Festival of Fools

Summertime shenanigans.

First, a brief update on the remodel.

After my self-leveling concrete episode, the bathroom tile was finally on deck. The sliced pebbles my wife selected came on sheets designed to link together, but faint borders were discernible, so I tore every pebble from its mesh backing and placed them individually, randomly, thousands of them, in thin-set mortar. It was grueling work, but at least I’m finally done with Portland cement – Hurray! The epoxy grout was equally frustrating, although the floor turned out perfect. And it’s heated!

Next up was the bathtub. This soaking tub, this grail, this work of art forged from solid copper somewhere deep in the mountains of Mexico, is quite heavy, and after filling its underside with expanding marine foam (a tricky process worthy of its own post), I worked up a harness from appliance straps to carry it down to the bathroom and threw my back out in the process. Pinched a nerve or something, feels like several. Everyone always says to “lift with your legs,” but nobody ever explains what in the hell that means.

The next day I installed the wall-hung toilet, which was a huge mistake because Sunday I couldn’t get out of bed. Always prepared, Bridget produced an Icy Hot patch and some Tylenol and instructed me to rest. This treatment worked well enough for me to disobey orders and mount a rally to hang the floating vanity. Now I’m shuffling around the house like a slipper-shod old man, wincing as I lower myself into my chair to sort through multiple browser windows open to websites for chiropractors and acupuncturists. It hurts even to breathe as I sit here holding up this madhouse with the shoulders of Samson and a back borrowed from Victor Hugo’s crippled hero, pecking out this post between flashes of searing pain.

Was it worth it? I dunno. I’m not done yet.

My back may be my body’s revolt against its sometimes-tyrannical boss, my brain; but apparently, I’m not the only one who’s gone mad around here. The birds, it seems, are entirely out of their avian, nut-sized minds. I suspect they may be eating psilocybin mushrooms.

Yesterday, Bridget rushed in from her morning walk and exclaimed, “There’s something going on in the forest that you absolutely have to come and see!” She’s not prone to hyperbole, so I hobbled outside and followed her up the drive into a scene of absolute bedlam.

There were five or six great horned owls each the size of Dobermans perched in various trees, all shrieking at full wail. Thirty or more ravens blackened the trees surrounding the owls — above, below, and on all sides — taunting them with shrill screeches and occasionally launching full attack dives to send the owls tumbling off their perches only to rise again on wingspans fit for dragons to alight on another branch and continue shrieking. In the middle of it all an oblivious pileated woodpecker hammered its head against a hemlock snag nonstop, as if attempting suicide by blunt force trauma. Meanwhile, a California quail posed on a stump piped out directions and wobbled his ridiculous plume as if conducting the mayhem above and his mate below as she flushed in and out of sword ferns trying to corral their tiny chicks that darted about chaotically like a swarm of fleas on the forest floor.

Then, in the midst of this cacophony, this madness, while the ravens cawed and swooped, and the owls shrieked and dodged, and the woodpecker relentlessly hammered, and the quail chittered and boiled, a merlin glided silently through the understory and dived for the quail on the stump and missed, clipping its wing on a salmonberry shrub and tumbling through the air before righting itself just in time to veer off and avoid colliding with us. We stood there agape, waiting for the earthquake. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. It was an absolute flying riot, a forest phantasmagoria. Goya couldn’t have painted it. We finally left, growing fearful that it might be something in the air. Something catching. Or maybe it’s just the heat.

In other news, the pond has finally dried up, but not before ten thousand tiny tree frogs climbed out of it. Few new toads this year for some reason, but these miniature Kermits are clinging to everything and it’s become absolutely impossible to cut the grass as they explode from the lawn like popped corn at the advance of the mower. I now regret my spring rescue project of relocating them as tadpoles from shrinking pools into deeper water. But aren’t they cute?

It appears to be a summer filled with shenanigans here.

A squirrel has decided to store its pinecones in my truck’s engine compartment. Upon removing the cones for the third time I found other mysterious things in even deeper recesses that lead me to suspect mice are also living in there.

The deer seem to believe the briefest of droughts nullifies our treaty and I’m waiting on child gates ordered from Amazon to keep them off the deck. They’ve turned our potted roses into a midnight buffet and I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up to requests for sorbet slipped under the door while they ruminate over the sunrise from our deck chairs. They don’t even leave Yelp reviews.

Then the other morning Bridget went out on the patio in her socked feet to toss some overripe fruit to the rabbits and immediately stepped on a snail and was sad about it for three days. The sound is unmistakable and hard to forget.

The same day I vacuumed up a tiny zebra spider and thought nothing of it until I couldn’t sleep that night. I finally got out of bed to empty the vacuum canister outside in a starlit cloud of dust. I have no idea if the little jumping ghoul survived, but at least my conscience is clear.

No doubt I’d be sleeping better if our Maine Coon hadn’t decided that my beard is her new scratching post. I wake up from dreams of drowning to find this 20-pound cat standing on my chest and rubbing her face against my whiskers. It doesn’t help of course that I’m allergic. This peculiar feline behavior has me up at odd hours eating enormous bowls of cereal by candlelight, waiting to see if the Benadryl or coffee kicks in first, while the cat slinks around the kitchen looking for crumbs. Meanwhile, Bridget sleeps on as if under a spell because she’s been up late working on a big project, occasionally forgetting she has her headphones on and bursting into song, usually something from the 80’s, usually just as I begin to fall asleep.

It’s all a damn zoo! Control is tenuous at best, perhaps completely illusionary. I must be extra careful at the moment to not show my weakness. If these animals realize my (hopefully temporary) disability, they’ll no doubt decide that “Napoleon is always right” and take over the place. Perhaps they already have. If only they could be trained to lay hardwood flooring. Harrumph!

All this is to say we’re not okay over here. There are no adults in sight. It’s a festival of fools beneath the moon. I’m still waiting for the earthquake. But then it might be something in the air. Something catching. Or maybe it’s just the heat.

Until next week then.

Ryan.