stuck keys).

This particular typewriter was manufactured in Canada, and that’s almost all that I know about it. Unfortunately, after I moved the carriage all the way to the left so that I could locate the serial number, I was unable to get it to return to the right. Oh, dear, it looks like I shall have to learn more about typewriters in order to fix that. Whatever shall I do?

Buyer’s photo (harsh interior lighting).

In other news, Princess has been slowly growing along (though she doesn’t look much taller this week). My standards for horticulture are not particularly high; I’m looking for benchmarks like “didn’t turn black and shrivel up.” Still, perhaps she could use a bit more exposure to sunlight now that Wisconsin has entered the Lean Light Months.

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Knitwise, I have continued to work on the Stripe Scarf, which now measures over 34 inches long, and the Very Narrow Shawl.

It’s been a busy weekend and now it’s a late night — so here is a short post, with hopes that next week’s will be longer and feature more photos.

The worth of water

Tucked away somewhere in my house is a powder blue t-shirt that was screen-printed in the middlish 1980s with a sketch of the Oxford, Ohio, water tower and the text “ANNUAL WATER EMERGENCY.” The combination of an aging water tower and the arrival of thousands of students to the Miami University campus had precipitated (sorry) a crisis that eventually resulted in timed showers and the distribution of one gallon of water per student for other personal use. (I know that George Z. and Stephanie T. remember this; does Mary W.?) I seem to recall that the Ohio National Guard was called up to organize the water distribution. Time passed, we managed our water use the best we could, and eventually Oxford updated its water processing facilities and — sadly — tore down the uptown water tower that had become a symbol of the town.

In the scrapbook I kept of these years, back when scrapbooks were made from three-ring binders and plastic-covered adhesive cardboard sheets, which is just about as awful an environment as you could possibly think of for photos, ticket stubs, and newspaper clippings, there is a tag from a teabag that reads “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” I preserved it because I made that cup of tea during the Water Emergency we were enduring at the time.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself in a different water emergency at my house. All seemed well on Thursday morning, but when I turned the handle of the kitchen sink faucet that evening there was almost no water pressure. I called the landlord to investigate, and the news wasn’t good — the water pump was failing. I filled some containers with water we could use for personal hygiene until the situation was remedied.

After some work on Friday, I thought that the problem had been solved. After using one stock-pot of water to make penne for dinner, we poured out the rest of the saved water. As it happens, that wasn’t really the best idea.

On Saturday morning I dropped off Youngest at the mall and went to watch Austin Kleba, the son of my high school (and Miami!) classmate Stephanie, skate in the National Speedskating Championships at the Pettit Center in Milwaukee (okay, actually West Allis). He eventually qualified for the World Cup Team for the 500m.

After those heats were done, and while the Zamboni freshened up the ice for the next event, I picked up Youngest and did some more shopping before returning home. There was my landlord in my front yard, sealing a concrete piece that I had never realized was the cap for our well. (I have lived here since 2007? 2008?) It turns out that the pump wasn’t the only problem: the well was running dry. (That explained why the water had slowed to a trickle during my morning shower; unfortunately, that was after I had thoroughly wetted my hair.)

It probably looked a little something like this.

We don’t know who might be able to drill a new well, or when that might happen. This morning I packed up my laundry and went to my friend Carol’s house to wash and dry it. I picked up some jugs of spring water on the way home. I’m not sure how we will do what needs to be done until we have dependable running water again, but we will do our best. We definitely appreciate the things that we took for granted last week.

Last week I did not buy another typewriter, though I did read a few more pages in a maintenance-and-repair manual for Smith-Coronas. You never know when that kind of information will come in handy.

In horticultural news, Princess is now almost two inches tall. I’m so proud!

I also received a Level 1 accordion instruction book in the mail and downloaded an accordion app to my iPad. Look out, world!

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Knitwise, I made progress on all three of my active projects. I have been pushing myself to knit in situations where I would otherwise be sitting and staring at a screen, so a certain amount of forward progress seemed inevitable.

