Doll Puppets

Nine at night and I can finally turn on the computer, with AC on and a bowl of ice next to the tower. D was carless, so after work I ran him up to the river house, from which they're still moving stuff. We sat for half-an-hour, sweating, in the shade, hottest day of the year, drinking a beer. Agreeing that we had to work Monday, to pull this off. Did I mention that eight foot doll puppets were a pain in the ass? The leg fell off one today, and we had to effect a repair. It had broken there previously, we could see that and fixed it better than it had been before. She articulates the joints in stupid ways, designed for failure, because she doesn't understand attachment nor the materials at hand. That's cool, an artist doesn't have to have a degree in engineering, they know what they want to happen. She uses muffler clamps as axles and dowel rod as base for the limbs, which is fine, but when you drill a quarter-inch hole close to the end of a dowel, it's going to split out. 100% of the time. Some places she uses aircraft cable and crimped connectors, much better, because the hole is smaller. I slept late this morning, skipped the sponge bath, just going to be working with D and he always has that fashionable haven't shaved for a couple of days look, so I can certainly skip something. Working another Saturday, for god's sake, and agreeing to work Monday, a holiday, so we can get this done. And it all depended on today, what we could do, given that we were going to work Monday also. Hang five dolls: doesn't sound that difficult, but sounds a little strange, when you mention it to strangers. And we did it, of course, finished hanging them, though the articulation remains a subject of discussion, at 3:30. I felt good about this, the ladies were all in the air. I can do the rest of it. Physically not that challenging, you split some wood, you have to do something, contribute to the entropic kingdom. An odd process, hard to describe; first I get a couple of chairs from the board room, so we can wheel around and look at specific situations; then we go to the basement, where there is thirty years of accumulated hardware, and bring up anything that might be remotely useful. We hang one doll, but it's the wrong doll in the wrong place, the hardware is correct, however, so we re-hang that doll in another place, a completely different system, and hang another doll on the hardware we'd installed for the first. Fits and starts. There's not really much luck involved in this, we have to handle the pieces, see what's required. How much do they weigh? What anchor do we use, and what attachment? Selflessness is key. We don't keep track of what is who's idea, we just hang dolls. D's solution for a doll in the entry way is brilliant, I can safely say a doll has never been hung that way. Point is, we get it done. This is the crux, right? getting it done. It's all theater. How best to present yourself. We don't go to hardware store until after lunch, and then they don't have what we need. Why don't they have any double pulleys? A fucking conspiracy is what it is. You and your's. A normal marine hardware store, they'd have what I needed. A decent anchor.