Wave Without A Shore

I’m apparently Red Snake born in the year of the Black Horse, and my element is fire, my ancestral element is water, and my lucky element is wood, green my lucky color, East is my lucky direction, and Rabbit or Tiger is my fortunate match.

Jane is Black Rabbit born in the year of the Black Dragon and her element is water, her ancestral element is water, and her lucky element is fire. South is her lucky direction, red her lucky color, and Horse and Snake are her fortunate match.

We seem to fit together in a weird way.

I believe it’s the year of the Dragon.

Jane is a Dragon.

I’m a Horse, myself.

In the first comment—a link to the chart.

…yesterday, shoveling snow. By noon, I was walking like the witch in Sleeping Beauty—could not straighten up. Didn’t hurt too much if I just didn’t straighten up. On the bright side, it was the opposite side from the sciatica in my right hip/leg from that nasty fall I took, oh, back when we were living in Spokane Valley—I caught a blade during a fast-traveling (for me) crossover and flew outward, sort of on the straight line tangent of the circle I was making, and went smack! flat out sideways. That is not a nice way to fall. The lower back didn’t like it, and subsequent years have reminded me of that moment—it was the day after Bloomsday Run and I was skating with tired legs and deeply blistered and sore feet. Well, what would I expect, eh?

So that’s the right side. Yesterday all pain left the right side and I was bent double on the left hip, so something shifted in that piece of dubious genetic engineering called the sacro-iliac joint, where the spine and the hips have a sort of vague connection mostly governed by tendons and muscle. It’s the weakest part of anybody’s makeup, so far as what they’re born with. When it’s out, ain’t nothin’ happy. And it gets ‘out’ from falls, or just because as you get older, you have all those accumulated insults: to paraphrase my father when I turned my trike over—”You’re going to remember that one when you’re sixty.”

He was right.

Well, I decided a day of no-functiong-brain would be an improvement over marginally-functioning-brain and unable-to-stand-up. So I took a prescription muscle relaxant, and went to bed (a Sleep Number bed, adjusted to 100, or ‘brick’, as opposed to 35, where I usually like it.)

This morning I lacked the energy to get out of bed, or do much more than take aim with the waterpistol when Shu decided to do an unfed-cat dance atop the air purifier. But I got up. Jane’s buzzing around full of energy. I am not. But I am able to stand upright again, and I’m just going to take it very easy to day and do minimal lifting. I may clean up the fish tank. Or do some other chore that requires no brain. Scraping pink coralline algae off the glass is relatively mindless, requiring only the ability to see the color pink, and the grace not to knock the corals loose from their perches. I think I can do that.

It stopped snowing last night, has warmed, and is melting a bit off shoveled sidewalks. This is good, because more is coming.

Our Toro electric is our friend.  We now have about 5″ of standing snow, as opposed to what melted while it got started. It’s powder, where we live. And rain can just wait, thank you! I established our back walk and the half of our double driveway we use this morning.
We’re going to do some cleanup today. Put away Christmas. Clear the decks.

Which should have taken 30 minutes. 4 hours later, into lunch, we now have it mostly put together.

This thing is amazing. Board restraints, anti-buck pawls, —My dad’s consisted of a flat surface, a saw blade with no guards at all, an on switch, an angle adjustment, and a height adjustment. I learned on that one, and still have all my fingers, and never got hit in the head by a board, either. I’m not sure I trust this modern stuff. This is “Buck Rogers does a table saw…” Only thing it lacks is a laser.

We are doing this to be able to cut a patch for the bathroom plywood. Sheesh! OTOH, it should go fast once we have this thing running.

Jane’s finger is getting soaked often.

I had my computer lock itself again today, so that I had to do a hard shutdown. I went through two sessions with ‘Peggy’ on Dell, until I finally got  one to admit he was lost, and I got gentlemanly Olivio, bless him, who worked until he admitted he was lost, too (but he was nice) and we eliminated hardware failure and think it is more a software issue. So I am taking some measures he suggested about hibernation-shutdown and I have his number and a tracking number so if it does it again we can remote the computer and let him try to spot the problem. OTOH, the fix may work.

I also found a piece of malware on my disc, and got rid of that. So today is a day for fixing things.

Jane fixed my dishwasher! Yay!

Jane dropped her laptop, which is now wheezing, and has discovered a red line running up her slashed finger. Sigh. I will be going to the pharmacy tomorrow earliest to get antibiotics…she is now soaking the finger in Epsom salts. Did I mention a snowfall is likely tonight. NOW it snows….

We do have a Carbonite backup, but when she consulted it after the computer accident, it refused to admit how much she has in storage. We hope Carbonite was only confused, because this laptop is not happy at all. And Jane’s computer has all the graphics and conversion work for Closed Circle.

I swear—nothing’s ever dull around here. It wouldn’t have slipped if she’d had all her fingers working.

We (and the Rotozip, an excellent tool) got the section prepared for the new floor insert: we found plywood in the basement; and Jane brilliantly used tinfoil to make a pattern which we will cut out and drop into the hole atop the floor decking, before restoring the floor tiles: this repairs the punky wood from the old corner-of-the-tub leak. OSGuy was so kind as to come by and let us put a 2″ pipe in place of a 1″ pipe supporting our tub spout, which lets the shower-cutoff make its full rotation, which it could not. The walls are bare of tile and wallboard: Jane is improving the insulation from an R-4 to R-15, to keep the tub water snug and heated. We are waiting for word that our new tile is in. And we are immaculate, edges trimmed, studs de-nailed and smooth as if it were a new construction.

Jane’s hand (actually it was her finger she sliced) is healing and doing well. A twinge of ouchiness now and again. But good.

We are so ready to get this done!

http://www.krem.com/video/featured-videos/Digital-addiction-can-cause-brain-damage-137412048.html

Wired-in may not be the best thing since sliced bread.

Turns out the leak punked some wood at the corner of the tub….

So we had to chisel that out. About a foot, foot and a half.

We now don’t know if we have enough tile to cover the patch when we get it. It’s going to be a squeaker—and Lowe’s has discontinued that tile.

And when we were hammering the wood chisel, it shook down some glassware downstairs in the basement, putting all my crystal at risk—but only breaking minor things, I hope: Jane didn’t let me see what went: she carried the survivors upstairs to wash, and while she was washing it, one dinged crystal glass—broke, and slashed her hand. She is now on painkillers. It’s almost good enough for stitches.

I swear to you, I can’t wait to have construction done with!

This is good. Nuff said.