What I Learned Today

It's a little after noon, and I haven't anything to report on the Windows Week front. They said they'd be here around 8:30, then texted that it would be 10, then showed up about 11. No biggie; as I said, it's not my first rodeo. But then there were problems--the sheetrock isn't the right thickness (the receipt they gave him says it's right, but when he got it out and looked at it, they'd loaded the wrong ones), it started to rain (meaning he had to go get a tarp), he couldn't find the right-sized drill bit (I let him use mine). Stuff like that. So he's gone to get something, and I ran in the moment he left and turned the heat back up. They want the heat off; I like it at 79. We don't compromise because they're the ones doing the hard work. I've been freezing all week, and today it's 38 and raining and you can bet that when they're not here? That heat is coming back on. All I can say is: I'm ready for this to be finished and done. I need to get my life and house and studio back.

I've been trying to work, and I'm realizing even more than I already knew just how thoroughly Stuff stops me. I knew that it made it harder to have ideas and get things going when there was a lot of stuff, and now I can really see it. Because the stuff from the sewing studio is distributed into this office and the living room, I can see how much there is and what an energy drain it is. Not going through to try to find stuff, but just having it in the room.  I can't even think--it's like the Stuff absorbs all the thought rays that would ordinarily shoot out from my brain and zip around and then zip back to me so I could formulate plans and stuff, and that's not happening because the Stuff absorbs those Brain Rays, sucks them up, kills them dead. I spend the whole day feeling like I'm piddling, spinning my wheels. I HATE this, as you might imagine.

I was telling The EGE last night that having remodeling done is exactly like travel but without the scenery. You're all excited to start the adventure, and you pack your stuff and get ready, and then you're on your way and new stuff's happening and things are different and exciting, but then that first night you realize you can't find any of your stuff. Where's the damn dental floss? It's an ordeal just to get a meal because you don't have your kitchen, and you can't work because your stuff's all packed, and you're not ever quite comfortable (too hot, too cold, wearing different clothes), and soon it seems like the days are just stalled out, with you in unfamiliar places just waiting to get back to your regular life. You're tired of the noise and weird odors and constant disruptions. You're sharing a bathroom with other people (!), and you're never by yourself until late at night, when everything's unfamiliar (last night we had no electricity in our bedroom, for example) and weird.

In short, I'm ready to go home.

And you know what else? That nail gun is one scary tool. I keep remembering a scene from that movie I can't ever remember the name of (of which. . .) with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, where The Bad Guys wreak havoc (and murder) with a nail gun. Eeeek. And now the compressor has just kicked in, and I've got that noise and the vacuum and the nail gun and two guys yelling to hear each other over the noise and omigod, I may lose my mind today.

Anyway, so I was reading about grackles to take my mind off the chaos. Chaos makes me nuts, as you might guess if you know anyone who's just the teeniest bit OCD and anal-retentive. I was never one of those adolescents who craved chaos.

I mostly craved a quiet room to myself and a good, thick book. Maybe chocolate, which I was not allowed to have but could dream about.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like total silence? Espcially, like, you know: when I'm working?

So: grackles. There are tons of them in the neighborhood, and they fascinate me. They congregate in the tiptops of the trees at dusk and talk about stuff, and I would give money (if I had any, you know, left over from the remodeling and stuff) to know what they talk about. My theory is that they tell each other where they found stuff that day--water, food, nesting full of someone else's eggs (they'll eat those in a heartbeat). I think they gather at sunset and face the sun together so they can give directional signals for where that stuff is.

But I could be wrong. They could be plotting against us or telling jokes about chihuahuas or doing a little file-sharing. Who knows?

The EGE has taken a TON of photos of grackles for me, but dang if I can find them. I so, so need someone to come in and organize all these 25,000 photos for me, labeling them all and sorting them into useful categories, like Grackles Congregating and Bathing in the Rain on Wednesday, for example.

Anyway, so I was reading about grackles, and I came to this interesting thing I didn't know: they will stand around and allow ants to stream up over their legs and bodies because the acid secreted by ant stings, formic acid, may help kill parasites (nobody is sure about this, of course, since nobody has yet deciphered Grackle Code. They could be letting the ants climb aboard a Grackle Taxi for a free trip down the block in exchange for info about where to find hatchlings. But they *think* it's about parasites. You know: Bird Mites. Those things you mother warned you about every time you tried to pick up a bird feather and that you STILL think about every time. Although now you pick the feather up anyway, seeing as how you don't appear to be mite-infested and so are maybe immune. Or so you hope).

Formic. Huh. Where had I heard that before? Ah: formication, which is a paresthesia in which it feels as if insects are crawling on your skin. Now, that sounds like a hallucination, and you think only people with mental issues would be affected, but no. The reason I know about it is that I had it--looking back, I can see that it was one of the earliest symptoms of perimenopause (up to 10% of menopausal women experience it; I'm guessing it's more than that but that most women don't even know to mention it). When I'd be out here working, I'd think ants or--omg!--FLEAS were crawling on my legs. I'd check, inspecting my skin, being absolutely certain that there was something crawling up my legs. But no.

That's when I started reading up and discovered a LOT about menopause that most of us never know. Dental problems. Nosebleeds. Constipation (all related to the loss of moisture in mucous membranes). Tons of other stuff they never tell you about.

The word "formica" is Latin for ant, and I thought it sounded a lot like "hormiga," which is ant in Spanish. Sure enough, hormiga comes from formica, and now I'm all happy. Few things are more satisfying to me than figuring out how words needed up being what they are.

Then I had to know how the word "formica" fit in with all of this. (Not at all, as it turns out: formica, that plastic laminate stuff, has nothing to do with ants or formic acid but was developed as "a substitute for mica," hence for+mica = formica. How disappointing.

Now I'm off to see what I can find out about the social relationships of grackles. If I can't find anything useful, I'll just continue to make it up my own self.

The guys are back. Now the floor is wet and muddy, the shop vac's going, along with the nail gun and the saw. Yikes! I can't leave to go take a walk because it's 38 and raining. Eeeeeeeeee.