Friday bullets, Aug. 14, 2020

And somehow we all made it to Friday. It felt touch and go there for a while earlier in the week.

• We are awash in cherry tomatoes; specifically the little yellow pear shaped ones. There are worse problems to have. I can eat them like candy.
• M., with P. holding, took out Java's stitches earlier this week. If I'm going to have a child who is a licensed vet tech, I should get some benefit out of it, huh? I'm told the stitches came out easily and Java was patient with the process. Her nose looks pretty good, especially considering that the vet wasn't sure that the edge that was nearly ripped off would make it. She does have a slightly jagged bit right on the edge, but it isn't terribly noticeable, nor should it bother her.
  
  See? You can hardly see it. If you look about 3/4 of the way up her nostril, by the little white patch, that is the beginning of the tear. There is a slight white line where it was stitched back together. 

• R. has been better, though we still have had some rough patches here and there over the course of the week. Today was the first completely smooth day since Tuesday. 
• I finally finished making the sweet baby gherkin pickles and canned them. The reason it was such a lengthy process was that you turn them into pickles before you can them. By the time I was done, they smelled and tasted exactly like the ones you buy in the store. I'm kind of tempted to start gathering more tiny cucumbers to do it all again. 
• This would also help with the continuous onslaught of very large cucumbers.
• We finished reading Secret Water, the Swallows and Amazons book we were on. This was not my favorite book. The series was written in the 30's, so I assume for any book written that long ago that there will be some language that I need edit as I read to make it less racist. This one was harder because of the group of children they meet who play at being savages. We had to have a discussion about it, and then I grit my teeth and went on. I'm hoping the next book goes back to the 'just a word here and there' variety. I will probably recommend parents skip this particular book if they are reading through the series.
• I have filled all the slots but one in the horse classes I am doing for children. That is better than I had hoped. This also means that even if our federal tax return does not arrive in our checking account this month that there will be enough funds available to make up the difference in what I need to pay the taxes. This is a huge weight off my shoulders.
• In other good news, friends of ours have an extra washing machine that they don't need. This is also hugely wonderful news.
• The car... well it is still just hanging out at the repair place. We're going to have to do something about transportation this weekend. People don't seem to have extra cars kicking around like they do other things.
• Nefertiti likes to sit in baskets. Actually Nefertiti likes to sit in or on just about anything, but baskets are a favorite. It doesn't seem to matter if there are eggs in the basket or not. Here is my broody cat sitting on about 9 or so eggs.

• There are baby lop-eared bunnies at the barn where Horse Power is. I can now say without any hesitation that the cutest thing on the planet is a three week old baby lop-eared bunny. 
• I am not so fond of the baby bunnies who happen to be living in one of my gardens and are eating all of the watermelon, though.
• I am not even close to being ready to start school next month. 
• Yesterday late afternoon found me sitting at a table, slowly piecing together a map that G. had drawn. It was a precious map of a block archipelago she had built and wanted a record of. But alas, she discovered it earlier in the day torn to shreds by one of the resident canines. Since I have had a lot of practice in piecing ripped paper back together, I assured her we could sort it out and tape it together. Thirty minutes later I was able to present her with a very taped together map, telling her now it looked like a real explorer's map which had recently been found. She decided that it was actually an improvement over the pre-ripped one. Phew.
• L. has written four or five new chapters in her newest novel, and is not starting to follow me around asking when I can go through it with her to correct the spelling. 
• Having D. working as a clerk at the library is pretty nice. He reserves things for me, returns, things, and straightens out difficulties with all the various library cards. It's like having my own personal librarian.
• TM took all his laundry to a laundromat yesterday. He was desperate and there was no washing machine here. He is not a fan, let's just say, of the whole experience.
• K. collect bottle caps. He then imagines his vast collection of bottle caps are actually his own personal clone army. Yesterday, as I was working in the studio, I overheard, K., playing in the loft outside the door, tell his clone army that they were in trouble for not being six feet apart.
• I'm realizing that I have until Sept. 7 to go get my driver's license renewed. It is at that point that my three-month grace period due to Covid is up. I'm not looking forward to standing in line at the Secretary of State's office.
• On Wednesday, at my driving lesson, I got to drive around the very large hay field behind the arena where we were working. It was a gorgeous day... sunny, cool breeze, lots of butterflies flitting around. It was easy to pretend that I was in one of the many 19th century novels that I've read driving my horse and cart somewhere. Does anyone else do that... pretend they are in a novel?
• J. is just about ready to put up saddle racks in the tack room. 
• Sadly, though, the tack room may have to wait another week while various car and washing machine things are done this weekend.

It's been a long week and I am tired. Time to head to bed.