Stripe Scarf is now several stripes long. Interestingly, the black sections take 9 ridges (18 rows) and the grey sections take 10 ridges (20 rows) to complete.

The striped scarf made from the thrift store yarns is longer now, too. I still have the work on the huge aluminum needles, so I get a forearm workout whenever I add a few rows.

Finally, I also worked on the Skinny Shawl made from the purple thrift store yarn. It’s hard to tell how wide it is, so I’ll just keep working on it until it’s done. This light is bad and doesn’t show the true colors of the yarn.

So we knit on….

In the presence of Royalty

The littlest peach tree is quietly growing away, and we have dubbed her “Princess.” She seems to be getting enough water, and every day I make sure to open the curtain and let her get some sunshine (well, as much as there was to have in this rainy week).

Friday

Sunday

I just love the way she’s coming along, particularly with so little assistance from me. I’ll leave her at home sitting in the big window in the library, unless it becomes obvious that she needs to be in the light from the lounge at my workplace.

This week I acquired two more typewriters. One is a Smith-Corona electronic that came with its own table and some supplies: typing paper, sheets of carbon paper, and the backing from a package of the ribbon cartridges that it takes. We plugged it in, and it works just fine. It’s not the same model of electronic typewriter that I had in the mid-80s, but it’s close. I didn’t do a photo shoot (but I could, if anyone wants to see it).

The other typewriter is a Royal HHE manual that was manufactured in late 1952. It’s in pretty good shape except for a missing key, and the ribbon is almost perfect. I’m not sure that the last owners knew that they had to press a special button to open the cover. After I opened the lid and un-jammed the stuck keys, it typed beautifully. I did buy some compressed air this weekend to help me blow out the dust and crud from underneath all the moving parts.

As I putter and play with these new toys, I’m getting story ideas. We’ll see what becomes of it all. Right now it’s hard to keep up with just the books that I’m reading, but the stories I want to tell are insisting more strongly that they be told.

In the meantime, I have a lot to learn about repairing, cleaning, and maintaining these old typewriters. I now have nine unless there are more in the basement.

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Knitwise, I made some progress on Stripe Scarf this week, and I cast on for another scarf project.

The stripes of Stripe Scarf are about 20 rows deep. I’m not counting the rows as I knit — mostly because I’m knitting while doing other things — but it’s not hard to tell when I’m getting close. At that point I fold the work over so the current stripe is directly on top of the last stripe. Then I ask myself, “Do I need to knit 2 more rows or 4 more rows?” The answer should be fairly obvious. As of this evening, the total length of the work is 14 inches.

Un-woven ends are tucked under the work in these photos.

Made you look!

Two weeks ago at my musical night out, I discovered that another attendee and the owner of the bar were both knitters. I resolved to bring a project the next Wednesday — but which one? Stripe Scarf was too dark and fussy to work on in a dim bar, and the skinny purple shawl was really a project to work on as I relaxed in my bedroom.

I put together a project bag of some Lion Brand Homespun that I had recently picked up at a thrift store. There were two partial skeins; I didn’t weigh them (what do you take me for?), but one of them seemed to be about half the size of the other. I decided to make a scarf with shallow stripes: two ridges (four rows) of the main color and one ridge (two rows) of the secondary color. I forgot to check my needle inventory before I headed off to work, so I was stuck with starting the work on a pair of straight aluminum needles in size US15.

These needles may be the reason you can’t take knitting needles on airplanes. On the other hand, nobody messed with me at the bar.

I have no idea what colors are in each skein, so it may be interesting to see what emerges as I knit along.

I’m not worried about the ragged-looking edge. This is [3 dollars’ worth of] acrylic, and it should work itself out when it’s washed and dried. I have the same number of stitches on each row, so it’s probably just a tension issue.

I’ll make some progress on the skinny purple shawl when I can sit in my bedroom chair again; it’s covered in two weeks’ worth of clothes that I haven’t hung up yet. I can only get so much done in a week (or two).