October 28, 2010. Thursday.
Situation: I spoke too soon yesterday. Only a little more than an hour after I finished writing yesterday’s report, I discovered a tick on my thigh when I went to sit down on the toilet. Not the first one I’ve seen buried in my skin, so I recognized it right away: its little legs flaring from its body like little hairs stuck in a booger. I called Moi, and she managed to remove the whole thing, including its head, with tweezers; she gave me a pill of doxycycline to take. Moi tells me she didn’t let Mway eat the ground hog she killed. She buried it instead; feels Mway would have gotten sick on it. Work has come in for me to do today, so I’m going to eat breakfast and do that. Get home at 3. Mway greets me in the driveway with the birch branch in her mouth. I’m apprehensive about ticks today. My walking pants have developed holes and threadbare spots in them this past year: notice a threadbare spot right where the tick had penetrated my thigh. I find another pair of jeans which I’ve been planning to demote from street clothes status and put those on (throw the others away, as well as another pair I find – hesitantly, I might add, because my mother would have braided them into a rug).
State of the Path: Mway plows through the chickens (Moi says she has been especially bullying them since her big kill yesterday.) I ask her where her stick is, and she runs to where it lies. I decide not to go by the old orchard (lessen my chances of meeting a tick), but it makes little difference: most everywhere along the main path I make contact with weeds, any of which could harbor one of the buggers. See a white butterfly in various places in bug land. Starting at the “chokeberries,” see specks of white floating in the air: bugs (possibly ticks) or seeds from the goldenrod? I start to cross the plank, look at all the weeds along the path ahead, then turn around. I do take the path up to the summer house (that’s a little wider). In a treeless black walnut up ahead, a huge squirrel’s nest appears against the sky. More specks of white bounce around me as I walk toward the clearing.
State of the Creek: Mway goes into the water at the tree stand, starts wading downstream to her exit spot at the honeysuckle. Under the bush, I see a curious a thing: a log (looks too big to be a root) embedded in the creek bank, a hole behind it. Mway exits the creek where I’m standing, immediately starts digging under the bush (now she thinks she’s a mighty hunter, I think). A dragonfly flits over the pool at the log jam.
The Fetch: I stand at the clear end of the clearing (the end I formally always stood at), away from any goldenrod, toss the stick to the other end. Mway a few times drops the stick a few feet short of where I’m standing, forcing me to walk forward to pick it up. As soon as she keeps the stick in her mouth when she brings it back I tell her “good enough.” A few grasshoppers hop away into the goldenrod. See the all-wing bugs on the path back through the sumacs. When I get back to the house, I throw my walking clothes in the dryer, inspect my naked body. Moi suggests I take a shower; I do that also.
2 comments:
Just a word of advice, MM, regarding your plans to post a chapter daily on my blog. Keep in mind that my blog will end on December 24 of this year. That means you’ll have to have finished your novel no later than November 29, unless you don’t mind continuing to write later chapters as you post those already written. I’m glad to hear that you plan on typing up your novel yourself. I’ve come across some of your pages, and I can’t make heads or tails of what you’ve written. On some pages there appears to be only one giant letter, so distorted it hardly looks recognizable as a letter.
My letters may not be Times New Roman perfect, and some of them may be far larger than 12-point size, but I find them sufficiently legible – perhaps you’ve become so accustomed to “word-processed” documents you’ve lost the ability to read handwriting, as you would call it. But this is something you don’t have to worry your little head about. Just keep the paper coming. (The scrap paper you’ve been providing is fine. I’ve even written a word or two on the planks of your office floor. And don’t worry about this either. I’m keeping good track of what and where I’ve written things.) And thanks for informing me that I have a deadline for this novel. The thought of one is pumping blood all through my body. Done with the “C” volume. “D” next, please. MM.
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