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three and a half hours at the Chipmunk mine
Monday, May 30 2016
Not long after getting back from walking the dogs this morning, Gretchen had to go to her weekly shift at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock (normally it would be on a Sunday, but this week things got switched around). She wanted to take Neville (as she usually does), but neither he nor Ramona had come back from the woods yet. So she left without them. Meanwhile I took a 25 milligram dose of time-release Adderall, ground up in a mortar and pestle, mixed with hot water, and drunk, the way I like to do it. This concoction used to have hardly any taste at all, but for some reason every time I drink it, it has a stronger and stronger chemical flavor. It's not bitter (as one would expect); it has more of a burnt-rubber quality.
I intended to use the resulting initiative to either clean the garage or do some much-procrastinated work on a side web project (the one involving wiring closets in skyscrapers), but there were a few hiccups along the way that caused me to worry about the dogs, who had yet to return from whatever they were doing in the forest. So I rode my bike up and down the Farm Road calling out for them. I also listened, in case they were barking themselves hoarse at the bottom of a tree containing a 250 pound bear-shaped fruit. But all I could hear were the tree frogs, the many species of birds, and the constant rain of frass from this year's continuation of last year's Gypsy Moth infestation.
Back at the house, I completed one of two web development tasks for the skyscraper wiring closet people and then, because the dogs had yet to return, set out on foot down the Stick Trail, the direction Gretchen had gone this morning. I followed the Gullies Trail to the bottom of the Valley of the Beasts and then went off-trail up that valley until I came to the trail that could take me up the low (but steep) valley wall to the Stick Trail. When I got up there, I continued south (away from home), though I called Gretchen at the Golden Notebook on my cellphone to ask where she'd gone this morning. Based on what she told me, it seemed there was no point in my continuing further south. So I headed home, continuing to call out, "Monie! Neville!" and pausing occasionally to listen. Who knew, perhaps they were caught in traps set for Coyotes. But then, in the middle of calling out for them, I saw them not twenty feet away, just off the trail. They'd been able to hear my calls for at least fifteen minutes and had chosen to ignore me. Both of them were filthy with dirt, though at the time only Ramona was doing any actual digging. (Neville is content to just watch Ramona in awe, which Ramona loves.) She'd managed to excavate a six-foot length of rotten tree trunk (which had apparently disintegrated into a black material resembling potting soil) and was continuing to dig in hopes of hitting paydirt, which in this case would've been a Chipmunk. The problem with Ramona's mining technique is that she seems to assume that Chipmunks, much like nuggets of gold, are inert lumps that can be dug down to and then extracted. But Chipmunks move, and in most cases the "minerals" have completely evacuated the mine within a few seconds of its opening.
Ramona and Neville at today's Chipmunk mine.
Neville at today's Chipmunk mine.
Having spent the last three and a half hours by themselves in the forest (a record!), Ramona and Neville decided to follow me home after I'd found them.
Back at the house, I took a quick shower to wash my filthy hair, rinse away the caterpillar gossamer (and at least one smooshed caterpillar; their insides are bright green), and shave away my stubble. Then I loaded up the dogs and drove into town. Miraculously, the air conditioner's clutch engaged immediately when I started the car, meaning I didn't have to hit it with a chunk of wood to drive in a cool climate-controlled environment. But the next time I would start it, I would have to resort to thumping it with a wooden block.
My first destination (after emerging on Route 28 via the decreasingly-driveable Beesmer Road, which I hadn't attempted to drive on in years) was the Tibetan Center's thrift store. Initially, the pickings seemed kind of thin. But then I found a 1/8 inch male-to-male stereo cord (you can never have too many of those) and then a long clip-on "third arm," for those times when something not too heavy needs to be held somewhere in space. I always check the toy section in addition to the gadget section, and today the toy section delivered: a 27 MHz remote-controlled vehicle with all-terrain tires. I always buy remote-controlled vehicles when they're as cheap as they are at the Tibetan Center thrift store, though so far I haven't managed to incorporate one into a project. Today's expenditures at the Tibetan Center came to less than four dollars.
My next stop was at the illegal parking spot on the side of Tinker Street in front of that icecream shop next door to the Golden Notebook. The sidewalk was so crowded with icecream eaters, I had difficulty leading Neville through. He was still filthy from whatever role he'd played in the Chipmunk mining, so after we surprised Gretchen with our arrival, she and I did what we could to clean him up. And then, having exhaused himself with all those hours in the forest, he fell into a snory sleep on his dog bed (which I'd also brought). It was the same dog bed he'd freakishly pissed in the other night (and also the night before that).
This evening Gretchen and I watched an episode of that HGTV show called House Hunters International. The international in this case was Lusaka, Zambia, and our protagonists were a young couple from Iowa with three kids. The man of the house had a gig teaching sustainable farming techniques and seemed like a deeply practical guy, one who wasn't too fussy about his living situation so long as it was cheap, while all the woman did was talk about how everything related to her children and her desire for convenient shopping. At the end of the show (spoiler alert), we're all surprised when the woman, given exclusive decision power for picking the house, chooses the cheapest one far out of the Lusaka (I have a feeling she might well have made a differnt choice had she had a different husband). Everything that woman had said supported the theory that she was a drip, but maybe we'd just been led to this view by the film editors. As I pointed out to Gretchen tonight, were someone to train a camera on me all day and create a mix of the stupidest things I'd said, they'd have some great material.
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