Thankful Thursday

And then the sky just opened up....

It was a full day. I tried to sleep in, through the rambunction of the early morning around here, and while I did that I dreamt of seeing seven tornadoes on the horizon as I searched in vain for my home. I was sure it was there somewhere. Seven tornadoes and a lost home. I wonder what it means, or if it means anything. Sometimes dreams do, I believe. I'll keep thinking about it.

But once I was up and about, well, there were messes to go, places to clean. Isn't that always the way? I cleared enough kitchen counter to make breakfast and sat down with that to compose my list for the day. Do you have a list? I need one. If I don't make a list for myself, I wander through the day with the vague notion that almost certainly something needs doing, but I can't for the life of me think of what it is. Or I start a needful project, run off to attend to something else, and then completely forget what I'd begun until it jumps up and bites me on the arse.

1. Pick up the chicken. We're not raising chickens this year, and I haven't been entirely happy about that, but so it goes. The empty freezer in the porch glared accusingly. So when the Co-Op announced a sale on chicken, I called them and ordered 10 CASES of eight each! Eighty chickens! They were due to arrive today.

2. E-mail study notes. A few days ago one of my classmates had requested some notes on nerve roots and paths, and the last couple days were so busy that I hadn't had a chance to respond. I didn't have this information anywhere except on my home-made flashcards, but I thought it would be a good review to type it all up "formally". In my case, repetition is the mother of memory.

3. Seed more lettuce, and dill. I ripped open that dill seed-package and nearly snorted the seeds right up into my sinuses. Gor, I love the smell!

I started with the notes. Brachial plexus: C5, C6, C7, C8, T1; musculocutaneous, axillary, radial, median, ulnar, and all their winding ways down the arm. Lumbosacral plexus: L2, L3, L4, L5, S1, S2; the obturator, the femoral and the ever-bifurcating sciatic splitting its path down thigh and calf. I sent it to the lady who'd made the request, and then to the rest of the class, figuring maybe someone else could use it.

On to the garden. Seeding turned out to be a larger matter than I'd originally conceived. First of all, once I got all close at hand, I found that there were quite a few clots of quackgrass and dandelion that needed routing, and thistle that needed to be discouraged. Our thistles spread by rhizome as well as seed, so it's not just a matter of extirpation. You have to return again and again to the same spot, since the demonic root will continue to send up shoots to invade your beets. If you keep after it, it does eventually lose heart and vigour, but it's not a job for the easily dismayed. Think years, not months.

After that, I turned my attention to the unsown bed, but it hadn't been worked up much since last year, so I got to spend a fair bit of time turning soil and combing it smooth with a rake. It's pleasing to see all that chicken litter mixed into the clay, and even more pleasing to see how many earthworms we've got this year. The first couple years after we bought this place, it had been so hard-used, and driven on, and starved, that worms were very few and far between. Now I turn up several with every shovelful. Glory!

The sky started to spit at me, so I drew my little lines in the beds for the lettuce seed, threw a handful at the dirt for the dill, mixed it all up, hung up my shovel and made for the house to clean my filthy feet.

I checked my e-mail. There was a reply from a classmate, assuring me that I, Madcap, TOTALLY ROCK for sending the notes. I believe this means she was thankful. It's Thursday, after all. ;-)

Wolfed a sandwich, went questing for chicken.

While the young lad in the meat department went hunting down my order, I strolled the aisles to fill my cart. Toilet paper. I buy a lot of toilet paper. Chive rolls his eyes, but I tell you, having a closet full of TP is a reassuring thing. Apples, cheese, salmon... I particularly buy what's on sale, and lots of it, especially non-perishables.

Sometimes I hear stories, usually from the States, about storms rolling in and people frantically jamming the grocery stores for foodstuffs and all, and I can hardly comprehend the lives they must lead. Why on earth would anyone with a kitchen not stock their shelves? The other day Chive and I were talking about disasters, and he went browsing through the cupboards and reckoned that we have enough food around for about three months. I'm working on that. I'd like it to be six months, or a year, but hey - three months is better than nothing, huh? But it's beyond my ken that anyone wouldn't have enough on hand to last even three days.

As I was loading the cases into the trunk and back seat, the rain began to get serious about its business. The drops were large. And wet. By the time I got home, puddles were merging to become lakes in our drive. I hollered for the kids and we unloaded. As we ferried the cases over the water and into the porch, the rain reconsidered its mission in life and became hail. Large hail. I tried to cower under my hair while I ripped open boxes and unloaded them into my freezer, but it didn't avail me much. Hailstones the size of my fingernails smacked me in the back of the neck and melted down my shirt. By the time we were finally finished, all three of us were as wet as mermaids. Poppy and Patch stripped off their coats and shoes and went screaming around the yard like the wild things they are, chasing the poor soggy kitties and wrestling each other to the ground.

I, much less entertainingly, sloshed into the house, toweled down, and checked my e-mail. Now I had a message assuring me of goddess-hood. Again, I believe this meant the sender was thankful of the notes.

Looking out the window, I was thankful too. Thankful that my plants aren't big enough to be damaged by the hail. Thankful that I got my seeds in before the deluge. Thankful that we're no longer living in a wildfire zone. Thankful that I have a lot of food in storage, and need not worry about feeding my family. Thankful that it was just hail, and not seven tornadoes, and that my home hasn't grown legs to go on walkabout.

And now I'm thankful that my bed is waiting so patiently. Why do I always stay vertical so long when horizontal is so wonderful?