Lousy Care

Not eating enough and taking drugs, I have what you might call antibiotic tummy. Unpleasant, but in most other ways I feel better. We get 20 or so pictures framed, which ain't bad, but I had to leave half-an-hour early, feeling dizzy, with a large container of plain yogurt and a bunch of fruit. Once home I eat those until I get tired of swallowing. Better almost immediately. Big day tomorrow and I must be at work to get the truck packed and shipped out, the ODC Show to it's next venue, north of Columbus. Reset my internal clock to get up at very first light, which will work for the next month or two, then timing becomes more difficult, getting up in the dark, then most difficult of all, leaving home before first light. I manage this without a bedside clock. There is a clock in the house, buried behind papers on my desk, that I reference every few days to verify the existence of time. I'm rarely late, usually early; and there's a street clock, a wonderful, ornate, cast iron thing at Market Street, on my way in to work, which tells me if I have time to go down to the river, or read at the museum before anyone else gets there. I always carry a book and enjoy a first smoke watching the fog on the river, and the museum is heated in winter, AC in summer, a treat I've almost never enjoyed. Starting in maybe two weeks I can build a fast hot fire in the cookstove, to fix dinner or heat water for shaving. Won't really need heat until around Thanksgiving, maybe later. I calculate I need one more fairly large dead tree, to cut and split for early winter, and with 25 acres of woodlot it shouldn't be a problem, push comes to shove I could buy some wood, $57 a ton, and I've contracted to get the driveway graded, so the dump truck load of dry, cut and split wood, could get to the ridge. Make a note to get some candles and lamp oil, I have to be able to read, for several hours after dark, so I need a few dozen candles and maybe 6 quarts of lamp oil. I'm fond of the 1 inch utility candle I can get at Big Lots for 59 cents, a package of five, which allows almost a week of reading, with the brass lamp to which I added a mirror. A couple of cool nights and I'm already projecting 'worse case scenario', I can't not, I can't afford to be caught with my pants down, my ass would probably freeze, There's not a lot of margin living this way. It's still summer, for god's sake, and I'm lining up cans in my pantry. Because I need to prepare, need fall-back and other positions that I can't even foresee. They had mowed the verges on Mackletree today, and it was a beautiful thing, a manicured edge leading into wildness, the crows and squirrels were beside themselves, I drove slowly because squirrels are so stupid and I hate that thump when they land in your wheel-wells.